a mother the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly
felt to be ridiculous. ("Les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour
les mères," remarks Goncourt, _Journal des Goncourt_, vol. iii,
p. 5.) She has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any
important part to play in life, and would, indeed, be
inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage
when the pairing season is over.

Madame Céline Renooz, in an elaborate study of the psychological
sexual differences between men and women (_Psychologie Comparée
de l'Homme et de la Femme_, 1898, pp. 85-87), also believes that
modesty is not really a feminine characteristic. "Modesty," she
argues, "is masculine shame attributed to women for two reasons:
first, because man believes that woman is subject to the same
laws as himself; secondly, because the course of human evolution
has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women
the psychological results of masculine sexuality. This is the
origin of the conventional lies which by a sort of social
suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at
least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but
only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it
is really an outrage to their sex. This reversal of psychological
laws has, however, only been accepted by women with a struggle.
Primitive woman, proud of her womanhood, for a long time
defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented.
And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment
when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the
intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she
must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of
Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness