THE DECADENCE OF MODESTY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 43, 28 October 1893, Page 341

THE DECADENCE OF MODESTY.

To those who believe that the world depends for its advancement on the cultivation and perpetuation of the qualities which are summed up, in popular parlance, as goodness and virtue, the tendency of the present age toward immodesty must be disheartening. Perhaps immodesty is too strong a word, and the decadence of modesty would be better to express what every intelligent and thoughtful person must recognise as the prevalent tone of the day. The only saving clause is that the external is not always an unvarying index of the internal, that is, that lack of

modesty in seeing, hearing, and saying things need not necessarily and inevitably involve mental or spiritual impurity, but this, it must be admitted, is a slender reed. The reflex action of sights, of sounds, of words, is so subtle, so insidious and so difficult to combat and counteract that nothing short of a miracle prevent the staining and smirching of the white soul if the environment be one of leek of modesty. There is no necessity for confusing modesty with prudery. Every sensible person understands the distinction between them, and knows where the one shades into the other. Modesty is the natural garb of purity ; prudery is too often only a disguise assumed to cover something which is best hidden. Modesty is lovely and charming at all times and

in all people ; prudery is a pure affectation, and therefore displeasing under all circumstances and conditions. But as to modesty, in its best sense, it will hardly be disputed that it has fallen into a state of comparative decadence. Any observer who studies the younger generation to-day, and the older one as well, cannot help tecognisirg the fact, melancholy though it may be. He will see publications of various kinds, books, magazines, weeklies, etc., openly advertised, sold and read which, a dozen yeats ago, would have been sold, if at all, under cover of the darkness and read, if at all, in secret. Two or three yeais ago, as will be remembered, a great to do was made about Tolstoi's ‘ Kreutzer Sonata,' though at the same time the mails were used for the circulation of publications which fairly reeked with vulgarity, and even obscenity, and which brought to their aid ail the skill of the ai

rtist and the colourist to render their salaciousness the more attractive. Does any one doubt this statement of the quality of much of the so called literature of the present •lay 1 If so, he must be blind or singulatly unobservant. How, then, can we hope to cultivate modesty in the rising generation when it is hemmed in and surrounded by glaring and shameless immodesty ’ The quick brain receives and stores what it receives through the eye and ear. and inevitably there comes a reproduction of it in some way or other, either in speech, in gesture, or in action. Is there a remedy ’ Not unless public sentiment can be turned into the channels of purity and decency. Censorship of the press the public will not submit to, and zealots, like Anthony Comstock, are apt to err on the side of excess of zeal, and thus bring ridicule and even suspicion on their motives. Something must be done to check the decadence of modesty among our people, for unless it be checked it will certainly be followed by the decadence and degradation of morals, and then farewell to the greatness of a great and powerful nation.