XII. THE SEX-TABOO

In the course of the last few chapters I have spoken more

than once of the solidarity and continuity of Christianity,

in its essential doctrines, with the Pagan rites. There is,

however, one notable exception to this statement. I refer

of course to Christianity's treatment of Sex. It is

certainly very remarkable that while the Pagan cults generally

made a great deal of all sorts of sex-rites, laid

much stress upon them, and introduced them in what

we consider an unblushing and shameless way into the

instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,'

on the whole took quite the opposite line--ignored sex,

condemned it, and did much despite to the perfectly natural

instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,'

because there is nothing to show that Jesus himself (if we

admit his figure as historical) adopted any such extreme

or doctrinaire attitude; and the quite early Christian teachers

(with the chief exception of Paul) do not exhibit this bias

to any great degree. In fact, as is well known, strong

currents of pagan usage and belief ran through the Christian

assemblies of the first three or four centuries. "The Christian

art of this period remained delightfully pagan. In the

catacombs we see the Saviour as a beardless youth, like a

young Greek god; sometimes represented, like Hermes the

guardian of the flocks, bearing a ram or lamb round

his neck; sometimes as Orpheus tuning his lute among

the wild animals."[1] The followers of Jesus were at times

even accused--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--

of celebrating sexual mysteries at their love-feasts. But

as the Church through the centuries grew in power and scope

--with its monks and their mutilations and asceticisms, and

its celibate clergy, and its absolute refusal to recognize the

sexual meaning of its own acclaimed symbols (like the

Cross, the three fingers of Benediction, the Fleur de Lys

and so forth)--it more and more consistently defined itself

as anti-sexual in its outlook, and stood out in that way in

marked contrast to the earlier Nature-religions.

[1] Angels' Wings, by E. Carpenter, p. 104.

It may be said of course that this anti-sexual tendency

can be traced in other of the pre-Christian Churches, especially

the later ones, like the Buddhist, the Egyptian,

and so forth; and this is perfectly true; but it would seem

that in many ways the Christian Church marked the culmination

of the tendency; and the fact that other cults participated

in the taboo makes us all the more ready and anxious

to inquire into its real cause.

To go into a disquisition on the Sex-rites of the various pre-

Christian religions would be 'a large order'--larger than

I could attempt to fill; but the general facts in this connection

are fairly patent. We know, of course, from the

Bible that the Syrians in Palestine were given to sexual

worships. There were erect images (phallic) and "groves"

(sexual symbols) on every high hill and under every green

tree;[1] and these same images and the rites connected

with them crept into the Jewish Temple and were popular

enough to maintain their footing there for a long period from

King Rehoboam onwards, notwithstanding the efforts of

Josiah[2] and other reformers to extirpate them. Moreover

there were girls and men (hierodouloi) regularly attached

during this period to the Jewish Temple as to the heathen

Temples, for the rendering of sexual services, which were

recognized in many cases as part of the ritual. Women

were persuaded that it was an honor and a privilege to be

fertilized by a 'holy man' (a priest or other man connected

with the rites), and children resulting from such

unions were often called "Children of God"--an appellation

which no doubt sometimes led to a legend of miraculous

birth! Girls who took their place as hierodouloi in the

Temple or Temple-precincts were expected to surrender

themselves to men-worshipers in the Temple, much in the

same way, probably, as Herodotus describes in the temple

of the Babylonian Venus Mylitta, where every native

woman, once in her life, was supposed to sit in the

Temple and have intercourse with some stranger.[3] Indeed

the Syrian and Jewish rites dated largely from Babylonia.

"The Hebrews entering Syria," says Richard Burton[4]

"found it religionized. by Assyria and Babylonia, when the

Accadian Ishtar had passed West, and had become Ashtoreth,

Ashtaroth, or Ashirah, the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician

Astarte, and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-

goddess who is queen of Heaven and Love." The word

translated "grove" as above, in our Bible, is in fact Asherah,

which connects it pretty clearly with the Babylonian Queen

of Heaven.

[1] 1 Kings xiv. 22-24.

[2] 2 Kings xxiii.

[3] See Herodotus i. 199; also a reference to this custom in the

apocryphal Baruch, vi. 42, 43.

[4] The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886 edn.), vol. x, p. 229.

In India again, in connection with the Hindu Temples and

their rites, we have exactly the same institution of girls

attached to the Temple service--the Nautch-girls--whose

functions in past times were certainly sexual, and whose

dances in honor of the god are, even down to the

present day, decidedly amatory in character. Then we

have the very numerous lingams (conventional representations

of the male organ) to be seen, scores and scores of

them, in the arcades and cloisters of the Hindu Temples--

to which women of all classes, especially those who wish to

become mothers, resort, anointing them copiously with

oil, and signalizing their respect and devotion to them in

a very practical way. As to the lingam as representing

the male organ, in some form or other--as upright stone

or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower--it occurs all

over the, world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a memorial

of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem

and instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken.

The pillars set up by Solomon in front of his temple were

obviously from their names--Jachin and Boaz[1]--meant to

be emblems of this kind; and the fact that they were

crowned with pomegranates--the universally accepted symbol

of the female--confirms and clinches this interpretation.

The obelisks before the Egyptians' temples were

signs of the same character. The well-known T-shaped

cross was in use in pagan lands long before Christianity, as

a representation of the male member, and also at the same

time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna

or whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same

symbol combined with the oval (or yoni) formed THE

Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian ritual--a figure which

is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and confessedly

indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one

design.[2] MacLennan in The Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869)

quotes with approval the words of Sanchoniathon, as saying

that "men first worship plants, next the heavenly bodies,

supposed to be animals, then 'pillars' (emblems of the

Procreator), and last, the anthropomorphic gods."

[1] "He shall establish" and "In it is strength" are in the Bible

the marginal interpretations of these two words.

[2] The connection between the production of fire by means of the

fire-drill and the generation of life by sex-intercourse is a

very obvious one, and lends itself to magical ideas. J. E. Hewitt

in his Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times (1894) says (vol. i, p.

8) that "Magha, the mother-goddess worshipped in Asia Minor, was

originally the socket-block from which fire was generated by the

fire-drill." Hence we have, he says, the Magi of Persia, and the

Maghadas of Indian History, also the word 'Magic."

It is not necessary to enlarge on this subject. The

facts of the connection of sexual rites with religious services

nearly everywhere in the early world are, as I say, sufficiently

patent to every inquirer. But it IS necessary to try

to understand the rationale of this connection. To dispatch

all such cases under the mere term "religious prostitution"

is no explanation. The term suggests, of

course, that the plea of religion was used simply as an

excuse and a cover for sexual familiarities; but though

this kind of explanation commends itself, no doubt, to

the modern man--whose religion is as commercial as his

sex-relationships are--and though in CASES no doubt it

was a true explanation--yet it is obvious that among people

who took religion seriously, as a matter of life and death

and who did not need hypocritical excuses or covers for

sex-relationships, it cannot be accepted as in general the

RIGHT explanation. No, the real explanation is--and I

will return to this presently--that sexual relationships are

so deep and intimate a part of human nature that from

the first it has been simply impossible to keep them OUT

of religion--it being of course the object of religion to bring

the whole human being into some intelligible relation with

the physical, moral, and if you like supernatural order of

the great world around him. Sex was felt from the first

to be part, and a foundational part, of the great order of the

world and of human nature; and therefore to separate

it from Religion was unthinkable and a kind of contradiction

in terms.[1]

[1] For further development of this subject see ch. xv.

If that is true--it will be asked--how was it that that

divorce DID take place--that the taboo did arise? How was

it that the Jews, under the influence of Josiah and the

Hebrew prophets, turned their faces away from sex and

strenuously opposed the Syrian cults? How was it that

this reaction extended into Christianity and became even

more definite in the Christian Church--that monks went

by thousands into the deserts of the Thebaid, and that

the early Fathers and Christian apologists could not find

terms foul enough to hurl at Woman as the symbol (to them)

of nothing but sex-corruption and delusion? How was it

that this contempt of the body and degradation of sex-

things went on far into the Middle Ages of Europe, and

ultimately created an organized system of hypocrisy, and

concealment and suppression of sex-instincts, which, acting

as cover to a vile commercial Prostitution and as a

breeding ground for horrible Disease, has lasted on even

to the edge of the present day?

This is a fair question, and one which demands an answer.

There must have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for

this remarkable reaction and volte-face which has characterized

Christianity, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, other

both earlier and later cults like those of the Buddhists, the

Egyptians, the Aztecs,[1] and so forth.

[1] For the Aztecs, see Acosta, vol. ii, p. 324 (London, 1604).

It may be said--and this is a fair answer on the SURFACE

of the problem--that the main reason WAS something in

the nature of a reaction. The excesses and corruptions of

sex in Syria had evidently become pretty bad, and that very

fact may have led to a pendulum-swing of the Jewish

Church in the opposite direction; and again in the same way

the general laxity of morals in the decay of the Roman empire

may have confirmed the Church of early Christendom in its

determination to keep along the great high road of asceticism.

The Christian followed on the Jewish and Egyptian Churches,

and in this way a great tradition of sexual continence and

anti-pagan morality came right down the centuries even into

modern times.

This seems so far a reasonable theory; but I think we

shall go farther and get nearer the heart of the problem if

we revert to the general clue which I have followed already

more than once--the clue of the necessary evolution of human

Consciousnss. In the first or animal stage of human

evolution, Sex was (as among the animals) a perfectly

necessary, instinctive and unself-conscious activity. It

was harmonious with itself, natural, and unproductive of

evil. But when the second stage set in, in which man

became preponderantly SELF-conscious, he inevitably set

about deflecting sex-activities to his own private pleasure

and advantage; he employed his budding intellect in

scheming the derailment of passion and desire from tribal

needs and, Nature's uses to the poor details of his own

gratification. If the first stage of harmonious sex-instinct

and activity may be held as characteristic of the Golden

Age, the second stage must be taken to represent the Fall

of man and his expulsion from Paradise in the Garden of

Eden story. The pleasure and glory of Sex having been

turned to self-purposes, Sex itself became the great Sin. A

sense of guilt overspread man's thoughts on the subject. "He

knew that he was naked," and he fled from the voice

and face of the Lord. From that moment one of

the main objects of his life (in its inner and newer activities)

came to be the DENIAL of Sex. Sex was conceived of as the

great Antagonist, the old Serpent lying ever in wait to

betray him; and there arrived a moment in the history

of every race, and of every representative religion, when

the sexual rites and ceremonies of the older time lost their

naive and quasi-innocent character and became afflicted with

a sense of guilt and indecency. This extraordinarily

interesting and dramatic moment in human evolution was

of course that in which self-consciousness grew powerful

enough to penetrate to the centre of human vitality, the

sanctumof man's inner life, his sexual instinct, and to deal

it a terrific blow--a blow from which it has never yet

recovered, and from which indeed it will not recover, until

the very nature of man's inner life is changed.

It may be said that it was very foolish of Man to

deny and to try to expel a perfectly natural and sensible

thing, a necessary and indispensable part of his own nature.

And that, as far as I can see, is perfectly true. But sometimes

it is unavoidable, it would seem, to do foolish things--

if only to convince oneself of one's own foolishness. On

the other hand, this policy on the part of Man was certainly

very wise--wiser than he knew--for in attempting to drive

out Sex (which of course he could not do) he entered into

a conflict which was bound to end in the expulsion of

SOMETHING; and that something was the domination, within

himself, of self-consciousness, the very thing which makes and

ever has made sex detestable. Man did not succeed in

driving the snake out of the Garden, but he drove himself

out, taking the real old serpent of self-greed and self-

gratification with him. When some day he returns to

Paradise this latter will have died in his bosom and

been cast away, but he will find the good Snake there as

of old, full of healing and friendliness, among the branches

of the Tree of Life.

Besides it is evident from other considerations that

this moment of the denial of sex HAD to come. When

one thinks of the enormous power of this passion, and its

age-long, hold upon the human race, one realizes that once

liberated from the instinctive bonds of nature, and backed

by a self-conscious and self-seeking human intelligence it was

on the way to become a fearful curse.

  A monstrous Eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth;

  For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran.

And this may have been all very well and appropriate in

the carboniferous Epoch, but WE in the end of Time have

no desire to fall under any such preposterous domination,

or to return to the primal swamps from which organic nature

has so slowly and painfully emerged.

I say it was the entry of self-consciousness into the sphere

of Sex, and the consequent use of the latter for private

ends, which poisoned this great race-power at its root.

For above all, Sex, as representing through Childbirth the

life of the Race (or of the Tribe, or, if you like,

of Humanity at large) should be sacred and guarded from

merely selfish aims, and therefore to use it only for such

aims is indeed a desecration. And even if--as some maintain

and I think rightly[1]--sex is not MERELY for child-birth

and physical procreation, but for mutual vitalizing and

invigoration, it still subserves union and not egotism; and to

use it egotistically is to commit the sin of Separation indeed.

It is to cast away and corrupt the very bond of life and

fellowship. The ancient peoples at any rate threw an illumination

of religious (that is, of communal and public) value over

sex-acts, and to a great extent made them into matters either of

Temple-ritual and the worship of the gods, or of communal and

pandemic celebration, as in the Saturnalia and other similar

festivals. We have certainly no right to regard these

celebrations--of either kind--as insincere. They were, at any

rate in their inception, genuinely religious or genuinely social

and festal; and from either point of view they were far better

than the secrecy of private indulgence which characterizes our

modern world in these matters. The thorough and shameless

commercialism of Sex has alas! been reserved for what is

called "Christian civilization," and with it (perhaps as

a necessary consequence) Prostitution and Syphilis have

grown into appalling evils, accompanied by a gigantic degradation

of social standards, and upgrowth of petty Philistinism

and niaiserie. Love, in fact, having in this modern

world-movement been denied, and its natural manifestations

affected with a sense of guilt and of sin, has really languished

and ceased to play its natural part in life; and a vast number

of people--both men and women, finding themselves

barred or derailed from the main object of existence,

have turned their energies to 'business' or 'money-making'

or 'social advancement' or something equally futile,

as the only poor substitute and pis aller open to them.

[1] See Havelock Ellis, The Objects of Marriage, a pamphlet

published by the "British Society for the Study of

Sex-psychology."

Why (again we ask) did Christianity make this apparently

great mistake? And again we must reply: Perhaps the

mistake was not so great as it appears to be. Perhaps

this was another case of the necessity of learning by loss.

Love had to be denied, in the form of sex, in order that it

might thus the better learn its own true values and needs. Sex

had to be rejected, or defiled with the sense of guilt and self-

seeking, in order that having cast out its defilement it might

return one day, transformed in the embrace of love.

The whole process has had a deep and strange world-

significance. It has led to an immensely long period of

suppression--suppression of two great instincts--the physical

instinct of sex and the emotional instinct of love. Two

things which should naturally be conjoined have been

separated; and both have suffered. And we know from

the Freudian teachings what suppressions in the root-instincts

necessarily mean. We know that they inevitably

terminate in diseases and distortions of proper action,

either in the body or in the mind, or in both; and that

these evils can only be cured by the liberation of the said

instincts again to their proper expression and harmonious

functioning in the whole organism. No wonder then that,

with this agelong suppression (necessary in a sense though

it may have been) which marks the Christian dispensation,

there should have been associated endless Sickness and Crime

and sordid Poverty, the Crucifixion of animals in the

name of Science and of human workers in the name of

Wealth, and wars and horrors innumerable! Hercules

writhing in the Nessus-shirt or Prometheus nailed to the

rocks are only as figures of a toy miniature compared with

this vision of the great and divine Spirit of Man caught in the

clutches of those dread Diseases which through the centuries

have been eating into his very heart and vitals.

It would not be fair to pile on the Christian Church the

blame for all this. It had, no doubt, its part to play in the

whole great scheme, namely, to accentuate the self-motive; and it

played the part very thoroughly and successfully. For it must be

remembered (what I have again and again insisted on) that in the

pagan cults it was always the salvation of the CLAN, the TRIBE,

the people that was the main consideration; the advantage of the

individual took only a very secondary part. But in

Christendom--after the communal enthusiasms of apostolic days and

of the medieval and monastic brotherhoods and sisterhoods had

died down--religion occupied itself more and more with

each man or woman's INDIVIDUAL salvation, regardless of

what might happen to the community; till, with the rise

of Protestantism and Puritanism, this tendency reached

such an extreme that, as some one has said, each

man was absorbed in polishing up his own little soul in a

corner to himself, in entire disregard to the damnation which

might come to his neighbor. Religion, and Morality

too, under the commercial regime became, as was natural,

perfectly selfish. It was always: "Am _I_ saved? Am

_I_ doing the right thing? Am _I_ winning the favor of God

and man? Will my claims to salvation be allowed?

Did _I_ make a good bargain in allowing Jesus to be crucified

for me?" The poison of a diseased self-consciousness entered

into the whole human system.

As I say, one must not blame the Christians too much for

all this--partly because, AFTER the communal periods which

I have just mentioned, Christianity was evidently deeply

influenced by the rise of COMMERCIALISM, to which during

the last two centuries it has so carefully and piously

adapted itself; and partly because--if our view is anywhere

near right--this microbial injection of self-consciousness

was just the necessary work which (in conjunction with

commercialism) it HAD to perform. But though one does

not blame Christianity one cannot blind oneself to its defects

--the defects necessarily arising from the part it had to

play. When one compares a healthy Pagan ritual--say

of Apollo or Dionysus--including its rude and crude sacrifices

if you like, but also including its whole-hearted spontaneity

and dedication to the common life and welfare--with the

morbid self-introspection of the Christian and the eternally

recurring question "What shall I do to be saved?"--the

comparison is not favorable to the latter. There is (at

any rate in modern days) a mawkish milk-and-wateriness

about the Christian attitude, and also a painful self-

consciousness, which is not pleasant; and though Nietzsche's

blonde beast is a sufficiently disagreeable animal, one almost

thinks that it were better to be THAT than to go about with

one's head meekly hanging on one side, and talking always

of altruism and self-sacrifice, while in reality one's heart was

entirely occupied with the question of one's own salvation.

There is besides a lamentable want of grit and substance

about the Christian doctrines and ceremonials. Somehow

under the sex-taboo they became spiritualized and etherealized

out of all human use. Study the initiation-rites of any

savage tribe--with their strict discipline of the young

braves in fortitude, and the overcoming of pain and fear;

with their very detailed lessons in the arts of war and life

and the duties of the grown man to his tribe; and with

their quite practical instruction in matters of Sex; and then

read our little Baptismal and Confirmation services, which

ought to correspond thereto. How thin and attenuated and

weak the latter appear! Or compare the Holy Communion,

as celebrated in the sentimental atmosphere of

a Protestant Church, with an ancient Eucharistic feast of

real jollity and community of life under the acknowledged

presence of the god; or the Roman Catholic service of the

Mass, including its genuflexions and mock oblations and

droning ritual sing-song, with the actual sacrifice in early

days of an animal-god-victim on a blazing altar; and I think

my meaning will be clear. We do not want, of course,

to return to all the crudities and barbarities of the past; but

also we do not want to become attenuated and spiritualized

out of all mundane sense and recognition, and to live in an

otherworld Paradise void of application to earthly

affairs.

The sex-taboo in Christianity was apparently, as I have

said, an effort of the human soul to wrest itself free from

the entanglement of physical lust--which lust, though normal

and appropriate and in a way gracious among the

animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness

become diseased and morbid or monstrous in Man. The

work thus done has probably been of the greatest value

to the human race; but, just as in other cases it has sometimes

happened that the effort to do a certain work has resulted

in the end in an unbalanced exaggeration so here. We

are beginning to see now the harmful side of the repression

of sex, and are tentatively finding our way back again to a

more pagan attitude. And as this return-movement is

taking place at a time when, from many obvious signs, the

self-conscious, grasping, commercial conception of life is

preparing to go on the wane, and the sense of solidarity to

re-establish itself, there is really good hope that our

return-journey may prove in some degree successful.

Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a

sparrow, but by putting one leg forward first, and then

the other. There was this advantage in the Christian

taboo of sex that by discouraging the physical and sensual

side of love it did for the time being allow the spiritual

side to come forward. But, as I have just now indicated,

there is a limit to that process. We cannot always keep

one leg first in walking, and we do not want, in life, always

to put the spiritual first, nor always the material and sensual.

The two sides in the long run have to keep pace with each other.

And it may be that a great number of the very curious

and seemingly senseless taboos that we find among the primitive

peoples can be partly explained in this way: that is,

that by ruling out certain directions of activity they

enabled people to concentrate more effectually, for the time

being, on other directions. To primitive folk the great world,

whose ways are puzzling enough in all conscience to us,

must have been simply bewildering in its dangers and

complications. It was an amazement of Fear and Ignorance.

Thunderbolts might come at any moment out of the blue sky,

or a demon out of an old tree trunk, or a devastating

plague out of a bad smell--or apparently even out of nothing

at all! Under those circumstances it was perhaps wise,

wherever there was the smallest SUSPICION of danger or

ill-luck, to create a hard and fast TABOO--just as we tell

our children ON NO ACCOUNT to walk under a ladder (thereby

creating a superstition in their minds), partly because it

would take too long to explain all about the real dangers

of paint-pots and other things, and partly because for the

children themselves it seems simpler to have a fixed and

inviolable law than to argue over every case that occurs.

The priests and elders among early folk no doubt took the

line of FORBIDDAL of activities, as safer and simpler, even if

carried sometimes too far, than the opposite, of easy

permission and encouragement. Taboos multiplied--many of

them quite senseless--but perhaps in this perilous maze

of the world, of which I have spoken, it really WAS simpler

to cut out a large part of the labyrinth, as forbidden ground,

thus rendering it easier for the people to find their way in

those portions of the labyrinth which remained. If

you read in Deuteronomy (ch. xiv) the list of birds and

beasts and fishes permitted for food among the Israelites,

or tabooed, you will find the list on the whole reasonable,

but you will be struck by some curious exceptions (according

to our ideas), which are probably to be explained by the

necessity of making the rules simple enough to be comprehended

by everybody--even if they included the forbiddal of some quite

eatable animals.

At some early period, in Babylonia or Assyria, a very

stringent taboo on the Sabbath arose, which, taken up in turn

by the Jewish and Christian Churches, has ruled the

Western World for three thousand years or more, and still

survives in a quite senseless form among some of our rural

populations, who will see their corn rot in the fields rather

than save it on a Sunday.[1] It is quite likely that this taboo

in its first beginning was due not to any need of a weekly

rest-day (a need which could never be felt among nomad

savages, but would only occur in some kind of industrial

and stationary civilization), but to some superstitious fear,

connected with such things as the changes of the Moon,

and the probable ILL-LUCK of any enterprise undertaken on

the seventh day, or any day of Moon-change. It is probable,

however, that as time went on and Society became more

complex, the advantages of a weekly REST-DAY (or market-

day) became more obvious and that the priests and legislators

deliberately turned the taboo to a social use.[2] The

learned modern Ethnologists, however, will generally have

none of this latter idea. As a rule they delight in representing

early peoples as totally destitute of common sense

(which is supposed to be a monopoly of us moderns!);

and if the Sabbath-arrangement has had any value or use

they insist on ascribing this to pure accident, and not to

the application of any sane argument or reason.

[1] For other absurd Sunday taboos see Westermarck on The Moral

Ideas, vol. ii, p. 289.

[2] For a tracing of this taboo from useless superstition to

practical utility see Hastings's Encycl. Religion and Ethics,

art. "The Sabbath."

It is true indeed that a taboo--in order to be a proper

taboo--must not rest in the general mind on argument or

reason. It may have had good sense in the past or even

an underlying good sense in the present, but its foundation

must rest on something beyond. It must be an absolute

fiat--something of the nature of a Mystery[1] or of Religion

or Magic-and not to be disputed. This gives it its blood-

curdling quality. The rustic does not know what would

happen to him if he garnered his corn on Sunday, nor does

the diner-out in polite society know what would happen if

he spooned up his food with his knife--but they both

are stricken with a sort of paralysis at the very suggestion of

infringing these taboos.

[1] See Westermarck, Ibid., ii. 586.

Marriage-customs have always been a fertile field for the

generation of taboos. It seems doubtful whether anything

like absolute promiscuity ever prevailed among the human

race, but there is much to show that wide choice and

intercourse were common among primitive folk and that

the tendency of later marriage custom has been on the whole

to LIMIT this range of choice. At some early period the

forbiddal of marriage between those who bore the

same totem-name took place. Thus in Australia "no man of

the Emu stock might marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake

might marry a Blacksnake woman, and so forth."[1] Among

the Kamilaroi and the Arunta of S. Australia the tribe was

divided into classes or clans, sometimes four, sometimes

eight, and a man of one particular clan was only marriageable

with a woman of another particular clan--say (1)

with (3) or (2) with (4), and so on.[2] Customs with a similar

tendency, but different in detail, seem to have prevailed

among native tribes in Central Africa and N. America.

And the regulations in all this matter have been so (apparently)

entirely arbitrary in the various cases that it would

almost appear as if the bar of kinship through the Totem

had been the EXCUSE, originating perhaps in some superstition,

but that the real and more abiding object was simply limitation.

And this perhaps was a wise line to take. A taboo

on promiscuity had to be created, and for this purpose any

current prejudice could be made use of.[3]

[1] Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, p. 66.

[2] See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Australia.

[3] The author of The Mystic Rose seems to take this view. See

p. 214 of that book.

With us moderns the whole matter has taken a different

complexion. When we consider the enormous amount of

suffering and disease, both of mind and body, arising from

the sex-suppression of which I have just spoken, especially

among women, we see that mere unreasoning taboos--which

possibly had their place and use in the past--can be

tolerated no longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight

of reason and science on a number of superstitions which

still linger in the dark and musty places of the Churches and

the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown conclusively

not only the foundational importance of sex in the evolution

of each human being, but also the very great

VARIETY of spontaneous manifestations in different individuals

and the vital necessity that these should be recognized,

if society is ever to expand into a rational human

form. It is not my object here to sketch the future

of marriage and sex-relations generally--a subject

which is now being dealt with very effectively from many

sides; but only to insist on our using our good sense in the

whole matter, and refusing any longer to be bound by senseless

pre-judgments.

Something of the same kind may be said with regard to

Nakedness, which in modern Civilization has become the

object of a very serious and indeed harmful taboo; both

of speech and act. As someone has said, it became in the

end of the nineteenth century almost a crime to mention

by name any portion of the human body within a radius

of about twenty inches from its centre (!) and as a matter

of fact a few dress-reformers of that period were actually

brought into court and treated as criminals for going about

with legs bare up to the knees, and shoulders and chest

uncovered! Public follies such as these have been responsible

for much of the bodily and mental disease and

suppression just mentioned, and the sooner they are sent to

limbo the better. No sensible person would advocate

promiscuous nakedness any more than promiscuous sex-

relationship; nor is it likely that aged and deformed

people would at any time wish to expose themselves. But

surely there is enough good sense and appreciation of grace

and fitness in the average human mind for it to be able to

liberate the body from senseless concealment, and give it

its due expression. The Greeks of old, having on the

whole clean bodies, treated them with respect and distinction.

The young men appeared quite naked in the palaestra,

and even the girls of Sparta ran races publicly in

the same condition;[1] and some day when our bodies (and

minds too) have become clean we shall return to similar

institutions. But that will not be just yet. As long as

the defilement of this commercial civilization is on us we

shall prefer our dirt and concealment. The powers that

be will protest against change. Heinrich Scham, in his

charming little pamphlet Nackende Menschen,[2] describes the

consternation of the commercial people at such ideas:

" 'What will become of us,' cried the tailors, 'if you go

naked?'

"And all the lot of them, hat, cravat, shirt, and shoemakers

joined in the chorus.

" 'AND WHERE SHALL I CARRY MY MONEY?' cried one who had

just been made a director."

[1] See Theocritus, Idyll xviii.

[2] Published at Leipzig about 1893.