Zwischenstufen_, Jahrgang iv, 1902, esp. p. 92.) At the same time
this is only one thread in the tangled skein with which we are
here concerned. The mass of facts which meets us when we turn to
the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of
artificially-imposed customs. They gain rather than lose in
importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual demands
of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the temporary
suppression of another feminine instinct of opposite, though
doubtless allied, nature.

But these somewhat conflicting, though not really contradictory,
statements serve to bring out the fact that a woman's modesty is
often an incalculable element. The woman who, under some
circumstances and at some times, is extreme in her reticences,
under other circumstances or at other times, may be extreme in
her abandonment. Not that her modesty is an artificial garment,
which she throws off or on at will. It is organic, but like the
snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impenetrable covering, and
sometimes glides off almost altogether. A man's modesty is more
rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either extreme.
Thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be impatient
with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked at her abandonments.

The significance of our inquiry becomes greater when we reflect that to
the reticences of sexual modesty, in their progression, expansion, and
complication, we largely owe, not only the refinement and development of
the sexual emotions,--"_la pudeur_" as Guyau remarked, "_a civilisé
l'amour_"--but the subtle and pervading part which the sexual instinct has
played in the evolution of all human culture.