The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological StudyGuyau, Jean-Marie
Religion
The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study
Guyau, Jean-Marie
Irreligion and sociology; Religion; Social sciences
of fright that inclines a bird to flee one’s caresses, which bruise
it. One’s very look possesses some element of hardness for a bird;
and is it not a prolongation of touch? In addition to these various
elements there goes, to the composition of a young girl’s or a young
man’s modesty, a higher and more properly human element; the fear of
love itself, the fear of something new and unknown, of the profound
and powerful instinct which is awakening in one after having up to
that time lain asleep, which abruptly arises in one and struggles for
dominance with the other forces and impulses of one’s being. The young
man, unaccustomed as yet to submit to the domination of this instinct,
finds in it something stranger and more mysterious than in any other;
_c’est l’interrogation anxieuse de chérubin_.[93]
[93] Shame is usually regarded as constituting the essence of
modesty, but shame can have been but one of the elements in its
formation; such shame as actually exists is readily explicable
as a sense of the uncleanness attaching, in especial in the
case of the woman (of whom the Hebrews required a periodic
purification), to certain animal functions. But modesty must
have been developed also by the use of clothing and the growth
of the habit of covering, first the loins and then more and
more of the entire person; and indeed the development of
modesty and of the habit of wearing clothes must each have been
aided by the other. The habit of going covered gives rise very
soon to shame at being seen uncovered. The little negresses
whom Livingstone supplied with shifts became, in a few days,
so accustomed to having the upper half of their bodies hidden
that, when they were surprised in their chambers in the
morning, they hastily covered their breasts.
[Sidenote: Religious education and modesty.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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