Altogether different is the case with those who are habitually bashful, of whom the world holds many thousands. Here, obviously, some factor or factors other than inexperience must enter to cause the chronic timidity which has the special quality of afflicting its victim only when in the presence of other human beings. This, indeed, is the distinguishing characteristic of bashfulness, as was pointed out long ago by Charles Darwin, in his statement that bashfulness seems to depend on "sensitiveness to the opinion, whether good or bad, of others." Darwin also held--and his view still is the prevailing one--that the sensitiveness of the habitually bashful man relates mostly to external appearances. That is to say, he is bashful because he knows he is awkward, because he is dressed out of style or not in keeping with the special occasion, or because he suffers from some real or fancied bodily defect. To the objection that there are plenty of awkward, badly dressed, and physically deformed men and women who are not at all bashful, the advocates of this theory fall back on heredity as the ultimate determining factor, insisting that it is an inborn weakness which makes the bashful man or woman supersensitive to the opinion of others regarding his or her personal appearance and demeanour. Now, recent research seems to leave no doubt that heredity does operate to some extent in the causation of bashfulness, since most bashful persons--at any rate, among those who come under the care of physicians--have a strain of the neurotic in their family histories. On the other hand, it has been quite as positively established that the matter of external appearances has a causal relation to bashfulness in comparatively few cases, though it may act as an aggravating element. In case after case the first manifestations of true chronic bashfulness have been traced to a period in life far antedating any anxiety on the person's part respecting the way he walks or dresses or looks. More than this, when the bashful themselves are questioned as to the causes of their bashfulness, they usually either profess entire ignorance, or emphasise mental, rather than physical, factors. "I attribute my bashfulness to no physical cause," is a characteristic response. "I attribute it to a certain weakness of mind, to my lack of self-confidence, to fear of ridicule, and especially to a nervous excitement which I feel whenever others look at me."