254 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
are an organic disturbance of equilibrium occurring when factors difficult of reconciliation are brought to the attention, and if we have in mind that the association of the sexes has furnished so powerful an emotional disturbance as jealousy, it seems a simple matter to explain the comparatively mild by-play of sexual mod- esty as a function of wooing, without bringing either clothing or ornament into the question. But modesty has, in fact, become so bound up with clothing that it is difficult to think the two apart. I wish, therefore, to examine the conditions in race his- tory which have brought the organs of sex into attention, and to note what forms of attention are favorable to the development of clothing, and what has been the effect upon attention of bringing clothing into a relation with the person.
There is, first of all, a very widespread attention to the male organs of sex at the time of puberty, in connection, generally, with the initiation ceremonies, which fall also at this time. Cir- cumcision is the form which this attention takes for the most part. This is sometimes performed by the boy himself, some- times by a friend, but generally as a part of the public initiation ceremony ; not, indeed, by the priests or medicine men, but by those in charge of the ceremony, or by relatives or guardians of the boy. I think that there can be little doubt that the sugges- tion of Ploss,' carefully developed by Andree,= is correct, that this ceremony is a part of the manifestation of tribal interest in the education and preparation for life of another man and warrior. The boy was at this time admitted to the ranks of the warriors and of the married men; the initiation, in general, marked the completion of his education for manhood, and the circumcision was of the nature of assistance rendered to nature in the com- pletion of his organic preparation for marriage. A similar attention to the growth of young women is seen in the ceremony of laceration, as it occurs, for instance, in Queensland,^ where the women allege that this is the object, and in the ceremony
'H. Ploss, DasKindin Branch und Sitte der Volker, Vol. I, 368.
' R. Andree, " Beschneidung," EthnographUche ParalUUn und Vergleicke, Neue Folge, pp. 166 £E.
3W. E. V.OTH, Ethnological Studies among the North-West- Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 174.
