is bound to a celibate existence;[65] and {409} among the Hindus,
in spite of the great honour in which marriage is held, celibacy
has always commanded respect in instances of extraordinary
sanctity.[66] Those of the Sanny[=a]sis who are known to lead
their lives in perfect celibacy receive on that account marks of
distinguished honour and respect.[67] Already the time-honoured
Indian institution of the four [=A]['s]ramas contained the germ
of monastic celibacy, the Brahmac[=a]rin, or student, being
obliged to observe absolute chastity during the whole course of
his study.[68] The idea was further developed in Jainism and
Buddhism. The Jain monk was to renounce all sexual pleasures,
"either with gods, or men, or animals"; not to give way to
sensuality; not to discuss topics relating to women; not to
contemplate the forms of women.[69] Buddhism regards sensuality
as altogether incompatible with wisdom and holiness; it is said
that "a wise man should avoid married life as if it were a
burning pit of live coals."[70] According to the legend, Buddha's
mother, who was the best and purest of the daughters of men, had
no other sons, and her conception was due to supernatural
causes.[71] One of the fundamental duties of monastic life, by an
infringement of which the guilty person brings about his
inevitable expulsion from Buddha's order, is that "an ordained
monk may not have sexual intercourse, not even with an
animal."[72] In Tibet some sects of the Lamas are allowed to
marry, but those who do not are considered more holy; and in
every sect the nuns must take a vow of absolute continence.[73]
The Buddhist priests of Ceylon are totally debarred from
women.[74] Chinese law enjoins celibacy on all priests, Buddhist
or Taouist.[75] And among the immortals of {410} Taouism there
are some women also, who have led an extraordinarily ascetic
life.[76]
[Footnote 65: Thurston, 'Anthropology of the Todas and Kotas,' in
the Madras Government Museum's _Bulletin_, i. 169, 170, 193.
Rivers, _Todas_, pp. 80, 99, 236.]
[Footnote 66: Monier-Williams, _Buddhism_, p. 88.]
[Footnote 67: Dubois, _op. cit._ p. 133. _Cf._ Monier-Williams,
_Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 68: Kern, _Manual of Indian Buddhism_, p. 73.]
[Footnote 69: Hopkins, _Religions of India_, p. 294.]
[Footnote 70: Dhammika-Sutta, 21, quoted by Monier-Williams,
_Buddhism_, p. 88.]
[Footnote 71: Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism_, p. 148.]
[Footnote 72: Oldenberg, _Buddha_, p. 350 _sq._]
[Footnote 73: Wilson, _Abode of Snow_, p. 213.]
[Footnote 74: Percival, _Account of the Island of Ceylon_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 75: _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. cxiv. p. 118. Medhurst,
'Marriage in China,' in _Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch_,
iv. 18. Davis, _China_, ii. 53.]
[Footnote 76: Réville, _La Religion Chinoise_, p. 451 _sq._]
A small class of Hebrews held the idea that marriage is impure.
The Essenes, says Josephus, "reject pleasure as an evil, but
esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be
virtue. They neglect wedlock."[77] This doctrine exercised no
influence on Judaism, but probably much upon Christianity. St.
Paul considered celibacy to be preferable to marriage. "He that
giveth her (his virgin) in marriage doeth well; but he that
giveth her not in marriage doeth better."[78] "It is good for a
man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let
each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own
husband."[79] If the unmarried and widows cannot contain let them
marry, "for it is better to marry than to burn."[80] These and
other passages[81] in the New Testament inspired a general
enthusiasm for virginity. Commenting on the words of the Apostle,
Tertullian points out that what is better is not necessarily
good. It is better to lose one eye than two, but neither is good;
so also, though it is better to marry than to burn, it is far
better neither to marry nor to burn.[82] Marriage "consists of
that which is the essence of fornication";[83] whereas continence
"is a means whereby a man will traffic in a mighty substance of
sanctity."[84] The body which our Lord wore and in which He
carried on the conflict of life in this world He put on from a
holy virgin; and John the Baptist, Paul, and all the others
"whose names are in the book of life"[85] cherished and loved
virginity.[86] Virginity works miracles: Mary, the sister of
Moses, leading the female band, passed on {411} foot over the
straits of the sea, and by the same grace Thecla was reverenced
even by lions, so that the unfed beasts, lying at the feet of
their prey, underwent a holy fast, neither with wanton look nor
sharp claw venturing to harm the virgin.[87] Virginity is like a
spring flower, always softly exhaling immortality from its white
petals.[88] The Lord himself opens the kingdoms of the heavens to
eunuchs.[89] If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator
he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and
some harmless mode of vegetation would have peopled paradise with
a race of innocent and immortal beings.[90] It is true that,
though virginity is the shortest way to the camp of the faithful,
the way of matrimony also arrives there, by a longer circuit.[91]
Tertullian himself opposed the Marcionites, who prohibited
marriage among themselves and compelled those who were married to
separate before they were received by baptism into the
community.[92] And in the earlier part of the fourth century the
Council of Gangra expressly condemned anyone who maintained that
marriage prevented a Christian from entering the kingdom of
God.[93] But, at the end of the same century, a council also
excommunicated the monk Jovinian because he denied that virginity
was more meritorious than marriage.[94] The use of marriage was
permitted to man only as a necessary expedient for the
continuance of the human species, and as a restraint, {412}
however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire.[95]
The procreation of children is the measure of a Christian's
indulgence in appetite, just as the husbandman throwing the seed
into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it.[96]
[Footnote 77: Josephus, _De bello Judaico_, ii. 8. 2. See also
Solinus, _Collectanea rerum memorabilium_, xxxv. 9 _sq._]
[Footnote 78: _1 Corinthians_, vii. 38.]
[Footnote 79: _Ibid._ vii. 1 _sq._]
[Footnote 80: _Ibid._ vii. 9.]
[Footnote 81: _St. Matthew_, xix. 12. _Revelation_, xiv. 4; &c.]
[Footnote 82: Tertullian, _Ad uxorem_, i. 3 (Migne, _op. cit._ i.
1278 _sq._). _Idem_, _De monogamia_, 3 (Migne, ii. 932 _sq._).]
[Footnote 83: _Idem_, _De exhortatione castitatis_, 9 (Migne,
_op. cit._ ii. 925).]
[Footnote 84: _Idem_, _De exhortatione castitatis_, 10 (Migne,
_op. cit._ ii. 925).]
[Footnote 85: _Philippians_, iv. 3.]
[Footnote 86: St. Clement of Rome, _Epistola I. ad virgines_, 6
(Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, i. 392).]
[Footnote 87: St. Ambrose, _Epistola LXIII._ 34 (Migne, _op.
cit._ xvi. 1198 _sq._).]
[Footnote 88: Methodius, _Convivium decem virginum_, vii. 1
(Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, xviii. 125).]
[Footnote 89: Tertullian, _De monogamia_, 3 (Migne, _op. cit._
ii. 932).]
[Footnote 90: This opinion was held by Gregory of Nyssa and, in a
later time, by John of Damascus. It was opposed by Thomas
Aquinas, who maintained that the human race was from the
beginning propagated by means of sexual intercourse, but that
such intercourse was originally free from all carnal desire (von
Eicken, _Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_, p. 437
_sq._; see also Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_, ii. 186).]
[Footnote 91: St. Ambrose, _Epistola LXIII._ 40 (Migne, _op.
cit._ xvi. 1200).]
[Footnote 92: Tertullian, _Adversus Marcionem_, i. 1, 29; iv. 11;
&c. (Migne, _op. cit._ ii. 247, 280 _sqq._, 382). _Idem_, _De
monogamia_, 1, 15 (Migne, ii. 931, 950). _Cf._ Irenaeus, _Contra
Hæreses_, i. 28. 1 (Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, vii. 690
_sq._); Clement of Alexandria, _Stromata_, iii. 3 (Migne, _op.
cit._ Ser. Græca, viii. 1113 _sqq._).]
[Footnote 93: _Concilium Gangrense_, can. 1 (Labbe-Mansi,
_Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio_, ii. 1106).]
[Footnote 94: _Concilium Mediolanense_, A.D. 390 (Labbe-Mansi,
_op. cit._ iii. 689 _sq._).]
[Footnote 95: St. Justin, _Apologia I. pro Christianis_, 29
(Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, vi. 373). Clement of Alexandria,
_Stromata_, ii. 23 (Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, viii. 1089).
Gibbon, _op. cit._ ii. 186.]
[Footnote 96: Athenagoras, _Legatio pro Christianis_, 33 (Migne,
_op. cit._ Ser. Græca, vi. 966).]
These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the
secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage
of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is
unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the
Church;[97] and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a
synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence
of the higher ecclesiastics.[98] The celibacy of the clergy in
general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who "looked with
abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character,
even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection." But in many
countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it
could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.[99]
[Footnote 97: Lea, _Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church_,
p. 37. Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 328 _sq._]
[Footnote 98: _Concilium Eliberitanum_, A.D. 305, ch. 33
(Labbe-Mansi, _op. cit._ ii. 11):--"Placuit in totum prohiberi
episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis
positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non
generare filios: quicumque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus
exterminetur."]
[Footnote 99: Gieseler, _Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History_,
ii. 275. Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, ii. 150.]
The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several
sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as
married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore
forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the
husband of the virgins dedicated to him.[100] They were obliged
to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say,
daughters of the Incas. "For though they imagined that the Sun
had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards,
with mixed divine and human blood. So the {413} virgins were of
necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same
as being of the family of the Sun."[101] And the crime of
violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and
punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the
women of the Inca.[102] Concerning the priestesses of the
Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that
the reason for their celibacy appears to be that "a priestess
belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the
property of a man, as would be the case if she married one."[103]
So also the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the
women dedicated to a god as his wives.[104] In the great temple
of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom
the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land;
and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with
her. "This," Herodotus says, "is like the story told by the
Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a
woman always passes the night in the temple of the Theban
Jupiter. In each case the woman is said to be debarred all
intercourse with men."[105] In the Egyptian texts there are
frequent references to "the divine consort," _neter [h.]emt_, a
position which was generally occupied by the ruling queen, and
the king was believed to be the offspring of such a union.[106]
As Plutarch states, the Egyptians thought it quite possible for a
woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit,
though they denied that a man could have corporeal intercourse
with a goddess.[107] Nor was the idea of a nuptial relation
between a woman and the deity foreign to the early Christians.
St. Cyprian speaks of women who had no husband and lord but
Christ, with whom they lived in a spiritual matrimony--who had
"dedicated themselves to Christ, and, retiring from carnal {414}
lust, vowed themselves to God in flesh and spirit."[108] In the
following words he condemns the cohabitation of such virgins with
unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely spiritual
connection:--"If a husband come and see his wife lying with
another man, is he not indignant and maddened, and does he not in
the violence of his jealousy perhaps even seize the sword? What?
How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be,
when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to
His holiness, lying with a man! and what punishments does He
threaten against such impure connections. . . . She who has been
guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but
Christ."[109] According to the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the
Virgin Mary had in a similar manner dedicated herself as a virgin
to God.[110] The idea that the deity is jealous of the chastity
of his or her servants may also perhaps be at the bottom of the
Greek custom according to which the hierophant and the other
priests of Demeter were restrained from conjugal intercourse and
washed their bodies with hemlock-juice in order to kill their
passions,[111] as also of the rule which required the priests of
certain goddesses to be eunuchs.[112]
[Footnote 100: Garcilasso de la Vega, _op. cit._ i. 297.]
[Footnote 101: _Ibid._ i. 292.]
[Footnote 102: _Ibid._ i. 300.]
[Footnote 103: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 121.]
[Footnote 104: _Idem_, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples_, pp. 140, 142.]
[Footnote 105: Herodotus, i. 181 _sq._]
[Footnote 106: Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_, p. 268. _Cf._
Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 295 _sq._]
[Footnote 107: Plutarch, _Numa_, iv. 5. _Idem_, _Symposiaca
problemata_, viii. 1. 6 _sq._]
[Footnote 108: St. Cyprian, _De habitu virginum_, 4, 22 (Migne,
_op. cit._ iv. 443, 462). _Cf._ Methodius, _Convivium decent
virginum_, vii. 1 (Migne, _op. cit._ Ser. Græca, xviii. 125).]
[Footnote 109: St. Cyprian, _Epistola LXII., ad Pomponium de
virginibus_, 3 _sq._ (Migne, _op. cit._ iv. 368 _sqq._). See also
Neander, _General History of the Christian Religion and Church_,
i. 378. The Council of Elvira decreed that such fallen virgins,
if they refused to return back to their former condition, should
be denied communion even at the moment of death (_Concilium
Eliberitanum_, A.D. 305, ch. 13 [Labbe-Mansi, _op. cit._ ii. 8]).]
[Footnote 110: _Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew_, 8 (_Ante-Nicene
Christian Library_, xvi. 25). See also _Gospel of the Nativity of
Mary_, 7 (_ibid._ xvi. 57 _sq._).]
[Footnote 111: Wachsmuth, _Hellenische Alterthumskunde_, ii. 560.]
[Footnote 112: _Cf._ Lactantius, _Divinæ Institutiones_, i. 17
(Migne, _op. cit._ vi. 206):--"Deum mater et amavit formosum
adolescentem, et eumdem cum pellice deprehensum exsectis
virilibus semivirum reddidit; et ideo nunc sacra ejus a Gallis
sacerdotibus celebrantur."]
Religious celibacy is further connected with the idea that sexual
intercourse is defiling. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it is
regarded as something unclean.[113] The Tahitians believed that
if a man refrained from all connections with women some months
before death, he passed {415} immediately into his eternal
mansion without any purification.[114] Herodotus writes:--"As
often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits
down before a censer of burning incense, and the woman sits
opposite to him. At dawn of day they wash; for till they are
washed they will not touch any of their common vessels. This
practice is also observed by the Arabs."[115] Among the Hebrews
both the man and woman had to bathe themselves in water, and were
"unclean until the even."[116] The idea that sexual intercourse
is unclean implies that some degree of supernatural danger is
connected with it;[117] and, as Mr. Crawley has pointed out, the
notion of danger may develop into that of sinfulness.[118] Where
woman is regarded as an unclean being[119] it is obvious that
intercourse with her should be considered polluting, but this is
not a sufficient explanation of the idea of sexual uncleanness. A
polluting effect is ascribed to any discharge of sexual
matter[120]--originally no doubt on account of its mysterious
propensities and the veil of mystery which surrounds the whole
sexual nature of man.
[Footnote 113: Macdonald, _Oceania_, p. 181.]
[Footnote 114: Cook, _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, ii. 164.]
[Footnote 115: Herodotus, i. 198.]
[Footnote 116: _Leviticus_, xv. 18.]
[Footnote 117: The danger attributed to sexual intercourse has
been much emphasised by Mr. Crawley in _The Mystic Rose_. See
also Westermarck, _Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco_.]
[Footnote 118: Crawley, _op. cit._ p. 214.]
[Footnote 119: See _supra_, i. 663 _sqq._]
[Footnote 120: Gregory III., _Judicia congrua p[oe]nitentibus_,
ch. 24 (Labbe-Mansi, _op. cit._ xii. 293):--"In somno peccans, si
ex cogitatione pollutus, viginti duos psalmos cantet: si in somno
peccans sine cogitatione, duodecim psalmos cantet."
_P[oe]nitentiale Pseudo-Theodori_, xxviii. 25 (Wasserschleben,
_Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche_, p. 600):--"Qui in
somno, non voluntate, pollutus sit, surgat, cantetque vii.
psalmos p[oe]nitentiales." _Cf._ _ibid._ xxviii. 6, 33
(Wasserschleben, p. 559 _sq._).]
The idea of sexual defilement is particularly conspicuous in
connection with religious observances. It is a common rule that
he who performs a sacred act or enters a holy place must be
ceremonially clean,[121] and no kind of uncleanness is to be
avoided more carefully than sexual pollution. Among the
Chippewyans, "if a chief is anxious to know the disposition of
his people towards him, or if he wishes to settle any difference
between them, he announces his intention of opening his
medicine-bag and smoking in his {416} sacred stem. . . . No one
can avoid attending on these occasions; but a person may attend
and be excused from assisting at the ceremonies, by acknowledging
that he has not undergone the necessary purification. The having
cohabited with his wife, or any other woman, within twenty-four
hours preceding the ceremony, renders him unclean, and,
consequently, disqualifies him from performing any part of
it."[122] Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians, like the Greeks,
"made it a point of religion to have no converse with women in
the sacred places, and not to enter them without washing, after
such converse."[123] This statement is corroborated by a passage
in the 'Book of the Dead.'[124] In Greece[125] and India[126]
those who took part in certain religious festivals were obliged
to be continent for some time previously. Before entering the
sanctuary of Mên Tyrannos, whose worship was extended over the
whole of Asia Minor, the worshipper had to abstain from garlic,
pork, and women, and had to wash his head.[127] Among the Hebrews
it was a duty incumbent upon all to be ritually clean before
entering the temple--to be free from sexual defilement,[128]
leprosy,[129] and the pollution produced by the association with
corpses of human beings, of all animals not permitted for food,
and of those permitted animals which had died a natural death or
been killed by wild beasts;[130] and eating of the consecrated
bread was interdicted to persons who had not been continent for
some time previously.[131] A Muhammedan would remove any defiled
garment before he commences his prayer, or otherwise abstain from
praying altogether; he would not dare to approach the sanctuary
of a saint in a state of sexual uncleanness; and sexual
intercourse is forbidden for those who make the pilgrimage to
Mecca.[132] {417} The Christians prescribed strict continence as
a preparation for baptism[133] and the partaking of the
Eucharist.[134] They further enjoined that no married persons
should participate in any of the great festivals of the Church if
the night before they had lain together;[135] and in the 'Vision'
of Alberic, dating from the twelfth century, a special place of
torture, consisting of a lake of mingled lead, pitch, and resin,
is represented as existing in hell for the punishment of married
people who have had intercourse on Sundays, church festivals, or
fast-days.[136] They abstained from the marriage-bed at other
times also, when they were disposed more freely to give
themselves to prayer.[137] Newly married couples were admonished
to practise continence during the wedding day and the night
following, out of reverence for the sacrament; and in some
instances their abstinence lasted even for two or three days.[138]
[Footnote 121: See _supra_, ii. 294, 295, 352 _sq._]
[Footnote 122: Mackenzie, _Voyages to the Frozen and Pacific
Oceans_, p. cii. _sq._]
[Footnote 123: Herodotus, ii. 64.]
[Footnote 124: Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_, p. 269 _sq._]
[Footnote 125: Wachsmuth, _op. cit._ ii. 560.]
[Footnote 126: Oldenberg, _Die Religion des Veda_, p. 411.]
[Footnote 127: Foucart, _Des associations religieuses chez les
Grecs_, pp. 119, 123 _sq._]
[Footnote 128: _Leviticus_, chs. xii., xv.]
[Footnote 129: _Ibid._ ch. xiii. _sq._]
[Footnote 130: _Ibid._ xi. 24 _sqq._; xvii. 15. _Numbers_, xix.
14 _sqq._ Montefiore, _Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the
Ancient Hebrews_, p. 476.]
[Footnote 131: _1 Samuel_, xxi. 4 _sq._]
[Footnote 132: _Koran_, ii. 193.]
[Footnote 133: St. Augustine, _De fide et operibus_, vi. 8
(Migne, _op. cit._ xl. 202).]
[Footnote 134: St. Jerome, _Epistola XLVIII._ 15 (Migne, _op.
cit._ xxii. 505 _sq._).]
[Footnote 135: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 324. St.
Gregory the Great, _Dialogi_, i. 10 (Migne, _op. cit._ lxxvii.
200 _sq._).]
[Footnote 136: Albericus, _Visio_, ch. 5, p. 17. Delepierre,
_L'enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu_, p. 57 _sq._ On this
subject see also Müller, _Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen
Kulturvölker_, pp. 52, 53, 120 _sq._]
[Footnote 137: St. Jerome, _Epistola XLVIII._ 15 (Migne, _op.
cit._ xxii. 505). Fleury, _Manners and Behaviour of the
Christians_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 138: Muratori, _Dissertazioni sopra le antichità
italiane_, 20, vol. i. 347.]
Holiness is a delicate quality which is easily destroyed if
anything polluting is brought into contact with the holy object
or person. The Moors believe that if anybody who is sexually
unclean enters a granary the grain will lose its _baraka_, or
holiness. A similar idea probably underlies the belief prevalent
among various peoples that incontinence, and especially illicit
love, injures the harvest.[139] In Efate, _namim_, or
uncleanness, supposed to be contracted in various emergencies,
was especially avoided {418} by the sacred men, because it was
believed to destroy their sacredness.[140] The priestly taboos,
of which Sir J. G. Frazer has given such an exhaustive account in
'The Golden Bough,' have undoubtedly in a large measure a similar
origin. Nay, it seems that pollution not only deprives the holy
person of his holiness, but is also supposed to injure him in a
more positive way. When the supreme pontiff in the kingdom of
Congo left his residence to visit other places within his
jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence
the whole time he was out, as it was believed that any act of
incontinence would prove fatal to him.[141] In self-defence,
therefore, gods and holy persons try to prevent polluted
individuals from approaching them, and their worshippers are
naturally anxious to do the same. But apart from the resentment
which the sacred being would feel against the defiler, it appears
that holiness is supposed to react quite mechanically against
pollution, to the destruction or discomfort of the polluted
individual. All Moors are convinced that anyone who in a state of
sexual uncleanness dared to visit a saint's tomb would be struck
by the saint; but the Arabs of Dukkâla, in Southern Morocco, also
believe that if an unclean person rides a horse some accident
will happen to him on account of the _baraka_ with which the
horse is endowed. It should further be noticed that, owing to the
injurious effect of pollution upon holiness, an act generally
regarded as sacred would, if performed by an unclean individual,
lack that magic efficacy which otherwise would be ascribed to it.
Muhammed represented ceremonial cleanliness as "one-half of the
faith and the key of prayer."[142] The Moors say that a scribe is
afraid of evil spirits only when he is sexually unclean, because
then his reciting of passages of the Koran--the most powerful
weapon against such spirits--would be of no avail. The Syrian
philosopher Jamblichus {419} speaks of the belief that "the gods
do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal
connections."[143] A similar notion prevailed among the early
Christians; with reference to a passage in the First Epistle of
the Corinthians,[144] Tertullian remarks that the Apostle added
the recommendation of a temporary abstinence for the sake of
adding an efficacy to prayers.[145] To the same class of beliefs
belongs the notion that a sacrificial victim should be clean and
without blemish.[146] The Chibchas of Bogota considered that the
most valuable sacrifice they could offer was that of a youth who
had never had intercourse with a woman.[147]
[Footnote 139: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 209 _sqq._ This is in
my opinion a more natural explanation than the one suggested by
Sir J. G. Frazer, namely, that uncivilised man imagines "that the
vigour which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind,
will form as it were a store of energy whereby other creatures,
whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in propagating
their species." This theory entirely fails to account for the
fact that illicit love, by preference, is supposed to mar the
fertility of the earth and to blight the crops--a belief which is
in full accordance with my own explanation, in so far as such
love is considered particularly polluting.]
[Footnote 140: Macdonald, _Oceania_, p. 181.]
[Footnote 141: Labat, _Relation historique de l'Ethiopie
occidentale_, i. 259 _sq._]
[Footnote 142: Pool, _Studies in Mohammedanism_, p. 27.]
[Footnote 143: Jamblichus, _De mysteriis_, iv. 11.]
[Footnote 144: _1 Corinthians_, vii. 5.]
[Footnote 145: Tertullian, _De exhortatione castitatis_, 10
(Migne, _op. cit._ ii. 926).]
[Footnote 146: See _supra_, ii. 295 _sq._]
[Footnote 147: Simon, quoted by Waitz, _Anthropologie der
Naturvölker_, iv. 363. See _infra_, Additional Notes.]
If ceremonial cleanliness is required even of the ordinary
worshipper it is all the more indispensable in the case of a
priest;[148] and of all kinds of uncleanness none is to be more
carefully avoided than sexual pollution. Sometimes admission into
the priesthood is to be preceded by a period of continence.[149]
In the Marquesas Islands no one could become a priest without
having lived chastely for several years previously.[150] Among
the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast men and women, in
order to become members of the priesthood, have to pass through a
long novitiate, generally from two to three years, during which
they live in retirement and are instructed by the priests in the
secrets of the craft; and "the people believe that, during this
period of retirement and study, the novices must keep their
bodies pure, and refrain from all commerce with the other
sex."[151] The Huichols of Mexico, again, are of opinion that a
man who wishes to become a shaman must be faithful to his wife
for five years, and that, if he violates this rule, he is sure to
be taken ill and will lose the power of healing.[152] In ancient
Mexico the priests, all {420} the time that they were employed in
the service of the temple, abstained from all other women but
their wives, and "even affected so much modesty and reserve, that
when they met a woman they fixed their eyes on the ground that
they might not see her. Any incontinence amongst the priests was
severely punished. The priest who, at Teohuacan, was convicted of
having violated his chastity, was delivered up by the priests to
the people, who at night killed him by the bastinado."[153] Among
the Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills the priests--who, unlike the
"dairymen" of their Toda neighbours are not celibates--are at the
great festival in honour of K[=a]matar[=a]ya forbidden to live or
hold intercourse with their wives for fear of pollution, and are
then even obliged to cook their meals themselves.[154] It seems
that, according to the Anatolian religion, married _hieroi_ had
to separate from their wives during the period they were serving
at the temple.[155] The Hebrew priest should avoid all
unchastity; he was not allowed to marry a harlot, or a profane,
or a divorced wife,[156] and the high-priest was also forbidden
to marry a widow.[157] Nay, even in a priest's daughter
unchastity was punished with excessive severity, because she had
profaned her father; she was to be burned.[158]
[Footnote 148: _Cf._ _supra_, ii. 352 _sq._]
[Footnote 149: _Cf._ Landtman, _op. cit._ p. 118 _sqq._]
[Footnote 150: Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_,
vi. 387.]
[Footnote 151: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 120.]
[Footnote 152: Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, ii. 236.]
[Footnote 153: Clavigero, _op. cit._ i. 274.]
[Footnote 154: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's
_Bulletin_, i. 193.]
[Footnote 155: Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_, i.
136, 137, 150 _sq._]
[Footnote 156: _Leviticus_, xxi. 7.]
[Footnote 157: _Ibid._ xxi. 14.]
[Footnote 158: _Ibid._ xxi. 9.]
Carried further, the idea underlying all these rules and
practices led to the notions that celibacy is more pleasing to
God than marriage,[159] and that it is a religious duty for those
members of the community whose special office is to attend to the
sacred cult. For a nation like the Jews, whose ambition was to
live and to multiply, celibacy could never become an ideal;
whereas the Christians, who professed the most perfect
indifference to all earthly matters, found no difficulty in
glorifying a state which, however opposed it was to the interests
of the race and the nation, made men pre-eminently fit to
approach their god. Indeed, {421} far from being a benefit to the
kingdom of God by propagating the species, sexual intercourse was
on the contrary detrimental to it by being the great transmitter
of the sin of our first parents. This argument, however, was of a
comparatively late origin. Pelagius himself almost rivalled St.
Augustine in his praise of virginity, which he considered the
great test of that strength of free-will which he asserted to be
at most only weakened by the fall of Adam.[160]
[Footnote 159: _Cf._ _supra_, ii. 358.]
[Footnote 160: Milman, _op. cit._ i. 151, 153.]
Religious celibacy is, moreover, enjoined or commended as a means
of self-mortification supposed to appease an angry god, or with a
view to raising the spiritual nature of man by suppressing one of
the strongest of all sensual appetites. Thus we find in various
religions celibacy side by side with other ascetic observances
practised for similar purposes. Among the early Christians those
young women who took a vow of chastity "did not look upon
virginity as any thing if it were not attended with great
mortification, with silence, retirement, poverty, labour,
fastings, watchings, and continual praying. They were not
esteemed as virgins who would not deny themselves the common
diversions of the world, even the most innocent."[161] Tertullian
enumerates virginity, widowhood, and the modest restraint in
secret on the marriage-bed among those fragrant offerings
acceptable to God which the flesh performs to its own especial
suffering.[162] Finally, it was argued that marriage prevents a
person from serving God perfectly, because it induces him to
occupy himself too much with worldly things.[163] Though not
contrary to the act of charity or the love of God, says Thomas
Aquinas, it is nevertheless an obstacle to it.[164] This was one,
but certainly not the only, cause of the obligatory celibacy
which the Christian Church imposed upon her clergy.
[Footnote 161: Fleury, _op. cit._ p. 128 _sq._]
[Footnote 162: Tertullian, _De resurrectione carnis_, 8 (Migne,
_op. cit._ ii. 806).]
[Footnote 163: Vincentius Bellovacensis, _Speculum naturale_,
xxx. 43. See also von Eicken, _op. cit._ p. 445.]
[Footnote 164: Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologica_, ii.-ii. 184. 3.]
CHAPTER XLII
FREE LOVE--ADULTERY
HARDLY less variable than the moral ideas relating to marriage
are those concerning sexual relations of a non-matrimonial
character.
Among many uncivilised peoples both sexes enjoy perfect freedom
previous to marriage, and in some cases it is considered almost
dishonourable for a girl to have no lover.
The East African Barea and Kunáma do not regard it as in the
least disreputable for a girl to become pregnant, nor do they
punish nor censure the seducer.[1] Among the Wanyoro "it
constantly happens that young girls spend the night with their
lovers, only returning to their father's house in the morning,
and this is not considered scandalous.**"[2] The Wadigo regard it
as disgraceful, or at least as ridiculous, for a girl to enter
into marriage as a virgin.[3] Among the Bakongo, "womanly
chastity is unknown, and a woman's honour is measured by the
price she costs."[4] Over nearly the whole of British Central
Africa, says Sir H. Johnston, "before a girl is become a woman
(that is to say before she is able to conceive) it is a matter of
absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl
remains a virgin after about five years of age."[5] Among the
Baronga "l'opinion publique se moque des gens continents plus
qu'elle ne les admire."[6] According to Mr. Warner, "seduction of
virgins, and cohabiting with unmarried women and {423} widows,
are not punishable by Kafir law, neither does any disgrace attach
to either sex by committing such acts."[7] In Madagascar
"continence is not supposed to exist in either sex before
marriage, . . . and its absence is not regarded as a vice."[8]
Among the Maoris of New Zealand "girls were at perfect liberty to
act as they pleased until married," and chastity in single women
was held of little account.[9] In the Tonga Islands unmarried
women might bestow their favours upon whomsoever they pleased
without any opprobrium, although it was thought shameful for a
woman frequently to change her lover.[10] In the Solomon Islands
"female chastity is a virtue that would sound strangely in the
ear of the native"; and in St. Christoval and the adjacent
islands, "for two or three years after a girl has become eligible
for marriage she distributes her favours amongst all the young
men of the village."[11] In the Malay Archipelago intercourse
between unmarried people is very commonly considered neither a
crime nor a disgrace;[12] and the same is perhaps even more
generally the case among the uncivilised races of India and
Indo-China.[13] Among the Angami Nagas, for instance, "girls
consider short hair, the symbol of virginity, a disgrace, and are
anxious to become entitled to wear it long; men are desirous
before marriage to have proof that their wives will not be
barren. . . . Chastity begins with marriage."[14] The Jakuts see
nothing immoral in free love, provided only that nobody suffers
material loss by it.[15] Among the Votyaks it is disgraceful for
a girl to be little sought after by the young men, and it is
honourable for her to have children; she then gets a wealthier
husband, and a higher price is paid for her to her father.[16]
The Kamchadales set no great value on the virginity of their
brides.[17] Of the Point Barrow Eskimo Mr. Murdoch writes:--"As
to the relations between the sexes there seems to be the most
complete absence of what we consider moral feelings. Promiscuous
sexual {424} intercourse between married or unmarried people, or
even among children, appears to be looked upon simply as a matter
for amusement. As far as we could learn, unchastity in a girl was
considered nothing against her. The immorality of these people
among themselves, as we witnessed it, seems too purely animal and
natural to be of recent growth or the result of foreign
influence. Moreover, a similar state of affairs has been observed
among Eskimo elsewhere."[18]
[Footnote 1: Munzinger, _Ostafrikanische Studien_, p. 524.]
[Footnote 2: _Emin Pasha in Central Africa_, p. 82. _Cf._ _ibid._
p. 208 (Monbuttu).]
[Footnote 3: Baumann, _Usambara_, p. 152.]
[Footnote 4: Johnston, _British Central Africa_, p. 405.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid._ p. 409, note.]
[Footnote 6: Junod, _Les Ba-Ronga_, p. 29.]
[Footnote 7: Warner, in Maclean, _Compendium of Kafir Laws_, p. 63.]
[Footnote 8: Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 137 _sq._]
[Footnote 9: Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 33. Gisborne, _Colony of
New Zealand_, p. 27.]
[Footnote 10: Mariner, _Natives of the Tonga Islands_, ii. 174.]
[Footnote 11: Guppy, _Solomon Islands_, p. 43.]
[Footnote 12: Wilken, 'Plechtigheden en gebruiken bij verlovingen
en huwelijken bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,' in
_Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_,
ser. v. vol. iv. 434 _sqq._]
[Footnote 13: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 71.
Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh_, i. p. clxxxiv.]
[Footnote 14: Prain, 'Angami Nagas,' in _Revue coloniale
internationale_, v. 491 _sq._]
[Footnote 15: Sumner, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxi. 96.]
[Footnote 16: Buch, 'Die Wotjäken,' in _Acta Soc. Scientiarum
Fennicæ_, xii. 509.]
[Footnote 17: Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 156.]
[Footnote 18: Murdoch, 'Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow
Expedition,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 419 _sq._ See also
Turner, 'Ethnology of the the Ungava District,' in _Ann. Rep.
Bur. Ethn._ xi. 189 (Koksoagmyut); Parry, _Second Voyage for the
Discovery of a North-West Passage_, p. 529 (Eskimo of Igloolik
and Winter Island).]
Yet however commonly chastity is disregarded in the savage world,
we must not suppose that such disregard is anything like a
universal characteristic of the lower races. In a previous work I
have given a list of numerous savage and barbarous peoples among
whom unchastity before marriage is looked upon as a disgrace or a
crime for a woman, sometimes punishable with banishment from the
community or even with death;[19] and it is noteworthy that to
this group of peoples belong savages of so low a type as the
Veddahs of Ceylon,[20] the Igorrotes of Luzon,[21] and certain
Australian tribes.[22] I have also called attention to facts
which seem to prove that in several cases the wantonness of
savages is largely due to foreign influence. The pioneers of a
"higher civilisation" are very frequently unmarried men who go
out to make their living in uncivilised lands, and, though
unwilling to contract regular marriages with native women, they
have no objection to corrupting their morals.[23] Moreover, in
many tribes the {425} free intercourse which prevails between
unmarried people is not of a promiscuous nature, and leads
necessarily to marriage should the girl prove with child.[24]
Nay, among various uncivilised races not only the girl, but the
man who seduces her is subject to punishment or censure.
[Footnote 19: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 61 _sqq._]
[Footnote 20: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in _Taprobanian_, i. 178.]
[Footnote 21: Meyer, 'Igorrotes von Luzon,' in _Verhandl.
Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop._ 1883, p. 384 _sq._ Blumentritt,
_Ethnographie der Philippinen_, p. 27.]
[Footnote 22: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 64 _sq._ Holden, in
Taplin, _Folklore of the South Australian Aborigines_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 23: It is strange to hear from a modern student of
anthropology, and especially from an Australian writer, that in
sexual licence the savage has never anything to learn and that
"all that the lower fringe of civilised men can do to harm the
uncivilised is to stoop to the level of the latter instead of
teaching them a better way" (Sutherland, _Origin and Growth of
the Moral Instinct_, i. 186). Mr. Edward Stephens ('Aborigines of
Australia,' in _Jour. & Proceed. Royal Soc. N. S. Wales_, xxiii.
480) has a very different story to tell with reference to the
tribes which once inhabited the Adelaide Plains in South Australia
and whose acquaintance he made more than half a century ago.]
[Footnote 24: Westermarck, _op. cit._ pp. 23, 24, 71.]
Among the East African Takue a seducer may have to pay the same
sum as if he had killed the girl, although the fine is generally
reduced to fifty cows.[25] Among the Beni Amer and Marea he is
killed, together with the girl and the child.[26] In Tessaua a
fine of 100,000 kurdi is imposed on the father of a bastard
child.[27] Among the Beni Mzab a man who seduces a girl has to
pay two hundred francs and is banished for four years.[28] Among
the Tedâ he is exposed to the revenge of her father.[29] The
Baziba look upon illegitimate intercourse between the sexes as
the most serious offence, though no action is taken until the
birth of a child; "then the man and woman are bound hand and foot
and thrown into Lake Victoria."[30] Among the Bakoki, whilst the
girl was driven from home and remained for ever after an outcast,
the man was fined three cows to her father and one to the
chief.[31] Certain West African savages described by Mr. Winwood
Reade, who banish from the clan a girl guilty of wantonness,
inflict severe flogging on the seducer.[32] In Dahomey a man who
seduces a girl is compelled by law to marry her and to pay eighty
cowries to the parent or master.[33] Among some Kafir tribes the
father or guardian of a woman who becomes pregnant can demand a
fine of one head of cattle from the father of the child;[34]
whilst in the Gaika tribe the mere seduction of a virgin incurs
the fine of three or four head of cattle.[35] Casalis mentions an
interesting custom prevalent among the Basutos, which on the one
hand illustrates the belief that sexual intercourse in certain
circumstances exposes a person to supernatural danger, and on the
other hand indicates that unchastity in unmarried men is not
looked upon with perfect indifference:--Immediately after the
birth of a child the fire of the dwelling was kindled afresh.
"For this purpose it was necessary that a young man of chaste
habits should rub two {426} pieces of wood quickly one against
another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly
believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to
take upon himself this office, after having lost his innocence.
As soon, therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the
fathers took their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt
themselves guilty confessed their crime, and submitted to be
scourged rather than expose themselves to the consequences of a
fatal temerity."[36] Livingstone, speaking of the good name which
was given to him by the Bakwains, observes:--"No one ever gains
much influence in this country without purity and uprightness.
The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinised by both young and
old, and seldom is the judgment pronounced, even by the heathen,
unfair or uncharitable. I have heard women speaking in admiration
of a white man, because he was pure, and never was guilty of any
secret immorality. Had he been, they would have known it, and,
untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in
consequence."[37]
[Footnote 25: Munzinger, _Ostafrikanische Studien_, p. 208.]
[Footnote 26: _Ibid._ p. 322.]
[Footnote 27: Barth, _Reisen in Nord- und Central-Afrika_, ii. 18.]
[Footnote 28: Chavanne, _Die Sahara_, p. 315.]
[Footnote 29: Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, i. 449.]
[Footnote 30: Cunningham, _Uganda_, p. 290.]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid._ p. 102.]
[Footnote 32: Reade, _Savage Africa_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 33: Forbes, _Dahomey_, i. 26.]
[Footnote 34: Warner, in Maclean, _op. cit._ p. 64.]
[Footnote 35: Brownlee, _ibid._ p. 112.]
[Footnote 36: Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 267 _sq._]
[Footnote 37: Livingstone, _Missionary Travels_, p. 513.]
Of the Australian Maroura tribe, Lower Darling, we are told that
before the advent of the whites "their laws were strict,
especially those regarding young men and young women. It was
almost death to a young lad or man who had sexual intercourse
till married."[38] Among various tribes in Western Victoria
"illegitimacy is rare, and is looked upon with such abhorrence
that the mother is always severely beaten by her relatives, and
sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is occasionally
killed and burned with her. The father of the child is also
punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed."[39]
[Footnote 38: Holden, in Taplin, _Folklore of the South
Australian Aborigines_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 39: Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 28.]
In Nias the pregnancy of an unmarried girl is punished with
death, inflicted not only upon her but upon the seducer as
well.[40] Among the Bódo and Dhimáls of India chastity is prized
in man and woman, married and unmarried.[41] Among the Tunguses
"in irregular amours only the men are punished," the seducer
being obliged either to purchase the girl at a certain price or,
if he refuses, to submit to corporal punishment.[42] Among the
Thlinkets, "if unmarried women prove frail the partner of their
guilt, if discovered, is bound to make reparation to the parents,
soothing their wounded honour with handsome {427} presents."[43]
In certain North American tribes the seducer is said to be viewed
with even more contempt than the girl whom he has dishonoured.[44]
[Footnote 40: Wilken, in _Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en
volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, ser. v. vol. iv. 444.]
[Footnote 41: Hodgson, _Miscellaneous Essays_, i. 123.]
[Footnote 42: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 84.]
[Footnote 43: Douglas, quoted by Petroff, _Report on Alaska_,
p. 177.]
[Footnote 44: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 66.]
Passing to more advanced races, we find that chastity is regarded
as a duty for unmarried women, whilst a different standard of
morality is generally applied to men. "Confucianism," says Mr.
Griffis, "virtually admits two standards of morality, one for
man, another for woman. . . . Chastity is a female virtue, it is
a part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man
personally."[45] Yet it is held up as an ideal even to men. It is
said that in youth, when the physical powers are not yet settled,
the superior man guards against lust.[46] Though licentious in
their habits, the Chinese exalt and dignify chastity as a means
of bringing the soul and body nearer to the highest
excellence;[47] one of their proverbs even maintains that "of the
myriad vices, lust is the worst."[48] Chastity for its own sake,
when defended by a woman at the expense of her life, meets with a
reward at the hands of the Government. "If a woman"--so the
Ordinances run--"be compelled by her husband to prostitute
herself for money, and takes her own life in order to preserve
her chastity, or if an unmarried virgin loses her life in
defending herself against violation, an honorary gate shall be
erected in each case near the door of the paternal dwelling."[49]
According to the Chinese Penal Code, "criminal intercourse by
mutual consent with an unmarried woman shall be punished with
seventy blows," whilst the punishment for such intercourse with a
married woman is eighty blows.[50]
[Footnote 45: Griffis, _Religions of Japan_, p. 149.]
[Footnote 46: _Lun Yü_, xvi. 7.]
[Footnote 47: Wells Williams, _Middle Kingdom_, ii. 193.]
[Footnote 48: Smith, _Proverbs of the Chinese_, p. 256.]
[Footnote 49: de Groot, _Religious System of China_, (vol. ii.
book) i. 752 _sq._]
[Footnote 50: _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. ccclxvi. p. 404.]
Among the ancient Hebrews fornication was forbidden to women[51]
but not to men. The action of Judah towards the supposed harlot
on the way to Timnath is mentioned {428} as the most natural
thing in the world,[52] even though the perpetrator was a man of
wealth and position, a man whom his brethren "shall praise" and
before whom his "father's children shall bow down."[53]
Throughout the Muhammedan world chastity is regarded as an
essential duty for a woman.[54] In Persia an unmarried girl who
gave birth to a child would surely be killed.[55] Among the
Fellaheen of Egypt a father or brother in most instances punishes
an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of
incontinence by throwing her into the Nile with a stone tied to
her neck, or cutting her to pieces, and then throwing her remains
into the river.[56] Among the Jbâla and Rif Berbers of Morocco
she is also frequently killed. For unmarried men, on the other
hand, chastity is by Muhammedans at most looked upon as an ideal,
almost out of reach. The Caliph Ali said that "with a man who is
modest and chaste nobody should find fault."[57] We are told that
the Muhammedans of India consider it inconceivable that a Moslem
should have illicit intercourse with a free Muhammedan woman;[58]
but connections with slave girls are regarded in a different light.
[Footnote 51: _Leviticus_, xix. 29. _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 18.]
[Footnote 52: _Genesis_, xxxviii. 15 _sqq._]
[Footnote 53: _Ibid._ xlix. 8.]
[Footnote 54: Burton, _Sindh_, p. 295.]
[Footnote 55: Polak, _Persien_, i. 217.]
[Footnote 56: Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians_, p. 209.]
[Footnote 57: Ameer Ali, _Ethics of Islâm_, p. 30.]
[Footnote 58: Lane-Poole, _Studies in a Mosque_, p. 106.]
Among the Hindus sexual impurity is scarcely considered a sin in
the men, but "in females nothing is held more execrable or
abominable. The unhappy inhabitants of houses of ill fame are
looked upon as the most degraded of the human species."[59] In
one of the Pahlavi texts continence is recommended from the point
of view of prudence:--"Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and
regret may not reach thee from thine own actions."[60] But in
Zoroastrianism, also, chastity is chiefly a female duty. It is
written in the Avesta, "Any woman that has given up her body to
two men in one day is sooner to be killed than a wolf, a lion, or
a snake."[61]
[Footnote 59: _Calcutta Review_, ii. 23. Dubois, _Description of
the Character, &c. of the People of India_, p. 193. _Cf._ _Laws
of Manu_, ix. 51 _sq._]
[Footnote 60: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, ii. 23 _sq._]
[Footnote 61: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv.
206, n. 1.]
{429} Among the ancient Teutons an unmarried woman who belonged
to an honourable family was severely punished for going wrong,
and the seducer was exposed to the revenge of her family, or had
to pay compensation for his deed.[62] The yet un-Romanised
Saxons, down to the days of St. Boniface, compelled a maiden who
had dishonoured her father's house, as well as an adulteress, to
hang herself, after which her body was burned and her paramour
hung over the blazing pile; or she was scourged or cut with
knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.[63]
[Footnote 62: Brunner, _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, ii. 659
_sqq._ Wilda, _Strafrecht der Germanen_, p. 799 _sqq._ Nordström,
_Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia_, ii.
67. Maurer, _Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes_, ii. 154.]
[Footnote 63: Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, ii. 54.]
In Greece the chastity of an unmarried girl was anxiously
guarded.[64] According to Athenian law, the relatives of a maiden
who had lost her virtue could with impunity kill the seducer on
the spot.[65] Virginity was an object of worship. Chastity was
the pre-eminent attribute of sanctity ascribed to Athene and
Artemis, and the Parthenon, or virgin's temple, was the noblest
religious edifice of Athens.[66] It is true that a certain class
of courtesans occupied a remarkably high position in the social
life of Greece, being admired and sought after even by the
principal men. But they did so on account of their extraordinary
beauty or their intellectual superiority; to the Greek mind the
moral standard was by no means the only standard of excellence.
The Romans, on the other hand, regarded the courtesan class with
much contempt.[67] In A.D. 19 the profligacy of women was checked
by stringent enactments, and it was provided that no woman whose
grandfather, father, or husband had been a Roman knight should
get money by prostitution. [68] The names of prostitutes had to
be published on the aedile's list, as Tacitus says, "according to
a recognised custom {430} of our ancestors, who considered it a
sufficient punishment on unchaste women to have to profess their
shame."[69] But both in Rome and Greece pre-nuptial unchastity in
men, when it was not excessive[70] or did not take some
especially offensive form, was hardly censured by public
opinion.[71] The elder Cato expressly justified it.[72] Cicero
says:--"If there be any one who thinks that youth is to be wholly
interdicted from amours with courtesans, he certainly is very
strict indeed. I cannot deny what he says; but still he is at
variance not only with the licence of the present age, but even
with the habits of our ancestors, and with what they used to
consider allowable. For when was the time that men were not used
to act in this manner? When was such conduct found fault with?
When was it not permitted? When, in short, was the time when that
which is lawful was not lawful?"[73] Epictetus only went a little
step further. He said to his disciples:--"Concerning sexual
pleasures, it is right to be pure before marriage, as much as in
you lies. But if you indulge in them, let it be according to what
is lawful. But do not in any case make yourself disagreeable to
those who use such pleasures, nor be fond of reproving them, nor
of putting yourself forward as not using them."[74] Here chastity
in men is at all events recognised as an ideal. But even in pagan
antiquity there were a few who enjoined it as a duty.[75]
Musonius Rufus emphatically asserted that no union of the sexes
other than marriage was permissible,[76] and Dio Chrysostom
desired prostitution to be suppressed by law.[77] Similar
opinions grew up in connection with the Neo-Platonic and
Neo-Pythagorean philosophies, and may be traced back to the
ancient masters themselves. We are told that Pythagoras
inculcated the virtue of {431} chastity so successfully that when
ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by
crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down
the beans, which were supposed to have a mystic affinity with the
seat of impure desires.[78] Plato, again, is in favour of a law
to the effect that "no one shall venture to touch any person of
the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the
unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and
unnatural lusts." Our citizens, he says, ought not to be worse
than birds and beasts, which live without intercourse, pure and
chaste, until the age for procreation, and afterwards, when they
have arrived at that period and the male has paired with the
female and the female with the male, "live the rest of their
lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original
compact."[79]
[Footnote 64: See Denis, _Histoire des théories et des idées
morales dans l'antiquité_, i. 69 _sq._]
[Footnote 65: Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 193.]
[Footnote 66: See Lecky, _History of European Morals_, i. 105.]
[Footnote 67: _Ibid._ ii. 300.]
[Footnote 68: Tacitus, _Annales_, ii. 85.]
[Footnote 69: Tacitus, _Annales_, ii. 85.]
[Footnote 70: Valerius Maximus (_Facta dictaque memorabilia_, ii.
5. 6) praises "frugalitas" as "immoderato Veneris usu aversa."]
[Footnote 71: Lecky, _op. cit._ ii. 314.]
[Footnote 72: Horace, _Satiræ_, i. 2. 31 _sq._]
[Footnote 73: Cicero, _Pro C[oe]lio_, 20 (48).]
[Footnote 74: Epictetus, _Enchiridion_, xxxiii. 8.]
[Footnote 75: Denis, _op. cit._ ii. 133 _sqq._]
[Footnote 76: Musonius Rufus, quoted by Stobæus, _Florilegium_,
vi. 61.]
[Footnote 77: Denis, _op. cit._ ii. 149 _sqq._]
[Footnote 78: Jamblichus, _De Pythagorica vita_, 31 (191). _Cf._
Jevons, in Plutarch's _Romane Questions_, p. lxxxviii. _sq._]
[Footnote 79: Plato, _Leges_, viii. 840 _sq._ _Cf._ Xenophon,
_Memorabilia_, i. 3. 8.]
Much stronger was the censure which Christianity passed on
pre-nuptial connections. While looking with suspicion even on the
life-long union of one man with one woman, the Church pronounced
all other forms of sexual intercourse to be mortal sins. In its
Penitentials sins of unchastity were the favourite topic; and its
horror of them finds an echo in the secular legislation of the
first Christian emperors. Panders were condemned to have molten
lead poured down their throats.[80] In the case of forcible
seduction both the man and woman, if she consented to the act,
were put to death.[81] Even the innocent offspring of illicit
intercourse were punished for their parents' sins with ignominy
and loss of certain rights which belonged to other, more
respectable, members of the Church and the State.[82] Persons of
different sex {432} who were not united in wedlock were forbidden
by the Church to kiss each other; nay, the sexual desire itself,
though unaccompanied by any external act, was regarded as sinful
in the unmarried.[83] In this standard of purity no difference of
sex was recognised, the same obligations being imposed upon man
and woman.[84]
[Footnote 80: Lecky, _op. cit._ ii. 316.]
[Footnote 81: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 24. 1.]
[Footnote 82: _Concilium Claromontanum_, A.D. 1095, can. 11
(Labbe-Mansi, _Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio_, xx. 817):--"Ut
nulli filii concubinarum ad ordines vel aliquos honores
ecclesiasticos promoveantur, nisi monchaliter vel canonice
vixerint in ecclesia." See also _supra_, i. 47.]
[Footnote 83: "Perit ergo et ipsa mente virginitas." Katz,
_Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts_, p. 114 _sq._ For the
subject of kissing see also Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologica_,
ii.-ii. 154. 4.]
[Footnote 84: Laurent, _Études sur l'histoire de l'Humanité_,
iv. 114.]
In this, as in so many other points of morals, however, there is
a considerable discrepancy between Christian doctrine and public
opinion in Christian countries. The gross and open immorality of
the Middle Ages indicates how little the idea of sexual purity
entered into the manners and opinions of the people. The
influence of the ascetic doctrine of the Church was in fact quite
contrary to its aspirations. The institution of clerical celibacy
lowered the estimation of virtue by promoting vice. During the
Middle Ages unchastity was regarded as an object of ridicule
rather than censure, and in the comic literature of that period
the clergy are universally represented as the great corrupters of
domestic virtue.[85] Whether the tenet of chastity laid down by
the code of Chivalry was taken more seriously may be fairly
doubted. A knight, it was said, should be abstinent and
chaste;[86] he should love only the virtues, talents, and graces
of his lady;[87] and love was defined as the "chaste union of two
hearts by virtue wrought."[88] But whilst the knight had certain
claims as regards the virtue of his lady, whilst he probably was
inclined to draw his sword only for a woman of fair reputation,
and whilst he himself professed to aspire only to her lip or
hand, we have reason to believe that the amours in which he
indulged with her were of a far less delicate kind. Sainte-Palaye
observes, "Jamais {433} on ne vit les m[oe]urs plus corrompues
que du temps de nos Chevaliers, et jamais le règne de la débauche
ne fut plus universel."[89] For a mediæval knight the chief
object of life was love. He who did not understand how to win a
lady was but half a man; and the difference between a lover and a
seducer was apparently slight. The character of the seducer, as
Mr. Lecky remarks, and especially of the passionless seducer who
pursues his career simply as a kind of sport, and under the
influence of no stronger motive than vanity or a spirit of
adventure, has for many centuries been glorified and idealised in
the popular literature of Christendom in a manner to which there
is no parallel in antiquity.[90]
[Footnote 85: Wright, _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, ii.
238. _Cf._ _Idem_, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in
England during the Middle Ages_, pp. 54, 281, 420.]
[Footnote 86: _Book of the Ordre of Chyualry_, fol. 40.]
[Footnote 87: Sainte-Palaye, _Mémoires sur l'ancienne
Chevalerie_, ii. 17.]
[Footnote 88: Mills, _History of Chivalry_, i. 214 _sq._]
[Footnote 89: Sainte-Palaye, _op. cit._ ii. 19. _Cf._ Walter
Scott, 'Essay on Chivalry,' in _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vi.
48 _sq._]
[Footnote 90: Lecky, _op. cit._ ii. 346. _Cf._ Delécluze, _Roland
ou la Chevalerie_, i. 356.]
The Reformation brought about some change for the better, if in
no other respect at least by making marriage lawful for a large
class of people to whom illicit love had previously been the only
means of gratifying a natural desire, and by abolishing the
monasteries. In fits of religious enthusiasm even the secular
legislators busied themselves with acts of incontinence in which
two unmarried adults of different sex were consenting parties. In
the days of the Commonwealth, according to an act of 1650, in
cases of less serious breach of chastity than adultery and
incest, each man or woman was for each offence to be committed to
the common gaol for three months, and to find sureties for good
behaviour during a whole year afterwards.[91] In Scotland, after
the Reformation, fornication was punished with a severity nearly
equal to that which attended the infraction of the marriage
vow.[92] But the fate of these and similar laws has been either
to be repealed or to become inactive.[93] For ordinary acts of
incontinence public opinion is, practically at least, the only
judge. In the case of female unchastity its sentence is {434}
severe enough among the upper ranks of society, whilst, so far as
the lower classes are concerned, it varies considerably even in
different parts of the same country, and is in many cases
regarded as venial. As to similar acts committed by unmarried
men, the words which Cicero uttered on behalf of C[oe]lius might
be repeated by any modern advocate who, in defending his client,
ventured frankly to express the popular opinion on the subject.
It seems to me that with regard to sexual relations between
unmarried men and women Christianity has done little more than
establish a standard which, though accepted perhaps in theory, is
hardly recognised by the feelings of the large majority of
people--or at least of men--in Christian communities, and has
introduced the vice of hypocrisy, which apparently was little
known in sexual matters by pagan antiquity.
[Footnote 91: Pike, _History of Crime in England_, ii. 182.]
[Footnote 92: Rogers, _Social Life in Scotland_, ii. 242.]
[Footnote 93: See Pike, _op. cit._ ii. 582; Hume, _Commentaries
on the Law of Scotland_, ii. 333.]
Why has sexual intercourse between unmarried people, if both
parties consent, come to be regarded as wrong? Why are the moral
opinions relating to it subject to so great variations? Why is
the standard commonly so different for man and woman? We shall
now try to find an answer to these questions.
If marriage, as I am inclined to suppose, is based on an instinct
derived from some ape-like progenitor, it would from the
beginning be regarded as the natural form of sexual intercourse
in the human race, whilst other more transitory connections would
appear abnormal and consequently be disapproved of. I am not
certain whether some feeling of this sort, however vague, is not
still very general in the race. But it has been more or less or
almost totally suppressed by social conditions which make it in
most cases impossible for men to marry at the first outbreak of
the sexual passion. We have thus to seek for some other
explanation of the severe censure passed on pre-nuptial connections.
It seems to me obvious that this censure is chiefly due to the
preference which a man gives to a virgin bride. As I have shown
in another place, such a preference is a {435} fact of very
common occurrence.[94] It partly springs from a feeling akin to
jealousy towards women who have had previous connections with
other men, partly from the warm response a man expects from a
woman whose appetites he is the first to gratify, and largely
from an instinctive appreciation of female coyness. Each sex is
attracted by the distinctive characteristics of the opposite sex,
and coyness is a female quality. In mankind, as among other
mammals, the female requires to be courted, often endeavouring
for a long time to escape from the male. Not only in civilised
countries may courtship mean a prolonged making of love to the
woman. Mariner's words with reference to the women of Tonga hold
true of a great many, if not all, savage and barbarous races of
men. "It must not be supposed," he says, "that these women are
always easily won; the greatest attentions and most fervent
solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no
other lover in the way."[95] The marriage ceremonies of many
peoples bear testimony to the same fact. One origin of the form
of capture is the resistance of the pursued woman, due to
coyness, partly real and partly assumed.[96] On the East Coast of
Greenland, for instance, the only method of contracting a
marriage is for a man to go to the girl's tent, catch her by her
hair or anything else which offers a hold, and drag her off to
his dwelling without further ado; violent scenes are often the
result, as single women always affect the utmost bashfulness and
aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should lose their
reputation for modesty.[97] It is certainly not the woman who
most readily yields to the desires of a man that is most
attractive to him; as an ancient writer puts it, all men love
seasoned dishes, not plain meats, or plainly dressed {436} fish,
and it is modesty that gives the bloom to beauty.[98] Conspicuous
eagerness in a woman appears to a man unwomanly, repulsive,
contemptible. His ideal is the virgin; the libertine he despises.
[Footnote 94: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 123 _sq._]
[Footnote 95: Mariner, _op. cit._ ii. 174. _Cf._ Fritsch, _Die
Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's_, p. 445 (Bushmans).]
[Footnote 96: _Cf._ Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 623
_sq._; _Idem_, in _Fortnightly Review_, xxi. 897 _sq._;
Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 388; Grosse, _Die Formen der Familie_,
p. 107; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 305 _sq._]
[Footnote 97: Nansen, _First Crossing of Greenland_, i. 316 _sqq._]
[Footnote 98: Athenæus, _Deipnosophistæ_, xiii. 16.]
Where marriage is the customary form of sexual intercourse
pre-nuptial incontinence in a woman, as suggesting lack of
coyness and modesty, is therefore apt to disgrace her. At the
same time it is a disgrace to, and consequently an offence
against, her family, especially where the ties of kinship are
strong. Moreover, where wives are purchased the unchaste girl, by
lowering her market value, deprives her father or parents of part
of their property. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold
Coast, says Major Ellis, "chastity _per se_ is not understood. An
unmarried girl is expected to be chaste because virginity
possesses a marketable value, and were she to be unchaste her
parents would receive little and perhaps no head-money for
her."[99] Among the Rendile of Eastern Africa, we are told, the
unchastity of unmarried girls meets with severe retribution, the
girl invariably being driven out from her home, for the sole and
simple reason that her market value to her parents has been
decreased.[100] The same commercial point of view is expressed in
the Mosaic rule:--"If a man entice a maid that is not betrothed,
and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If
her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay
money according to the dowry of virgins."[101] But the girl is
not the only offender. Whilst the disgrace of incontinence falls
on her alone, the offence against her relatives is divided
between her and the seducer. Speaking of the presents which,
among the Thlinkets, a man is bound to give to the parents of the
girl whom he has seduced, Sir James Douglas observes, "The
offender is simply regarded as a robber, who has committed
depredation on their merchandise, their only anxiety being to
make the {437} damages exacted as heavy as possible."[102]
Marriage by purchase has thus raised the standard of female
chastity, and also, to some extent, checked the incontinence of
the men. But it can certainly not be regarded as the sole cause
of the duty of chastity where such a duty is recognised by
savages. Among the Veddahs, who do not make their daughters
objects of traffic,[103] the unmarried girls are nevertheless
protected by their natural guardians "with the keenest sense of
honour."[104] In many of the instances quoted above where a
seduction is followed by more or less serious consequences for
the seducer, the penalty he has to pay is evidently something
else than the mere market value of the girl.
[Footnote 99: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 286.]
[Footnote 100: Chanler, _Through Jungle and Desert_, p. 317.]
[Footnote 101: _Exodus_, xxii. 16 _sq._]
[Footnote 102: Douglas, quoted by Petroff, _op. cit._ p. 177.]
[Footnote 103: Le Mesurier, 'Veddás of Ceylon,' in _Jour. Roy.
Asiatic Soc. Ceylon Branch_, ix. 340. Hartshorne, 'Weddas,' in
_Indian Antiquary_, viii. 320.]
[Footnote 104: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in _Taprobanian_,
i. 178.]
Thus the men, by demanding that the women whom they marry shall
be virgins, indirectly give rise to the demand that they
themselves shall abstain from certain forms of incontinence. From
my collection of facts relating to savages I find that in the
majority of cases where chastity is required of unmarried girls
the seducer also is considered guilty of a crime. But, as was
just pointed out, his act is judged from a more limited point of
view. It is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offence
against the parents or family of the girl; chastity _per se_ is
hardly required of savage men. Where prostitution exists they may
without censure gratify their passions among its victims. Now, to
anybody who duly reflects upon the matter it is clear that the
seducer does a wrong to the woman also; but I find no indication
that this idea occurs at all to the savage mind. Where the
seducer is censured the girl also is censured, being regarded not
as the injured party but as an injurer. Even in the case of rape
the harm done to the girl herself is little thought of. Among the
Tonga Islanders "rape, providing it be not upon a married woman
or one to whom respect is due on the score of {438} superior rank
from the perpetrator, is considered not as a crime but as a
matter of indifference."[105] The same is the case in the Pelew
Islands.[106] In the laws of the Rejangs of Sumatra referring to
this offence, "there is hardly anything considered but the value
of the girl's person to her relations, as a mere vendible
commodity."[107] Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, the
punishment for rape is based on the principle that the price of
the woman has been depreciated, that the chances of marriage have
been lessened, and that the act is an insult to her kindred, as
implying contempt of their feelings and their power of
protection.[108] Even the Teutons in early days hardly severed
rape from abduction, the kinsmen of the woman feeling themselves
equally wronged in either case.[109] If the girl's feelings are
thus disregarded when she is an unwilling victim of violence, it
can hardly be expected that she should be an object of pity when
she is a consenting partner. Does not public opinion in the midst
of civilisation turn against the dishonoured rather than the
dishonourer?
[Footnote 105: Mariner, _op. cit._ ii. 107.]
[Footnote 106: Kubary, 'Die Verbrechen und das Strafverfahren auf
den Pelau-Inseln,' in _Original-Mittheil. aus der ethnol.
Abtheil. der königl. Museen Berlin_, i. 78.]
[Footnote 107: Crawfurd, _History of the Indian Archipelago_,
iii. 130.]
[Footnote 108: Dorsey, 'Siouan Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ xv. 226.]
[Footnote 109: Brunner, _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_ ii. 666.
Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law before the Time of
Edward I._ ii. 490. According to Salic law, the fine for the rape
of an _ingenua puella_ was 62½ solidi, or only a little higher
than the fine for a connection with her to which she herself
consented (_Lex Salica_, Herold's text, xiv. 4; xv. 3); whereas
the fine for adultery with a free woman was 200 solidi (_ibid._
xv. 1).]
There is yet another party to be considered, namely, the
offspring. One would imagine that to every thinking mind, not
altogether destitute of sympathetic feelings, the question what
is likely to happen to the child if the woman becomes pregnant
should present itself as one of the greatest gravity. But in
judging of matters relating to sexual morality men have generally
made little use of their reason and been guilty of much
thoughtless cruelty. Although marriage has come into existence
solely for the sake of the offspring, it rarely happens that in
sexual relations much unselfish thought is bestowed upon unborn
{439} individuals. Legal provisions in favour of illegitimate
children have made men somewhat more careful, for their own sake,
but they have also nourished the idea that the responsibility of
fatherhood may be bought off by the small sum the man has to pay
for the support of his natural child. Custom or law may exempt
him even from this duty. We are told that in Tahiti the father
might kill a bastard child, but that, if he suffered it to live,
he was _eo ipso_ considered to be married to its mother.[110]
This custom, it would seem, is hardly more inhuman than the
famous law according to which "la recherche de la paternité est
interdite."[111]
[Footnote 110: Cook, _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, ii. 157.]
[Footnote 111: _Code Napoléon_, § 340.]
The great authority on the ethics of Roman Catholicism tries to
prove that simple fornication is a mortal sin chiefly because it
"tends to the hurt of the life of the child who is to be born of
such intercourse," or more generally, because "it is contrary to
the good of the offspring."[112] But this tender care for the
welfare of illegitimate children seems strange when we consider
the manner in which such children have been treated by the Roman
Catholic Church herself. It is obvious that the extreme horror of
fornication which is expressed in the Christian doctrine is in
the main a result of the same ascetic principle which declared
celibacy superior to marriage and tolerated marriage only because
it could not be suppressed.
[Footnote 112: Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologica_, ii.-ii. 154. 2.]
Moral ideas concerning unchastity have also been influenced by
the close association which exists in a refined mind between the
sexual impulse and a sentiment of affection which lasts long
after the gratification of the bodily desire. We find the germ of
this feeling in the abhorrence with which prostitution is
regarded by savage tribes who have no objection to ordinary
sexual intercourse previous to marriage,[113] and in the
distinction which among ourselves is drawn between the prostitute
and the woman {440} who yields to temptation because she loves.
To indulge in mere sexual pleasure, unaccompanied by higher
feelings, appears brutal and disgusting in the case of a man, and
still more so in the case of a woman. After all, love is
generally only an episode in a man's life, whereas for a woman it
is the whole of her life.[114] The Greek orator said that in the
moment when a woman loses her chastity her mind is changed.[115]
On the other hand, when a man and a woman, tied to each other by
deep and genuine affection, decide to live together as husband
and wife, though not joined in legal wedlock, the censure which
public opinion passes upon their conduct seems to an unprejudiced
mind justifiable at most only in so far as it may be considered
to have been their duty to comply with the laws of their country
and to submit to a rule of some social importance.
[Footnote 113: _E.g._, the Chittagong Hill tribes (Lewin, _Wild
Races of South-Eastern India_, p. 348). _Cf._ Westermarck, _op.
cit._ p. 70 _sq._]
[Footnote 114: _Cf._ Simmel, _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft_,
i. 201; Paulsen, _System der Ethik_, ii. 274.]
[Footnote 115: Lysias, quoted by Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten
Griechen_, i. 273.]
Sexual intercourse between unmarried persons of opposite sex is
thus regarded as wrong from different points of view under
different conditions, social or psychical, and all of these
conditions are not in any considerable degree combined at any
special stage of civilisation. Sometimes the opinions on the
subject are greatly influenced by the institution of marriage by
purchase, sometimes they are influenced by the refinement of
love; and between such causes there can be no co-operation. This
is one reason for the singular complexity which characterises the
evolution of the duty of chastity; but there is another reason
perhaps even more important. The causes to which this duty may be
traced are frequently checked by circumstances operating in an
opposite direction. Thus the preference which a man is naturally
disposed to give to a virgin bride may be overcome by his desire
for offspring, inducing him to marry a woman who has proved
capable of gratifying this desire.[116] It may also be
ineffective for the simple reason that no virgin bride is to be
found. Nothing has more generally prevented chastity {441} from
being recognised as a duty than social conditions promoting
licentious habits. Even in savage society, where almost every man
and every woman marry and most of them marry early in life, there
are always a great number of unmarried people of both sexes above
the age of puberty; and, generally speaking, the number of the
unmarried increases along with the progress of civilisation. This
state of things easily leads to incontinence in men and women,
and where such incontinence becomes habitual it can hardly incur
much censure. Again, where the general standard of female
chastity is high, the standard of male chastity may nevertheless
be the lowest possible. This is the case where there is a class
of women who can no longer be dishonoured, because they have
already been dishonoured, whose virtue is of no value either to
themselves or their families because they have lost their virtue,
and who make incontinence their livelihood. Prostitution, being a
safeguard of female chastity, has facilitated the enforcement of
the rule which enjoins it as a duty, but at the same time it has
increased the inequality of obligations imposed on men and women.
It has begun to exercise this influence already at the lower
stages of culture. Prostitution is by no means unknown in the
savage world.[117] It is a recognised institution in many of the
Melanesian islands; "at Santa Cruz," says Dr. Codrington, "where
the separation of the sexes is so carefully maintained, there are
certainly public courtesans."[118] Prostitution prevails in many
or most Negro countries;[119] and so favourably, we are told, is
this institution sometimes regarded, that rich Negro ladies on
their death-beds buy female slaves and present them to the
public, "in the same manner as in England they would have left a
legacy to some public charity."[120] The Wanyoro even have a
{442} definite system of prostitution, governed by stringent laws
which seem to be very old.[121] In Greenland, where it was
"reckoned the greatest of infamies" for an unmarried woman to
become pregnant,[122] there were professional harlots already in
early times;[123] and the same was the case among many of the
North American Indians.[124] Thus among the Omahas
extra-matrimonial intercourse is, as a rule, practised only with
public women, called _minckeda_; and "so strict are the Omahas
about these matters, that a young girl or even a married woman
walking or riding alone, would be ruined in character, being
liable to be taken for a _minckeda_, and addressed as such."[125]
Public prostitution was tolerated, if not encouraged, among all
the Maya nations, whilst intercourse with other unmarried women
was punished with a fine or, if the affronted relatives insisted,
with death.[126] "In order to avoid greater evils," the Incas of
Peru permitted public prostitutes, who were treated with extreme
contempt;[127] but, with this exception, "to be lewd with single
women was capital."[128] Among all the civilised nations of the
Old World prostitution has existed, and still exists, as a
tolerated institution, even where legislators have endeavoured to
suppress it.[129] Its prevalence in our modern society greatly
increases the perplexity of public opinion in regard to sexual
morality. Its victims are degraded and despised beyond
description. At the same time their male customers {443} are
tacitly allowed to support the trade. That the demand for a
merchandise increases the production of it is in this case seldom
thought of. But secrecy must be observed. In sexual matters
openness is indecent, and the chief crime is to be found out.
[Footnote 116: See _supra_, ii. 423.]
[Footnote 117: See, _e.g._, Tutuila, 'Line Islanders,' in _Jour.
Polynesian Soc._ i. 270; Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_,
p. 261 (natives of New Britain); Davis, _El Gringo_, p. 221
(Indians of New Mexico); Ploss-Bartels, _Das Weib_, i. 536, 540
_sqq._]
[Footnote 118: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 234 _sqq._]
[Footnote 119: _Emin Pasha in Central Africa_, p. 88.]
[Footnote 120: Reade, _Savage Africa_, p. 547 _sq._]
[Footnote 121: _Emin Pasha in Central Africa_, p. 87. Wilson and
Felkin, _Uganda_, ii. 49.]
[Footnote 122: Egede, _Description of Greenland_, p. 141.]
[Footnote 123: Cranz, _History of Greenland_, i. 176.]
[Footnote 124: Carver, _Travels through the Interior Parts of
North America_, p. 375.]
[Footnote 125: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ iii. 365.]
[Footnote 126: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_,
ii. 676, 659.]
[Footnote 127: Garcilasso de la Vega, _First Part of the Royal
Commentaries of the Yncas_, i. 321 _sq._]
[Footnote 128: Herrera, _General History of the West Indies_,
iv. 340.]
[Footnote 129: Dufour, _Histoire de la prostitution_, _passim_.
Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, i. 348. Wilkins, _Modern
Hinduism_, p. 412. Polak, 'Die Prostitution in Persien,' in
_Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift_, xi. 516, 517, 563 _sqq._
Lane, _Modern Egyptians_, i. 150. Weinhold, _Altnordisches
Leben_, p. 259 (ancient Scandinavians). Desmaze, _Les pénalités
anciennes_, p. 61 _sq._ n. 4; Mackintosh, _History of
Civilisation in Scotland_, i. 428 (Middle Ages); &c. Since the
thirteenth century even the Church tolerated the establishment of
brothels in the larger cities (Müller, _Das sexuelle Leben der
christlichen Kulturvölker_, p. 149).]
There is, moreover, a form of religious prostitution, just as
there is religious celibacy. In fact, the two customs are
sometimes very closely connected with one another. Among the
E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast the chief business of
the female _kosi_, or wife of the god to whom she is dedicated,
is prostitution. "In every town there is at least one institution
in which the best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of
age, are received. Here they remain for three years, learning the
chants and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and
prostituting themselves to the priests and the inmates of the
male seminaries; and at the termination of their novitiate they
become public prostitutes. This condition, however, is not
regarded as one for reproach; they are considered to be married
to the god, and their excesses are supposed to be caused and
directed by him. Properly speaking, their libertinage should be
confined to the male worshippers at the temple of the god, but
practically it is indiscriminate. Children who are born from such
unions belong to the god."[130] So also the priestesses on the
Gold Coast, though not allowed to marry, are by no means debarred
from sexual intercourse. They "are ordinarily most licentious,
and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who
may chance to take their fancy. A priestess who is favourably
impressed by a man sends for him to her house, and this command
he is sure to obey, through fear of the consequences of exciting
her anger. She then tells him that the god she serves has
directed her to love him, and the man thereupon lives with her
until she grows tired of him, or a new object takes her fancy.
Some priestesses have as many as half a dozen men in their train
at one time, and may on great occasions be seen walking {444} in
state, followed by them. Their life is one continual record of
debauchery and sensuality, and when excited by the dance they
frequently abandon themselves to the wildest excesses."[131] It
seems that the "wife" of the Egyptian god at Thebes also in time
became a libertine; Strabo tells us that the beautiful woman who
was dedicated to him had sexual intercourse with any man she
chose "till the natural purification of her body took place,"
after which she was given to a man.[132] In India every Hindu
temple of any importance has its dancing girls, whose position is
inferior only to that of the sacrificers.[133] Thus at
J[)u]g[)u]nnat'h[)u]-ksh[)u]tr[)u] in Orissa a number of women of
infamous character are employed to dance and sing before the god.
They live in separate houses, not at the temple. The Brahmins who
officiate there continually have adulterous connections with
them, and these women also prostitute themselves to
visitors.[134] In the Canaanitish cults there were women, called
_[k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th_, who were consecrated to the deity with
whose temple they were associated, and who at the same time acted
as prostitutes.[135] At the local shrines of North Israel the
worship of Yahveh itself was deeply affected by these
practices;[136] but they were forbidden in the Deuteronomic
code.[137] Perhaps this temple prostitution may be accounted for
by a belief that it bestowed blessings upon the worshippers.
According to notions which prevail to this day in countries with
Semitic culture, sexual intercourse with a holy person is
regarded as beneficial to him or her who indulges in it.[138]
[Footnote 130: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples_, p. 141.]
[Footnote 131: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 121 _sq._]
[Footnote 132: Strabo, _Geographica_, xvii. i. 46. _Cf._
Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_, p. 269.]
[Footnote 133: Warneck, quoted by Ploss-Bartels, _op. cit._ i. 534.]
[Footnote 134: Ward, _View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos_,
ii. 134.]
[Footnote 135: Driver, _Commentary on Deuteronomy_, p. 264.
Cheyne, 'Harlot,' in Cheyne and Black, _Encyclopædia Biblica_,
ii. 1965.]
[Footnote 136: _Hosea_, iv. 14. _Cf._ Cheyne, in _Encyclopædia
Biblica_, ii. 1965.]
[Footnote 137: _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 17 _sq._]
[Footnote 138: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of
Holiness (Baraka)_, p. 85.]
Of a somewhat different character was the religious prostitution
which prevailed in ancient Babylonia, in connection with the
worship of Ishtar. Herodotus says that every woman born in that
country was obliged once in her {445} life to go and sit down in
the precinct of Aphrodite, and there consort with a stranger. A
woman who had once taken her seat was not allowed to return home
till one of the strangers threw a silver coin into her lap, and
took her with him beyond the holy ground. The silver coin could
not be refused because, since once thrown, it was sacred. The
woman went with the first man who threw her money, rejecting no
one. When she had gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess,
she returned home, and from that time forth no gift, however
great, would prevail with her.[139] Several allusions in
cuneiform literature to the sacred prostitution carried on at
Babylonian temples confirm Herodotus' statement in general.[140]
A cult very similar to this was also found in certain parts of
the island of Cyprus,[141] at Heliopolis in Syria,[142] and at
Byblus.[143] In the worship of Anaitis the Armenians even of the
highest families prostituted their own daughters at least once in
their lives, nor was this regarded as any bar to an honourable
marriage afterwards.[144] Although such practices were generally
excluded from the ordinary Greek worships of Aphrodite,
unchastity in the temple cult of that goddess is reported to have
occurred at Corinth[145] and in the city of the Locri
Epizephyrii, who, according to the story, vowed to consecrate
their daughters to this service in order to gain the goddess's
aid in a war.[146]
[Footnote 139: Herodotus, i. 199.]
[Footnote 140: Jeremias, _Izdubar-Nimrod_, p. 59 _sq._ Jastrow,
_Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, p. 475 _sq._ Mürdter-Delitzsch,
_Geschichte Babyloniens_, p. 41.]
[Footnote 141: Herodotus, i. 199. Athenæus, _Deipnosophistæ_,
xii. 11, p. 516 a.]
[Footnote 142: Socrates, _Historia ecclesiastica_, 18 (Migne,
_op. cit._ Ser. Græca, lxvii. 123). Sozomen, _Historia
ecclesiastica_, v. 10 (Migne, Ser. Græca, lxvii. 1243). Eusebius,
_Vita Constantini_, iii. 58 (Migne, Ser. Græca, xx. 1124).]
[Footnote 143: Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, 6.]
[Footnote 144: Strabo, xi. 14. 16.]
[Footnote 145: _Ibid._ viii. 6. 20.]
[Footnote 146: Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, ii. 636.
Athenæus, xii. 11, p. 516 a.]
Various theories have been set forth to explain the religious
prostitution of the Babylonian type. It has been interpreted as
an expiation for individual marriage, as a temporary recognition
of pre-existing communal rights at a time when "communal
marriage" in the full sense of the term had already ceased to
exist.[147] It {446} has been supposed to be nothing but ordinary
immorality practised under the cloak of religion.[148] It has
been represented as a form of sacrifice, either as a first-fruit
offering[149] or as an act by which a worshipper sacrifices her
most precious possession to the deity.[150] To Dr. Farnell it
seems to be "a special modification of a wide-spread custom, the
custom of destroying virginity before marriage so that the
bridegroom's intercourse should be safe from a peril that is much
dreaded by men in a certain stage of culture; and here, as in
other ritual," he adds, "it is the stranger that takes the peril
upon himself."[151] But why should the stranger have been more
willing than the bridegroom to expose himself to this danger?
Considering that the act was performed at the temple of the
goddess of fecundity, I think its object most probably was to
ensure fertility in the woman; this, in fact, is directly
indicated by the words which the stranger, according to
Herodotus, uttered when he threw the silver coin into her
lap:--"The goddess Mylitta prosper thee!"[152] And from what has
been said in a previous chapter about the semi-supernatural
character ascribed to strangers, about the efficacy of their
blessings and the benefits expected from their love,[153] we can
see why a stranger was appointed to confer the blessing upon the
girl.[154]
[Footnote 147: Avebury, _Origin of Civilisation_, p. 559.]
[Footnote 148: Jeremias, _Izdubar-Nimrod_, p. 60.]
[Footnote 149: Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_, p. 267 _sq._]
[Footnote 150: Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_,
p. 155.]
[Footnote 151: Farnell, 'Sociological Hypotheses concerning the
Position of Women in Ancient Religion,' in _Archiv f.
Religionswiss._ vii. 88.]
[Footnote 152: Herodotus, i. 199.]
[Footnote 153: _Supra_, i. ch. xxiv.]
[Footnote 154: Since the present chapter was in type, some fresh
attempts have been made to explain this religious prostitution.
Sir J. G. Frazer (_Adonis Attis Osiris_, p. 23 _sq._) regards it
as a rite intended to ensure the fruitfulness of the ground and
the increase of man and beast on the principle of hom[oe]opathic
magic. A very similar opinion has been expressed by Dr. Havelock
Ellis ('Ursprung und Entwicklung der Prostitution,' in
_Mutterschutz_, iii. fasc. 1 _sq._). According to Mr. Hartland,
again ('Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta,' in
_Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 189
_sqq._), it was a puberty rite involving a sacrifice of virginity
to which every woman was subjected. [My own theory has
subsequently been accepted by van Gennep, _Les rites de passage_,
p. 242 _sq._]]
Among ourselves an act of incontinence assumes a {447} different
aspect if one of the parties, either the man or the woman, is
married. Involving a breach of faith, adultery is an offence
against him or her to whom faith is due, and at the same time the
seducer commits an offence against the husband of the adulteress.
But here again our own views are not universally shared.
Although it is hard to understand that the seducer could ever be
regarded as guiltless, we are told that among a few peoples
adultery is not held to be wrong;[155] and Mr. Morgan states that
among the Iroquois "punishment was inflicted upon the woman
alone, who was supposed to be the only offender."[156] But these
cases are certainly quite exceptional. In a savage tribe a
seducer may be thankful if he escapes by paying to the injured
husband the value of the bride or some other fine, or if the
penalty is reduced to a flogging, to his head being shaved, his
ears cut off, one of his eyes destroyed, or his legs speared.
Very commonly he has to pay with his life. We have seen that even
among many peoples who generally prohibit self-redress an
adulterer may be put to death by the aggrieved husband,
especially if he be caught _flagrante delicto_;[157] and in other
cases he may be subject to capital punishment, in the proper
sense of the word.[158] In Albania, even in our days, custom not
only allows, but compels, the injured husband to kill the
adulterer.[159] Hebrew law enjoined the man who committed
adultery with another man's wife to be put to death;[160] and
Christian legislators followed the example. Constantine
celebrated his new zeal for the sacramental idea of marriage by
establishing the punishment of death for the seducer;[161]
adultery was in point of {448} heinousness assimilated to murder,
idolatry, and sorcery.[162] Various mediæval law-books punished
the seducer with death;[163] whilst in Scotland notorious and
manifest adultery was made capital as late as 1563.[164] This
extreme severity, however, has been followed by extreme leniency.
In Scotland, though adultery kept its place in the statute-book
as a heinous and in some cases a capital crime, prosecution for
it had ceased for many years before the time of Baron Hume;[165]
and in England it is no crime at all in the eyes of the law, only
an ecclesiastical offence.
[Footnote 155: Davis, _El Gringo_, p. 221 _sq._ (Indians of New
Mexico). Adair, _History of the American Indians_, p. 146
(Cherokees). Krasheninnikoff, _History of Kamschatka_, p. 204.
Prejevalsky, _Mongolia_, i. 70 (Mongols). Colquhoun, _Amongst the
Shans_, p. 75 (Yendalines, one of the Karen tribes). Chanler,
_op. cit._ p. 317 (Rendile in Eastern Africa). Lichtenstein,
_Travels in Southern Africa_, ii. 48 (Bushmans).]
[Footnote 156: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 331.]
[Footnote 157: _Supra_, i. 290 _sqq._]
[Footnote 158: _Supra_, i. 189.]
[Footnote 159: Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, i. 177.]
[Footnote 160: _Leviticus_, xx. 10. _Deuteronomy_, xxii. 22.]
[Footnote 161: _Codex Justinianus_, ix. 9. 29. 4.]
[Footnote 162: _Codex Theodosianus_, xi. 36. i. St. Basil, quoted
by Bingham, _Works_, vi. 432 _sq._]
[Footnote 163: Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel des peuples
modernes_, ii. 606. _Idem_, _Histoire du droit criminel de
l'Espagne_, p. 391.]
[Footnote 164: Erskine-Rankine, _Principles of the Law of
Scotland_, p. 563.]
[Footnote 165: Hume, _Commentaries on the Law of Scotland_, ii. 302.]
The punishment of the seducer often varies according to his rank,
or according to that of the husband, or according to the relative
rank of both, or according to the rank of the adulteress. Among
the Monbuttu, if the guilty woman belongs to the royal household,
the adulterer is put to death, whereas otherwise he is only
compelled to pay an indemnity to the offended husband.[166] Among
the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast the fine imposed
for adultery depends on the rank of the injured husband;[167] and
the same principle is found in Anglo-Saxon law.[168] Among the
Bakongo, again, the penalties for adultery "vary from capital
punishment to a trifling fine, according to the station of the
offender or the district he lives in."[169] Drury tells us that
in the country of Anterndroea in Madagascar, "if a man lies with
another man's wife who is superior to him, he forfeits thirty
head of cattle besides beads and shovels a great number," whereas
"if the men are of an equal rank, then twenty beasts are the
fine."[170] According to the Chinese Penal Code, a slave who is
guilty of criminal intercourse with the wife or daughter of a
freeman, shall be punished at the least one degree more {449}
severely than a freeman would have been under the same
circumstances.[171] In India a man of one of the first three
castes who committed adultery with a Sûdra woman was banished,
but a Sûdra who committed adultery with a woman of one of the
first three castes suffered capital punishment;[172] and an
opinion is also quoted that for a Brâhmana who once was guilty of
adultery with a married woman of equal class, the penance was
one-fourth of that prescribed for an outcast.[173] In ancient
Peru "an adulterer was punish'd with death, if the woman was of
note, or else with the rack."[174]
[Footnote 166: Casati, _Ten Years in Equatoria_, i. 163.]
[Footnote 167: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 168: _Laws of Alfred_, ii. 10.]
[Footnote 169: Johnston, _River Congo_, p. 404.]
[Footnote 170: Drury, _Journal_, p. 183.]
[Footnote 171: _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. ccclxxiii. p. 409.]
[Footnote 172: _Âpastamba_, ii. 10. 27. 8 _sq._]
[Footnote 173: _Ibid._ ii. 10. 27. 11.]
[Footnote 174: Herrera, _op. cit._ iv. 338.]
We find no difficulty in explaining all these facts. In early
civilisation a husband has often extreme rights over his wife.
The seducer encroaches upon a right of which he is most jealous,
and with regard to which his passions are most easily inflamed.
Adultery is regarded as an illegitimate appropriation of the
exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase
of his wife, as an offence against property.[175] It is said in
the 'Laws of Manu' that "seed must not be sown by any man on that
which belongs to another."[176] How closely the seducer is
associated with a thief is illustrated by the fact that among
some peoples he is punished as such, having his hands, or one of
them, cut off.[177] Yet even among savages the offence is
something more than a mere infringement of the right of
ownership. The Kurile Islanders, says Krasheninnikoff, have an
extraordinary way of punishing adultery: the husband of the
adulteress challenges the adulterer to a combat. The result is
generally the death of both the combatants; but it is held to be
"as great dishonour to refuse this combat as to refuse an
invitation to a duel among the people of Europe."[178] The
passion of jealousy, the feeling of ownership, and the sense of
honour, {450} thus combine to make the seducer's act an offence,
and often a heinous offence, in the eyes of custom or law; and
for the same reasons as in other offences the magnitude of guilt
is here also influenced by the rank of the parties concerned.
Modern legislation, on the other hand, does not to the same
extent as early law and custom allow a man to give free vent to
his angry passion; it regards the dishonour of the aggrieved
husband as a matter of too private a character to be publicly
avenged; and the faithfulness which a wife owes her husband is no
longer connected with any idea of ownership. Moreover, the
severity of earlier European laws against adultery was closely
connected with Christianity's abhorrence of all kinds of
irregular sexual intercourse; and secular legislation has more
and more freed itself from the bondage of religious doctrine.
[Footnote 175: See, _e.g._, Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 225; Burton,
_Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 77; Monrad, _Skildring af
Guinea-Kysten_, p. 5; Letourneau, _L'évolution de la morale_,
p. 154 _sq._]
[Footnote 176: _Laws of Manu_, ix. 42.]
[Footnote 177: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 130.]
[Footnote 178: Krasheninnikoff, _History of Kamschatka_, p. 238.]
Among some savage peoples it is the seducer only who suffers,
whilst the unfaithful wife escapes without punishment.[179]
Jealousy, in the first place, turns against the rival, and the
seducer is the dishonourer and the thief. But, as a general rule,
the unfaithful wife is also looked upon as an offender, and the
punishment falls on both. She is discarded, beaten, or
ill-treated in some way or other, and not infrequently she is
killed. Often, too, she is disfigured by her enraged husband, so
that no man may fall in love with her ever after.[180] Indeed, so
strong is the idea that a wife belongs exclusively to her
husband, that among several peoples she has to die with him;[181]
and frequently a widow is prohibited from remarrying either for
ever or for a certain period after the husband's death.[182] In
ancient Peru widows generally continued to live single, as "this
virtue was much commended in their laws and ordinances."[183] Nor
is it in China considered proper {451} for a woman to contract a
second marriage after her husband's death, and a lady of rank, by
doing so, exposes herself to a penalty of eighty blows.[184] "As
a faithful minister does not serve two lords, neither may a
faithful woman marry a second husband"--this is to the Chinese a
principle of life, a maxim generally received as gospel.[185]
Among so-called Aryan peoples the ancient custom which ordained
sacrifice of widows survived in the prohibitions issued against
their marrying a second time.[186] Even now the bare mention of a
second marriage for a Hindu woman would be considered the
greatest of insults, and, if she married again, "she would be
hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any
time to have the slightest intercourse with her."[187] In
Greece[188] and Rome[189] a widow's remarriage was regarded as an
insult to her former husband; and so it is still regarded among
the Southern Slavs.[190] The early Christians, especially the
Montanists and Novatians, strongly disapproved of second
marriages by persons of either sex;[191] a second marriage was
described by them as a "kind of fornication,"[192] or as a
"specious adultery."[193] It was looked upon as a manifest sign
of incontinence, and also as inconsistent with the doctrine that
marriage is an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church.[194]
[Footnote 179: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 122. Macpherson,
_Memorials of Service in India_, p. 133 (Kandhs). Batchelor,
_Ainu of Japan_, p. 189 _sq._ Scaramucci and Giglioli, 'Notizie
sui Danakil,' in _Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia_,
xiv. 26.]
[Footnote 180: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 122.]
[Footnote 181: _Ibid._ p. 125 _sq._ _Supra_, i. 472 _sqq._]
[Footnote 182: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 127
_sqq._]
[Footnote 183: Garcilasso de la Vega, _op. cit._ i. 305.]
[Footnote 184: Gray, _China_, i. 215.]
[Footnote 185: de Groot, _Religious System of China_, (vol. ii.
book) i. 745.]
[Footnote 186: Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan
Peoples_, p. 391.]
[Footnote 187: Dubois, _People of India_, p. 132.]
[Footnote 188: Pausanias, ii. 21. 7.]
[Footnote 189: Rossbach, _Römische Ehe_, p. 262.]
[Footnote 190: Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_, p. 578.
_Cf._ Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 115 (Bulgarians).]
[Footnote 191: Mayer, _Die Rechte der Israeliten, Athener und
Römer_, ii. 290. Bingham, _op. cit._ vi. 427 _sq._; viii. 13 _sq._]
[Footnote 192: Tertullian, _De exhortatione castitatis_, 9
(Migne, _Patrologiæ cursus_, ii. 924).]
[Footnote 193: Athenagoras, _Legatio pro Christianis_, 33 (Migne,
_op. cit._ Ser. Graeca, vi. 967).]
[Footnote 194: Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_, ii. 187. Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 326.]
Conjugal fidelity, whilst considered a stringent duty in the
wife, is not generally considered so in the husband. This is
obviously the rule among savage and barbarous tribes; but there
are interesting exceptions to the rule. The Igorrotes of Luzon
are so strictly monogamous that {452} in case of adultery the
guilty party can be compelled to leave the hut and the family for
ever,[195] and among various other monogamous savages adultery is
said to be unknown.[196] The Dyak husband "preserves his vow of
fidelity with a rectitude which makes jealousy a farce."[197] The
Toungtha, who marry only one wife, do not consider it right for a
master to take advantage of his position even with regard to the
female slaves in his house.[198] Nay, the duty of fidelity in the
husband has been recognised even by some savage peoples who allow
polygamy. The Abipones, we are told, thought it both wicked and
disgraceful to have any illicit intercourse with other women than
their wives; hence adultery was almost unheard of among
them.[199] Among the Omaha Indians, "if a woman's husband be
guilty of adultery with another woman she may strike him or the
guilty female in her anger," though she cannot claim
damages.[200] In several tribes of Western Victoria a wife whose
husband has been unfaithful to her "may make a complaint to the
chief, who can punish the man by sending him away from his tribe
for two or three moons";[201] and among some aborigines in New
South Wales similar complaints may be made to the elders of the
tribe, with the result that the adulterous husband may have to
suffer for his conduct.[202] The Kandhs of India deny the married
man certain prerogatives which are granted to his wife: whilst
constancy to her husband is so far from being required in a wife,
"that her pretensions do not, at least, suffer diminution in the
eyes of either sex when fines are levied on her convicted
lovers," infidelity in a married man is held to be highly
dishonourable, and {453} is often punished with deprivation of
many social privileges.[203]
[Footnote 195: Meyer, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. f.
Anthrop._ 1883, p. 385.]
[Footnote 196: Bailey, in _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ N. S. ii. 291 _sq._
Hartshorne, in _Indian Antiquary_, viii. 320 (Veddahs). Finsch,
_Neu-Guinea_, p. 101; Earl, _Papuans_, p. 81 (Papuans of Dorey).]
[Footnote 197: Boyle, _Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo_,
p. 236. See also Low, _Sarawak_, p. 300 (Hill Dyaks).]
[Footnote 198: Lewin, _Wild Races of South-Eastern India_, p. 193
_sq._]
[Footnote 199: Dobrizhoffer, _Account of the Abipones_, ii. 138.]
[Footnote 200: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ iii. 364.]
[Footnote 201: Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 33.]
[Footnote 202: Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial System_, p. 18.]
[Footnote 203: Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_, p. 133.]
The duty which savages thus in certain instances have imposed on
the husband is hardly at all recognised in the archaic State. The
Mexicans "did not consider, nor did they punish, as adultery the
trespass of a husband with any woman who was free, or not joined
in matrimony; wherefore the husband was not bound to so much
fidelity as was exacted from the wife," adultery in her being
inevitably punished with death.[204] In China, where adultery in
a woman is branded as one of the vilest crimes and the guilty
wife is oftentimes "cut into small pieces," concubinage is a
recognised institution of the country.[205] In Corea "conjugal
fidelity--obligatory on the woman--is not required of the
husband. . . . Among the nobles, the young bridegroom spends
three or four days with his bride, and then absents himself from
her for a considerable time, to prove that he does not esteem her
too highly. Etiquette dooms her to a species of widowhood, while
he spends his hours of relaxation in the society of his
concubines. To act otherwise would be considered in very bad
taste, and highly unfashionable."[206] In Japan, "while the man
is allowed a loose foot, the woman is expected not only to be
absolutely spotless, but also never to show any jealousy, however
wide the husband may roam, or however numerous may be the
concubines in his family."[207] According to Hebrew law adultery
was a capital offence, but it presupposed that the guilty woman
was another man's wife.[208] The "Aryan" nations in early times
generally saw nothing objectionable in the unfaithfulness of a
married man, whereas an adulterous wife was subject to the
severest penalties.[209] Until some time after the introduction
of Christianity among the Teutons their {454} law-books made no
mention of the infidelity of husbands, because it was permitted
by custom.[210] The Romans defined adultery as sexual intercourse
with another man's wife; on the other hand, the intercourse of a
married man with an unmarried woman was not regarded as
adultery.[211] The ordinary Greek feeling on the subject is
expressed in the oration against Neæra, ascribed to Demosthenes,
where the licence accorded to husbands is spoken of as a matter
of course:--"We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for
constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children and
to be our faithful house-keepers."[212]
[Footnote 204: Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, i. 356.]
[Footnote 205: Doolittle, _op. cit._ i. 339. Griffis, _Religions
of Japan_, p. 149.]
[Footnote 206: Griffis, _Corea_, p. 251 _sq._]
[Footnote 207: _Idem_, _Religions of Japan_, p. 320.]
[Footnote 208: _Leviticus_, xx. 10. _Deuteronomy_, xxii. 22.]
[Footnote 209: Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan
Peoples_, p. 388.]
[Footnote 210: Wilda, _Strafrecht der Germanen_, p. 821.
Nordström, _op. cit._ ii. 67 _sq._ Stemann, _Den danske
Retshistorie indtil Christian V.'s Lov_, pp. 324, 633. Keyser,
_Efterladte Skrifter_, vol. ii. pt. ii. 32 _sq._ Brunner,
_Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, ii. 662.]
[Footnote 211: Vinnius, _In quatuor libros institutionum
imperialium commentarius_, iv. 18. 4, p. 993. _Cf._ _Digesta_, l.
16. 101. 1; Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 688 _sq._]
[Footnote 212: _Oratio in Neæram_, p. 1386. _Cf._ Schmidt, _Die
Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 196 _sq._]
At the same time the idea that fidelity in marriage ought to be
reciprocal was not altogether unknown in classical
antiquity.[213] In a lost chapter of his 'Economics,' which has
come to us only through a Latin translation, Aristotle points out
that it for various reasons is prudent for a man to be faithful
to his wife, but that nothing is so peculiarly the property of a
wife as a chaste and hallowed intercourse.[214] Plutarch condemns
the man who, lustful and dissolute, goes astray with a courtesan
or maid-servant; though at the same time he admonishes the wife
not to be vexed or impatient, considering that "it is out of
respect to her that he bestows upon another all his wanton
depravity."[215] Plautus argues that it is unjust of a husband to
exact a fidelity which he does not keep himself.[216]
[Footnote 213: Lecky, _op. cit._ ii. 312 _sq._ Schmidt, _op.
cit._ ii. 195 _sq._]
[Footnote 214: Aristotle, _[OE]conomica_, p. 341, vol. ii. 679.
_Cf._ Isocrates, _Nicocles sive Cyprii_, 40.]
[Footnote 215: Plutarch, _Conjugalia præcepta_, 16.]
[Footnote 216: Plautus, _Mercator_, iv. 5.]
In its condemnation of adultery Christianity made no distinction
between husband and wife.[217] If continence is a stringent duty
for unmarried persons independently of {455} their sex, the
observance of the sacred marriage vow must be so in a still
higher degree. But here again there is a considerable discrepancy
between the actual feelings of Christian peoples and the standard
of their religion. Even in the laws of various European countries
relating to divorce or judicial separation we find an echo of the
popular notion that adultery is a smaller offence in a husband
than in a wife.[218]
[Footnote 217: Laurent, _op. cit._ iv. 114. Gratian, _Decretum_,
ii. 35. 5. 23.]
[Footnote 218: See _supra_, ii. 397.]
The judgment pronounced upon an unfaithful husband is of course
influenced by the opinion about extra-matrimonial connections in
general. Where it is considered wrong for a man to have
intercourse with either an unmarried woman or another man's wife,
adultery in a husband is _eo ipso_ condemned. But whether, or how
far, infidelity on his part is stigmatised as an offence against
his wife, chiefly depends upon the degree of regard which is paid
to the feelings of women. That a married man generally enjoys
more liberty than a married woman is largely due to the same
causes as make him the more privileged partner in other respects;
but there are also special reasons for this inequality between
the sexes. It was a doctrine of the Roman jurists that adultery
is a crime in the wife, and in the wife only, on account of the
danger of introducing strange children to the husband.[219]
Moreover, the temptation to infidelity and the facility in
indulging in it are commonly greater in the case of the husband
than in that of the wife; and, as we have often noticed before,
actual practice is always apt to influence moral opinion. And a
still more important reason for the inequality in question is
undoubtedly the general notion that unchastity of any kind is
more discreditable for a woman than for a man.
[Footnote 219: Hunter, _Exposition of Roman Law_, p. 1071.]
CHAPTER XLIII
HOMOSEXUAL LOVE
OUR review of the moral ideas concerning sexual relations has not
yet come to an end. The gratification of the sexual instinct
assumes forms which fall outside the ordinary pale of nature. Of
these there is one which, on account of the _rôle_ which it has
played in the moral history of mankind, cannot be passed over in
silence, namely, intercourse between individuals of the same sex,
what is nowadays commonly called homosexual love.
It is frequently met with among the lower animals.[1] It probably
occurs, at least sporadically, among every race of mankind.[2]
And among some peoples it has assumed such proportions as to form
a true national habit.
[Footnote 1: Karsch, 'Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren,' in
_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, ii. 126 _sqq._ Havelock
Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, 'Sexual Inversion,' p.
2 _sqq._]
[Footnote 2: Ives, _Classification of Crimes_, p. 49. The
statement that it is unknown among a certain people cannot
reasonably mean that it may not be practised in secret.]
In America homosexual customs have been observed among a great
number of the native tribes. In nearly every part of the
continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men
dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions
of women, and living with other men as their concubines or
wives.[3] Moreover, between {457} young men who are comrades in
arms there are _liaisons d'amitié_, which, according to Lafitau,
"ne laissent aucun soupçon de vice apparent, quoiqu'il y ait, ou
qu'il puisse y avoir, beaucoup de vice réel."[4]
[Footnote 3: von Spix and von Martius, _Travels in Brazil_, ii.
246; von Martius, _Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern
Brasiliens_, p. 27 _sq._; Lomonaco, 'Sulle razze indigene del
Brasile,' in _Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia_, xix.
46; Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 246 (Brazilian Indians).
Garcilasso de la Vega, _First Part of the Royal Commentaries of
the Yncas_, ii. 441 _sqq._; Cieza de Leon, 'La crónica del Perú
[primera parte],' ch. 49, in _Biblioteca de autores españoles_,
xxvi. 403 (Peruvian Indians at the time of the Spanish conquest).
Oviedo y Valdés, 'Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias,'
ch. 81, in _Biblioteca de autores españoles_, xxii. 508
(Isthmians). Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, i.
585 (Indians of New Mexico); ii. 467 _sq._ (ancient Mexicans).
Diaz del Castillo, 'Conquista de Nueva-España,' ch. 208, in
_Biblioteca de autores españoles_, xxvi. 309 (ancient Mexicans).
Landa, _Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan_, p. 178 (ancient
Yucatans). Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, 'Naufragios y relacion de la
jornada que hizo a la Florida,' ch. 26, in _Biblioteca de autores
españoles_, xxii. 538; Coreal, _Voyages aux Indes Occidentales_,
i. 33 _sq._ (Indians of Florida). Perrin du Lac, _Voyage dans les
deux Louisianes et chez les nations sauvages du Missouri_, p.
352; Bossu, _Travels through Louisiana_, i. 303. Hennepin,
_Nouvelle Découverte d'un très Grand Pays Situé dans l'Amerique_,
p. 219 _sq._; 'La Salle's Last Expedition and Discoveries in
North America,' in _Collections of the New-York Historical
Society_, ii. 237 _sq._; de Lahontan, _Mémoires de l'Amérique
septentrionale_, p. 142 (Illinois). Marquette, _Recit des
voyages_, p. 52 _sq._ (Illinois and Naudowessies). Wied-Neuwied,
_Travels in the Interior of North America_, p. 351 (Manitaries,
Mandans, &c.). McCoy, _History of Baptist Indian Missions_,
p. 360 _sq._ (Osages). Heriot, _Travels through the Canadas_,
p. 278; Catlin, _North American Indians_, ii. 214 _sq._ (Sioux).
Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 365;
James, _Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains_,
i. 267 (Omahas). Loskiel, _History of the Mission of the United
Brethren among the Indians_, 1.14 (Iroquois). Richardson, _Arctic
Searching Expedition_, ii. 42 (Crees). Oswald, quoted by Bastian,
_Der Mensch in der Geschichte_, iii. 314 (Indians of California).
Holder, in _New York Medical Journal_, December 7th, 1889, quoted
by Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 9 _sq._ (Indians of Washington
and other tribes in the North-Western United States). See also
Karsch, 'Uranismus oder Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Naturvölkern,'
in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, iii. 112 _sqq._]
[Footnote 4: Lafitau, _Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains_, i. 603,
607 _sqq._]
Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the
peoples in the neighbourhood of Behring Sea.[5] In Kadiak it was
the custom for parents who had a girl-like son to dress and rear
him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at
woman's work, and letting him associate only with women and
girls. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he was
married to some wealthy man and was then called an _achnuchik_ or
_shoopan_.[6] Dr. Bogoraz gives the following account of a {458}
similar practice prevalent among the Chukchi:--"It happens
frequently that, under the supernatural influence of one of their
shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will
suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He
adopts a woman's attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself
altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of
his sex takes a husband into the _yurt_ and does all the work
which is usually incumbent on the wife in most unnatural and
voluntary subjection. Thus it frequently happens in a _yurt_ that
the husband is a woman, while the wife is a man! These abnormal
changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community,
and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans, who
interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity."
The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship;
indeed, nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their
sex.[7] Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman's
attire and are believed to be transformed physically into women
are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman's
sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian
tribes.[8] In some cases at least there can be no doubt that
these transformations were connected with homosexual practices.
In his description of the Koriaks, Krasheninnikoff makes mention
of the _ke'yev_, that is, men occupying the position of
concubines; and he compares them with the Kamchadale _koe'k[vc]u[vc]_,
as he calls them, that is, men transformed into women. Every
_koe'k[vc]u[vc]_, he says, is regarded as a magician and interpreter
of dreams; but from his confused description Mr. Jochelson thinks it
may be inferred that the most important feature of the
institution of the _koe'k[vc]u[vc]_ lay, not in their shamanistic
power, but in their position with regard to the satisfaction of
the {459} unnatural inclinations of the Kamchadales. The
_koe'k[vc]u[vc]_ wore women's clothes, did women's work, and were in
the position of wives or concubines.[9]
[Footnote 5: Dall, _Alaska_, p. 402; Bancroft, _op. cit._ i. 92;
Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, iii. 314 (Aleuts), von
Langsdorf, _Voyages and Travels_, ii. 48 (natives of Oonalaska).
Steller, _Kamtschatka_, p. 289, n. _a_; Georgi, _Russia_, iii.
132 _sq._ (Kamchadales).]
[Footnote 6: Davydow, quoted by Holmberg, 'Ethnographische
Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,' in _Acta Soc.
Scientiarum Fennicæ_, iv. 400 _sq._ Lisiansky, _Voyage Round the
World_, p. 199. von Langsdorf**, _op. cit._ ii. 64. Sauer,
_Billing's Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia_, p. 176.
Sarytschew, 'Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,'
in _Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages_, vi. 16.]
[Footnote 7: Bogoraz, quoted by Demidoff, _Shooting Trip to
Kamchatka_, p. 74 _sq._]
[Footnote 8: Jochelson, _Koryak Religion and Myth_, pp. 52, 53 n. 3.]
[Footnote 9: Jochelson, _op. cit._ p. 52 _sq._]
In the Malay Archipelago homosexual love is common,[10] though
not in all of the islands.[11] It is widely spread among the
Bataks of Sumatra.[12] In Bali it is practised openly, and there
are persons who make it a profession.[13] The _basir_ of the
Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery.
They "are dressed as women, they are made use of at idolatrous
feasts and for sodomitic abominations, and many of them are
formally married to other men."[14] Dr. Haddon says that he never
heard of any unnatural offences in Torres Straits;[15] but in the
Rigo district of British New Guinea several instances of
pederasty have been met with,[16] and at Mowat in Daudai it is
regularly indulged in.[17] Homosexual love is reported as common
among the Marshall Islanders[18] and in Hawaii.[19] From Tahiti
we hear of a set of men called by the natives _mahoos_, who
"assume the dress, attitude, and manners, of women, and affect
all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of
females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their
acquaintance. With the manners of the women, they adopt their
peculiar employments. . . . The encouragement of this abomination
is almost solely {460} confined to the chiefs."[20] Of the New
Caledonians M. Foley writes:--"La plus grande fraternité n'est
pas chez eux la fraternité uterine, mais la fraternité des armes.
Il en est ainsi surtout au village de Poepo. Il est vrai que
cette fraternité des armes est compliquée de pédérastie."[21]
[Footnote 10: Wilken, 'Plechtigheden en gebruiken bij verlovingen
en huwelijken bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,' in
_Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_,
xxxiii. (ser. v. vol. iv.) p. 457 _sqq._]
[Footnote 11: Crawfurd, _History of the Indian Archipelago_,
iii. 139. Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 12: Junghuhn, _Die Battaländer auf Sumatra_, ii. 157, n.*]
[Footnote 13: Jacobs, _Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs_, pp. 14,
134 _sq._]
[Footnote 14: Hardeland, _Dajacksch-deutsches Wörterbuch_, p. 53
_sq._ Schwaner, _Borneo_, i. 186. Perelaer, _Ethnographische
beschrijving der Dajaks_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 15: Haddon, 'Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres
Straits,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xix. 315.]
[Footnote 16: Seligmann, 'Sexual Inversion among Primitive
Races,' in _The Alienist and Neurologist_, xxiii. 3 _sqq._]
[Footnote 17: Beardmore, 'Natives of Mowat, Daudai, New Guinea,'
in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xix. 464. Haddon, _ibid._ xix. 315.]
[Footnote 18: Hernsheim, _Beitrag zur Sprache der Marshall-Inseln_,
p. 40. A different opinion is expressed by Senfft, in Steinmetz,
_Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und
Ozeanien_, p. 437.]
[Footnote 19: Remy, _Ka Mooolelo Hawaii_, p. xliii.]
[Footnote 20: Turnbull, _Voyage Round the World_, p. 382. See
also Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific_, pp.
333, 361; Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 246, 258.]
[Footnote 21: Foley, 'Sur les habitations et les m[oe]urs des
Néo-Calédoniens,' in _Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop. Paris_, ser. iii.
vol. ii. 606. See also de Rochas, _Nouvelle Calédonie_, p. 235.]