Closely connected with modesty, and yet entirely distinct from it, is
another and still stronger sentiment--the regard for chastity. Many an
American officer whose brave wife accompanied him in a frontier war
has been asked by her to promise that he would shoot her with his own
revolver rather than let her fall into the clutches of licentious
Indians. Though deliberate murder is punishable by death, no American
jury has ever convicted a man for slaying the seducer of his wife,
daughter, or sister. Modern law punishes rape with death, and its
victim is held to have suffered a fate worse than death. The brightest
of all jewels in a bride's crown of virtues is chastity--a jewel
without which all the others lose their value. Yet this jewel of
jewels formerly had no more value than a pebble in a brook-bed. The
sentiment in behalf of chastity had no existence for ages, and for a
long time after it came into existence chastity was known not as a
virtue but only as a necessity, inculcated by fear of punishment or
loss of worldly advantages.
In support of this statement a whole volume might be written; but as
abundant evidence will be given in later chapters relating to the
lower races in Africa, Australia, Polynesia, America, and Asia, only a
few instances need be cited here. In his recent work on the _Origin
and Growth of the Moral Sense_ (1898), Alexander Sutherland, an
Australian author, writes (I., 180):
"In the House of Commons papers for 1844 will be found
some 350 printed pages of reports, memoranda, and
letters, gathered by the standing committee appointed
in regard to the treatment of aboriginals in the
Australian colonies. All these have the same unlovely
tale to tell of an absolute incapacity to form even a
rudimentary notion of chastity. One worthy missionary,
who had been for some years settled among tribes of New
South Wales, _as yet brought in contact with no other
white men_, writes with horror of what he had observed.
The conduct of the females, even young children, is
most painful; they are cradled in prostitution and
fostered in licentiousness. Brough Smith (II., 240)
quotes several authorities who record that in Western
Australia the women in early youth were almost
prostitutes. 'For about six months after their
initiation into manhood the youths were allowed an
unbounded licence, and there was no possible blame
attached to the young unmarried girl who entertained
them'" (179).
In Lewis and Clark's account of their expedition across the American
Continent they came to the conclusion that there was an utter absence
of regard for chastity "among all Indians," and they relate the
following as a sample (439):
"Among all the tribes, a man will lend his wife or
daughter for a fish-hook or a strand of beads. To
decline an offer of this sort is indeed to disparage
the charms of the lady, and therefore gives such
offence, that, although we had occasionally to treat
the Indians with rigor, nothing seemed to irritate both
sexes more than our refusal to accept the favors of the
females. On one occasion we were amused by a Clatsop,
who, having been cured of some disorder by our medical
skill, brought his sister as a reward for our kindness.
The young lady was quite anxious to join in this
expression of her brother's gratitude, and mortified we
did not avail ourselves of it."
De Varigny, who lived forty years in the Hawaiian Islands, says (159)
that
"the chief difficulty of the missionaries in the Sandwich
Islands was teaching the women chastity; they knew neither
the word nor the thing. Adultery, incest, fornication, were
the common order of things, accepted by public opinion, and
even consecrated by religion."
The same is true of other Polynesians, the Tahitians, for instance, of
whom Captain Cook wrote that they are
"people who have not even the idea of decency, and who
gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no
more sense of impropriety than we feel when we satisfy our
hunger at a social board with our friends."
Among the highest of all these island peoples, the Tongans, the only
restriction to incontinence was that the lover must not be changed too
often.
What Dalton says of the Chilikata Mishmis, one of the wild tribes of
India, applies to many of the lower races in all parts of the world:
"Marriage ceremony there is, I believe, none; it is
simply an affair of purchase, and the women thus
obtained, if they can be called wives, are not much
bound by the tie. The husbands do not expect them to be
chaste; they take no cognizance of their temporary
liaisons so long as they are not deprived of their
services. If a man is dispossessed of one of his wives,
he has a private injury to avenge, and takes the
earliest opportunity of retaliating, but he cannot see
that a woman is a bit the worse for a little
incontinency."
In many cases not only was there complete indifference to chastity,
but virginity in a bride was actually looked on with disfavor. The
Finnish Votyaks considered it honorable in a girl to be a mother
before she was a wife. The Central American Chibchas were like the
Philippine Bisayos, of whom a sixteenth century writer, quoted by
Jagor, said that a man is unhappy to find his bride above suspicion,
"because, not having been desired by anyone, she must have some bad
quality which will prevent him from being happy with her."
The wide prevalence in all parts of the world of the custom of lending
or exchanging wives, or offering wife or daughter to a guest,[11] also
bears witness to the utter indifference to chastity, conjugal and
maiden; as does the custom known as the _jus primae noctis._ Dr. Karl
Schmidt has tried very hard to prove that such a "right" to the bride
never existed. But no one can read his treatises without noting that
his argument rests on a mere quibble, the word _jus_. There may have
been no codified _law_ or "right" allowing kings, bishops, chiefs,
landlords, medicine men, and priests to claim brides first, but that
the _privilege_ existed in various countries and was extensively made
use of, there can be no doubt. Westermarck (73-80), Letourneau
(56-62), Ploss (I., 400-405), and others have collected abundant
proofs. Here I have room for only a few instances, showing that those
whom we would consider the _victims_ of such a horrible custom, not
only submitted to it with resignation, but actually looked on it as an
_honor_ and a highly coveted privilege.
"The aboriginal inhabitants of Teneriffe are
represented as having married no woman who had not
previously spent a night with the chief, which was
considered a great honor."
"Navarette tells us that, on the coast of Malabar, the
bridegroom brought the bride to the King, who kept her
eight days in the palace; and the man took it 'as a
great honor and favor that the King should make use of
her.'"
"Egede informs us that the women of Greenland thought
themselves fortunate if an Angekokk, or prophet,
honored them with his caresses; and some husbands even
paid him, because they believed that the child of such
a holy man could not but be happier and better than
others." (Westermarck, 77, 80.)
"In Cumana the priests, who were regarded as holy,
slept only with unmarried women, 'porque tenian por
honorosa costumbre que ellos las quitassen la
virginidad.'" (Bastian, _K.A.A._, II., 228.)
From this lowest depth of depravity it would be interesting, if space
and the architectural plan of this volume permitted, to trace the
growth of the sentiment which demands chastity; noting, in the first
place, how married women were compelled, by the jealous fury of their
masters, to practise continence; how, very much later, virginity began
to be valued, not, indeed, at first, as a virtue having a value and
charm of its own, but as a means of enhancing the market value of
brides. Indifference to masculine chastity continued much longer
still. The ancient civilized nations had advanced far enough to value
purity in wives and maidens, but it hardly occurred to them that it
was man's duty to cultivate the same virtue. Even so austere and
eminent a moral philosopher as Cicero declared that one would have to
be very severe indeed to ask young men to refrain from illicit
relations. The mediaeval church fathers endeavored for centuries to
enforce the doctrine that men should be as pure as women, with what
success, every one knows. A more powerful agency in effecting a reform
was the loathsome disease which in the fifteenth century began to
sweep away millions of licentious men, and led to the survival of the
fittest from the moral point of view. The masculine standard is still
low, but immense progress has been made during the last hundred years.
The number of prostitutes in Europe is still estimated at seven
hundred thousand, yet that makes only seven to every thousand females,
and though there are many other unchaste women, it is safe to say that
in England and America, at any rate, more than nine hundred out of
every thousand females are chaste, whereas among savages, as a rule,
nearly all females are prostitutes (in the moral sense of the word),
before they marry. In view of this astounding progress there is no
reason to despair regarding man's future. It would be a great triumph
of civilization if the average man could be made as pure as the
average woman. At the same time, since the consequences of sin are
infinitely more serious in women, it is eminently proper that they
should be in the van of moral progress.
Chastity, modesty, polygamy, murder, religion, and nature have now
furnished us an abundance of illustrations showing the changeableness
and former non-existence of sentiments which in us are so strong that
we are inclined to fancy they must have been the same always and
everywhere. Before proceeding to prove that romantic love is another
sentiment of which the same may be said, let us pause a moment to
discuss a sentiment which presents one of the most difficult problems
in the psychology of love, the Horror of Incest.