From the genital act, modesty is stretched over the exterior sexual organs by a mechanism very simple and very logical. But here, I think, one must distinguish between genital modesty bred from the custom of clothing the whole body, and that which has led men to cover only a particular part. Heat, cold, rain, insects explain clothing, but not the savage's cotton drawers or the fig leaf; especially when the leaf, imposed on married women, for example, is forbidden to virgins, or when this symbolic leaf is so reduced that it serves no purpose, save that of a sign. In this last case, it has not even any direct relation to genital modesty; it is only a matrimonial ornament, analogous to the ring or the collar, a sign, indeed indicating a condition. It is possible also, that among certain peoples where the men go entirely naked, the women wear an apron merely to keep off flies, gad-flies, rather as a peasant drapes his horse's muzzle with grass and leaves. Quite often, however, one is forced to recognize in these customs, the proof of a particular genital sensibility, analogous to civilized modesty. An English sailor, at the time of the first explorations got himself rejected by the Maori women not because he appeared without clothing, a state which custom required, but because he appeared with his organ unsheathed. This detail shocked them extremely. A curious example of the localization of shame: all parts of the body could and should show themselves, all save this small surface. On reflection, the modesty of Europeans at a ball or on the beach is almost as absurd as that of the Maoris, or as that of the fellaheen women who at the approach of a stranger remove their shirts, their sole garments, in order to cover their faces. Sexual modesty, as one observes it today, among the most various peoples, is utterly artificial. Livingstone assures us that he developed modesty in little Kaffir girls by clothing them. Surprised in neglige, they covered their breasts--and this in a race where the women go wholly naked, save for a string round the middle, from which another string hangs. Clothing is only one of the causes of modesty, or of customs which give us the illusion of it, and the sentiment of fear associated with the sexual act does not explain all the rest. There is a shame particular to the female, an ensemble of movements, which one can assimilate to nothing, which one can attach to nothing. The gesture of Venus modest is not purely a woman's gesture; nearly all females, especially mammifers, have it; the female, who refuses, lowers her tail and clamps it between her legs; there is here, evidently, the origin of one of the particular forms of modesty. We have given characteristic examples in an earlier chapter.