Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 8

We cannot accept an ideal of chast.i.ty unless we ruthlessly cast aside all the unnatural and empty forms of chast.i.ty. If chast.i.ty is merely a fatiguing effort to emulate in the s.e.xual sphere the exploits of professional fasting men, an effort using up all the energies of the organism and resulting in no achievement greater than the abstinence it involves, then it is surely an unworthy ideal. If it is a feeble submission to an external conventional law which there is no courage to break, then it is not an ideal at all. If it is a rule of morality imposed by one s.e.x on the opposite s.e.x, then it is an injustice and provocative of revolt. If it is an abstinence from the usual forms of s.e.xuality, replaced by more abnormal or more secret forms, then it is simply an unreality based on misconception. And if it is merely an external acceptance of conventions without any further acceptance, even in act, then it is a contemptible farce. These are the forms of chast.i.ty which during the past two centuries many fine-souled men have vigorously rejected.

The fact that chast.i.ty, or asceticism, is a real virtue, with fine uses, becomes evident when we realize that it has flourished at all times, in connection with all kinds of religions and the most various moral codes. We find it p.r.o.nounced among savages, and the special virtues of savagery-hardness, endurance, and bravery-are intimately connected with the cultivation of chast.i.ty and asceticism.[70] It is true that savages seldom have any ideal of chast.i.ty in the degraded modern sense, as a state of permanent abstinence from s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps having a merit of its own apart from any use. They esteem chast.i.ty for its values, magical or real, as a method of self-control which contributes towards the attainment of important ends. The ability to bear pain and restraint is nearly always a main element in the initiation of youths at p.u.b.erty. The custom of refraining from s.e.xual intercourse before expeditions of war and hunting, and other serious concerns involving great muscular and mental strain, whatever the motives a.s.signed, is a sagacious method of economizing energy. The extremely widespread habit of avoiding intercourse during pregnancy and suckling, again, is an admirable precaution in s.e.xual hygiene which it is extremely difficult to obtain the observance of in civilization. Savages, also, are perfectly well aware how valuable s.e.xual continence is, in combination with fasting and solitude, to acquire the apt.i.tude for abnormal spiritual powers.

Thus C. Hill Tout (Journal Anthropological Inst.i.tute, Jan.-June, 1905, pp. 143-145) gives an interesting account of the self-discipline undergone by those among the Salish Indians of British Columbia, who seek to acquire shamanistic powers. The psychic effects of such training on these men, says Hill Tout, is undoubted. "It enables them to undertake and accomplish feats of abnormal strength, agility, and endurance; and gives them at times, besides a general exaltation of the senses, undoubted clairvoyant and other supernormal mental and bodily powers." At the other end of the world, as shown by the Reports of the Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (vol. v, p. 321), closely a.n.a.logous methods of obtaining supernatural powers are also customary.

There are fundamental psychological reasons for the wide prevalence of asceticism and for the remarkable manner in which it involves self-mortification, even acute physical suffering. Such pain is an actual psychic stimulant, more especially in slightly neurotic persons. This is well ill.u.s.trated by a young woman, a patient of Janet's, who suffered from mental depression and was accustomed to find relief by slightly burning her hands and feet. She herself clearly understood the nature of her actions. "I feel," she said, "that I make an effort when I hold my hands on the stove, or when I pour boiling water on my feet; it is a violent act and it awakens me: I feel that it is really done by myself and not by another.... To make a mental effort by itself is too difficult for me; I have to supplement it by physical efforts. I have not succeeded in any other way; that is all: when I brace myself up to burn myself I make my mind freer, lighter and more active for several days. Why do you speak of my desire for mortification? My parents believe that, but it is absurd. It would be a mortification if it brought any suffering, but I enjoy this suffering, it gives me back my mind; it prevents my thoughts from stopping: what would one not do to attain such happiness?" (P. Janet, "The Pathogenesis of Some Impulsions," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April, 1906.) If we understand this psychological process we may realize how it is that even in the higher religions, however else they may differ, the practical value of asceticism and mortification as the necessary door to the most exalted religious state is almost universally recognized, and with complete cheerfulness. "Asceticism and ecstacy are inseparable," as Probst-Biraben remarks at the outset of an interesting paper on Mahommedan mysticism ("L'Extase dans le Mysticisme Musulman," Revue Philosophique, Nov., 1906). Asceticism is the necessary ante-chamber to spiritual perfection.

It thus happens that savage peoples largely base their often admirable enforcement of asceticism not on the practical grounds that would justify it, but on religious grounds that with the growth of intelligence fall into discredit.[71] Even, however, when the scrupulous observances of savages, whether in s.e.xual or in non-s.e.xual matters, are without any obviously sound basis it cannot be said that they are entirely useless if they tend to encourage self-control and the sense of reverence.[72] The would-be intelligent and practical peoples who cast aside primitive observances because they seem baseless or even ridiculous, need a still finer practical sense and still greater intelligence in order to realize that, though the reasons for the observances have been wrong, yet the observances themselves may have been necessary methods of attaining personal and social efficiency. It constantly happens in the course of civilization that we have to revive old observances and furnish them with new reasons.

In considering the moral quality of chast.i.ty among savages, we must carefully separate that chast.i.ty which among semi-primitive peoples is exclusively imposed upon women. This has no moral quality whatever, for it is not exercised as a useful discipline, but merely enforced in order to heighten the economic and erotic value of the women. Many authorities believe that the regard for women as property furnishes the true reason for the widespread insistence on virginity in brides. Thus A. B. Ellis, speaking of the West Coast of Africa (Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, pp. 183 et seq.), says that girls of good cla.s.s are betrothed as mere children, and are carefully guarded from men, while girls of lower cla.s.s are seldom betrothed, and may lead any life they choose. "In this custom of infant or child betrothals we probably find the key to that curious regard for ante-nuptial chast.i.ty found not only among the tribes of the Gold and Slave Coasts, but also among many other uncivilized peoples in different parts of the world." In a very different part of the world, in Northern Siberia, "the Yakuts," Sieroshevski states (Journal Anthropological Inst.i.tute, Jan.-June, 1901, p. 96), "see nothing immoral in illicit love, providing only that n.o.body suffers material loss by it. It is true that parents will scold a daughter if her conduct threatens to deprive them of their gain from the bride-price; but if once they have lost hope of marrying her off, or if the bride-price has been spent, they manifest complete indifference to her conduct. Maidens who no longer expect marriage are not restrained at all, if they observe decorum it is only out of respect to custom." Westermarck (History of Human Marriage, pp. 123 et seq.) also shows the connection between the high estimates of virginity and the conception of woman as property, and returning to the question in his later work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (vol. ii, Ch. XLII), after pointing out that "marriage by purchase has thus raised the standard of female chast.i.ty," he refers (p. 437) to the significant fact that the seduction of an unmarried girl "is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offense against the parents or family of the girl," and there is no indication that it is ever held by savages that any wrong has been done to the woman herself. Westermarck recognizes at the same time that the preference given to virgins has also a biological basis in the instinctive masculine feeling of jealousy in regard to women who have had intercourse with other men, and especially in the erotic charm for men of the emotional state of shyness which accompanies virginity. (This point has been dealt with in the discussion of Modesty in vol. i of these Studies.)

It is scarcely necessary to add that the insistence on the virginity of brides is by no means confined, as A. B. Ellis seems to imply, to uncivilized peoples, nor is it necessary that wife-purchase should always accompany it. The preference still persists, not only by virtue of its natural biological basis, but as a refinement and extension of the idea of woman as property, among those civilized peoples who, like ourselves, inherit a form of marriage to some extent based on wife-purchase. Under such conditions a woman's chast.i.ty has an important social function to perform, being, as Mrs. Mona Caird has put it (The Morality of Marriage, 1897, p. 88), the watch-dog of man's property. The fact that no element of ideal morality enters into the question is shown by the usual absence of any demand for ante-nuptial chast.i.ty in the husband.

It must not be supposed that when, as is most usually the case, there is no complete and permanent prohibition of extra-nuptial intercourse, mere unrestrained license prevails. That has probably never happened anywhere among uncontaminated savages. The rule probably is that, as among the tribes at Torres Straits (Reports Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, vol. v, p. 275), there is no complete continence before marriage, but neither is there any unbridled license.

The example of Tahiti is instructive as regards the prevalence of chast.i.ty among peoples of what we generally consider low grades of civilization. Tahiti, according to all who have visited it, from the earliest explorers down to that distinguished American surgeon, the late Dr. Nicholas Senn, is an island possessing qualities of natural beauty and climatic excellence, which it is impossible to rate too highly. "I seemed to be transported into the garden of Eden," said Bougainville in 1768. But, mainly under the influence of the early English missionaries who held ideas of theoretical morality totally alien to those of the inhabitants of the islands, the Tahitians have become the stock example of a population given over to licentiousness and all its awful results. Thus, in his valuable Polynesian Researches (second edition, 1832, vol. i, Ch. IX) William Ellis says that the Tahitians practiced "the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty," though not specifying them. When, however, we carefully examine the narratives of the early visitors to Tahiti, before the population became contaminated by contact with Europeans, it becomes clear that this view needs serious modification. "The great plenty of good and nouris.h.i.+ng food," wrote an early explorer, J. R. Forster (Observations Made on a Voyage Round the World, 1778, pp. 231, 409, 422), "together with the fine climate, the beauty and unreserved behavior of their females, invite them powerfully to the enjoyments and pleasures of love. They begin very early to abandon themselves to the most libidinous scenes. Their songs, their dances, and dramatic performances, breathe a spirit of luxury." Yet he is over and over again impelled to set down facts which bear testimony to the virtues of these people. Though rather effeminate in build, they are athletic, he says. Moreover, in their wars they fight with great bravery and valor. They are, for the rest, hospitable. He remarks that they treat their married women with great respect, and that women generally are nearly the equals of men, both in intelligence and in social position; he gives a charming description of the women. "In short, their character," Forster concludes, "is as amiable as that of any nation that ever came unimproved out of the hands of Nature," and he remarks that, as was felt by the South Sea peoples generally, "whenever we came to this happy island we could evidently perceive the opulence and happiness of its inhabitants." It is noteworthy also, that, notwithstanding the high importance which the Tahitians attached to the erotic side of life, they were not deficient in regard for chast.i.ty. When Cook, who visited Tahiti many times, was among "this benevolent humane" people, he noted their esteem for chast.i.ty, and found that not only were betrothed girls strictly guarded before marriage, but that men also who had refrained from s.e.xual intercourse for some time before marriage were believed to pa.s.s at death immediately into the abode of the blessed. "Their behavior, on all occasions, seems to indicate a great openness and generosity of disposition. I never saw them, in any misfortune, labor under the appearance of anxiety, after the critical moment was past. Neither does care ever seem to wrinkle their brow. On the contrary, even the approach of death does not appear to alter their usual vivacity" (Third Voyage of Discovery, 1776-1780). Turnbull visited Tahiti at a later period (A Voyage Round the World in 1800, etc., pp. 374-5), but while finding all sorts of vices among them, he is yet compelled to admit their virtues: "Their manner of addressing strangers, from the king to the meanest subject, is courteous and affable in the extreme.... They certainly live amongst each other in more harmony than is usual amongst Europeans. During the whole time I was amongst them I never saw such a thing as a battle.... I never remember to have seen an Otaheitean out of temper. They jest upon each other with greater freedom than the Europeans, but these jests are never taken in ill part.... With regard to food, it is, I believe, an invariable law in Otaheite that whatever is possessed by one is common to all." Thus we see that even among a people who are commonly referred to as the supreme example of a nation given up to uncontrolled licentiousness, the claims of chast.i.ty were admitted, and many other virtues vigorously flourished. The Tahitians were brave, hospitable, self-controlled, courteous, considerate to the needs of others, chivalrous to women, even appreciative of the advantages of s.e.xual restraint, to an extent which has rarely, if ever, been known among those Christian nations which have looked down upon them as abandoned to unspeakable vices.

As we turn from savages towards peoples in the barbarous and civilized stages we find a general tendency for chast.i.ty, in so far as it is a common possession of the common people, to be less regarded, or to be retained only as a traditional convention no longer strictly observed. The old grounds for chast.i.ty in primitive religions and tabu have decayed and no new grounds have been generally established. "Although the progress of civilization," wrote Gibbon long ago, "has undoubtedly contributed to a.s.suage the fiercer pa.s.sions of human nature, it seems to have been less favorable to the virtue of chast.i.ty," and Westermarck concludes that "irregular connections between the s.e.xes have, on the whole, exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization."

The main difference in the social function of chast.i.ty as we pa.s.s from savagery to higher stages of culture seems to be that it ceases to exist as a general hygienic measure or a general ceremonial observance, and, for the most part, becomes confined to special philosophic or religious sects which cultivate it to an extreme degree in a more or less professional way. This state of things is well ill.u.s.trated by the Roman Empire during the early centuries of the Christian era.[73] Christianity itself was at first one of these sects enamored of the ideal of chast.i.ty; but by its superior vitality it replaced all the others and finally imposed its ideals, though by no means its primitive practices, on European society generally.

Chast.i.ty manifested itself in primitive Christianity in two different though not necessarily opposed ways. On the one hand it took a stern and practical form in vigorous men and women who, after being brought up in a society permitting a high degree of s.e.xual indulgence, suddenly found themselves convinced of the sin of such indulgence. The battle with the society they had been born into, and with their own old impulses and habits, became so severe that they often found themselves compelled to retire from the world altogether. Thus it was that the parched solitudes of Egypt were peopled with hermits largely occupied with the problem of subduing their own flesh. Their pre-occupation, and indeed the pre-occupation of much early Christian literature, with s.e.xual matters, may be said to be vastly greater than was the case with the pagan society they had left. Paganism accepted s.e.xual indulgence and was then able to dismiss it, so that in cla.s.sic literature we find very little insistence on s.e.xual details except in writers like Martial, Juvenal and Petronius who introduce them mainly for satirical ends. But the Christians could not thus escape from the obsession of s.e.x; it was ever with them. We catch interesting glimpses of their struggles, for the most part barren struggles, in the Epistles of St. Jerome, who had himself been an athlete in these ascetic contests.

"Oh, how many times," wrote St. Jerome to Eustochium, the virgin to whom he addressed one of the longest and most interesting of his letters, "when in the desert, in that vast solitude which, burnt up by the heart of the sun, offers but a horrible dwelling to monks, I imagined myself among the delights of Rome! I was alone, for my soul was full of bitterness. My limbs were covered by a wretched sack and my skin was as black as an Ethiopian's. Every day I wept and groaned, and if I was unwillingly overcome by sleep my lean body lay on the bare earth. I say nothing of my food and drink, for in the desert even invalids have no drink but cold water, and cooked food is regarded as a luxury. Well, I, who, out of fear of h.e.l.l, had condemned myself to this prison, companion of scorpions and wild beasts, often seemed in imagination among bands of girls. My face was pale with fasting and my mind within my frigid body was burning with desire; the fires of l.u.s.t would still flare up in a body that already seemed to be dead. Then, deprived of all help, I threw myself at the feet of Jesus, was.h.i.+ng them with my tears and drying them with my hair, subjugating my rebellious flesh by long fasts. I remember that more than once I pa.s.sed the night uttering cries and striking my breast until G.o.d sent me peace." "Our century," wrote St. Chrysostom in his Discourse to Those Who Keep Virgins in Their Houses, "has seen many men who have bound their bodies with chains, clothed themselves in sacks, retired to the summits of mountains where they have lived in constant vigil and fasting, giving the example of the most austere discipline and forbidding all women to cross the thresholds of their humble dwellings; and yet, in spite of all the severities they have exercised on themselves, it was with difficulty they could repress the fury of their pa.s.sions." Hilarion, says Jerome, saw visions of naked women when he lay down on his solitary couch and delicious meats when he sat down to his frugal table. Such experiences rendered the early saints very scrupulous. "They used to say," we are told in an interesting history of the Egyptian anchorites, Palladius's Paradise of the Holy Fathers, belonging to the fourth century (A. W. Budge, The Paradise, vol. ii, p. 129), "that Abba Isaac went out and found the footprint of a woman on the road, and he thought about it in his mind and destroyed it saying, 'If a brother seeth it he may fall.'" Similarly, according to the rules of St. Caesarius of Aries for nuns, no male clothing was to be taken into the convent for the purpose of was.h.i.+ng or mending. Even in old age, a certain anxiety about chast.i.ty still remained. One of the brothers, we are told in The Paradise (p. 132) said to Abba Zeno, "Behold thou hast grown old, how is the matter of fornication?" The venerable saint replied, "It knocketh, but it pa.s.seth on."

As the centuries went by the same strenuous anxiety to guard chast.i.ty still remained, and the old struggle constantly reappeared (see, e.g., Migne's Dictionnaire d'Ascetisme, art. "Demon, Tentation du"). Some saints, it is true, like Luigi di Gonzaga, were so angelically natured that they never felt the sting of s.e.xual desire. These seem to have been the exception. St. Benedict and St. Francis experienced the difficulty of subduing the flesh. St. Magdalena de Pozzi, in order to dispel s.e.xual desires, would roll on th.o.r.n.y bushes till the blood came. Some saints kept a special cask of cold water in their cells to stand in (Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. i, p. 124). On the other hand, the Blessed Angela de Fulginio tells us in her Visiones (cap. XIX) that, until forbidden by her confessor, she would place hot coals in her secret parts, hoping by material fire to extinguish the fire of concupiscence. St. Aldhelm, the holy Bishop of Sherborne, in the eighth century, also adopted a homeopathic method of treatment, though of a more literal kind, for William of Malmsbury states that when tempted by the flesh he would have women to sit and lie by him until he grew calm again; the method proved very successful, for the reason, it was thought, that the Devil felt he had been made a fool of.

In time the Catholic practice and theory of asceticism became more formalized and elaborated, and its beneficial effects were held to extend beyond the individual himself. "Asceticism from the Christian point of view," writes Brenier de Montmorand in an interesting study ("Ascetisme et Mysticisme," Revue Philosophique, March, 1904) "is nothing else than all the therapeutic measures making for moral purification. The Christian ascetic is an athlete struggling to transform his corrupt nature and make a road to G.o.d through the obstacles due to his pa.s.sions and the world. He is not working in his own interests alone, but-by virtue of the reversibility of merit which compensates that of solidarity in error-for the good and for the salvation of the whole of society."

This is the aspect of early Christian asceticism most often emphasized. But there is another aspect which may be less familiar, but has been by no means less important. Primitive Christian chast.i.ty was on one side a strenuous discipline. On another side it was a romance, and this indeed was its most specifically Christian side, for athletic asceticism has been a.s.sociated with the most various religious and philosophic beliefs. If, indeed, it had not possessed the charm of a new sensation, of a delicious freedom, of an unknown adventure, it would never have conquered the European world. There are only a few in that world who have in them the stuff of moral athletes; there are many who respond to the attraction of romance.

The Christians rejected the grosser forms of s.e.xual indulgence, but in doing so they entered with a more delicate ardor into the more refined forms of s.e.xual intimacy. They cultivated a relations.h.i.+p of brothers and sisters to each other, they kissed one another; at one time, in the spiritual orgy of baptism, they were not ashamed to adopt complete nakedness.[74]

A very instructive picture of the forms which chast.i.ty a.s.sumed among the early Christians is given us in the treatise of Chrysostom Against Those who Keep Virgins in their Houses. Our fathers, Chrysostom begins, only knew two forms of s.e.xual intimacy, marriage and fornication. Now a third form has appeared: men introduce young girls into their houses and keep them there permanently, respecting their virginity. "What," Chrysostom asks, "is the reason? It seems to me that life in common with a woman is sweet, even outside conjugal union and fleshly commerce. That is my feeling; and perhaps it is not my feeling alone; it may also be that of these men. They would not hold their honor so cheap nor give rise to such scandals if this pleasure were not violent and tyrannical.... That there should really be a pleasure in this which produces a love more ardent than conjugal union may surprise you at first. But when I give you the proofs you will agree that it is so." The absence of restraint to desire in marriage, he continues, often leads to speedy disgust, and even apart from this, s.e.xual intercourse, pregnancy, delivery, lactation, the bringing up of children, and all the pains and anxieties that accompany these things soon destroy youth and dull the point of pleasure. The virgin is free from these burdens. She retains her vigor and youthfulness, and even at the age of forty may rival the young nubile girl. "A double ardor thus burns in the heart of him who lives with her, and the gratification of desire never extinguishes the bright flame which ever continues to increase in strength." Chrysostom describes minutely all the little cares and attentions which the modern girls of his time required, and which these men delighted to expend on their virginal sweethearts whether in public or in private. He cannot help thinking, however, that the man who lavishes kisses and caresses on a woman whose virginity he retains is putting himself somewhat in the position of Tantalus. But this new refinement of tender chast.i.ty, which came as a delicious discovery to the early Christians who had resolutely thrust away the licentiousness of the pagan world, was deeply rooted, as we discover from the frequency with which the grave Fathers of the Church, apprehensive of scandal, felt called upon to reprove it, though their condemnation is sometimes not without a trace of secret sympathy.[75]

There was one form in which the new Christian chast.i.ty flourished exuberantly and unchecked: it conquered literature. The most charming, and, we may be sure, the most popular literature of the early Church lay in the innumerable romances of erotic chast.i.ty-to some extent, it may well be, founded on fact-which are embodied to-day in the Acta Sanctorum. We can see in even the most simple and non-miraculous early Christian records of the martyrdom of women that the writers were fully aware of the delicate charm of the heroine who, like Perpetua at Carthage, tossed by wild cattle in the arena, rises to gather her torn garment around her and to put up her disheveled hair.[76] It was an easy step to the stories of romantic adventure. Among these delightful stories I may refer especially to the legend of Thekla, which has been placed, incorrectly it may be, as early as the first century, "The Bride and Bridegroom of India" in Judas Thomas's Acts, "The Virgin of Antioch" as narrated by St. Ambrose, the history of "Achilleus and Nereus," "Mygdonia and Karish," and "Two Lovers of Auvergne" as told by Gregory of Tours. Early Christian literature abounds in the stories of lovers who had indeed preserved their chast.i.ty, and had yet discovered the most exquisite secrets of love.

Thekla's day is the twenty-third of September. There is a very good Syriac version (by Lipsius and others regarded as more primitive than the Greek version) of the Acts of Paul and Thekla (see, e.g., Wright's Apocryphal Acts). These Acts belong to the latter part of the second century. The story is that Thekla, refusing to yield to the pa.s.sion of the high priest of Syria, was put, naked but for a girdle (subligaculum) into the arena on the back of a lioness, which licked her feet and fought for her against the other beasts, dying in her defense. The other beasts, however, did her no harm, and she was finally released. A queen loaded her with money, she modified her dress to look like a man, travelled to meet Paul, and lived to old age. Sir W. M. Ramsay has written an interesting study of these Acts (The Church in the Roman Empire, Ch. XVI). He is of opinion that the Acts are based on a first century doc.u.ment, and is able to disentangle many elements of truth from the story. He states that it is the only evidence we possess of the ideas and actions of women during the first century in Asia Minor, where their position was so high and their influence so great. Thekla represents the a.s.sertion of woman's rights, and she administered the rite of baptism, though in the existing versions of the Acts these features are toned down or eliminated.

Some of the most typical of these early Christian romances are described as Gnostical in origin, with something of the germs of Manichaean dualism which were held in the rich and complex matrix of Gnosticism, while the spirit of these romances is also largely Montanist, with the combined chast.i.ty and ardor, the p.r.o.nounced feminine tone due to its origin in Asia Minor, which marked Montanism. It cannot be denied, however, that they largely pa.s.sed into the main stream of Christian tradition, and form an essential and important part of that tradition. (Renan, in his Marc-Aurele, Chs. IX and XV, insists on the immense debt of Christianity to Gnostic and Montanist contributions). A characteristic example is the story of "The Betrothed of India" in Judas Thomas's Acts (Wright's Apocryphal Acts). Judas Thomas was sold by his master Jesus to an Indian merchant who required a carpenter to go with him to India. On disembarking at the city of Sandaruk they heard the sounds of music and singing, and learnt that it was the wedding-feast of the King's daughter, which all must attend, rich and poor, slaves and freemen, strangers and citizens. Judas Thomas went, with his new master, to the banquet and reclined with a garland of myrtle placed on his head. When a Hebrew flute-player came and stood over him and played, he sang the songs of Christ, and it was seen that he was more beautiful than all that were there and the King sent for him to bless the young couple in the bridal chamber. And when all were gone out and the door of the bridal chamber closed, the bridegroom approached the bride, and saw, as it were, Judas Thomas still talking with her. But it was our Lord who said to him, "I am not Judas, but his brother." And our Lord sat down on the bed beside the young people and began to say to them: "Remember, my children, what my brother spake with you, and know to whom he committed you, and know that if ye preserve yourselves from this filthy intercourse ye become pure temples, and are saved from afflictions manifest and hidden, and from the heavy care of children, the end whereof is bitter sorrow. For their sakes ye will become oppressors and robbers, and ye will be grievously tortured for their injuries. For children are the cause of many pains; either the King falls upon them or a demon lays hold of them, or paralysis befalls them. And if they be healthy they come to ill, either by adultery, or theft, or fornication, or covetousness, or vain-glory. But if ye will be persuaded by me, and keep yourselves purely unto G.o.d, ye shall have living children to whom not one of these blemishes and hurts cometh nigh; and ye shall be without care and without grief and without sorrow, and ye shall hope for the time when ye shall see the true wedding-feast." The young couple were persuaded, and refrained from l.u.s.t, and our Lord vanished. And in the morning, when it was dawn, the King had the table furnished early and brought in before the bridegroom and bride. And he found them sitting the one opposite the other, and the face of the bride was uncovered and the bridegroom was very cheerful. The mother of the bride saith to her: "Why art thou sitting thus, and art not ashamed, but art as if, lo, thou wert married a long time, and for many a day?" And her father, too, said; "Is it thy great love for thy husband that prevents thee from even veiling thyself?" And the bride answered and said: "Truly, my father, I am in great love, and am praying to my Lord that I may continue in this love which I have experienced this night. I am not veiled, because the veil of corruption is taken from me, and I am not ashamed, because the deed of shame has been removed far from me, and I am cheerful and gay, and despise this deed of corruption and the joys of this wedding-feast, because I am invited to the true wedding-feast. I have not had intercourse with a husband, the end whereof is bitter repentance, because I am betrothed to the true Husband." The bridegroom answered also in the same spirit, very naturally to the dismay of the King, who sent for the sorcerer whom he had asked to bless his unlucky daughter. But Judas Thomas had already left the city and at his inn the King's stewards found only the flute-player, sitting and weeping because he had not taken her with him. She was glad, however, when she heard what had happened, and hastened to the young couple, and lived with them ever afterwards. The King also was finally reconciled, and all ended chastely, but happily.

In these same Judas Thomas's Acts, which are not later than the fourth century, we find (eighth act) the story of Mygdonia and Karish. Mygdonia, the wife of Karish, is converted by Thomas and flees from her husband, naked save for the curtain of the chamber door which she has wrapped around her, to her old nurse. With the nurse she goes to Thomas, who pours holy oil over her head, bidding the nurse to anoint her all over with it; then a cloth is put round her loins and he baptizes her; then she is clothed and he gives her the sacrament. The young rapture of chast.i.ty grows lyrical at times, and Judas Thomas breaks out: "Purity is the athlete who is not overcome. Purity is the truth that blencheth not. Purity is worthy before G.o.d of being to Him a familiar handmaiden. Purity is the messenger of concord which bringeth the tidings of peace."

Another romance of chast.i.ty is furnished by the episode of Drusiana in The History of the Apostles traditionally attributed to Abdias, Bishop of Babylon (Bk. v, Ch. IV, et seq.). Drusiana is the wife of Andronicus, and is so pious that she will not have intercourse with him. The youth Callimachus falls madly in love with her, and his amorous attempts involve many exciting adventures, but the chast.i.ty of Drusiana is finally triumphant.

A characteristic example of the literature we are here concerned with is St. Ambrose's story of "The Virgin in the Brothel" (narrated in his De Virginibus, Migne's edition of Ambrose's Works, vols. iii-iv, p. 211). A certain virgin, St. Ambrose tells us, who lately lived at Antioch, was condemned either to sacrifice to the G.o.ds or to go to the brothel. She chose the latter alternative. But the first man who came in to her was a Christian soldier who called her "sister," and bade her have no fear. He proposed that they should exchange clothes. This was done and she escaped, while the soldier was led away to death. At the place of execution, however, she ran up and exclaimed that it was not death she feared but shame. He, however, maintained that he had been condemned to death in her place. Finally the crown of martyrdom for which they contended was adjudged to both.

We constantly observe in the early doc.u.ments of this romantic literature of chast.i.ty that chast.i.ty is insisted on by no means chiefly because of its rewards after death, nor even because the virgin who devotes herself to it secures in Christ an ever-young lover whose golden-haired beauty is sometimes emphasized. Its chief charm is represented as lying in its own joy and freedom and the security it involves from all the troubles, inconveniences and bondages of matrimony. This early Christian movement of romantic chast.i.ty was clearly, in large measure, a revolt of women against men and marriage. This is well brought out in the instructive story, supposed to be of third century origin, of the eunuchs Achilleus and Nereus, as narrated in the Acta Sanctorum, May 12th. Achilleus and Nereus were Christian eunuchs of the bedchamber to Domitia, a virgin of n.o.ble birth, related to the Emperor Domitian and betrothed to Aurelian, son of a Consul. One day, as their mistress was putting on her jewels and her purple garments embroidered with gold, they began in turn to talk to her about all the joys and advantages of virginity, as compared to marriage with a mere man. The conversation is developed at great length and with much eloquence. Domitia was finally persuaded. She suffered much from Aurelian in consequence, and when he obtained her banishment to an island she went thither with Achilleus and Nereus, who were put to death. Incidentally, the death of Felicula, another heroine of chast.i.ty, is described. When elevated on the rack because she would not marry, she constantly refused to deny Jesus, whom she called her lover. "Ego non nego amatorem meum!"

A special department of this literature is concerned with stories of the conversions or the penitence of courtesans. St. Martinia.n.u.s, for instance (Feb. 13), was tempted by the courtesan Zoe, but converted her. The story of St. Margaret of Cortona (Feb. 22), a penitent courtesan, is late, for she belongs to the thirteenth century. The most delightful doc.u.ment in this literature is probably the latest, the fourteenth century Italian devotional romance called The Life of Saint Mary Magdalen, commonly a.s.sociated with the name of Frate Domenico Cavalca. (It has been translated into English). It is the delicately and deliciously told romance of the chaste and pa.s.sionate love of the sweet sinner, Mary Magdalene, for her beloved Master.

As time went on the insistence on the joys of chast.i.ty in this life became less marked, and chast.i.ty is more and more regarded as a state only to be fully rewarded in a future life. Even, however, in Gregory of Tours's charming story of "The Two Lovers of Auvergne," in which this att.i.tude is clear, the pleasures of chaste love in this life are brought out as clearly as in any of the early romances (Historia Francorum, lib. i, cap. XLII). Two senators of Auvergne each had an only child, and they betrothed them to each other. When the wedding day came and the young couple were placed in bed, the bride turned to the wall and wept bitterly. The bridegroom implored her to tell him what was the matter, and, turning towards him, she said that if she were to weep all her days she could never wash away her grief for she had resolved to give her little body immaculate to Christ, untouched by men, and now instead of immortal roses she had only had on her brow faded roses, which deformed rather than adorned it, and instead of the dowry of Paradise which Christ had promised her she had become the consort of a merely mortal man. She deplored her sad fate at considerable length and with much gentle eloquence. At length the bridegroom, overcome by her sweet words, felt that eternal life had shone before him like a great light, and declared that if she wished to abstain from carnal desires he was of the same mind. She was grateful, and with clasped hands they fell asleep. For many years they thus lived together, chastely sharing the same bed. At length she died and was buried, her lover restoring her immaculate to the hands of Christ. Soon afterwards he died also, and was placed in a separate tomb. Then a miracle happened which made manifest the magnitude of this chaste love, for the two bodies were found mysteriously placed together. To this day, Gregory concludes (writing in the sixth century), the people of the place call them "The Two Lovers."

Although Renan (Marc-Aurele, Ch. XV) briefly called attention to the existence of this copious early Christian literature setting forth the romance of chast.i.ty, it seems as yet to have received little or no study. It is, however, of considerable importance, not merely for its own sake, but on account of its psychological significance in making clear the nature of the motive forces which made chast.i.ty easy and charming to the people of the early Christian world, even when it involved complete abstinence from s.e.xual intercourse. The early Church anathematized the eroticism of the Pagan world, and exorcized it in the most effectual way by setting up a new and more exquisite eroticism of its own.

During the Middle Ages the primitive freshness of Christian chast.i.ty began to lose its charm. No more romances of chast.i.ty were written, and in actual life men no longer sought daring adventures in the field of chast.i.ty. So far as the old ideals survived at all it was in the secular field of chivalry. The last notable figure to emulate the achievements of the early Christians was Robert of Arbrissel in Normandy.

Robert of Arbrissel, who founded, in the eleventh century, the famous and distinguished Order of Fontevrault for women, was a Breton. This Celtic origin is doubtless significant, for it may explain his unfailing ardor and gaiety, and his enthusiastic veneration for womanhood. Even those of his friends who deprecated what they considered his scandalous conduct bear testimony to his unfailing and cheerful temperament, his alertness in action, his readiness for any deed of humanity, and his entire freedom from severity. He attracted immense crowds of people of all conditions, especially women, including prost.i.tutes, and his influence over women was great. Once he went into a brothel to warm his feet, and, incidentally, converted all the women there. "Who are you?" asked one of them, "I have been here twenty-five years and n.o.body has ever come here to talk about G.o.d." Robert's relation with his nuns at Fontevrault was very intimate, and he would often sleep with them. This is set forth precisely in letters written by friends of his, bishops and abbots, one of whom remarks that Robert had "discovered a new but fruitless form of martyrdom." A royal abbess of Fontevrault in the seventeenth century, pretending that the venerated founder of the order could not possibly have been guilty of such scandalous conduct, and that the letters must therefore be spurious, had the originals destroyed, so far as possible. The Bollandists, in an unscholarly and incomplete account of the matter (Acta Sanctorum, Feb. 25), adopted this view. J. von Walter, however, in a recent and thorough study of Robert of Arbrissel (Die Ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, Theil I), shows that there is no reason whatever to doubt the authentic and reliable character of the impugned letters.

The early Christian legends of chast.i.ty had, however, their successors. Auca.s.sin et Nicolette, which was probably written in Northern France towards the end of the twelfth century, is above all the descendant of the stories in the Acta Sanctorum and elsewhere. It embodied their spirit and carried it forward, uniting their delicate feeling for chast.i.ty and purity with the ideal of monogamic love. Auca.s.sin et Nicolette was the death-knell of the primitive Christian romance of chast.i.ty. It was the discovery that the chaste refinements of delicacy and devotion were possible within the strictly normal sphere of s.e.xual love.

There were at least two causes which tended to extinguish the primitive Christian attraction to chast.i.ty, even apart from the influence of the Church authorities in repressing its romantic manifestations. In the first place, the submergence of the old pagan world, with its practice and, to some extent, ideal of s.e.xual indulgence, removed the foil which had given grace and delicacy to the tender freedom of the young Christians. In the second place, the austerities which the early Christians had gladly practised for the sake of their soul's health, were robbed of their charm and spontaneity by being made a formal part of codes of punishment for sin, first in the Penitentials and afterwards at the discretion of confessors. This, it may be added, was rendered the more necessary because the ideal of Christian chast.i.ty was no longer largely the possession of refined people who had been rendered immune to Pagan license by being brought up in its midst, and even themselves steeped in it. It was clearly from the first a serious matter for the violent North Africans to maintain the ideal of chast.i.ty, and when Christianity spread to Northern Europe it seemed almost a hopeless task to acclimatize its ideals among the wild Germans. Hereafter it became necessary for celibacy to be imposed on the regular clergy by the stern force of ecclesiastical authority, while voluntary celibacy was only kept alive by a succession of religious enthusiasts perpetually founding new Orders. An asceticism thus enforced could not always be accompanied by the ardent exaltation necessary to maintain it, and in its artificial efforts at self-preservation it frequently fell from its insecure heights to the depths of unrestrained license.[77] This fatality of all hazardous efforts to overpa.s.s humanity's normal limits begun to be realized after the Middle Ages were over by clear-sighted thinkers. "Qui veut faire l'ange," said Pascal, pungently summing up this view of the matter, "fait la bete." That had often been ill.u.s.trated in the history of the Church.

The Penitentials began to come into use in the seventh century, and became of wide prevalence and authority during the ninth and tenth centuries. They were bodies of law, partly spiritual and partly secular, and were thrown into the form of catalogues of offences with the exact measure of penance prescribed for each offence. They represented the introduction of social order among untamed barbarians, and were codes of criminal law much more than part of a system of sacramental confession and penance. In France and Spain, where order on a Christian basis already existed, they were little needed. They had their origin in Ireland and England, and especially flourished in Germany; Charlemagne supported them (see, e.g., Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, p. 96, also Ch. XVII; Hugh Williams, edition of Gildas, Part II, Appendix 3; the chief Penitentials are reproduced in Wa.s.serschleben's Bussordnungen).

In 1216 the Lateran Council, under Innocent III, made confession obligatory. The priestly prerogative of regulating the amount of penance according to circ.u.mstances, with greater flexibility than the rigid Penitentials admitted, was first absolutely a.s.serted by Peter of Poitiers. Then Alain de Lille threw aside the Penitentials as obsolete, and declared that the priest himself must inquire into the circ.u.mstances of each sin and weigh precisely its guilt (Lea, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 171).

Long before this period, however, the ideals of chast.i.ty, so far as they involved any considerable degree of continence, although they had become firmly hardened into the conventional traditions and ideals of the Christian Church, had ceased to have any great charm or force for the people living in Christendom. Among the Northern barbarians, with different traditions of a more vigorous and natural order behind them, the demands of s.e.x were often frankly exhibited. The monk Ordericus Vitalis, in the eleventh century, notes what he calls the "lasciviousness" of the wives of the Norman conquerors of England who, when left alone at home, sent messages that if their husbands failed to return speedily they would take new ones. The celibacy of the clergy was only established with the very greatest difficulty, and when it was established, priests became unchaste. Archbishop Odo of Rouen, in the thirteenth century, recorded in the diary of his diocesan visitations that there was one unchaste priest in every five parishes, and even as regards the Italy of the same period the friar Salimbene in his remarkable autobiography shows how little chast.i.ty was regarded in the religious life. Chast.i.ty could now only be maintained by force, usually the moral force of ecclesiastical authority, which was itself undermined by unchast.i.ty, but sometimes even physical force. It was in the thirteenth century, in the opinion of some, that the girdle of chast.i.ty (cingula cast.i.tatis) first begins to appear, but the chief authority, Caufeynon (La Ceinture de Chastete, 1904) believes it only dates from the Renaissance (Schultz, Das Hofische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesanger, vol. i, p. 595; Dufour, Histoire de la Prost.i.tution, vol. v, p. 272; Krauss, Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 247). In the sixteenth century convents were liable to become almost brothels, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of Burchard, a Pope's secretary, in his Diarium, edited by Thuasne who brings together additional authorities for this statement in a footnote (vol. ii, p. 79); that they remained so in the eighteenth century we see clearly in the pages of Casanova's Memoires, and in many other doc.u.ments of the period.

The Renaissance and the rise of humanism undoubtedly affected the feeling towards asceticism and chast.i.ty. On the one hand a new and ancient sanction was found for the disregard of virtues which men began to look upon as merely monkish, and on the other hand the finer spirits affected by the new movement began to realize that chast.i.ty might be better cultivated and observed by those who were free to do as they would than by those who were under the compulsion of priestly authority. That is the feeling that prevails in Montaigne, and that is the idea of Rabelais when he made it the only rule of his Abbey of Theleme: "Fay ce que vouldras."

A little later this doctrine was repeated in varying tones by many writers more or less tinged by the culture brought into fas.h.i.+on by the Renaissance. "As long as Danae was free," remarks Ferrand in his sixteenth century treatise, De la Maladie d'Amour, "she was chaste." And Sir Kenelm Digby, the latest representative of the Renaissance spirit, insists in his Private Memoirs that the liberty which Lycurgus, "the wisest human law-maker that ever was," gave to women to communicate their bodies to men to whom they were drawn by n.o.ble affection, and the hope of generous offspring, was the true cause why "real chast.i.ty flourished in Sparta more than in any other part of the world."

In Protestant countries the ascetic ideal of chast.i.ty was still further discredited by the Reformation movement which was in considerable part a revolt against compulsory celibacy. Religion was thus no longer placed on the side of chast.i.ty. In the eighteenth century, if not earlier, the authority of Nature also was commonly invoked against chast.i.ty. It has thus happened that during the past two centuries serious opinion concerning chast.i.ty has only been partially favorable to it. It began to be felt that an unhappy and injurious mistake had been perpetrated by attempting to maintain a lofty ideal which encouraged hypocrisy. "The human race would gain much," as Senancour wrote early in the nineteenth century in his remarkable book on love, "if virtue were made less laborious. The merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[78]

There can be no doubt that the undue discredit into which the idea of chast.i.ty began to fall from the eighteenth century onwards was largely due to the existence of that merely external and conventional physical chast.i.ty which was arbitrarily enforced so far as it could be enforced,-and is indeed in some degree still enforced, nominally or really,-upon all respectable women outside marriage. The conception of the physical virtue of virginity had degraded the conception of the spiritual virtue of chast.i.ty. A mere routine, it was felt, prescribed to a whole s.e.x, whether they would or not, could never possess the beauty and charm of a virtue. At the same time it began to be realized that, as a matter of fact, the state of compulsory virginity is not only not a state especially favorable to the cultivation of real virtues, but that it is bound up with qualities which are no longer regarded as of high value.[79]

"How arbitrary, artificial, contrary to Nature, is the life now imposed upon women in this matter of chast.i.ty!" wrote James Hinton forty years ago. "Think of that line: 'A woman who deliberates is lost.' We make danger, making all womanhood hang upon a point like this, and surrounding it with unnatural and preternatural dangers. There is a wanton unreason embodied in the life of woman now; the present 'virtue' is a morbid unhealthy plant. Nature and G.o.d never poised the life of a woman upon such a needle's point. The whole modern idea of chast.i.ty has in it sensual exaggeration, surely, in part, remaining to us from other times, with what was good in it in great part gone."

"The whole grace of virginity," wrote another philosopher, Guyau, "is ignorance. Virginity, like certain fruits, can only be preserved by a process of desiccation."

Merimee pointed out the same desiccating influence of virginity. In a letter dated 1859 he wrote: "I think that nowadays people attach far too much importance to chast.i.ty. Not that I deny that chast.i.ty is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as there are in vices. It seems to be absurd that a woman should be banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. The morality of this age is a.s.suredly not that which is taught in the Gospel. In my opinion it is better to love too much than not enough. Nowadays dry hearts are stuck up on a pinnacle" (Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1896).

Dr. H. Paul has developed an allied point. She writes: "There are girls who, even as children, have prost.i.tuted themselves by masturbation and lascivious thoughts. The purity of their souls has long been lost and nothing remains unknown to them, but-they have preserved their hymens! That is for the sake of the future husband. Let no one dare to doubt their innocence with that unimpeachable evidence! And if another girl, who has pa.s.sed her childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even only in pa.s.sion, they all stand up and scream that she is 'dishonored!' And, not least, the prost.i.tuted girl with the hymen. It is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the biggest stones. Yet the 'dishonored' woman, who is sound and wholesome, need not fear to tell what she has done to the man who desires her in marriage, speaking as one human being to another. She has no need to blush, she has exercised her human rights, and no reasonable man will on that account esteem her the less" (Dr. H. Paul, "Die Ueberschatzung der Jungfernschaft," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 14, 1907).

In a similar spirit writes F. Erhard (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. i, p. 408): "Virginity in one sense has its worth, but in the ordinary sense it is greatly overestimated. Apart from the fact that a girl who possesses it may yet be thoroughly perverted, this over-estimation of virginity leads to the girl who is without it being despised, and has further resulted in the development of a special industry for the preparation, by means of a prudishly cloistral education, of girls who will bring to their husbands the peculiar dainty of a bride who knows nothing about anything. Naturally, this can only be achieved at the expense of any rational education. What the undeveloped little goose may turn into, no man can foresee."

Freud (s.e.xual-Probleme, March, 1908) also points out the evil results of the education for marriage which is given to girls on the basis of this ideal of virginity. "Education undertakes the task of repressing the girl's sensuality until the time of betrothal. It not only forbids s.e.xual relations and sets a high premium on innocence, but it also withdraws the ripening womanly individuality from temptation, maintaining a state of ignorance concerning the practical side of the part she is intended to play in life, and enduring no stirring of love which cannot lead to marriage. The result is that when she is suddenly permitted to fall in love by the authority of her elders, the girl cannot bring her psychic disposition to bear, and goes into marriage uncertain of her own feelings. As a consequence of this artificial r.e.t.a.r.dation of the function of love she brings nothing but deception to the husband who has set all his desires upon her, and manifests frigidity in her physical relations with him."

Senancour (De l'Amour, vol. i, p. 285) even believes that, when it is possible to leave out of consideration the question of offspring, not only will the law of chast.i.ty become equal for the two s.e.xes, but there will be a tendency for the situation of the s.e.xes to be, to some extent, changed. "Continence becomes a counsel rather than a precept, and it is in women that the voluptuous inclination will be regarded with most indulgence. Man is made for work; he only meets pleasure in pa.s.sing; he must be content that women should occupy themselves with it more than he. It is men whom it exhausts, and men must always, in part, restrain their desires."

As, however, we liberate ourselves from the bondage of a compulsory physical chast.i.ty, it becomes possible to rehabilitate chast.i.ty as a virtue. At the present day it can no longer be said that there is on the part of thinkers and moralists any active hostility to the idea of chast.i.ty; there is, on the contrary, a tendency to recognize the value of chast.i.ty. But this recognition has been accompanied by a return to the older and sounder conception of chast.i.ty. The preservation of a rigid s.e.xual abstinence, an empty virginity, can only be regarded as a pseudo-chast.i.ty. The only positive virtue which Aristotle could have recognized in this field was a temperance involving restraint of the lower impulses, a wise exercise and not a non-exercise.[80] The best thinkers of the Christian Church adopted the same conception; St. Basil in his important monastic rules laid no weight on self-discipline as an end in itself, but regarded it as an instrument for enabling the spirit to gain power over the flesh. St. Augustine declared that continence is only excellent when practised in the faith of the highest good,[81] and he regarded chast.i.ty as "an orderly movement of the soul subordinating lower things to higher things, and specially to be manifested in conjugal relations.h.i.+ps"; Thomas Aquinas, defining chast.i.ty in much the same way, defined impurity as the enjoyment of s.e.xual pleasure not according to right reason, whether as regards the object or the conditions.[82] But for a time the voices of the great moralists were unheard. The virtue of chast.i.ty was swamped in the popular Christian pa.s.sion for the annihilation of the flesh, and that view was, in the sixteenth century, finally consecrated by the Council of Trent, which formally p.r.o.nounced an anathema upon anyone who should declare that the state of virginity and celibacy was not better than the state of matrimony. Nowadays the pseudo-chast.i.ty that was of value on the simple ground that any kind of continence is of higher spiritual worth than any kind of s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p belongs to the past, except for those who adhere to ancient ascetic creeds. The mystic value of virginity has gone; it seems only to arouse in the modern man's mind the idea of a piquancy craved by the hardened rake;[83] it is men who have themselves long pa.s.sed the age of innocence who attach so much importance to the innocence of their brides. The conception of life-long continence as an ideal has also gone; at the best it is regarded as a mere matter of personal preference. And the conventional simulation of universal chast.i.ty, at the bidding of respectability, is coming to be regarded as a hindrance rather than a help to the cultivation of any real chast.i.ty.[84]

The chast.i.ty that is regarded by the moralist of to-day as a virtue has its worth by no means in its abstinence. It is not, in St. Theresa's words, the virtue of the tortoise which withdraws its limbs under its carapace. It is a virtue because it is a discipline in self-control, because it helps to fortify the character and will, and because it is directly favorable to the cultivation of the most beautiful, exalted, and effective s.e.xual life. So viewed, chast.i.ty may be opposed to the demands of debased mediaeval Catholicism, but it is in harmony with the demands of our civilized life to-day, and by no means at variance with the requirements of Nature.

There is always an a.n.a.logy between the instinct of reproduction and the instinct of nutrition. In the matter of eating it is the influence of science, of physiology, which has finally put aside an exaggerated asceticism, and made eating "pure." The same process, as James Hinton well pointed out, has been made possible in the s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps; "science has in its hands the key to purity."[85]

Many influences have, however, worked together to favor an insistence on chast.i.ty. There has, in the first place, been an inevitable reaction against the s.e.xual facility which had come to be regarded as natural. Such facility was found to have no moral value, for it tended to relaxation of moral fibre and was unfavorable to the finest s.e.xual satisfaction. It could not even claim to be natural in any broad sense of the word, for, in Nature generally, s.e.xual gratification tends to be rare and difficult.[86] Courts.h.i.+p is arduous and long, the season of love is strictly delimited, pregnancy interrupts s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps. Even among savages, so long as they have been untainted by civilization, virility is usually maintained by a fine asceticism; the endurance of hards.h.i.+p, self-control and restraint, tempered by rare orgies, const.i.tute a discipline which covers the s.e.xual as well as every other department of savage life. To preserve the same virility in civilized life, it may well be felt, we must deliberately cultivate a virtue which under savage conditions of life is natural.[87]