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rate, upon modes of judgment not clearly analyzable in con- sciousness. An openness of manner in the relations of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness, or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is charming, but too much modesty is prudery. Under these cir- cumstances, when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is real- ized, but the effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and when, at the same time, the effect produced by the action is felt to be very important to happiness, it is to be expected that there should often be a conflict between the tend- ency to follow a stimulus and the tendency to inhibit it, a hover- ing between advance and retreat, assent and negation, and a disturbed state of attention, and an organic hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the act is realized or thought as improper.'
But however thin and movable the partitions between attrac- tion and disgust, every person is aware of certain standards of
■ A wholesale unsettling of habit is seen when a lower culture is inr.pinged upon by a higher. The consciousness of other standards of behavior causes new forms of modesty in the lower race. Haddon reports of the natives of Torres Straits : " The men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people ; now both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before me — only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only when they were diving. The women, according to my experience, would never voluntarily expose their breasts to white men's gaze ; if caught exposed, she would immediately cover her chest or turn around ; this also applies to quite young girls, less so to old women. Amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming more so, and I have been gravely assured that a man 'can't' (z. e.,
must not, should not) see a woman's breasts I have not noticed any reticence
in their speaking about sexual matters before the young, but missionary influence has modified this a great deal ; formerly, I imagine, there was no restraint in speech, now there is a great deal of prudery ; for example, the men were always much ashamed when I asked for the name of the sexual parts of a woman, even when alone or in the presence of one or two men only, and I had the greatest possible difficulty in getting the little information I did about the former relationships between the sexes. All this, I suspect, is not really due to a sense of decency per se, but rather to a desire on their part not to appear barbaric to strangers ; in other words, the hesitancy is between them and the white man, not as between themselves." (A. C. Haddon, " The Ethnog- raphy of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits," /o!<r. Anth. Inst., Vol. XIX, p. 336.) Bonwick sayS also : " I have repeatedly been amused at observing the Australian natives prepare for their approach to the abodes of civilization by wrapping their blankets more decently around them and putting on their ragged trousers or petti- coats" (loc. cit.y p. 24).
