Chastity and Modesty

In this series, we have considered the quality of chastity and modesty in their most general sense and without any attempt at precise differentiation. We may exclude altogether the quality of virginity because this is a merely physical quality with no necessary ethical relationships. The demand for virginity in women is either the demand for a better marketable article, or for a more powerful stimulant to masculine desire. Virginity involves no moral qualities in its possessor. Chastity and modesty, on the other hand, are meaningless terms, except as and when demands made by the spirit on itself or on the body it controls. But if we are to accept these as modern phenomena, it is necessary that we should be somewhat more precise in defining them.