256 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Campbell gives some instances of the relation of sex organs to superstitious practices among the somewhat higher (chiefly the Hindu) religions, and adds :
The belief on this point is a case of the great early religious law, the unwilled is the spirit-caused. To the early man both the local physical and general mental effects of the promptings of the sex appetite imply the entrance and working of some outside spirit. In later religious thought the effects are explained as due to possession by Venuses, Loves, or nymphs. In another view the cause is Satan warring in man's members, or the old Adam goading to sin. Since, therefore, the private parts are great spirit haunts, they can be used as spirit housers. Therefore the private parts are lucky. The belief that the private parts are especially open to spirit attacks seems to be the origin of physical decency. The private parts are kept hid, lest th&evil eye or other evil spirit should through them enter the body.'
In view of this we might well suspect that the first expression of modesty in connection with bodily habits would be found in women, and that the origin of clothing might be found in the efforts of women to cover themselves at those times when exposure of their persons would be particularly dangerous and displeasing to men. Puberty and menstruation are, indeed, the occasion of a large amount of attention to the girl. She with- draws from the camp, or is isolated, because her bodily state is looked on as an illness, and illness is regarded as spirit-caused. She was treated at this time among the natural races essentially as she was treated under the Mosaic law, as unclean, and there can be no question that modesty had a particular development in relation to this fact in the life of woman, but the modesty was not associated with the organs or functions of sex as such, but with a set of superstitions attached to these. And there is cer- tainly no coincidence between the first menstruation and putting on clothes, nor are clothes put on and taken off with reference to any particular periods in the life of woman. The only clear connection, indeed, between menstruation and clothing is that the girl often wears some sign of her marriageability after the first menstruation on her head or body in the way of an ornament ; but this is not specially likely to be worn on the loins, and is in
■J. M. Campbell, The Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXIV, p. 263.
