Among many peoples of Africa, and in certain tribes of the Malay Archipelago and South America, the girls also undergo a sort of circumcision, and this is looked upon as an indispensable preliminary to marriage.[1252] Sunt autem gentes, quarum contrarius mos est, ut clitoris et labia minora non exsecentur, verum extendantur, et saepe longissime extendandur. Atque ista etiam deformatio insigne pulchritudinis existimatur.[1253] De indigenis Ponapéis haec adnotat Dr. Finsch; labia interna longius extenta et pendentia puellis et uxoribus singulare sunt incitamentum, quae res eodem modo se habet apud alias gentes, ut apud Hottentottas.[1254] It certainly seems strange that such deformities should have been originally intended to improve the appearance. But we must remember the rough taste of savages, and the wish for variety so deeply rooted in human nature. These practices evidently began at a time when man went in a state of perfect nudity. The mutilations, as the eyes became accustomed to them, gradually ceased to be interesting, and continued to be inflicted merely through the force of habit, or from a religious motive. A new stimulus was then invented, parts of the body which had formerly been exposed being hidden by a scanty covering: as the Chinese women at first had their feet pressed in order to excite admiration, but afterwards began to conceal them from coquetry, or as the Tassai beauties, though entirely naked otherwise, wear two or three petticoats one over another.[1255] * * * * * How, then, are we to explain the connection which undoubtedly exists between nakedness and the feeling of shame? The hypothesis here set forth cannot be regarded as fully established until this question is answered. “The ideas of modesty,” Forster truly says, “are different in every country, and change in different periods of time.”[1256] As v. Humboldt remarks, “A woman in some parts of Asia is not permitted to show the ends of her fingers; while an Indian of the Caribbean race is far from considering herself naked, when she wears a ‘guajuco’ two inches broad. Even this band is regarded as a less essential part of dress than the pigment which covers the skin. To go out of the hut without being painted with arnotta, is to transgress all the rules of Caribbean decency.”[1257] In Tahiti, a person not properly tattooed would “be as much reproached and shunned, as if with us he should go about the streets naked;”[1258] and, in Tonga also, the men would think it very indecent not to be tattooed.[1259]