In the course of the last few chapters I have spoken more than once
of the solidarity and continuity of Christianity, in its essential
doctrines, with the Pagan rites. There is, however, one notable
exception to this statement. I refer of course to Christianity's
treatment of Sex. It is certainly very remarkable that while the Pagan
cults generally made a great deal of all sorts of sex-rites, laid much
stress upon them, and introduced them in what we consider an unblushing
and shameless way into the instincts connected with it. I say 'the
Christian Church,' on the whole took quite the opposite line--ignored
sex, condemned it, and did much despite to the perfectly natural
instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,' because
there is nothing to show that Jesus himself (if we admit his figure as
historical) adopted any such extreme or doctrinaire attitude; and the
quite early Christian teachers (with the chief exception of Paul) do not
exhibit this bias to any great degree. In fact, as is well known, strong
currents of pagan usage and belief ran through the Christian assemblies
of the first three or four centuries. "The Christian art of this period
remained delightfully pagan. In the catacombs we see the Saviour as a
beardless youth, like a young Greek god; sometimes represented, like
Hermes the guardian of the flocks, bearing a ram or lamb round his neck;
sometimes as Orpheus tuning his lute among the wild animals." (1)
The followers of Jesus were at times even accused--whether rightly
or wrongly I know not--of celebrating sexual mysteries at their
love-feasts. But as the Church through the centuries grew in power and
scope--with its monks and their mutilations and asceticisms, and its
celibate clergy, and its absolute refusal to recognize the sexual
meaning of its own acclaimed symbols (like the Cross, the three fingers
of Benediction, the Fleur de Lys and so forth)--it more and more
consistently defined itself as anti-sexual in its outlook, and stood out
in that way in marked contrast to the earlier Nature-religions.
(1) Angels' Wings, by E. Carpenter, p. 104.
It may be said of course that this anti-sexual tendency can be traced in
other of the pre-Christian Churches, especially the later ones, like the
Buddhist, the Egyptian, and so forth; and this is perfectly true; but it
would seem that in many ways the Christian Church marked the culmination
of the tendency; and the fact that other cults participated in the taboo
makes us all the more ready and anxious to inquire into its real cause.
To go into a disquisition on the Sex-rites of the various pre-Christian
religions would be 'a large order'--larger than I could attempt to fill;
but the general facts in this connection are fairly patent. We know,
of course, from the Bible that the Syrians in Palestine were given to
sexual worships. There were erect images (phallic) and "groves" (sexual
symbols) on every high hill and under every green tree; (1) and these
same images and the rites connected with them crept into the Jewish
Temple and were popular enough to maintain their footing there for a
long period from King Rehoboam onwards, notwithstanding the efforts of
Josiah (2) and other reformers to extirpate them. Moreover there were
girls and men (hierodouloi) regularly attached during this period to
the Jewish Temple as to the heathen Temples, for the rendering of sexual
services, which were recognized in many cases as part of the ritual.
Women were persuaded that it was an honor and a privilege to be
fertilized by a 'holy man' (a priest or other man connected with the
rites), and children resulting from such unions were often called
"Children of God"--an appellation which no doubt sometimes led to a
legend of miraculous birth! Girls who took their place as hierodouloi in
the Temple or Temple-precincts were expected to surrender themselves
to men-worshipers in the Temple, much in the same way, probably, as
Herodotus describes in the temple of the Babylonian Venus Mylitta, where
every native woman, once in her life, was supposed to sit in the Temple
and have intercourse with some stranger. (3) Indeed the Syrian and
Jewish rites dated largely from Babylonia. "The Hebrews entering
Syria," says Richard Burton (4) "found it religionized by Assyria and
Babylonia, when the Accadian Ishtar had passed West, and had become
Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth, or Ashirah, the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician
Astarte, and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess who is queen of
Heaven and Love." The word translated "grove" as above, in our Bible,
is in fact Asherah, which connects it pretty clearly with the Babylonian
Queen of Heaven.
(1) 1 Kings xiv. 22-24.
(2) 2 Kings xxiii.
(3) See Herodotus i. 199; also a reference to this custom in the
apocryphal Baruch, vi. 42, 43.
(4) The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886 edn.), vol. x, p. 229.
In India again, in connection with the Hindu Temples and their rites,
we have exactly the same institution of girls attached to the Temple
service--the Nautch-girls--whose functions in past times were certainly
sexual, and whose dances in honor of the god are, even down to the
present day, decidedly amatory in character. Then we have the very
numerous lingams (conventional representations of the male organ) to
be seen, scores and scores of them, in the arcades and cloisters of the
Hindu Temples--to which women of all classes, especially those who
wish to become mothers, resort, anointing them copiously with oil, and
signalizing their respect and devotion to them in a very practical
way. As to the lingam as representing the male organ, in some form or
other--as upright stone or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower--it
occurs all over the world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a
memorial of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem and
instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken. The pillars set
up by Solomon in front of his temple were obviously from their
names--Jachin and Boaz (1)--meant to be emblems of this kind; and the
fact that they were crowned with pomegranates--the universally accepted
symbol of the female--confirms and clinches this interpretation. The
obelisks before the Egyptians' temples were signs of the same character.
The well-known T-shaped cross was in use in pagan lands long before
Christianity, as a representation of the male member, and also at the
same time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna or
whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same symbol combined with
the oval (or yoni) formed THE Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian
ritual--a figure which is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and
confessedly indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one design.
(2) MacLennan in The Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869) quotes with approval
the words of Sanchoniathon, as saying that "men first worship plants,
next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals, then 'pillars'
(emblems of the Procreator), and last, the anthropomorphic gods."
(1) "He shall establish" and "In it is strength" are in the Bible
the marginal interpretations of these two words.
(2) The connection between the production of fire by means of the
fire-drill and the generation of life by sex-intercourse is a very
obvious one, and lends itself to magical ideas. J. E. Hewitt in his
Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times (1894) says (vol. i, p. 8) that
"Magha, the mother-goddess worshipped in Asia Minor, was originally the
socket-block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill." Hence we
have, he says, the Magi of Persia, and the Maghadas of Indian History,
also the word "Magic."
It is not necessary to enlarge on this subject. The facts of the
connection of sexual rites with religious services nearly everywhere in
the early world are, as I say, sufficiently patent to every inquirer.
But it IS necessary to try to understand the rationale of this
connection. To dispatch all such cases under the mere term "religious
prostitution" is no explanation. The term suggests, of course, that the
plea of religion was used simply as an excuse and a cover for sexual
familiarities; but though this kind of explanation commends itself,
no doubt, to the modern man--whose religion is as commercial as his
sex-relationships are--and though in CASES no doubt it was a true
explanation--yet it is obvious that among people who took religion
seriously, as a matter of life and death and who did not need
hypocritical excuses or covers for sex-relationships, it cannot be
accepted as in general the RIGHT explanation. No, the real explanation
is--and I will return to this presently--that sexual relationships are
so deep and intimate a part of human nature that from the first it has
been simply impossible to keep them OUT of religion--it being of
course the object of religion to bring the whole human being into
some intelligible relation with the physical, moral, and if you like
supernatural order of the great world around him. Sex was felt from the
first to be part, and a foundational part, of the great order of the
world and of human nature; and therefore to separate it from Religion
was unthinkable and a kind of contradiction in terms. (1)
(1) For further development of this subject see ch. xv.
If that is true--it will be asked--how was it that that divorce DID take
place--that the taboo did arise? How was it that the Jews, under the
influence of Josiah and the Hebrew prophets, turned their faces away
from sex and strenuously opposed the Syrian cults? How was it that this
reaction extended into Christianity and became even more definite in the
Christian Church--that monks went by thousands into the deserts of the
Thebaid, and that the early Fathers and Christian apologists could
not find terms foul enough to hurl at Woman as the symbol (to them) of
nothing but sex-corruption and delusion? How was it that this contempt
of the body and degradation of sex-things went on far into the Middle
Ages of Europe, and ultimately created an organized system of hypocrisy,
and concealment and suppression of sex-instincts, which, acting as cover
to a vile commercial Prostitution and as a breeding ground for horrible
Disease, has lasted on even to the edge of the present day?
This is a fair question, and one which demands an answer. There must
have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for this remarkable reaction
and volte-face which has characterized Christianity, and, perhaps to
a lesser degree, other both earlier and later cults like those of the
Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, (1) and so forth.
(1) For the Aztecs, see Acosta, vol. ii, p. 324 (London, 1604).
It may be said--and this is a fair answer on the SURFACE of the
problem--that the main reason WAS something in the nature of a reaction.
The excesses and corruptions of sex in Syria had evidently become pretty
bad, and that very fact may have led to a pendulum-swing of the Jewish
Church in the opposite direction; and again in the same way the general
laxity of morals in the decay of the Roman empire may have confirmed the
Church of early Christendom in its determination to keep along the
great high road of asceticism. The Christian followed on the Jewish
and Egyptian Churches, and in this way a great tradition of sexual
continence and anti-pagan morality came right down the centuries even
into modern times.
This seems so far a reasonable theory; but I think we shall go farther
and get nearer the heart of the problem if we revert to the general clue
which I have followed already more than once--the clue of the necessary
evolution of human Consciousnss. In the first or animal stage of
human evolution, Sex was (as among the animals) a perfectly necessary,
instinctive and unself-conscious activity. It was harmonious with
itself, natural, and unproductive of evil. But when the second stage set
in, in which man became preponderantly _self_-conscious, he inevitably
set about deflecting sex-activities to his own private pleasure and
advantage; he employed his budding intellect in scheming the derailment
of passion and desire from tribal needs and Nature's uses to the poor
details of his own gratification. If the first stage of harmonious
sex-instinct and activity may be held as characteristic of the Golden
Age, the second stage must be taken to represent the Fall of man and his
expulsion from Paradise in the Garden of Eden story. The pleasure and
glory of Sex having been turned to self-purposes, Sex itself became the
great Sin. A sense of guilt overspread man's thoughts on the subject.
"He knew that he was naked," and he fled from the voice and face of the
Lord. From that moment one of the main objects of his life (in its inner
and newer activities) came to be the _denial_ of Sex. Sex was conceived
of as the great Antagonist, the old Serpent lying ever in wait to betray
him; and there arrived a moment in the history of every race, and of
every representative religion, when the sexual rites and ceremonies of
the older time lost their naive and quasi-innocent character and became
afflicted with a sense of guilt and indecency. This extraordinarily
interesting and dramatic moment in human evolution was of course that in
which self-consciousness grew powerful enough to penetrate to the centre
of human vitality, the _sanctum_ of man's inner life, his sexual instinct,
and to deal it a terrific blow--a blow from which it has never yet
recovered, and from which indeed it will not recover, until the very
nature of man's inner life is changed.
It may be said that it was very foolish of Man to deny and to try
to expel a perfectly natural and sensible thing, a necessary and
indispensable part of his own nature. And that, as far as I can see, is
perfectly true. But sometimes it is unavoidable, it would seem, to do
foolish things--if only to convince oneself of one's own foolishness.
On the other hand, this policy on the part of Man was certainly very
wise--wiser than he knew--for in attempting to drive out Sex (which of
course he could not do) he entered into a conflict which was bound
to end in the expulsion of SOMETHING; and that something was the
domination, within himself, of self-consciousness, the very thing which
makes and ever has made sex detestable. Man did not succeed in driving
the snake out of the Garden, but he drove himself out, taking the real
old serpent of self-greed and self-gratification with him. When some day
he returns to Paradise this latter will have died in his bosom and been
cast away, but he will find the good Snake there as of old, full of
healing and friendliness, among the branches of the Tree of Life.
Besides it is evident from other considerations that this moment of the
denial of sex HAD to come. When one thinks of the enormous power of this
passion, and its age-long, hold upon the human race, one realizes that
once liberated from the instinctive bonds of nature, and backed by a
self-conscious and self-seeking human intelligence it was on the way to
become a fearful curse.
A monstrous Eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth;
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran.
And this may have been all very well and appropriate in the
carboniferous Epoch, but WE in the end of Time have no desire to fall
under any such preposterous domination, or to return to the primal
swamps from which organic nature has so slowly and painfully emerged.
I say it was the entry of self-consciousness into the sphere of Sex, and
the consequent use of the latter for private ends, which poisoned
this great race-power at its root. For above all, Sex, as representing
through Childbirth the life of the Race (or of the Tribe, or, if you
like, of Humanity at large) should be sacred and guarded from merely
selfish aims, and therefore to use it only for such aims is indeed a
desecration. And even if--as some maintain and I think rightly (1)--sex
is not MERELY for child-birth and physical procreation, but for mutual
vitalizing and invigoration, it still subserves union and not egotism;
and to use it egotistically is to commit the sin of Separation indeed.
It is to cast away and corrupt the very bond of life and fellowship. The
ancient peoples at any rate threw an illumination of religious (that is,
of communal and public) value over sex-acts, and to a great extent made
them into matters either of Temple-ritual and the worship of the gods,
or of communal and pandemic celebration, as in the Saturnalia and
other similar festivals. We have certainly no right to regard these
celebrations--of either kind--as insincere. They were, at any rate in
their inception, genuinely religious or genuinely social and festal;
and from either point of view they were far better than the secrecy
of private indulgence which characterizes our modern world in these
matters. The thorough and shameless commercialism of Sex has alas!
been reserved for what is called "Christian civilization," and with
it (perhaps as a necessary consequence) Prostitution and Syphilis have
grown into appalling evils, accompanied by a gigantic degradation of
social standards, and upgrowth of petty Philistinism and niaiserie.
Love, in fact, having in this modern world-movement been denied, and its
natural manifestations affected with a sense of guilt and of sin, has
really languished and ceased to play its natural part in life; and a
vast number of people--both men and women, finding themselves barred or
derailed from the main object of existence, have turned their energies
to 'business' or 'money-making' or 'social advancement' or something
equally futile, as the only poor substitute and pis aller open to them.
(1) See Havelock Ellis, The Objects of Marriage, a pamphlet
published by the "British Society for the Study of Sex-psychology."
Why (again we ask) did Christianity make this apparently great mistake?
And again we must reply: Perhaps the mistake was not so great as
it appears to be. Perhaps this was another case of the necessity of
learning by loss. Love had to be denied, in the form of sex, in order
that it might thus the better learn its own true values and needs. Sex
had to be rejected, or defiled with the sense of guilt and self-seeking,
in order that having cast out its defilement it might return one day,
transformed in the embrace of love. The whole process has had a deep and
strange world-significance. It has led to an immensely long period of
suppression--suppression of two great instincts--the physical instinct
of sex and the emotional instinct of love. Two things which should
naturally be conjoined have been separated; and both have suffered.
And we know from the Freudian teachings what suppressions in the
root-instincts necessarily mean. We know that they inevitably terminate
in diseases and distortions of proper action, either in the body or
in the mind, or in both; and that these evils can only be cured by the
liberation of the said instincts again to their proper expression and
harmonious functioning in the whole organism. No wonder then that, with
this agelong suppression (necessary in a sense though it may have
been) which marks the Christian dispensation, there should have
been associated endless Sickness and Crime and sordid Poverty, the
Crucifixion of animals in the name of Science and of human workers in
the name of Wealth, and wars and horrors innumerable! Hercules writhing
in the Nessus-shirt or Prometheus nailed to the rocks are only as
figures of a toy miniature compared with this vision of the great and
divine Spirit of Man caught in the clutches of those dread Diseases
which through the centuries have been eating into his very heart and
vitals.
It would not be fair to pile on the Christian Church the blame for all
this. It had, no doubt, its part to play in the whole great scheme,
namely, to accentuate the self-motive; and it played the part very
thoroughly and successfully. For it must be remembered (what I have
again and again insisted on) that in the pagan cults it was always
the salvation of the CLAN, the TRIBE, the people that was the main
consideration; the advantage of the individual took only a very
secondary part. But in Christendom--after the communal enthusiasms
of apostolic days and of the medieval and monastic brotherhoods and
sisterhoods had died down--religion occupied itself more and more with
each man or woman's INDIVIDUAL salvation, regardless of what might
happen to the community; till, with the rise of Protestantism and
Puritanism, this tendency reached such an extreme that, as some one has
said, each man was absorbed in polishing up his own little soul in a
corner to himself, in entire disregard to the damnation which might come
to his neighbor. Religion, and Morality too, under the commercial regime
became, as was natural, perfectly selfish. It was always: "Am _I_ saved?
Am _I_ doing the right thing? Am _I_ winning the favor of God and man?
Will my claims to salvation be allowed? Did _I_ make a good bargain
in allowing Jesus to be crucified for me?" The poison of a diseased
self-consciousness entered into the whole human system.
As I say, one must not blame the Christians too much for all
this--partly because, AFTER the communal periods which I have just
mentioned, Christianity was evidently deeply influenced by the rise
of COMMERCIALISM, to which during the last two centuries it has so
carefully and piously adapted itself; and partly because--if our view is
anywhere near right--this microbial injection of self-consciousness was
just the necessary work which (in conjunction with commercialism) it HAD
to perform. But though one does not blame Christianity one cannot blind
oneself to its defects--the defects necessarily arising from the part it
had to play. When one compares a healthy Pagan ritual--say of Apollo or
Dionysus--including its rude and crude sacrifices if you like, but also
including its whole-hearted spontaneity and dedication to the common
life and welfare--with the morbid self-introspection of the Christian
and the eternally recurring question "What shall I do to be saved?"--the
comparison is not favorable to the latter. There is (at any rate in
modern days) a mawkish milk-and-wateriness about the Christian attitude,
and also a painful self-consciousness, which is not pleasant; and though
Nietzsche's blonde beast is a sufficiently disagreeable animal, one
almost thinks that it were better to be THAT than to go about with one's
head meekly hanging on one side, and talking always of altruism and
self-sacrifice, while in reality one's heart was entirely occupied with
the question of one's own salvation. There is besides a lamentable want
of grit and substance about the Christian doctrines and ceremonials.
Somehow under the sex-taboo they became spiritualized and etherealized
out of all human use. Study the initiation-rites of any savage
tribe--with their strict discipline of the young braves in fortitude,
and the overcoming of pain and fear; with their very detailed lessons in
the arts of war and life and the duties of the grown man to his tribe;
and with their quite practical instruction in matters of Sex; and then
read our little Baptismal and Confirmation services, which ought to
correspond thereto. How thin and attenuated and weak the latter
appear! Or compare the Holy Communion, as celebrated in the sentimental
atmosphere of a Protestant Church, with an ancient Eucharistic feast of
real jollity and community of life under the acknowledged presence
of the god; or the Roman Catholic service of the Mass, including its
genuflexions and mock oblations and droning ritual sing-song, with the
actual sacrifice in early days of an animal-god-victim on a blazing
altar; and I think my meaning will be clear. We do not want, of course,
to return to all the crudities and barbarities of the past; but also we
do not want to become attenuated and spiritualized out of all mundane
sense and recognition, and to live in an otherworld Paradise void of
application to earthly affairs.
The sex-taboo in Christianity was apparently, as I have said, an effort
of the human soul to wrest itself free from the entanglement of physical
lust--which lust, though normal and appropriate and in a way gracious
among the animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness
become diseased and morbid or monstrous in Man. The work thus done has
probably been of the greatest value to the human race; but, just as in
other cases it has sometimes happened that the effort to do a certain
work has resulted in the end in an unbalanced exaggeration so here. We
are beginning to see now the harmful side of the repression of sex, and
are tentatively finding our way back again to a more pagan attitude.
And as this return-movement is taking place at a time when, from many
obvious signs, the self-conscious, grasping, commercial conception of
life is preparing to go on the wane, and the sense of solidarity to
re-establish itself, there is really good hope that our return-journey
may prove in some degree successful.
Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a sparrow, but
by putting one leg forward first, and then the other. There was this
advantage in the Christian taboo of sex that by discouraging the
physical and sensual side of love it did for the time being allow the
spiritual side to come forward. But, as I have just now indicated,
there is a limit to that process. We cannot always keep one leg first in
walking, and we do not want, in life, always to put the spiritual first,
nor always the material and sensual. The two sides in the long run have
to keep pace with each other.
And it may be that a great number of the very curious and seemingly
senseless taboos that we find among the primitive peoples can be partly
explained in this way: that is, that by ruling out certain directions
of activity they enabled people to concentrate more effectually, for
the time being, on other directions. To primitive folk the great world,
whose ways are puzzling enough in all conscience to us, must have been
simply bewildering in its dangers and complications. It was an amazement
of Fear and Ignorance. Thunderbolts might come at any moment out of the
blue sky, or a demon out of an old tree trunk, or a devastating plague
out of a bad smell--or apparently even out of nothing at all! Under
those circumstances it was perhaps wise, wherever there was the smallest
SUSPICION of danger or ill-luck, to create a hard and fast TABOO--just
as we tell our children ON NO ACCOUNT to walk under a ladder (thereby
creating a superstition in their minds), partly because it would take
too long to explain all about the real dangers of paint-pots and other
things, and partly because for the children themselves it seems simpler
to have a fixed and inviolable law than to argue over every case that
occurs. The priests and elders among early folk no doubt took the
line of FORBIDDAL of activities, as safer and simpler, even if
carried sometimes too far, than the opposite, of easy permission and
encouragement. Taboos multiplied--many of them quite senseless--but
perhaps in this perilous maze of the world, of which I have spoken,
it really WAS simpler to cut out a large part of the labyrinth, as
forbidden ground, thus rendering it easier for the people to find their
way in those portions of the labyrinth which remained. If you read in
Deuteronomy (ch. xiv) the list of birds and beasts and fishes permitted
for food among the Israelites, or tabooed, you will find the list on
the whole reasonable, but you will be struck by some curious exceptions
(according to our ideas), which are probably to be explained by the
necessity of making the rules simple enough to be comprehended by
everybody--even if they included the forbiddal of some quite eatable
animals.
At some early period, in Babylonia or Assyria, a very stringent taboo on
the Sabbath arose, which, taken up in turn by the Jewish and Christian
Churches, has ruled the Western World for three thousand years or more,
and still survives in a quite senseless form among some of our rural
populations, who will see their corn rot in the fields rather than save
it on a Sunday. (1) It is quite likely that this taboo in its first
beginning was due not to any need of a weekly rest-day (a need which
could never be felt among nomad savages, but would only occur in
some kind of industrial and stationary civilization), but to some
superstitious fear, connected with such things as the changes of the
Moon, and the probable ILL-LUCK of any enterprise undertaken on the
seventh day, or any day of Moon-change. It is probable, however, that as
time went on and Society became more complex, the advantages of a weekly
REST-DAY (or market-day) became more obvious and that the priests and
legislators deliberately turned the taboo to a social use. (2) The
learned modern Ethnologists, however, will generally have none of this
latter idea. As a rule they delight in representing early peoples as
totally destitute of common sense (which is supposed to be a monopoly
of us moderns!); and if the Sabbath-arrangement has had any value or
use they insist on ascribing this to pure accident, and not to the
application of any sane argument or reason.
(1) For other absurd Sunday taboos see Westermarck on The Moral
Ideas, vol. ii, p. 289.
(2) For a tracing of this taboo from useless superstition to
practical utility see Hastings's Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "The
Sabbath."
It is true indeed that a taboo--in order to be a proper taboo--must not
rest in the general mind on argument or reason. It may have had good
sense in the past or even an underlying good sense in the present, but
its foundation must rest on something beyond. It must be an absolute
fiat--something of the nature of a Mystery (1) or of Religion or
Magic-and not to be disputed. This gives it its blood-curdling quality.
The rustic does not know what would happen to him if he garnered his
corn on Sunday, nor does the diner-out in polite society know what
would happen if he spooned up his food with his knife--but they both are
stricken with a sort of paralysis at the very suggestion of infringing
these taboos.
(1) See Westermarck, Ibid., ii. 586.
Marriage-customs have always been a fertile field for the generation
of taboos. It seems doubtful whether anything like absolute promiscuity
ever prevailed among the human race, but there is much to show that wide
choice and intercourse were common among primitive folk and that the
tendency of later marriage custom has been on the whole to LIMIT this
range of choice. At some early period the forbiddal of marriage between
those who bore the same totem-name took place. Thus in Australia "no man
of the Emu stock might marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake might marry a
Blacksnake woman, and so forth." (1) Among the Kamilaroi and the Arunta
of S. Australia the tribe was divided into classes or clans, sometimes
four, sometimes eight, and a man of one particular clan was only
marriageable with a woman of another particular clan--say (1) with (3)
or (2) with (4), and so on. (2) Customs with a similar tendency, but
different in detail, seem to have prevailed among native tribes in
Central Africa and N. America. And the regulations in all this matter
have been so (apparently) entirely arbitrary in the various cases that
it would almost appear as if the bar of kinship through the Totem had
been the EXCUSE, originating perhaps in some superstition, but that the
real and more abiding object was simply limitation. And this perhaps was
a wise line to take. A taboo on promiscuity had to be created, and for
this purpose any current prejudice could be made use of. (3)
(1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, p. 66.
(2) See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Australia.
(3) The author of The Mystic Rose seems to take this view. See
p. 214 of that book.
With us moderns the whole matter has taken a different complexion. When
we consider the enormous amount of suffering and disease, both of mind
and body, arising from the sex-suppression of which I have just spoken,
especially among women, we see that mere unreasoning taboos--which
possibly had their place and use in the past--can be tolerated no
longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight of reason and science on a
number of superstitions which still linger in the dark and musty
places of the Churches and the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown
conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the
evolution of each human being, but also the very great VARIETY of
spontaneous manifestations in different individuals and the vital
necessity that these should be recognized, if society is ever to expand
into a rational human form. It is not my object here to sketch the
future of marriage and sex-relations generally--a subject which is now
being dealt with very effectively from many sides; but only to insist on
our using our good sense in the whole matter, and refusing any longer to
be bound by senseless pre-judgments.
Something of the same kind may be said with regard to Nakedness, which
in modern Civilization has become the object of a very serious and
indeed harmful taboo; both of speech and act. As someone has said, it
became in the end of the nineteenth century almost a crime to mention
by name any portion of the human body within a radius of about twenty
inches from its centre (!) and as a matter of fact a few dress-reformers
of that period were actually brought into court and treated as criminals
for going about with legs bare up to the knees, and shoulders and chest
uncovered! Public follies such as these have been responsible for much
of the bodily and mental disease and suppression just mentioned, and
the sooner they are sent to limbo the better. No sensible person
would advocate promiscuous nakedness any more than promiscuous
sex-relationship; nor is it likely that aged and deformed people would
at any time wish to expose themselves. But surely there is enough good
sense and appreciation of grace and fitness in the average human mind
for it to be able to liberate the body from senseless concealment, and
give it its due expression. The Greeks of old, having on the whole
clean bodies, treated them with respect and distinction. The young men
appeared quite naked in the palaestra, and even the girls of Sparta ran
races publicly in the same condition; (1) and some day when our
bodies (and minds too) have become clean we shall return to similar
institutions. But that will not be just yet. As long as the defilement
of this commercial civilization is on us we shall prefer our dirt and
concealment. The powers that be will protest against change. Heinrich
Scham, in his charming little pamphlet Nackende Menschen, (2) describes
the consternation of the commercial people at such ideas:
"'What will become of us,' cried the tailors, 'if you go naked?'
"And all the lot of them, hat, cravat, shirt, and shoemakers joined in
the chorus.
"'AND WHERE SHALL I CARRY MY MONEY?' cried one who had just been made a
director."
(1) See Theocritus, Idyll xviii.
(2) Published at Leipzig about 1893.