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 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 Greece125 and India126 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 The Christians prescribed strict continence as a preparation for baptism133 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

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 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 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

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 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 Kāmatarāya 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

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, 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

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.

CHAPTER XLII

FREE LOVE—ADULTERY

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 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 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

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 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.