The racial interest is also the cause of the double standard of sex-morality of the two sexes. This is best seen by the study of the evolution of sexual morality, or the history of marriage.DR
1) In the first stage, the lowest conceivable stage of savagery, when men still lived in hordes, mankind lived in a state of “promiscuous” intercourse like the gregarious animals. All the males of the horde protected the females and their offspring. In the prehuman period, when horde-life was not yet known, the semi-human creatures must have lived in pairs, where every male protected his female and her offspring. Without this protection the race would have died.
2) In the second stage the irregular state was abandoned and the “consanguineous family” developed. It was founded upon intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own or collateral, in a group. Marriage between parents and children, as in the preceding stage, is now decreed immoral and is prohibited.
3) In the third stage the prohibition of intermarriage in the same clan was decreed. Experience has taught even these primitive men that the offspring of consanguineous marriages were often deficient and degenerate. The prohibition of intermarriage in the same clan excluded own brothers and sisters from the marriage relations, or, in other words, incest is now considered immoral. This so-called “punaluan family”DS was founded upon intermarriage of several sisters, own or collateral, with each other’s husbands, in a group, the joint husbands not being necessarily kinsmen of each other, but all belonging to other tribes than their joint wives, or of several brothers with each other’s wives, in a group. In this so-called exogamousDT marriage each group of men were conjointly married to the group of women. Adultery was as yet unknown. The children, in all these three stages, could only know their mother. Inheritance follows in the female line, and gynocracy or matriarchate, the government by women, prevails. The common mother of the clan is the origin and ruler of the same.
4) In the fourth stage communal marriage is replaced by the “pairing family.” It is founded upon the marriage between single pairs, but without an exclusive cohabitation. The marriage is continued during the pleasure of the parties. Marriage between any relatives is entirely prohibited and considered immoral. Hence marriage in a group is now impossible. Marriage is still exogamous. The male leaves his clan and marries into another clan. When he dies, his personal property, which consisted of his arms and dress, is handed over to his former clan. The main fortune remains in the clan of the wife. The children may now know their father, yet they belong to their mother’s clan. Communistic housekeeping prevails throughout the whole clan. Matriarchate is still in force. The woman is still the undisputed mistress of the house and clan. The males have only to provide the clan with food from day to day, by hunting and fishing, and to fight the clan’s battles in its protection. Property and descent go in the female line, and kinship is counted through the mother.
5) During the fifth stage sources of wealth, hitherto unthought of, develop by the training of animals and the breeding of herds. The males, who have hitherto always been the providers of food for the clan, are consequently the possessors of the herds, which now form the main source of subsistence. Lest with the death of the man, his property, the flocks, should be handed over to the former clan, change of descent from the female to the male line is established. The man is now the ruler. The common ancestor, formerly only the leader in war, is now the head of the clan and manager of its possessions. Apart of the head other leaders were necessary in the frequent wars. The latter become preeminent among the other members of the clan and receive individual allotments from the common wealth of the clan.DU With the growth of their influence these allotments ripen finally into individual ownership and are inherited by the children.
6) The progress during the sixth stage was caused by the law of inheritance. Inheritance in the male line requires that the father should know his child. The strictest fidelity of the wife is, therefore, a condition sine qua non, her faithfulness is of the greatest racial importance. The woman no less than the man was interested in female purity, in the interest of her children. This strict fidelity, exacted from the wife by men and women alike, leads to the ‘patriarchal family’ as found in the Bible. It is founded upon the marriage of one man with one or more wives.DV
Now, polygamy is a physical impossibility. Where no man or woman remains unmated, general polygyny or polyandry is practically impossible. The number of the two sexes is nearly equal. If infanticide is not practiced (male infanticide has seldom been practiced, except in Egypt, Exod. I, 16), and war captives or slaves are not available, the general public must be content with one mate.DW Polygyny in this way led to “monogamy,” founded upon marriage between single couples with an exclusive cohabitation, as is now the rule in most of the civilized nations.
Female chastity.—All the changes in the marriage relations of the sexes were thus made out of altruistic motives, in the interest of the progeny with the sacrifice of personal comfort. Promiscuity, consanguineous marriage, punaluan family, and the pairing family followed each other in the interest of the health of the offspring. The last change to female monogamy was made in the economic interest of the progeny. The husband in sacrificing his own comfort, while providing food and shelter for his children, must be certain that he is the father of these children. Uncertainty would make him negligent, and the existence of the race would be jeopardized.DX
Adultery on the part of the husband does not necessarily alter the relations of the children to the parents and each other; unchastity of the wife, however, either altogether breaks the family bond or weakens it through doubt. The purity of the woman and her faithfulness are, therefore, of the greatest racial importance, and it is eminently proper that she should be in the van of moral progress. The highest moral character, says Kant, is that which does the good not out of inclination but from a sense of duty guided by reason, and there is good reason for female chastity.DY
In the lowest savage life the woman was free and even the ruler. At that time not the remotest vestige of the idea of chastity was to be found. The gratification of the instinct was simply a natural process that contained in it neither good nor evil. The jewel of chastity had no more value than a grain of sand. For ages the sentiment of chastity had no existence. Fornication, adultery and incest were the common order of things, accepted by public opinion and even consecrated by religion. Later on, chastity was known, not as a virtue but as a necessity. But the severe punishment to which the wife was subjected for her transgressions from the straight path of chastity has led to the constant inculcations at home and in the community that impurity in the woman is unholy, hated by God and most infamous. These constant inculcations have created such a strong sentiment of female purity that the old philosophers maintained that it was an innate instinct, always present under normal conditions.
When the spotless purity of the wife was once accepted as the moral law of the race, it was of vital importance for her that the man should also be limited to one permanent mate. She had to place obstacles in his way of finding gratification of his sensual desires elsewhere except with a permanent mate. To accomplish her purpose, general female chastity was of the greatest help to her. Strict female chastity is the best means to preserve the man’s fidelity. This fact is at the bottom of woman’s hatred for her lax sister. She never forgives the woman who lowers the value of feminine favors. If men can find gratification of their desires for a little money on the streets or for a small gift among his female acquaintances, all the obstacles that chaste women have devised for many centuries become futile and are of no avail. Hence woman hates her fallen sister relentlessly. The law of obstacles is at the bottom of the restrictions women have themselves imposed upon their sex. After chastity in the wife has been dictated to her by economic reasons, woman has been forced to develop her moral standard. Her sexual passivity comes to woman’s aid in maintaining her purity. It makes it easier for her to refuse a man’s advances than it is for him to curb his passions.DZ
The law of obstacles has also created modesty and coyness, the twin sisters of chastity. To increase the obstacles to men’s advances, the woman imposed upon herself great restraint when in men’s company. All the exterior modesty which women require in expression, dress and behavior of their sex is to be explained by the desire to increase the obstacles. Feminine coyness prolongs the period of courtship. By keeping the suitor in suspense and doubt the imagination and the sentimental side of love are developed.EA
Modesty and coyness, though appearing to be natural and inherited sentiments, are nothing more than natural obstacles that tend to increase the value of the favor granted. Woman, for this reason, watches not only over her own modesty, but is anxious also to protect the modesty of her sister. She watches with jealous eyes that feminine modesty should not be offended in any way. She is ever ready to succor her sister with all her means, in confinements, at accidents or in cases of sickness where the presence of men might offend feminine modesty.EB
Honor and virtue in woman did not originally take their rise from any innate moral sense,—for a religious rite or a legal form even to-day mark for her the whole difference between irredeemable sin and absolute duty,—but from the mode of her position and in accordance with the conditions of her relation to men.EC Her morality is founded rather upon the rule of reason which is the best judge of duty. Woman’s modesty and coyness are nothing else but reason applied to human actions and regulating man’s appetites, desires and affections for the good of the family, community, nation and of the human race.
Thus the fascinating details of the evolution of the marriage relations among men teach the lesson that the strong sentiment of chastity, this powerful moral law that controls human actions as the law of gravitation rules the world, has grown slowly from microscopic beginnings until it has assumed a racial consciousness which underlies that of the individual. Throughout the three periods of the history of mankind—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—the human heart felt a law within, written by the strong hand of the Creator, that man has to sacrifice personal comfort and freedom of action in the interest of posterity, and that it is preferable to suffer the pain of repressed passion and to bear its trial in the interest of that general morality which our conscience tells us to be of such fundamental value.