Biography. See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed,
etc., from Al-Ghazáli introduced (pp. 72–77) into Bell and Sons’
“History of the Saracens” by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878). I
regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs: everybody
will not detect “Al-Lauh al-Mahfúz” (the Guarded Tablet) in
“Allauh ho’hnehphoud” (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a
camel-load.
[FN#338] The word should have been Arianism. This “heresy” of the
early Christians was much aided by the “Discipline of the
Secret,” supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from
neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries,
like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis
(transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the
Seven Sacraments; when Arnobius could ask, Quid Deo cum vino est?
and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could
expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father.
Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol i.e., Sign of the
Secret. This “mental reservation” lasted till the Edict of
Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held
Christianity secure when divulging her “mysteries”; and it
allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.
[FN#339] The Gnostics played rather a fantastic rôle in
Christianity with their Demiurge, their Æonogony, their Æons by
syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified
bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth, and some of them descended to
absolute absurdities, e.g., the Tascodrugitæ and the
Pattalorhinchitæ who during prayers placed their fingers upon
their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.
[FN#340] “Kitáb al-’Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán” = The Book of the
Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38).
[FN#341] This person was one of the Amsál or Exampla of the
Arabs. For her first thirty years she whored; during the next
three decades she pimped for friend and foe, and, during the last
third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she
had a buckgoat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced
herself by contemplating their amorous conflicts.
[FN#342] And modern Moslem feeling upon the subject has
apparently undergone a change. Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet,
sings,
Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to
ken,
Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.
And the Osmanli proverb is, “Of ten men nine are women!”
[FN#343] His Persian paper “On the Vindication of the Liberties
of the Asiatic Women” was translated and printed in the Asiatic
Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100–107); it is quoted by Dr. Jon.
Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. xxxiv. et seq.) and by a host of
writers. He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof.
Charles Stewart in 1810 and re-issued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.
[FN#344] The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit.= the
separation, popularly “The Flight.” Stating the case broadly, it
has become the practice of modern writers to look upon Mohammed
as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous despot at
Al-Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and
unfair. In a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a
good citizen, teste his title Al-Amín =The Trusty. But when
driven from his home by the pagan faction, he became de facto as
de jure a king: nay, a royal pontiff; and the preacher was merged
in the Conqueror of his foes and the Commander of the Faithful.
His rule, like that of all Eastern rulers, was stained with
blood; but, assuming as true all the crimes and cruelties with
which Christians charge him and which Moslems confess, they were
mere blots upon a glorious and enthusiastic life, ending in a
most exemplary death, compared with the tissue of horrors and
havock which the Law and the Prophets attribute to Moses, to
Joshua, to Samuel and to the patriarchs and prophets by express
command of Jehovah.
[FN#345] It was not, however, incestuous: the scandal came from
its ignoring the Arab “pundonor.”
[FN#346] The “opportunism” of Mohammed has been made a matter of
obloquy by many who have not reflected and discovered that
time-serving is the very essence of “Revelation.” Says the Rev.
W. Smith (“Pentateuch,” chaps. xiii.), “As the journey (Exodus)
proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way,” and
he applies this to successive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 32–36;
xxvii. 8–11 and xxxvi. 1–9), holding it indirect internal
evidence of Mosaic authorship (?). Another tone, however, is used
in the case of Al-Islam. “And now, that he might not stand in awe
of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation,” says Ockley in
his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases as, “the
imposter has the impudence to say.” But why, in common honesty,
refuse to the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah? It
is a mere petitio principii to argue that the latter is
“inspired” while the former is not, moreover, although we may be
called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to
require our belief in things contrary to Reason.
[FN#347] This is noticed in my wife’s volume on The Inner Life of
Syria, chaps. xii. vol. i. 155.
[FN#348] Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it
Prince. Addison’s “Vision of Mirza” (Spectator, No. 159) is
therefore “The Vision of Mister.”
[FN#349] And women. The course of instruction lasts from a few
days to a year and the period of puberty is fêted by magical
rites and often by some form of mutilation. It is described by
Waitz, Réclus and Schoolcraft, Páchue-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson,
Thomas, Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo
Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt, C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc.
Anthrop. Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor Mantegazza
(chaps. i.) for whom see infra.
[FN#350] Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape
and pederasty saying to the young, If you do this you will be
killed.
[FN#351] “Báh,” is the popular term for the amatory appetite:
hence such works are called Kutub al-Báh, lit. = Books of Lust.
[FN#352] I can make nothing of this title nor can those whom I
have consulted: my only explanation is that they may be fanciful
names proper.
[FN#353] Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (1)
Aristides of the Libri Milesii; (2) Astyanassa, the follower of
Helen who wrote on androgenization; (3) Cyrene, the artist of
amatory Tabellæ or ex-votos offered to Priapus; (4) Elephantis,
the poetess who wrote on Varia concubitus genera; (5) Evemerus,
whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a fragment of Q. Eunius, was
collected by Hieronymus Columnar (6) Hemitheon of the Sybaritic
books, (7) Musæus, the Iyrist; (8) Niko, the Samian girl; (9)
Philænis, the poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13,
attributed to Polycrates the Sophist; (10) Protagorides, Amatory
Conversations; (11) Sotades, the Mantinæan who, says Suidas,
wrote the poem “Cinædica”; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of
Love; and (13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures. Amongst the Romans
we have Aedituus, Annianus (in Ausonius), Anser, Bassus Eubius,
Helvius Cinna, Lævius (of Io and the Erotopægnion), Memmius,
Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo
coeundi); Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian
Fables and Sulpitia, the modest erotist. For these see the
Dictionnaire Érotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x. (Paris, Liseux,
1885).
[FN#354] It has been translated from the Sanskrit and annotated
by A.F.F. and B.F.R. Reprint Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxv.: for the Kama
Shastra Society, London and Benares, and for private circulation
only. The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will
presently appear.
[FN#355] The local press has often proposed to abate this
nuisance of erotic publication which is most debasing to public
morals already perverted enough. But the “Empire of Opinion”
cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the
“native press,” generally seems to seek only a quiet life. In
England if erotic literature were not forbidden by law, few would
care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and penalties
keep up the phenomenally high prices.
[FN#356] The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an “infamous piece
of good breeding,” because “men of the town, and particularly
those who have been polished in France, make use of the most
coarse and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves
often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear.”
[FN#357] See the Novelle of Bandello the Bishop (Tome 1, Paris,
Liseux, 1879, small in 18) where the dying fisherman replies to
his confessor, “Oh! Oh! your reverence, to amuse myself with boys
was natural to me as for a man to eat and drink; yet you asked me
if I sinned against nature!” Amongst the wiser ancients sinning
contra naturam was not marrying and begetting children.
[FN#358] Avis au Lecteur “L’Amour dans l’Humanité,” par P.
Mantegazza, traduit par Emilien Chesneau, Paris, Fetscherin et
Chuit, 1886.
[FN#359] See “H. B.” (Henry Beyle, French Consul at Civita Vecchia) par
un des Quarante” (Prosper Mérimee), Elutheropolis, An mdccclxiv. De
l’Imposture du Nazaréen.
[FN#360] This detail especially excited the veteran’s curiosity.
The reason proved to be that the scrotum of the unmutilated boy
could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of
the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical
literature of Greece and Rome; although the same cause might be
expected everywhere to the same effect. But in Mirabeau
(Kadhésch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de
confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys,
exclaims, “Des femmes! eh! c’est comme si tu me servais un gigot
sans manche.” See also infra for “Le poids du tisserand.”
[FN#361] See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John
Van Voorst, 1852.
[FN#362] Submitted to Government on Dec. 31, ’47, and March 2,
’48, they were printed in “Selections from the Records of the
Government of India.” Bombay. New Series. No. xvii. Part 2, 1855.
These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2)
Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in
collaboration with my late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E.
Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.
[FN#363] Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that
“boys are handsome only when they resemble women,” and so the
Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v. 160) declares “Boys are
likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl.”
For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with
the female, see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy’s voice
before it breaks excels that of any diva.
[FN#364] “Mascula,” from the priapiscus, the over-development of
clitoris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu Tartúr, habens
cristam), which enabled her to play the man. Sappho (nat. B.C.
612) has been retoillée like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie
Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not
of sanctity. Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the
Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as
Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates: Ovid who could consult
documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho
to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265.
Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?
Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the (a
term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to
Atthis:—
Ille mî par esse Deo videtur * * *
(Heureux! qui près de toi pour toi seule soupire * * *
Blest as th’ immortal gods is he, etc.)
By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure
for passion, Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for
Stratonice. Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the
Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as “one in which the whole volume of
Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one
brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can
display itself.” But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. Müller and
esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some
of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most
debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois.
[FN#365] The Arabic Sabhákah, the Tractatrix or Subigitatrix who
has been noticed in vol. iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise ( )
and tribassare ( ); the former applied to the love of
woman for woman and the latter to its mecanique: this is either
natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris
when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum,
the artificial penis (the Persian “Mayájang”); the patte de chat,
the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea. As this
feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need
hardly enlarge upon the subject.
[FN#366] Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for
such passions by there being in the beginning three species of
humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes. When the latter
were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were
individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks
its other half in the same sex, the primitive man prefers men and
the primitive woman women. C’est beau, but—is it true? The idea
was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with
androgynic humanity, and thence it passed to extreme India, where
Shiva as Ardhanárí was male on one side and female on the other
side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and
functions. The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was
hermaphrodite (=Hermes and Venus), masculum et fminam creavit
eos—male and female created He them—on the sixth day, with the
command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28), while Eve the
woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain
Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals.
See L’Anandryne in Mirabeau’s Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette
Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of God,
producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction
like the vegetable kingdom.
[FN#367] De la Femme, Paris, 1827.
[FN#368] Die Lustseuche des Alterthum’s, Halle, 1839.
[FN#369] See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) “Paederastie” in
the Allgemeine Encyclopædie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig,
Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it through the several
states, Dorians, Æolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of
Asia Minor. For these details I must refer my readers to M.
Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the
section of an essay.
[FN#370] Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour
Hérodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by
Liseux.
[FN#371] In Sparta the lover was called or x
and the beloved as in Thessaly or x.
[FN#372] The more I study religions the more I am convinced that
man never worshipped anything but himself. Zeus, who became
Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were
entitled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a
deified ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew
Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh of Moab; the name would gain
amplitude by long time and distant travel, and the old island
chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who
possibly gave rise to the old Lat. “Catamitus”) was probably some
fair Phrygian boy (“son of Tros”) who in process of time became a
symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle (perspicacity) to be
raised amongst the Immortals; and the chaste myth simply
signified that only the prudent are loved by the gods. But it
rotted with age as do all things human. For the Pederastía of the
Gods see Bayle under Chrysippe.
[FN#373] See Dissertation sur les idées morales des Grecs et sur
les dangers de lire Platon. Par M. Audé, Bibliophile, Rouen,
Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late Octave
Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio
Princeps—which, if I remember rightly, contains much more
matter.
[FN#374] The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc.
Gottingen i. 1–32. It was founded upon Erasmus’ “Sancte Socrate,
ore pro nobis,” and the article was translated by M. Alcide
Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.
[FN#375] The subject has employed many a pen, e.g., Alcibiade
Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino—ad
captandum?), Oranges, par Juann Wart, 1652: small square 8vo of
pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf
with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a
re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format,
pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Racon
printed 102 copies in 8vo of pp. iv.–108, and in 1863 it was
condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus
de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work produced “Alcibiade
Enfant à l’école,” traduit pour la première fois de l’Italien de
Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l’Ancien Pierre Marteau,
mdccclxvi. Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was
beheaded, aet. 26 (March 5, 1644), at Avignon in 1644 by the
vengeance of the Barberini: he was a bel esprit déréglé, nourri
d’études antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl’ Incogniti. His
peculiarities are shown by his “Opere Scelte,” 2 vols. 12mo,
Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo,
a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a
mere skit at the Jesuits and their Péché philosophique. Then came
the “Dissertation sur l’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola,” traduit de
l’Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnée de notes et
d’une post-face par un bibliophile francais (M. Gustave Brunet,
Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861—an octavo of pp. 78
(paged), 254 copies. The same Baseggio printed in 1850 his
Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the
authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly
attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not
seen the “Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus” (Palladii, 1633)
supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo; but
most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.
[FN#376] The word is from numbness, torpor, narcotism: the
flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the
Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of
morose voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania:
certain mediæval writers found in the former a type of the
Saviour, and ’Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or
first Adam: to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in
the contemplation of his own perfections.
[FN#377] The verse of Ovid is parallel’d by the song of Al-Záhir
al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).
Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminæ.
Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.
[FN#378] The venerable society of prostitutes contained three
chief classes. The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so
called from Diete (Crete), who imitated Pasiphaë, wife of Minos,
in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle
class, the Aleutridæ, who were the Almahs or professional
musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai,
whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page
of Grecian history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt,
established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or
bordel whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.
[FN#379] This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to
Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand
Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.
[FN#380] Properly speaking, “Medicus” is the third or ring
finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,
Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.
[FN#381] So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian
does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and
medius to suggest the clitoris.
[FN#382] What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the
Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No
wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found
in the neo-Phædrus, the tales of Musæus and in the Septem
Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted.” As the “Fabliau de
la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari,” it tempted
Brantôme and La Fontaine; and Abel Rémusat shows in his Contes
Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter
K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is
the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who
introduces it into his chapt. v.—“Of the Contingencies of Death
and Treating our Dead.” But in those days divines were not
mealy-mouthed.
[FN#383] Glossarium eroticum linguæ Latinæ, sive theogoniæ, legum
et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P.
(Parisiis, Dondey-Dupré, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be
Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of
Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, “On
s’est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inédits de M. Ie Baron
de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues qu’on
désignait comme l’auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n’est
pas bien avérée, et quelques bibliographes persistent à penser
que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d’Eloi
Johanneau.” Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been
printed by Liseux, Paris.
[FN#384] This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of
Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople,
to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The
Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are
the Gætulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see
Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc., par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin
Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth
century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and last are
the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed
originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish
residence and showing by thickness of feature and a
parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon’s, a
negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in
“Morocco and the Moors,” etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my
late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see
reprinted.
[FN#385] Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous
modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges
of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible,
but where are the stones?
[FN#386] To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many
Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. “Bakhshísh,”
for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of
the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say Hadíyah, regalo
or favor.
[FN#387] Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their
caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often
concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to
taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored
“Consuistis in precibus ’Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!” These
men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man’s
brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which
rendered their creation truly dreadful.
[FN#388] Gallus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon,
a castrato.