And in the actual life of the young girl to-day
there is a moment when by a secret atavism she feels the pride of
her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot
understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering
between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely
knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of
confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing
was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs
of that human epoch." (Celine Renooz, _Psychologie Comparee de
l'Homme et de la Femme_, p. 85.) It may be added that among
primitive peoples, and even among some remote European
populations to-day, the exhibition of feminine nudity has
sometimes been regarded as a spectacle with religious or magic
operation. (Ploss, _Das Weib_, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp.
663-680; Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, p.
304.) It is stated by Gopcevic that in the long struggle between
the Albanians and the Montenegrians the women of the former
people would stand in the front rank and expose themselves by
raising their skirts, believing that they would thus insure
victory.
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