XIV. UNCLEANNESS AND THE EVIL EYE…

XIV. UNCLEANNESS AND THE EVIL EYE

Demonism and the aleatory interest.--Universality of primitive demonism.--Uncleanness.--Female uncleanness.--Uncleanness in ethnography.--Uncleanness in higher religions.--Uncleanness amongst Jews.--Uncleanness amongst Greeks.--These customs produced modesty and the subordination of women.--Uncleanness, holiness, devotedness.--The evil eye; jettatura.--The evil eye in ethnography.--Amulets against the evil eye.--Devices against the evil eye.--Insult and vituperation against the evil eye.--Interaction of the mores and the evil eye.

+556. Demonism and the aleatory interest.+ Uncleanness and the evil eye are dogmatic notions, products of demonism. The dogmas are arbitrary. A corpse is unclean and makes any one unclean who touches it. A baby is not unclean. The evil eye brings bad luck, not pain or disease. Uncleanness and the evil eye have each a field. Neither is of universal application. The mores, starting out from primitive demonism, produced these two dogmas as an adjustment of experience and observation to demonism. Uncleanness is a very rude and primary expression of the unsanitary and contagious. It undoubtedly often happens that calamity befalls in the hour of success and rejoicing. A number of people were trodden to death on the Brooklyn bridge when it was opened. A few centuries ago, and in all ancient times, such an incident would have been accepted as the obvious chastisement of the superior powers on the overweening pride of men. The same might be said of the death of Mr. Huskisson at the opening of the first railroad. The sum of such incidents stands in some relation to fundamental superstitions about demons, if such are believed. The incidents can be fitted into the doctrines very easily. The whole aleatory interest is a field for this kind of general dogmas of the application of fundamental principles to classes of cases. The folkways, deeply concerned in the aleatory interest, work out the applications.

+557. Universality of primitive demonism.+ Demonism is the broadest and most primitive form of religion. All the higher religions show a tendency to degenerate back to it. Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism, and mediaeval Christianity show this tendency. Greek religion is most remarkable because we find in Homer very little demonism. It appears, therefore, that in his time primitive demonism had been overcome. In the fifth century B.C. we find it coming in again, and in the fourth century it became the ruling form of popular religion. It predominated in late Greek religion, mixed with demonism from western Asia and Egypt, and passed to Rome, where it entered into primitive Christianity, combining with highly developed demonism from rabbinical Judaism. Religion always arises out of the mores. Changes in religion are produced by changes in the mores. Religious ideas, however, in the next stage, are brought back to the mores as controlling dogmas. The product of the first stage becomes the seed in the second. Goblinism and demonism have great effect on the mores, probably because demonism is so original and universal in all religions, and so popular in its hold on the minds of all. Demonism furnishes devices of magic, sorcery, sortilege, divination, augury, oracles, etc., by which it is believed that men can get from the superior powers (spirits, demons, etc.) what they want, and can learn what is to be in the future. It therefore has the greatest apparatus by which to satisfy human needs, as they appear under the demonistic interpretation of the world and human life.

The most important immediate and direct consequences of demonism in the second stage, when it is brought back to the work of life as a normative system, are the notions of uncleanness and of the evil eye.

+558. Uncleanness.+ The notion of uncleanness is ritual. It is not entirely irrational. Contagious diseases and diseases which are the result of ignorance and neglect of sanitation give sense to the notion. The interpretation of those phenomena as due to the intervention of superior powers is like the interpretation of other diseases as due to demons. In fact, uncleanness is a step towards a rational view of disease, because it brings in secondary causes, and puts the action of demons one step further off. The effect of uncleanness was that it made the affected person unfit and unable to perform ritual acts on which human welfare was supposed to depend. The affected person became dangerous to others, and was forced to banish himself from societal contact with them. He was also cut off from access to the superior powers. It was therefore indispensable that he should recover cleanness in order to carry on his life. The recovery was accomplished through ritual acts and devices, and chiefly through the intervention of shamans, who were experts in the rites and devices required.

+559. Female uncleanness.+ The ritual notion of uncleanness, being a product of deduction from demonistic world philosophy, was arbitrary, and was capable of indefinite extension. It was not a disease, was not held to facts by symptoms of pain, etc. Women were held to be unclean, and causes of uncleanness by contact, at marriage, menstruation, and childbirth. They were always possessed by demons, which accounted for their special functions as mothers. The periods mentioned were periods of special activity of the demonistic function. The belief was common in the Orient that a woman was dangerous to her husband at marriage. A demon left her at that time in the nuptial bloodshed. At menstruation women were dangerous to men. The ritual idea of uncleanness was so extended that women were put under a kind of imprisonment for a time, especially in the Zoroastrian system (sec. 561), in order to remove them from social contact. At child bearing also they were forced into retirement for a specified period.[1767] Corpses also were unclean and made all those unclean who came into contact with them. There are numerous other and comparatively trifling causes of ritual uncleanness.[1768]

+560. Uncleanness in ethnography.+ The Macusi of British Guiana forbid women to bathe during the period, and also forbid them to go into the forest, for they would risk bites from enamored snakes.[1769] If a woman of the Ngumba, in Kamerun, bears a dead child, the uncleanness is double. She may not touch the hand of a man until she is unwell again.[1770] In Madagascar no one who had been at a funeral might enter the palace, or approach the sovereign, for a month, and no corpse might be buried in the capital city. The mourners washed their dresses, or dipped a portion of them in running water, as a ritual purification.[1771] The Tshi peoples of West Africa cause women to retire, at the period, to huts prepared for the purpose in the bush, because they are at that time offensive to the deities.[1772] The Ewe-speaking peoples think a mother and baby unclean for forty days after childbirth.[1773] The Bechuanas, when they have touched a corpse, dug a grave, or are near relatives of a deceased person,--the ritual uncleanness being thus extended to a wider circle of those in any way concerned in a burial,--purify themselves by prescribed ritualistic washings, put on new garments and cut their hair, or purify themselves with the smoke of a fire into which magic-working materials have been cast. On returning from battle they ceremonially wash themselves and their weapons.[1774] The Karoks of California think that if a menstruating woman approaches any medicine which is about to be given to a sick man she will cause his death.[1775] The Tamils think that saliva renders ritually unclean whatever it touches. Therefore, in drinking, they pour the liquid down the throat without touching the cup to the lips.[1776] The Romans held that nothing else had such marvelous efficacy as, or more deadly qualities than, the menstrual flow.[1777] Here we find that which is, in one view, evil and contemptible, regarded, in another view, as powerful and worthy of respect. The Arabs thought that "a great variety of natural powers" attached themselves to a woman during the period.[1778] The gum of the acacia was thought to be a clot of menstrual blood. Therefore it was an amulet. The tree is a woman.[1779] At the great feast of the dead amongst the Eskimo on Bering Straits the feast makers make wiping motions, stamp, and slap the thighs, in order to "cast off all uncleanness that might be offensive to the shades," and thus to render their sacrifices acceptable.[1780] The spirits amongst the Kwakiutl, Chinooks, and their neighbors kill an unclean man. These people have fastings and washings for purification.[1781]

+561. Uncleanness in higher religions.+ In the higher religions the same notions of ritual cleanness were retained and developed. Pious Zoroastrians could not travel by sea without great inconvenience, because they could not help defiling the natural element water, which they were forbidden to do.[1782] They were forbidden to blow a fire with the breath, lest they should defile the element fire, and they wore a covering over the mouth when they approached the fire for any purpose. Parings of the nails and cuttings of the hair were unclean. They would be weapons for demons if they were not covered by rites and spells. The menses of women were caused by the evil god Ahriman. A woman, during the period, was "unclean and possessed by the demon. She must be kept confined and apart from the faithful, whom her touch would defile, and from the fire, which her very look would injure. She was not allowed to eat as much as she wanted, as the strength which she might acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food was not given to her from hand to hand, but passed to her from a distance in a long leaden spoon." At childbirth, the mother was unclean, in spite of the logic of the religion, according to which she should be pure because she has increased life. "The strength of old instincts overcame the drift of new principles." [The old mores were too strong for the new religion.] A woman who bears a dead child is a grave, and must be ritually purified as such. Only to save her from death can she drink water, which she would defile, and if it is given to her she must undergo a penalty. These views go back to the notion that she has been near death and has had the death fiend in her. A great fire is lighted to drive off the demons.[1783] At this day there is in the house of a Parsee a room for the monthly seclusion of women. It is bare of all comforts and from it neither sun, moon, stars, fire, water, or sacred implements, nor any human being, can be seen. The first ceremony performed on a newborn child is washing its hands, to purify it, since it also is unclean.[1784]

+562. Uncleanness amongst the Jews.+ Ritual uncleanness is represented in the Old Testament as due to contact with carcasses of unclean cattle and other unclean things;[1785] to contact with a woman in childbirth, with a longer period if the infant is a girl than a boy.[1786] Care about clean and unclean things was praised as a high religious virtue,[1787] and the prophets used the distinction for the difference between virtue and vice.[1788] The food taboo is expressed by declaring forbidden animals unclean.[1789] Plague and leprosy are cases of ritual uncleanness, also issues.[1790] Distinctions of this kind (cleanness and uncleanness), enforced by ritual, depend on clear facts of observation and prescribe simple acts. They include no dogmas. They prescribe things to be done. They produce notions and habits. They enter so deeply into ways of living that it takes long counter-education to eradicate them. The strength of the adherence to this distinction, in the rabbinical period, is well shown in the New Testament.

+563. Uncleanness amongst Greeks.+ The Greeks had similar conceptions of uncleanness. Marriage was surrounded by rites of purification and precaution, the marriage bath being one of the most essential acts in the wedding rites.[1791] Death and the dead produced uncleanness, and purification by water, fire, or smoke was required.[1792]

+564. These mores produced modesty and subordination of women.+ Two things of great social importance in respect to women are traceable to these mores: (a) The sex modesty of women. The usages of Zoroastrianism are cruel. They treat women as base, not on the same plane with men, affected by a natural inferiority, and therefore as having something to be ashamed of. Inasmuch as these usages were all in the mores, the women accepted them as true and right, and probably never rebelled against them even in thought. The mores therefore taught them sex modesty, and especial shame of the sex function. (b) The subordination of women. They never were subordinated because they are weaker, because in savagery and barbarism they often are not so, but because of their feminine disabilities and the correlative inferiorities. They accepted the facts and the interpretation which the mores put on them. Then they acquiesced in the treatment they received which was reasonable upon that state of facts.

+565. Uncleanness, holiness, devotedness.+ Uncleanness was an application of taboo. It had a double aspect. It was at once repelling and protective. If corpses were unclean they were put out of contact with the living as far as possible, and this was done to protect the living. The things which were excluded by taboo because they were bad came into parallelism with the things which were tabooed because they were holy and were not to be treated carelessly as common and insignificant. The holy things were in contrast with the profane things; unclean things were in contrast with all which concerned the cult.[1793] Nelson says of the Eskimo that at a feast the "wiping motion followed by the stamping and the slapping on the thighs indicated that the feast-makers thus cast off all uncleanness that might be offensive to the shades, and thus render their offerings acceptable."[1794] This purification was ritual and produced ritual or cult cleanness. Any one who touched a holy thing was raised to a disagreeable amount of holiness, which he must maintain or undergo the ritual uncleanness of a profaned holy thing. Special offerings and atonements were necessary to remove the danger from being holy, which might prove fatal.[1795] The Jewish Scriptures which were canonical were distinguished as "those which defile the hands." This shows the original identity of "unclean" and "holy." Both are under taboo, devoted to higher powers. Whatever touches the devoted thing becomes likewise devoted. The high priest has to wash, on the day of atonement, after he has worn the holy vestment.[1796] The Sadducees scoffed at the saying of the Pharisees that the Holy Scriptures defile the hands.[1797]

+566. The evil eye. Jettatura.+ Another direct and immediate product of primitive demonism is the notion of the evil eye. This is a concrete dogma and a primary inference from demonism. It is often confounded with the jettatura of the Italians. The evil eye is an affliction which befalls the fortunate and prosperous in their prosperity. It is the demons who are irritated by human luck and prosperity who inflict calamity, pain, and loss, at the height of good luck. The jettatura is a spell of evil cast either voluntarily or involuntarily by persons who have the gift of the evil eye and can cast evil spells, perhaps unconsciously and involuntarily. It follows from the notion of the evil eye that men should never admire, praise, congratulate, or encourage those who are rich, successful, prosperous, and lucky. The right thing to do is to vituperate and scoff at them in their prosperity. That may offset their good luck, check their pride, and humble them a little. Then the envy of the superior powers may not be excited against them to the point of harming them. It is the most probable explanation of the cloistering and veiling of women that it was intended to protect them, especially if they were beautiful, from the evil eye. The admiration which they would attract would be fatal to them. The notion of the evil eye led to covering some parts of the body and so led to notions of decency (sec. 459). It is assumed that demons envy human success and prosperity and so inflict loss and harm on the successful. Hence admiration and applause excite their malignity.

+567. Ethnographical illustrations.+ Of the following cases many are cases of jettatura. In the Malagasy language many proper names of persons are coarse and insulting because a pleasant-sounding name might cause envy.[1798] In Bornu when a horse is sold, if it is a fine one, it is delivered by night, for fear of the evil eye (covetous and envious eyes) of bystanders.[1799] Schweinfurth[1800] tells an incident of a man who, going through a Nubian village, noticed that the limb of a tree was rotten and ready to fall. He warned some people who were standing under it. Immediately afterwards it did fall, but the fall was attributed to the evil eye of the person who first noticed the danger. The Dinka are mentioned as free from this superstition.[1801] In the Sudan food is usually covered by a conical straw cover to prevent the evil eye [viz. of the hungry people who might admire and long for it].[1802] Customs of eating and drinking in private, and of covering the mouth when eating or drinking, belong here. All along the north coast of Africa the belief in the evil eye prevails. A hen's-egg shell upon which three small leaden horseshoes have been riveted is an amulet against it.[1803] At Katanga, Central Africa, only the initiated may watch the smelting of copper, for fear of the evil eye, which would spoil the process.[1804] In the Caroline Islands a canoe, while being built, is enclosed in a building for fear of the evil eye.[1805] This represents a class of cases in which a high and refined art is being practiced. In parts of Melanesia, and often elsewhere, a shell or leaf is fastened on the end of the masculine organ to ward off the evil eye. The same is the purpose of hanging strips of leather, etc., which catch attention, to divert it from the organ which is sensitive to the evil eye. Hence arose the taboo on parts of the body. In some groups in India, at weddings, women of the bride's and bridegroom's parties sing songs, each deriding and decrying the other. This is for luck. "Praise is risky; abuse and blame are safe."[1806] In Behar, on a certain day, sisters abuse brothers, in the belief that this will cause them long life and good luck.[1807] In the Horn of Africa magicians who want to get rid of a man stupefy him with drugs and sell him into slavery as having the evil eye (jettatura).[1808] Amongst the Kabyles a husband left alone with his bride first strikes her three light blows on the shoulder with the back of his knife to ward off from her the evil eye.[1809] In India a small object of iron is hung on a cradle because iron wards off the evil eye.[1810] The jettatura belongs to persons born at certain periods in the year, or a woman's behavior during pregnancy may cause her child to have it.[1811] People are held to be in danger of the evil eye in prosperity and on festive occasions when they put on fine dress and ornaments. Witches, beggars, and people of the lowest class have the evil eye. Diseases of decline are attributed to the jettatura. Cattle cease to give milk and trees lose leaves on account of it. Flowers and fruit wither untimely. Gems break or lose brilliancy.[1812]

+568. Amulets against the evil eye.+ In the Dutch East Indies the phallus, or the symbol of it, is a charm against the evil eye which is cast in quarrels.[1813] Roman boys wore a symbol of this kind. Obscene gestures were supposed to ward off the evil eye.[1814] In some parts of India a tiger's tooth or claw is an amulet for the same purpose, also obscene symbols or strings of cowries. Whatever dangles and flutters attracts attention to itself and away from the thing to be protected.[1815] Hindoo parents give their children ugly and inauspicious names, especially if they have lost some children.[1816] The notion of the evil eye was very strong amongst the Arabs, with the notion that beauty attracted it.[1817] Mohammed himself believed in the evil eye. The superstition came down from the heathen period when rags and dirty things were hung on children to protect them from the evil eye.[1818] The veiling of women amongst the Arabs was probably due to it. Beautiful women also painted black spots on their cheeks.[1819] Children, horses, and asses are now disfigured amongst Moslems to protect them from the risk they would run if beautiful. To save a child from the evil eye they say "God be good to thee" and spit in its face.[1820] Amongst the Bedouins, whenever one utters praises he must add: "Mashallah," that is, God avert ill! The only other way to avert ill is to give the praised object to him who praised it.[1821] Glittering and waving objects are much used by Moslems on dress and horse caparisons to distract attention. They put texts of the Koran on streamers on their houses for the same purpose.

+569. Devices against the evil eye.+ Homer has the idea that the gods curb the pride of prosperity and are jealous of it. His heroes are taught as a life policy to avert envy. Self-disparagement is an approved pose.[1822] Plutarch[1823] explains the efficiency of objects set up to avert witchcraft on the theory that by their oddity they draw the evil eye from persons and objects. Fescennine verses of the Romans, which were used at weddings and triumphs, were intended to ward off ill luck. Soldiers followed the chariot of the triumphing general and shouted to him derisive and sarcastic verses to avert the ill to which he was then most liable. The Greeks used coarse jests at festivals for the same purpose.[1824] Modern Egyptians have inherited this superstition. Mothers leave their children ragged and dirty, especially when they take them out of doors, for fear of admiration and envy. Boys are greatly envied. They are kept long in the harem and dressed in girl's clothes for the same protection.[1825] Amongst the richer classes at Cairo chandeliers are hung before a bridegroom's house. If a crowd collects to look at a fine chandelier, a jar is purposely broken to distract attention from it, lest an envious eye should cause it to fall.[1826] When the Pasha gave up his monopoly of meat, butchers hung up carcasses in full view on the street. This was complained of, since every beggar could see the meat and envy it, "and one might, therefore, as well eat poison as such meat."[1827] An antidote is to burn a bit of alum, with the recital of the first and the last three chapters of the Koran.[1828] The Jews of Southern Russia do not allow their children to be admired or caressed. If it is done, the mother will order the child to "make a fig gesture" behind the back of the one who did it.[1829]

The evil eye is mentioned in Proverbs xxiii. 6 and xxviii. 22, and perhaps in Matt. xx. 15. The emphasis in Proverbs seems to be on envy and covetousness, not on magical evil.

In China children are often named "dog," "hog," "flea," etc., to ward off the evil eye.[1830]

+570. Insult and vituperation for luck and against evil eye.+ Amongst the southern Slavs the evil eye acts by bringing evil spirits into action as the agents, and they "decry" the person or thing. No doubt this mode of operation is to be generally understood when not mentioned. The beautiful suffer most. One may unwittingly do the harm by admiration. One should never say, "What a beautiful child!" but "What an ugly child!" if one admires it. The language has become inverted by this usage.[1831] The superstition is popular in Hungary. A child is never to be praised or admired. If one looks at a child for a while in admiration, he should then spit on it three times.[1832] Possibly the custom of throwing an old shoe after a bride is to be traced to the same superstition. It is a contemptible and derisory gift for luck, like vituperative outcries. The fear of the evil eye and the jettatura is now very strong in southern Italy.[1833]

+571. Interaction of the mores and the evil eye.+ The doctrine of the evil eye is plainly an immediate deduction from demonism. If the atmosphere is full of demons, surrounding us all, agents of all things which happen and affect our interests, human welfare depends either on their uncontrollable caprice, or on devices by which they can be controlled. In the former case human beings need to have omens, oracles, rites of divination, etc., to find out what is to be. In the latter case all devices of magic and sorcery are of the highest value to men. This is why magic is so ultimate and original in the history of civilization. It teaches men not to look for any rational causation in the order of things, and to believe in the efficacy of ritual proceedings which contain no rational relation of means to ends. Then it costs no effort to believe that one person can bewitch another, and do it unconsciously. Any relation of responsibility can be invented and believed, since there are no tests of agency. It follows that a new function is opened for the mores. They have to select and establish those relations of agency and responsibility which are to be believed in; that is, they define crimes and criminal responsibility. Ordeals as tests fall in with the same system. They touch no actual relations and therefore prove nothing. It is the mores which establish faith in them and give them the sanction of the society. As to the evil eye, as the evil result of envy and of prosperity, it is an a posteriori inference from observed facts, exaggerated into a dogma. Cases of disaster in the hour of triumph occur, both as consequences of overweening self-confidence and by pure chance (Caesar, Caesar Borgia, Napoleon). The aleatory interest always averages up, but the successful, who have enjoyed good fortune for a time, believe that it must last for them, and forget that the balance requires bad luck. The lookers-on, however, form their philosophy from what they see. They believe in Nemesis, or other doctrine of offsets, and try by vituperation to make artificial offsets which will avert greater and more real calamities. In all steps of these doctrines and acts the mores are called into play. They are the only limits to the applications of the doctrines. They are of little use. They are afloat in and with the faiths and doctrines. They never can make definitions or set limits. They only enthuse customs, which may change from day to day in their definitions and limits and carry the mores with them. No doubt primitive religion here had excellent effect, for as it arose out of demonism it brought in authority and fixed dogma, which, although erroneous and in itself bad, was a great deal better than the floating superstitions of demonism.

[1767] Levit. xii.

[1768] Ibid., xiii, xiv, xv.

[1769] Schomburgk, Brit. Guiana, II, 316.

[1770] Globus, LXXXI, 337.

[1771] Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 290.

[1772] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 94.

[1773] Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 153.

[1774] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 201.

[1775] Powers, Calif. Indians, 31.

[1776] Gehring, Sued-Indien, 96.

[1777] Pliny, Hist. Nat., VII, 64.

[1778] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 448.

[1779] Ibid., 133.

[1780] Bur. Eth., XVIII, Part I, 371.

[1781] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1895, 393.

[1782] Darmsteter, Zend-Avesta, I, xxxiv.

[1783] Darmsteter, Zend-Avesta, xcii.

[1784] Geiger, Ostiran. Kultur, 236, 259.

[1785] Levit. v. 2; xi. 26.

[1786] Ibid. xii.

[1787] Ibid. x. 10; xi. 47

[1788] Isaiah. vi. 5; Ezek. xxxiii. 17.

[1789] Levit. xi.

[1790] Ibid. xiv, xv.

[1791] Rohde, Psyche, II, 72.

[1792] Guhl und Koner, Leben der Griechen und Roemer, 367.

[1793] Maurer, Voelkerkunde, Bibel, und Christenthum, I, 105.

[1794] Bur. Ethnol., XVIII, Part I, 371.

[1795] Hastings, Dict. Bible, "Relig. of Israel."

[1796] Levit., xvi. 4, 24.

[1797] Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124.

[1798] Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 167.

[1799] Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, I, 607.

[1800] Heart of Africa, II, 406.

[1801] Ibid., I, 157.

[1802] Junker, Afrika, I, 69.

[1803] Globus, LXXV, 19.

[1804] Ibid., LXXII, 164.

[1805] Kubary, Karolinenarchipel., 292.

[1806] JASB, IV, 63.

[1807] Ibid., II, 598.

[1808] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., II, 140.

[1809] Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, II, 219.

[1810] JASB, II, 170.

[1811] Ibid., I, 120.

[1812] Ibid.

[1813] Wilken in Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 399.

[1814] Jewish Encyc., s.v. "Evil Eye."

[1815] Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 254.

[1816] Ibid., 371.

[1817] Lane, Arabian Nights, I, 67.

[1818] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 448.

[1819] Von Kremer, Kulturgesch. des Orients, II, 212, 253.

[1820] Pischon, Einfluss des Islam, 110.

[1821] Globus, LXXV, 193.

[1822] Keller, Hom. Soc., 114.

[1823] Symposium, V, 9.

[1824] Smith, Antiq., I, 839; II, 831.

[1825] Lane, Mod. Egypt., I, 77.

[1826] Ibid., 384

[1827] Ibid., 385.

[1828] Ibid., 381.

[1829] Globus, LXXXIII, 316.

[1830] Williams, Middle Kingdom, I, 797.

[1831] Krauss, Volksglaube der Suedslaven, 41-43.

[1832] Temesvary, Aberglaube in der Geburtshilfe, 75.

[1833] Bur. Ethnol., III, 297.

Chapter XV

THE MORES CAN MAKE ANYTHING RIGHT AND PREVENT CONDEMNATION OF ANYTHING

The mores define the limits which make right and wrong.--Public punishments.--Prisons in England in the eighteenth century.-- Wars of factions; penalties of defeat.--Bundling.--Two forms of bundling.--Mediaeval bundling.--Poverty and wooing.--Night wooing in the North American colonies.--Reasons for it.--Public lupanars.--The end of the lupanars.--Education needed to clarify the judgment.

+572. Mores define the limits which make anything right.+ At every turn we find new evidence that the mores can make anything right. What they do is that they cover a usage in dress, language, behavior, manners, etc., with the mantle of current custom, and give it regulation and limits within which it becomes unquestionable. The limit is generally a limit of toleration. Literature, pictures, exhibitions, celebrations, and festivals are controlled by some undefined, and probably undefinable, standard of decency and propriety, which sets a limit of toleration on the appeals to fun, sensuality, and various prejudices. In regard to all social customs, the mores sanction them by defining them and giving them form. Such regulated customs are etiquette. The regulation by the mores always gives order and form, and thus surrounds life with limits within which we may and beyond which we may not pursue our interests (e.g. property and marriage). Horseplay and practical jokes have been tolerated, at various times and places, at weddings. They require good-natured toleration, but soon run to excess and may become unendurable. The mores set the limits or define the disapproval. The wedding journey was invented to escape the "jokes." The rice and old shoes will soon be tabooed. The mores fluctuate in their prescriptions. If the limits are too narrow, there is an overflow into vice and abuse, as was proved by seventeenth-century puritanism in England. If the limit is too remote, there is no discipline, and the regulation fails of its purpose. Then a corruption of manners ensues. In the cases now to be given we shall see the power of the mores to give validity to various customs. The cases are all such that we may see in them sanction and currency given to things which seem to us contrary to simple and self-evident rules of right; that is, they are contrary to the views now inculcated in us by our own mores as axiomatic and beyond the need of proof.[1834]

+573. Punishments for crime.+ Mediaeval punishments for criminals, leaving out of account heretics and witches, bore witness to the grossness, obscenity, inhumanity, and ferocity of the mores of that age. The punishments were not thought wrong or questionable. There was no revolt against them in any one's mind. They were judged right, wise, and necessary, by full public opinion. They were not on the outer boundary of the mores, but in the core of them. Schultz[1835] says that the romancers have not exaggerated the horrors of mediaeval dungeons. Many of them still remain and are shown to horrified tourists. There was no arrangement for having them cleaned by anybody, so that in time they were sure to become horribly dangerous to health. They were small, dark, damp, cold, and infested by vermin, rats, snakes, etc.[1836] Several dungeons in the Bastille were so constructed that the prisoners could neither sit, stand, nor lie, in comfort.[1837] Fiendish ingenuity was expended on the invention of refinements of suffering, and executions offered public exhibitions in which the worst vices in the mores of the time were fed and strengthened. Many punishments were not only cruel, but obscene, the cruelty and obscenity being destitute of moral or civil motive and only serving to gratify malignant passion. A case is mentioned of a law in which it was provided that if a criminal had no property, his wife should be violated by a public official as a penalty.[1838] In the later Middle Ages, after torture was introduced into civil proceedings, ingenuity and "artistic skill" were manifested in inventing instruments of torture.[1839] A case is given of extravagant cruelty and tyranny on the part of a man of rank towards a cook who had displeased him. It was impossible to obtain protection or redress. The standpoint of the age was that a man of rank must be allowed full discretion in dealing with a cook.[1840] In many cases details were added to punishments, which were intended to reach the affections, mental states, faiths, etc., of the accused, and add mental agony to physical pain. "Use and wont" exercised their influence on people who saw or heard of these acts of the authorities until cruelties and horrors became commonplace and familiar, and the lust of cruelty was a characteristic of the age.

+574. Prisons in England in the time of Queen Anne.+ The prisons of England, in Queen Anne's time, were sinks of misery, disease, cruelty, and extortion, from which debtors suffered most, on account of their poverty. Women contributed to the total loathsomeness and suffered from it. The Marshalsea prison was "an infected pest house all the year long." There were customs by which jailers and chaplains extorted fees from the miserable prisoners. In the country the prisons were worse than in London. Pictures are said to exist in which debtor prisoners are shown catching mice for food, dying of starvation and malaria, covered with boils and blains, assaulted by jailers, imprisoned in underground dungeons, living with hogs, with clogs on their legs, tortured with thumbscrews, etc. "Nobody ever seems to have bothered their heads about it. It was not their business." In 1702 the House of Commons ordered a bill to be brought in for regulating the king's bench and fleet prisons, "but nobody took sufficient interest in it, and it never became an act."[1841] If the grade and kind of humanity which the case required did not exist in the mores of the time, there would be no response. It was on the humanitarian wave of the latter half of the century that Howard succeeded in bringing about a reform. The prisons in the American colonies were of the same kind as those in the old country. The Tories, in the revolution, suffered most from their badness. It is not known that personal abuse was perpetrated in them.

+575. Wars of factions. Penalties of defeat.+ Political factions and religious sects have always far surpassed the criminal law in the ferocity of their penalties against each other. Neither the offenses nor the penalties are defined in advance. As Lea says,[1842] the treatment of Alberico, brother of Ezzelino da Romano, and his family (1259) shows the ferocity of the age. Ezzelino showed the same in many cases, and the hatred heaped up against him is easily understood, but the gratification of it was beastly and demonic.[1843] Great persons, after winning positions of power, used all their resources to crush old rivals or opponents (Clement V, John XXII) and to exult over the suffering they could inflict.[1844] In the case of Wullenweber, at Lubeck,[1845] burgesses of cities manifested the same ferocity in faction fights. The history of city after city contains similar episodes. At Ghent, in 1530, the handicraftsmen got the upper hand for a time and used it like savages.[1846] All parties fought out social antagonisms without reserve on the doctrine: To the victors the spoils; to the vanquished the woe! If two parties got into a controversy about such a question as whether Christ and his apostles lived by beggary, they understood that the victorious party in the controversy would burn the defeated party. That was the rule of the game and they went into it on that understanding.

In all these matters the mores of the time set the notions of what was right, or those limits within which conduct must always be kept. No one blamed the conduct on general grounds of wrong and excess, or of broad social inexpediency. The mores of the time were absolutely imperative as to some matters (e.g. duties of church ritual), but did not give any guidance as to the matters here mentioned. In fact, the mores prevented any unfavorable criticism of those matters or any independent judgment about them.

+576. Bundling.+ One of the most extraordinary instances of what the mores can do to legitimize a custom which, when rationally judged, seems inconsistent with the most elementary requirements of the sex taboo, is bundling. In Latin Europe generally, especially amongst the upper classes, it is not allowed that a young man and a young woman shall be alone together even by day, and the freer usage in England, and still more in the United States, is regarded as improper and contrary to good manners. In the latter countries two young people, if alone together, do not think of transgressing the rules of propriety as set by custom in the society. Such was the case also with night visits. Although the custom was free, and although better taste and judgment have abolished it, yet it was defined and regulated, and was never a proof of licentious manners. It is found amongst uncivilized people, but is hardly to be regarded as a survival in higher civilization. Christians, in the third and fourth centuries,[1847] practiced it, even without the limiting conditions which were set in the Middle Ages. Having determined to renounce sex, as an evil, they sought to test themselves by extreme temptation. It was a test or proof of the power of moral rule over natural impulse.[1848] "It was a widely spread custom in both the east and the west of the Roman empire to live with virgins. Distinguished persons, including one of the greatest bishops of the empire, who was also one of the greatest theologians, joined in the custom. Public opinion in the church judged them lightly, although unfavorably."[1849] "After the church took on the episcopal constitution, it persecuted and drove out the subintroductae. They were regarded as a survival from the old church which was disapproved. The custom that virgins dwelt in the house with men arose in the oldest period of the Christian church."[1850] "They did not think of any evil as to be apprehended." "In fact, we have only a little clear evidence that the living together did not correspond in the long run to the assumptions on which it was based."[1851] The custom was abolished in the sixth century.[1852] "Spiritual marriage" was connected with the monastic profession and both were due to the ascetic tendency of the time. "From the time when we can clearly find monastic associations in existence, we find hermits living in comradeship with nuns."[1853] We are led back to Jewish associations. The custom is older than Christianity. The custom at Corinth[1854] was but imitation of Jewish "God worshipers" or "Praying women."[1855] The Therapeuts had such companions. Their houses of worship were arranged to separate the sexes. Their dances sometimes lasted all night.[1856] In the Middle Ages several sects who renounced marriage introduced tests of great temptation.[1857] Individuals also, believing that they were carrying on the war between "the flesh" and "the spirit" subjected themselves to similar tests.[1858] These are not properly cases in the mores, but they illustrate the intervention of sectarian doctrines or views to traverse the efforts to satisfy interests, and so to disturb the mores.

+577. Two forms of bundling.+ Two cases are to be distinguished: (1) night visits as a mode of wooing;[1859] (2) extreme intimacy between two persons who are under the sex taboo (one or both being married, or one or both vowed to celibacy), and who nevertheless observe the taboo.

+578. Mediaeval bundling.+ The custom in the second form became common in the woman cult of the twelfth century and it spread all over Europe.[1860] As the vassal attended his lord to his bedchamber, so the knight his lady. The woman cult was an aggregation of poses and pretenses to enact a comedy of love, but not to satisfy erotic passion. The custom spread to the peasant classes in later centuries, and it extended to the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, England, Scotland, and Wales, but it took rather the first form in the lower classes and in the process of time. In building houses in Holland the windows were built conveniently for this custom. "In 1666-1667 every house on the island of Texel had an opening under the window where the lover could enter so as to sit on the bed and spend the night making love to the daughter of the house." The custom was called queesten. Parents encouraged it. A girl who had no queester was not esteemed. Rarely did any harm occur. If so, the man was mobbed and wounded or killed. The custom can be traced in North Holland down to the eighteenth century.[1861] This was the customary mode of wooing in the low countries and Scandinavia. In spite of the disapproval of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the custom continued just as round dances continue now, in spite of the disapproval of many parents, because a girl who should refuse to conform to current usage would be left out of the social movement. The lover was always one who would be accepted as a husband. If he exceeded the limits set by custom he was very hardly dealt with by the people of the village.[1862] The custom is reported from the Schwarzwald as late as 1780. It was there the regular method of wooing for classes who had to work all day. The lover was required to enter by the dormer window. Even still the custom is said to exist amongst the peasants of Germany, but it is restricted to one night in the month or in the year.[1863] Krasinski[1864] describes kissing games customary amongst the Unitarians of the Ukrain. He says that they are a Greek custom and he connects them with bundling.

+579. Poverty and wooing.+ Amongst peasants there was little opportunity for the young people to become acquainted. When the cold season came they could not woo out of doors. The young women could not be protected by careful rules which would prevent wooing. They had to take risks and to take care of themselves. Poverty was the explanation of this custom in all civilized countries, although there was always in it an element of frolic and fun.

+580. Night wooing in North American colonies.+ All the emigrants to North America were familiar with the custom. In the seventeenth century, in the colonies, the houses were small, poorly warmed, and inconvenient, allowing little privacy. No doubt this is the reason why the custom took new life in the colonies. Burnaby[1865] says that it was the custom amongst the lower classes of Massachusetts that a pair who contemplated marriage spent the night together in bed partly dressed. If they did not like each other they might not marry, unless the woman became pregnant. The custom was called "tarrying." It was due to poverty again. Modern inhabitants of tenement houses are constrained in their customs by the same limitation, and the effect is seen in their folkways. The custom of bundling had a wide range of variety. Two people sitting side by side might cover themselves with the same robe, or lie on the bed together for warmth. Peters[1866] defended the custom, which, he said, "prevails amongst all classes to the great honor of the country, its religion, and ladies." The older women resented the attempts of the ministers to preach against the custom. Sofas were introduced as an alternative. The country people thought the sofa less proper. In the middle of the eighteenth century the decline in social manners, which was attributed to the wars, caused the custom to produce more evil results.[1867] Also the greater wealth, larger houses, and better social arrangements changed the conditions and there was less need for the custom. It fell under social disapproval and was thrown out of the folkways. Stiles[1868] says that "it died hard" after the revolution. In 1788 a ballad in an almanac brought the custom into popular ridicule. Stiles quotes the case of Seger vs. Slingerland, in which the judge, in a case of seduction, held that parents who allowed bundling, although it was the custom, could not recover.[1869]

+581. Reasons for bundling.+ A witness before the Royal Commission on the Marriage Laws, 1868,[1870] testified that night visiting was still common amongst the laboring classes in some parts of Scotland. "They have no other means of intercourse." It was against custom for a lover to visit his sweetheart by day. As to the parents, "Their daughters must have husbands and there is no other way of courting." This statement sums up the reasons for this custom which, not being a public custom, must have varied very much according to the character of individuals who used it. Attempts were always made to control it by sanctions in public opinion.

+582. Public lupanars.+ Perhaps the most incredible case to illustrate the power of the mores to extend toleration and sanction to an evil thing remains to be mentioned,--the lupanars which were supported by the mediaeval cities. Athenaeus[1871] says that Solon caused female slaves to be bought by the city and exposed in order to save other women from assaults on their virtue. In later times prostitution was accepted as inevitable, but it was not organized by the city. Salvianus (fifth century, A.D.) represents the brothels as tolerated by the Roman law in order to prevent adultery.[1872] Lupanars continued to exist from Roman times until the Middle Ages. Those in southern Europe were recruited from the female pilgrims from the north who set out for Rome or Palestine and whose means failed them.[1873] It is another social phenomenon due to poverty and to a specious argument of protection to women in a good position. This argument came down by tradition with the institution. The city council of Nuremberg stated, as a reason for establishing a lupanar, that the church allowed harlots in order to prevent greater evils.[1874] This statement, no doubt, refers to a passage in Augustine, De Ordine:[1875] "What is more base, empty of worth, and full of vileness than harlots and other such pests? Take away harlots from human society and you will have tainted everything with lust. Let them be with the matrons and you will produce contamination and disgrace. So this class of persons, on account of their morals, of a most shameless life, fills a most vile function under the laws of order." The bishop had laid down the proposition that evil things in human society, under the great orderly scheme of things which he was trying to expound, are overruled to produce good. He then sought illustrations to prove this. The passage quoted is one of his illustrations. Everywhere else in his writings where he mentions harlots he expresses the greatest abomination of them. His general proposition is fallacious and extravagant, and he had to strain the cases which he alleged as illustrations, but he was a church father, and five hundred years later no one dared criticise or dissent from anything which he had said. It went far beyond the incidental use of an illustration made by him, to cite the passage, with his authority, for a doctrine that cities might wisely establish lupanars in order to prevent sex vice, especially in the interest of virtuous women.[1876] Such houses were maintained without secrecy or shame. Queen Joanna of Naples made ordinances for a lupanar at Avignon, in 1347, when it was the papal residence. Generally the house was rented to a "host" under stipulations as to the food, dress, and treatment of the inmates, and regulations as to order, gambling, etc.[1877] The inmates, like the public executioners, were required to wear a distinctive dress. Frequenters did not need to practice secrecy. The houses were free to persons of rank, and were especially prepared by the city when it had to entertain great persons. Women who were natives of the city were not admitted. This is the only feature which is not entirely cynical and shameless.[1878] In 1501 a rich citizen of Frankfurt am Main bequeathed to the city a sum of money with which to build a large house into which all the great number of harlots could be collected,[1879] for the number increased greatly. They appeared at all great concourses of men, and were sent out to the Hansa stations.[1880] In fact, the people of the time accepted certain social phenomena as "natural" and inevitable, and they made their arrangements accordingly, uninterfered with by "moral sense." In Wickliffe's time the bishop of Winchester obtained a handsome rent from the stews of Southwark.[1881] Probably he and his contemporaries thought no harm. Never until the nineteenth century was it in the mores of any society to feel that the sacrifice of the mortal welfare of one human being to the happiness of another was a thing which civil institutions could not tolerate. It could not enter into the minds of men of the fifteenth century that harlots, serfs, and other miserable classes had personal rights which were outraged by the customs and institutions of that time.

+583. The end of the lupanars.+ All the authorities agree that the thing which put an end to the city lupanars was syphilis.[1882] It was not due to any moral or religious revolt, although there had been individuals who had criticised the institution of harlots, and some pious persons had founded convents, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for repentant harlots. Protestants and Catholics tried, to some extent, to throw the blame of the lupanars on each other. Luther urged the abolition of them in 1520. They reached their greatest development in the fifteenth century.[1883] The mere existence of an article so degrading to both husband and wife as the girdle[1884] is significant of the mores of the period, and shows how far the mores can go to make anything "right," or properly customary.

+584. Judgment is beclouded by the atmosphere formed by the mores. Education.+ Witch persecutions are another case of the extent to which familiarity with the customs prevents any rational judgment of phenomena of experience and observation. How was it possible that men did not see the baseness and folly of their acts? The answer is that the ideas of demonism were a part of the mental outfit of the period. The laws were traditions from generations which had drawn deductions from the doctrines of demonism and had applied them in criminal practice. The legal procedure was familiar and corresponded to the horror of crimes and criminals, of which witchcraft and witches were the worst. The mores formed a moral and civil atmosphere through which everything was seen, and rational judgment was made impossible. It cannot be doubted that, at any time, all ethical judgments are made through the atmosphere of the mores of the time. It is they which tell us what is right. It is only by high mental discipline that we can be trained to rise above that atmosphere and form rational judgments on current cases. This mental independence and ethical power are the highest products of education. They are also perilous. Our worst cranks are those who get the independence and power, but cannot stand alone and form correct judgments outside of the mores of the time and place. It must be remembered that the mores sometimes becloud the judgment, but they more often guide it.

[1834] See secs. 184-188, on Fashion.

[1835] Hoef. Leben, I, 37.

[1836] Scherr, Kulturgesch., 377.

[1837] Lacroix, Moyen Age, I, 430.

[1838] Schultz, D. L., 160.

[1839] Lecky, Rationalism, I, 332.

[1840] Schultz, Hoef. Leben, II, 448.

[1841] Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne.

[1842] Inquis., II, 228.

[1843] Rerum Ital. Script., IX, 134.

[1844] Lea, Inquis., II, 452.

[1845] Barthold, Hansa, III, 291.

[1846] Raeumer, Hist. Taschenbuch, 2 ser., III, 413.

[1847] Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae, 4.

[1848] Harnack, Pseudo-Clement. Briefe de Virginitate; Cyprian, Epist. IV ad Pompon (c. 250 A.D.); Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae; Julicher in Archiv fuer Religionswssnsft., VII, 372.

[1849] Achelis, 12.

[1850] Ibid., 74.

[1851] Achelis, 67.

[1852] Ibid., 58.

[1853] Ibid., 47.

[1854] 1 Cor. vii. 36-40.

[1855] Achelis, 32.

[1856] Ibid., 31.

[1857] Lea, Inquis., II, 357; III, 109; Sacerd. Celibacy, 167.

[1858] Todd, Life of St. Patrick, 91.

[1859] This custom existed amongst uncivilized people. Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued.-Afr., 140; Gomme, Folklore, 220; Ling Roth, Sarawak, I, 109; JAI, XXI, 120; Globus, LXXVIII, 228; La Hontan, Voyages dans l'Amer., II, 133; Masson, Balochistan, III, 287.

[1860] Weinhold, D. F., I, 260, ff.

[1861] Wilken in Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-Kunde, XXXV, 205.

[1862] Scheltema, Frijen en Trouwen, 59; Schotel, _Het Oud-Holland. Huisgezin_, 228; Globus, LXXXII, 324.

[1863] Rudeck, Gesch. der Sittlichkeit, 146, 404.

[1864] Cossacks of the Ukrain, 281.

[1865] Travels in the Middle Settlements of N. Amer. (1759-1760), 144.

[1866] Hist. of Connecticut, 325.

[1867] Stiles, Bundling, 80.

[1868] Stiles, Bundling, 75.

[1869] Stiles, Bundling, 112.

[1870] Page 172.

[1871] Deipnosophists, XIII, 25.

[1872] De Gubernat. Dei, VII, 99.

[1873] Weinhold, D. F., II, 22.

[1874] Schultz, D. L., 73.

[1875] Migne, Patrol. Latina, XXXII, 1000.

[1876] Scherr, Deutsches Frauenleben, I, 275.

[1877] Jaeger, Ulms Leben im M. A., 544.

[1878] Rudeck, Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit, 26-35.

[1879] Westerhout, Geslachtsleven onzer Voorouders, 198.

[1880] Scherr, Kulturgesch., 223.

[1881] Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wickliffe, 280.

[1882] The origin of this disease being unknown, it has been suggested that it was due to vice and excess in the Middle Ages (Umschau, VII, 71).

[1883] See Cambridge Hist. of Mod. Europe, I, especially Lea's chapter; Janssen, Deutsches Volk, VIII; Schultz, Hoef. Leben, I, 452; same author, Deutsch. Leben, 254, 257, 277, 283; Du Laure, Paris, 268; Scherr, Kulturgesch., 222, on the fifteenth century.

[1884] Schultz, D. L., 283.

XVI. SACRAL HARLOTRY. CHILD SACRIFICE

Men's clubhouses.--Consecrated women.--Relation of sacral harlotry and child sacrifice.--Reproduction and food supply.-- The Gilgamesh epic.--The Adonis myth.--Religious ritual, religious drama, and harlotry.--The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion.--Religion and the mores.--Cases of sacral harlotry.--The same customs in the Old Testament.--The antagonism of abundance and excess.--Survivals of sacral harlotry; analogous customs in Hindostan.--Lingam and yoni.-- Conventionalization.--Criticism of the mores of Hindostan.-- Mexican mores; drunkenness.--Japanese mores.--Chinese religion and mores.--Philosophy of the interest in reproduction; incest.--The archaic is sacred.--Child sacrifice.--Beast sacrifice substituted for child sacrifice.--Mexican doctrine of greater power through death.--Motives of child sacrifice.-- Dedication by vows.--Degeneration of the custom of consecrating women.--Our traditions come from Israel.--How the Jewish view of sensuality prevailed.

The topics treated in this chapter are further illustrations of the power of the mores to make anything right, and to protect anything from condemnation. See also Chapter XVII.

+585. Men's clubhouses.+ It is a very common custom in barbaric society that the men have a clubhouse in which they spend much of their time together and in which the unmarried men sleep. Such houses are centers of intrigue, enterprise, amusement, and vice. The men work there, carry on shamanistic rites, hold dances, entertain guests, and listen to narratives by the elders. Women are excluded altogether or at times. In the Caroline Islands such houses are institutions of social and religious importance. While the women of the place may not enter them, those from a neighboring place live in them for a time in license, but return home with payment which is used partly for religious purposes and partly for themselves.[1885]

+586. Consecrated women.+ It may even be said to be the current view of uncivilized peoples, up to the full development of the father family, that women have free control of their own persons until they are married, when they pass under a taboo which they are bound to observe. Therefore before marriage they may accumulate a dowry. Very many cases also occur of men-women and women-men, persons of either sex who assume the functions and mode of life of the other. Cases also occur in barbarism of women consecrated to the gods. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of West Africa[1886] girls of ten or twelve are received and educated for three years in the chants and dances of worship, serving the priests. At the end of the time they become public women, but are under no reproach, because they are regarded as married to the god and acting under his direction. Properly they should be restricted to the worshipers at the temple, but they are not. Probably such was the original taboo which is now relaxed and decayed. Children whom such women bear belong to the god. The institution "is essentially religious in its origin and is intimately connected with phallic worship."

+587. Sacral harlotry and child sacrifice.+ These observations may serve to introduce a study of the phenomena, so incomprehensible to us, of sacral prostitution and child sacrifice. That study is calculated to show us that the mores define right and wrong. It would be a great mistake to regard the above cases as mere aberrations of sex appetite. The usages had their origin in interests. Sacral harlotry was a substitute for the child sacrifice of females. The other incidental interests found advantage in it. It was an attempt to solve problems of life. It was regarded as conducive to welfare, and was connected with religion. It was kept up by the conservatism and pertinacity of religious usage until a later time and another set of conditions, when it became vicious.

+588. Reproduction and food supply.+ The operations of nature by which plants and animals reproduce are of great interest and importance to man, because on them depends the abundance of his food supply. It is impossible to tell when this interest would "begin," but it would become intense whenever the number of men was great in proportion to the food supply. Hence the rainfall, the course of the seasons, the prevalence of winds, the conjunction of astronomical phenomena with spawning or fruit seasons, and the habits of plants and animals caught the feeble attention of savage man and taught him facts of nature, through his eagerness to get signs of coming plenty or suggestions as to his own plans and efforts. Attention has been called to a very interesting fact about the fructification of the domesticated date palm wherever oasis cultivation prevailed in western Asia.[1887] The fructification must be artificial. Men carry the pollen to the female plant and adopt devices to distribute it on the wind or by artificial contact. At the present time this is done by attaching a bunch of the male seed on a branch to windward.[1888] Tylor first suggested that certain ancient pictorial representations are meant to depict the work of artificial fructification as carried on by mythological persons,--cherubim, who represent the winds.[1889] The function of the wind distributing the seed is divine work. The tree is of such supreme value[1890] that the well living of men depends on this operation. The sex conjunction therefore was the most important and beneficent operation in nature, and correct knowledge of it was the prime condition of getting an abundant food supply. Man followed the operation with all the interest of the food supply and all the awe of religion. It is certain that his interest in it was "innocent." He began to mythologize about it on account of the grand elements of welfare, risk, and skill which were in it. A parallel case is furnished by the treatment accorded to rice by the Javanese. It is to them the great article of food supply. They endow it with a soul and ascribe to it sex passion. They have ceremonies by which to awaken this passion in the rice as a means of increasing their own food supply. The ceremonies consist in sympathetic magic by men and women at night.[1891]

+589. The Gilgamesh epic.+ The Gilgamesh epic which originated in the Euphrates valley more than 2000 years B.C.[1892] consists of a number of episodes which were later collected and coordinated into a single work like other great epics. Jastrow[1893] construes it as a variation of the story of Adam and Eve. Gilgamesh is a hero admired by all women. The elders of Uruk beg his mother, the mother-goddess Aruru (a form of Ishtar), to restrain him. In order to comply she makes of clay Eabani, a satyr-like, hairy wild man, with a tail and horns, who lives with the beasts. Jastrow thinks that this means that he consorted with female beasts, having as yet no female of his own species. No one could capture him, so the god Shamash assailed him by lust, sending to him a priestess of Ishtar who won him to herself (woman) away from beasts. She said to him: "Thou shalt be like a god. Why dost thou lie with beasts?" "She revealed his soul to Eabani." She was, therefore, a culture heroine, and the myth means that, with the knowledge of sex, awoke consciousness, intelligence, and civilization. Eabani followed the priestess to Uruk, where he and Gilgamesh became comrades,--heroes of war and slayers of monsters. Ishtar fell in love with Gilgamesh, but he refused her because all men and beasts whom she loved she reduced to misery. Her vengeance for this rejection brings woe and death on the two friends. The Mexicans had a similar myth that the sun god and the maize goddess produced life in vegetation by their sex activity. The sun god contracted venereal disease so that they probably connected syphilis with sexual excess.[1894] In the worship of Ishtar at Uruk there were three grades of harlot priestesses, and there the temple consecration of women was practiced in recognition of the connection between the service of Ishtar and civilization. At first the goddesses of life and of love were the same. The Venus of reproduction and the Venus of carnal lust were later distinguished. At some periods the distinction was sharply maintained. At other times the former Venus was only an intermediary to lead to the latter. The Mexicans had two goddesses,--one of chaste, the other of impure, love. The festivals of the former were celebrated with obscene rites; those of the latter with the self-immolation of harlots, with excessive language and acts. The goddess was thought to be rejuvenated by the death of the harlots. The obscene rites were at war with the current mores of the people at the time. The demons of license became the guardians of good morals. They concealed the phallus. Sins of license were confessed to the gods of license.[1895] Teteoinnan, the maize-mother, also became a harlot through the work of furthering growth, but in the service of the state she punished transgressions of the sex taboo.[1896] This is as if the need of the taboo having been learned by the consequences of license and excess, the goddess of the latter became the guardian of the former. In the Semitic religions the beginning and end of life were attributed to supernatural agencies dangerous to man.[1897] The usages to be mentioned below show that this was not an abstract dogma, but was accepted as the direct teaching of experience.

+590. The Adonis myth.+ There was in the worship of Ishtar wailing for Tammuz (Adonis). He was either the son or the husband of Ishtar. She went to Hades to rescue him. His death was a myth for the decay of vegetation, and his resurrection was a myth for its revival. The former was celebrated with lamentations; the latter with extravagant rejoicings and sex license.[1898] This legend, which under local modifications and much syncretism existed until long after Christianity was introduced in the Greco-Roman world, coincides with the laws of Hammurabi as to harlot priestesses.

+591. Sacral harlotry.+ Three things which later reached strong independent development are here united,--religious ritual, religious drama (with symbols, pantomime, and mysteries which later came to be considered indecent), and harlotry. Sacral harlotry was the only harlotry. It was normal and was not a subject of ethical misgiving. It was a part of the religious and social system. When, later, prostitution became an independent social fact and was adjudged bad, sacral harlotry long continued under the conventionalization and persistence of religious usage (sec. 74), but then the disapproval of prostitution in the mores produced an ethical war which resulted in the abolition of harlotry. Sacral harlotry, while it lasted, was practiced for one of two purposes,--to collect a dowry for the women or to collect money for the temple.

+592. The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion.+ Herodotus[1899] states that the women of the Lydians and of some peoples on the island of Cyprus collected a dowry by freedom before marriage; that a woman chosen by the god from the whole nation remained in the little cell on top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which religion and sex license are so strongly antagonized that religion seems to us an independent force, of "divine origin," which is sent into the world with an inherent character of antisensuality, or as a revelation of the harm and wickedness of certain sex acts. That notion, however, is a part of our Jewish inheritance. The fact stated by Herodotus is no longer doubted. It is only one in a series of parallel cases, all of which must have originated in similar ideas and have been regarded as contributing in the same way to human welfare. Preuss[1900] attempts to explain it. "It is only to be understood if men earlier, in order to make natural objects prosper, had practiced sex usages of a kind which later, according to the mores of daily life, seemed to them to be prostitution. From this development came the fact that the Germans called the Corn-mother the 'Great Harlot.'" We know that men have sacrificed their children and other human beings, the selected being the bravest or most beautiful; that they have mutilated themselves in all ways from the slightest to the most serious; that they have celebrated the most extravagant orgies; and that they have acted against their own most important interests,--all in the name of religion. There is nothing in religion itself which antagonizes sensuality, cruelty, and other base elements in human nature. Religion has its independent origin in supposed interests, and makes its own demands on men. The demands of religion are sacrifices and ritual observances. The whole religious system is evolved within the circle of interests, ideas, and mores which the society possesses at the time. Religion also finds adjustment and consistency with all other interests and tastes of the group at the time. A father of many daughters would use the temple service as a way to provide for one of them.[1901] Religion is also extremely persistent. Therefore it holds and carries over to later ages customs which once were beneficial, but which at the later time are authoritative but harmful. If parents threw their children into the furnace to Molech, why should they not devote their daughters to Ishtar? If they once practiced sympathetic magic to make rice grow, religion might carry the customs over to a time when they would be shocking and abominable. Although the survival of these customs became sensual and corrupting, it is certain that it was not their original purpose to serve sensuality. They were not devices to cultivate or gratify licentiousness. We know of no case of a primitive custom with such a purpose. The provisions in the laws of Hammurabi are as simple and matter-of-fact as possible. They are provisions for actual interests which, it seemed, ought to be provided for. Another proof of the innocence of the customs is that in independent cases the same customs were established. The customs were responses of men to the great agents who (as they thought they perceived) wrought things in nature. The methods and means used by the agents were revered. They could not be despised or disapproved by men. Therefore reproduction was religious and sex was consecrated. The whole realm was one of mystery and wonder. Men became as gods by knowledge of it. From that knowledge they acquired power to make things grow and so got food and escaped want. The interest in sex, and the customs connected with it, was revivified in connection with agriculture. The mode of fructifying the date palm was a very great discovery in natural science. Primitive men would turn it into a religious fact and rule. The inference that women should be consecrated to the goddess of life and that in her service reproduction should be their sacred duty was in the logic of primitive people. Ishtar was polyandrous, but she turned into Astarte, the wife of the chief Baal, or else she became androgyne and then masculine. There is a virgin mother and a mother of the gods. The idea of the latter continued with invincible persistency. She may be unmarried, choosing her partners at will, or "queen, head, and first born of all gods."[1902] In these changes we see the religious notions and the mores adjusting themselves to each other. As long as the underlying notions were true and sincere and the logic was honest, the usages were harmless. When the original notions were lost, or the logic became an artificial cover for a real ethical inconsistency, and the customs were kept up, perhaps to give gain to priests, the usages served licentiousness.

+593. Religion and the mores.+ Religion never has been an independent force acting from outside creatively to mold the mores or the ideas of men. Evidently such an idea is the extreme form of the world philosophy in which another (spiritual) world is conceived of as impinging upon this one from "above," to give it laws and guidance. The mores grow out of the life as a whole. They change with the life conditions, density of population, and life experience. Then they become strange or hostile to traditional religion. In our own experience our mores have reached views about ritual practices, polygamy, slavery, celibacy, etc., which are strange or hostile to those in the Bible. Since the sixteenth century we have reconstructed our religion to fit our modern ideas and mores. Every religious reform in history has come about in this way. All religious doctrines and ritual acts are held immutable by strong interests and notions of religious duty. Therefore they fall out of consistency with the mores, which are in constant change, being acted on by all the observation or experience of life. Sacral harlotry is a case, the ethical horror of which is very great and very obvious to us, of old religious ideas and customs preserved by the religion into times of greatly changed moral (i.e. of the mores) and social codes.

+594. Cases of sacral harlotry.+ Survivals of sacral harlotry are found in historic Egypt. Even under the Caesars the most beautiful girl of the noble families of Thebes was chosen to be consecrated in the temple of Ammon. She gained honor and profit by the life of a courtesan, and always found a grand marriage when she retired on account of age. In all the temples there were women attached to the service of the gods. They were of different grades and ranks and were supposed to entertain the god as harem women entertained princes. In the temples of goddesses women were the functionaries and obtained great honor and power.[1903] Constantine demolished the temples of impure cult in Phoenicia and Egypt and caused the priests to be scattered by soldiers. Farnell[1904] thinks that the Babylonian custom (especially because it was required that the man should be a stranger) was due to fear of harm from the nuptial blood. The attendants in the temples are known as "hierodules." Otto[1905] says that the hierodules were not temple slaves, or harlots, but he finds evidence that the temples had income from temple harlots. The Phoenicians who settled Carthage took the religion of western Asia with them. Perhaps there was an element of sensuality in the antecedent religion of north Africa which united with that of the imported religion. This would account for the cultus at Sicca, in Numidia. There was there a temple of Astarte or Tanith in which women lived who never went forth except to collect a dowry by harlotry.[1906] At Byblos (Gebal), in Phoenicia, there was a great temple of the same goddess at which there were elaborate celebrations of the Adonis myth. There was sacral harlotry for strangers only, the money going as a sacrifice to the goddess. Every woman must have her head shaved in mourning for Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal numen." "The identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems also to be identical with Dido."[1909] "The Arabian Lat was worshiped by the Nabataeans as mother-of-the-gods and must be identified with the virgin-mother whose worship at Petra is described by Epiphanius."[1910] In the worship of Anaitis in Armenia male and female slaves were dedicated to the goddess, but men of rank also consecrated their daughters. After long service they married, no one considering them degraded. They were not mercenary, being well provided for by their families. Therefore they received only their social equals.[1911] Baal Peor seems also to have been a case of sacral harlotry.[1912] The strongest reason for thinking so is Hosea ix. 10. Rosenbaum[1913] interprets the pestilence as venereal. The kedeshim (male prostitutes) were expelled from Judah by Asa.[1914] They had been there since Rehoboam.[1915] They are heard of again.[1916] They were under vows and brought their earnings to Jahveh.[1917] Farnell[1918] interprets a fragment of Pindar as proof of sacral harlotry at Corinth. At a temple of the Epizephyrian Locri it was practiced in fulfillment of a vow made by the people, under some ancient insult, to consecrate their daughters if the goddess would help them.[1919] Farnell also[1920] directs attention to a case in Sicily where the connection is with the Carthaginian Eryx. In the Cistellaria of Plautus the usage is referred to as Tuscan.[1921] Augustus rebuilt Carthage and it appears that the old usages had survived the interval of one hundred and fifty years. The temple of Tanith was rebuilt and called that of the celestial virgin. The Romans forbade sacral harlotry, which was in strong antagonism to their sex mores. Hahn has called attention[1922] to a passage which proves the existence of sacral harlotry in Scandinavia just before the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century. The hero remains through the winter with the woman who was the consecrated attendant of the god Frey and who traveled about with his wooden image. The people take the hero to be the god, and rejoice when the priestess becomes a mother by him.[1923] The Mexicans, with the same interests, under like conditions evolved the same customs and similar ideas. Mayas of the lowest classes sent out their daughters to earn their own marriage portions.[1924]

+595. The same customs in the Old Testament.+ In 1 Sam. i Hannah vowed that if God would give her a son she would devote him to the Lord, in sign of which no razor should touch him. She gave him to be an aedituus, who lived in the temple awaiting divine instructions and commissions. In Josh. ix. 23, 27 we have a case of war captives condemned to menial service in the temple. In Ezek. xliv. 8, 9, the people are blamed for putting heathen in the temple service instead of doing it themselves. The kedeshim, temple prostitutes of both sexes, are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, especially at every reformation of the religion. They seem to become objects of condemnation within the period of the history.

+596. Antagonism of abundance and excess.+ The Germans had a Corn-mother, a goddess of agricultural growth and fertility. The Mexicans also had a mother-of-the-gods, Teteoinnan. The former became a harlot. The latter, by her sex activity, brought about growth and abundant reproduction, and became a goddess of lewdness.[1925] Thus wherever the agricultural interest controls this set of ideas we see the struggle between the idea that unrestrained sex indulgence produces abundance and the idea that it produces excess, lewdness, and harm. We can still trace to the metaphorical use of "mother," "father," and "son," and also to the use of the same words to express the possession of a quality in a high degree, or a tie of destiny, some of the most important concepts of our own religion.

+597. Survivals of sacral harlotry. Analogous customs in Hindostan.+ The early Portuguese travelers to the East found sacral harlotry in Cochin China. All virgins of noble birth were bound by vows from infancy. Otherwise no honorable man would marry them.[1926] Modern Egyptian dancing girls, Ghowazy or Barmeky, had a tradition that they belonged to a race by themselves. They kept up isolation and peculiar customs. Each was compelled to surrender to a stranger and then to marry a man of her own group.[1927] "Probably Heaven and Earth are the most ancient of all Vedic gods, and from their fancied union, as husband and wife, the other deities and the whole universe were at first supposed to spring." "The whole world is embodied in the woman.... Women are gods. Women are vitality," say the Vedic Scriptures. In Manu[1928] "the self-existent god is described as dividing his own substance and becoming half male and half female."[1929] A competent author, who wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century, says that the women attached to the temples in Hindostan sang and danced twice a day, the songs being about mythological subjects and indecent according to the current mores of everyday life. Vows play a very important part in the Hindoo system of sacral harlotry. A woman, with the consent of her husband, vowed her unborn child, if a girl, to the temple, in order to get an easy confinement. It was no disgrace to a family to have a daughter living this life. Barren women visited remote temples, under a vow of self-devotion, in order to bear children. They were victimized by the priests. At festivals of Vishnu priests tried to enlist girls in the attendant multitude. The line between the sacral usage and licentiousness was broken down at some remote resorts, but in the great temples the conduct of the women was not at all shameless, although they were trained to please. They observed perfect decorum. No one could venture on any impropriety with them. The bystanders would not allow it, and the proceedings were all controlled by strict rules. The Brahmins propounded a doctrine that intercourse with the consecrated women would free from sin.[1930] The vows show us the motive which maintained this usage, and these statements clearly show the conventionalization which enveloped the whole. Although the practices in the temples have undergone some modification, they still exist. There are secret mysteries, and dramatic representations of mythological incidents, which seem like survivals of the ancient usages above mentioned.[1931] There are courtesans at the temples near which pilgrims congregate, and they pay part of their earnings to the temple.[1932] The holy festival of Jugganatha, at Puri, which is a spring festival of Vedic origin, is a kind of Saturnalia, in which the bonds of social order are loosened and the standards of decency are laid aside. There are rites in which "words are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological dramas are represented in front of the image of a deity by men, but in the presence of a general company of men and women.[1936] The Sakta worshipers are a sect who worship Sakta, the mighty, mysterious, feminine force recognized in nature, and which they personify as the Mother of the Universe, like the ancient Mother-goddess. This goddess is manifested, for Hindoos, in natural appetites, in highly developed faculties by which one exalts one's self and defeats one's enemies. The rites of the sect are horrible and obscene, and have for their purpose to violate and outrage the restrictions in the mores. By those rites men and women obtain union with the Supreme Being. The members of the sect call themselves "perfect ones" and all others "beasts." They use mystic texts and secret orgies, at which they drink strong drinks, eat meat and fish, and practice sex license. They recognize no caste.[1937] There are also other sects which have inverted all conceptions of decency, propriety, and expediency. They practice self-torture, crime, and uncleanliness, and use loathsome food, etc. In all these matters they show great ingenuity of invention. They are dying out.[1938] There are also sects which are cannibal, incestuous, and practicers of secret license and obscenity.[1939] In some parts of the Madras presidency, girls are made basivis by a vow of the parents, in order to give them the privileges of males. This custom may be derived from the institution of the "appointed daughter," that is, a daughter selected in order that her son may perform the rites for her father (who had no son) and may carry on the line. Modern basivis "live in their father's house. They do not marry, yet they bear children, the father of whom they may choose at pleasure, and the children inherit their family name." It is a device to insure male descendants, and is so regulated by religious consecration and rules that it is recognized in the mores. If a basivi breaks the rules she falls to a status which is very different. Men are also dedicated and wear female dress, if they are born imperfect or malformed.[1940]

+598. Lingam and yoni.+ The lingam symbol is to be seen all over India, alone or with the yoni. In some parts of India the lingam is worn as an amulet.[1941] The word "lingam" is said to mean "symbol."[1942] To Europeans the object seems indecent and obscene. If it is of phallic origin, "the Hindus are no more conscious of the fact than we of the similar origin of the maypole."[1943] It is no more erotic than an egg or a seed. It is a symbol of Siva, the eternal reproductive power of nature, reintegrating after disintegration. One form of Siva is androgyne. The dualism of the male, spirit, and the female, matter, is essential to all creation. "To one imbued with these dualistic conceptions the lingam and the yoni are suggestive of no improper ideas."[1944]

+599. Conventionalization.+ In all these cases it is evident that the mores extend their protection over archaic and sacred things, and preserve them instead of forbidding them. The great means of preserving them is by conventionalization. They are put under a conventional understanding, different from the everyday usages with their ethics, and are judged by an arbitrary standard. In the English translation of the Bible words and phrases are used which are archaic and now under taboo in everyday life. Our children have to be taught that "that is in the Bible," that is, they have to learn the conventionalization by which the archaic forms are covered. The words in the Bible are not subject to criticism, and they cannot be cited to justify similar usage in common life.

+600. Mores of Hindostan.+ The phenomena which are presented in Hindostan, when studied from our standpoint, show how completely different may be the estimate of things according to use and wont. The phenomena are very different in character. Some of them are cases of degeneracy and aberration of customs, after they have been discarded by the mores, have become vicious, and have fallen into the hands of abandoned persons who have given up all position inside the mores. Others of these customs show how old usages, when brought in question, lose innocence. Consciousness and reflection produce doubt and then shame. Sometimes things which are private or secret by convention come in contact with things which are secret by vice. All the phenomena in Hindostan show how completely the moral effect depends on the integrity or decay of conventionalization. The conventionalization is still so strong that the effects on public morals which we might expect are not produced. Public manners are marked by decency and propriety and the society is not vicious.[1945] Things which exist under conventionalization never furnish grounds for an ethical judgment on the group which practices them.

+601. Mexican mores. Drunkenness.+ In Mexico also there were goddesses of erotic passion to whom men and women were consecrated. Courtesans sometimes immolated themselves in the service of the goddess. The notion of virtue in resistance to passion existed, but the goddess, like the Greek Venus, resented any effort to escape her sway and exerted herself to defeat it.[1946] The Mayas did not maintain a severe form of sex taboo and they had festivals at which that taboo was entirely suspended.[1947] Pederasty also existed under the sanction of religion. Young men in the training house, which was a house of lamentation and penance, were allowed license which was contrary to the current mores of the society, but was an old privilege of soldiers. The dances which they performed daily were obscene. The persons in the dance represented vegetation demons, and the dances helped to get good crops.[1948] The notion was not to employ sympathetic magic, but the men, by parallel operations, were supposed to help in the work of fructification which the demons were accomplishing in the plant. Hence a great drama of human cooperation was carried on in the dances. Snakes and frogs were eaten because they were demons of rain and growth. The obscene dances were "not consequences of sex desire, but, on account of their antiquity, they were accepted as a matter of course."[1949] At the time of the Spanish conquest public opinion about the dances was not fixed, but they lasted on through the force of ancient religious tradition. We may be sure that the case of Mexico throws light on the ancient usages of sacral harlotry. In comparatively recent times there were cases in Russia of sex license on the eve of great Christian festivals.[1950] There is a parallel also, amongst the Mexicans, in the case of drunkenness. Religion controlled and forbade drunkenness, but then again allowed it on specified occasions. To drink pulque was forbidden, under penalty of death, except to prescribed persons at certain festivals, but on the festival of the fire god all intoxicated themselves by custom and tradition.[1951] Kings in Central America were expressly allowed to intoxicate themselves at festivals, and functionaries were appointed to perform their duties while they were incapacitated. It is nowadays considered not dishonorable to become intoxicated during festivals, and "it may be observed that Indians now thank God for the gift of drunkenness."[1952] That is a case of the persistence of ideas born of old mores long after another religion and social system have displaced the folkways themselves.

+602. Japanese mores.+ In Japan the government formerly bought girls of fourteen from their parents and caused them to be educated in feminine accomplishments. For ten years they lived as courtesans to the profit of the state. They were then discharged with a sum of money. The number of them at one time was twenty thousand. They furnished at the tea houses afternoon entertainments at which families were present, but men alone remained later.[1953] When a people, through acquaintance with mores different from its own, is led to philosophize about the latter, or is made conscious of them and uncertain about them, then the old mores of that people lose their innocence. The Japanese have had much experience of this within fifty years.

+603. Chinese religion and mores.+ For contrast it may be worth while to notice the evidence collected by Schallmeyer[1954] that the specifically Chinese religions are free from all immoral notions and usages. Indeed the Chinese religions are said to be hostile to indecency. Meadows is quoted as saying that any sentence of the canonical writings of China could be read in any English family without offense, and that there is nothing in Chinese religious rites resembling the immoral rites which are met with elsewhere. Chinese lyric poetry is said to be pure.

+604. Philosophy of interest in reproduction. Incest.+ Some reserve in regard to the interpretation of myths is proper and necessary, but the absorbing interest of sex production for man, after he begins to depend upon it and cooperate with it for his food supply, is a product of the study of myths which may be accepted with confidence. That interest was no more sensual than interest in the rainfall, and the mythologizing about it was no more depraved than mythologizing about creation or language. Men were sure to apply all which they learned about reproduction in food plants and animals to their own reproduction. If Chaldean civilization goes back five or six thousand years before Christ, then the Chaldeans had had ample time, even before Hammurabi, to experience the evils of overpopulation and of sex vice. In the Chaldean mythology Ishtar, goddess of all sex attraction and repulsion, destroyed all the lovers whom she selected. She had the double character, which appears in all myths and philosophy, of sex license and sex renunciation together. She was a goddess of the mother family and polyandric.[1955] The two policies, sex license and sex renunciation, were both advocated at the same time in the early centuries of the Christian era and in the Middle Ages. Men found out that the problem of reproduction for them was far more complicated than the multiplication of dates to the utmost limit. At this point of knowledge instinctive or intelligent regulations had to be put on physical appetites. For primitive men the reproductive function is as simple a function as eating or sleeping. It is not in itself wicked or base. It is naive until knowledge comes. Then it is found that rules must be made to regulate the interest. If there are rules, there is the sense of wrongdoing in the breach of them. A thing which is tabooed becomes interesting and more or less awful. The numbers of the sexes are never exactly equal, and the proportion is further disturbed by polygamy. Therefore experience of evil and inconvenience forced some reflection and some judgments as to life policy. Regulations were devised behind which there was a philosophy of the satisfaction of interests; that is to say, mores were developed to cover the case. There seems also to be some connection between sacral harlotry and the prevention of incest. The poorest who cannot marry or buy slaves have always practiced incest (sec. 516). Sacral harlotry won another religious sanction from these cases. In the laws of Hammurabi we find two classes of women attached to the temple. If the interpretations of the specialists may be trusted, the arrangement was in one class of cases in the nature of a life annuity, and those who had no husband had the god for a husband,--an idea which, with one or another new coloring, has come down to our own time. That any one should renounce the sex function was not within the mental horizon of early times. When the women lived in the temple that fact established conventionalization about them and gave to their life that regulation which has made decency and order in all ages. Their case was defined and sanctioned in the mores. The couples retired outside the temple.[1956] When marriage was accompanied by very easy divorce and could not be defined except as a form of property right of the husband, when there were concubines who were not wives only because they had no property, and slaves who had no defined relation to the household until they had borne children to the head of it, the women in the temple might be surrounded by other special forms of taboo which would give them a status within the mores. They were "holy" by virtue of their consecration to the goddess.[1957] So far as we know, their lives were not spent in dissipation. The accounts in Herodotus and Baruch vi. 43, of the later usage at Babylon show that there was method and decorum in the institution, and that it was carried on with conventional dignity. It is our custom to think out the consistency of all our doctrines and usages. It is certain that ancient peoples did not do that, just as the masses now do not. They accepted and lived in unquestioned usage. Therefore we know of cases in classic society in which maidens and matrons on special occasions shared in functions which seem totally repugnant to their character. The explanation lies in conventionalization within the mores for an occasion or under a conjuncture of circumstances. It is unquestionably possible that in that way lewdness can be set aside and thus corrupting effect on character can be prevented.

+605. The archaic is sacred.+ In the minds of primitive people all which is archaic is sacred and all which is novel is questionable. Therefore religion holds and consecrates whatever is archaic and traditional. The appetites of men were anterior to any mores regulative of them, and the goddess Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, or Venus is a goddess of erotic passion and reproduction. The folkways devised to prevent experienced ills are an invasion of her domain and a rebellion against her sway. The regulations cannot be made absolute for a long time. There must be a compromise. Some females must be given to the goddess as devotees, at least under conditions, or there must be set times and places within which her sway shall be unhampered by human rules. The conditions establish conventionalization around an institution. It is by this process and by changing the conditions that marriage has been made what it now is. Concubinage, slave women, harlotry, and all other forms but the prescribed one have been put under taboo. It is very possible that some future generation will look back in wonder at our self-complacency, which feels no care or responsibility for the women who are forced, in our system, to renounce sex. It is safe to say that the Chaldeans of 2500 B.C. would have been as much shocked at the inhumanity of our arrangement as we can be at the lewdness of theirs.

+606. Child sacrifice.+ The temple consecration of women must be connected with child sacrifice. The latter is logically anterior. Their historical relation we do not know. To dedicate a girl to the goddess would be an alternative to the sacrifice of her. All forms of child sacrifice and sacral suicide go back to the pangs and terrors of men under loss and calamity. Something must be found which would wring pity and concession from the awful superior powers who afflict mankind. Every one born under this human lot must perish if he is not redeemed. His first vicarious sacrifice is his firstborn, but if he can get a war captive from a foreign group this substitute may be accepted. The Mexican human sacrifices were of this kind. The people stood around assenting and rejoicing, because the rite meant salvation to themselves and their children. A man who took a captive in war gave him to the priest to be sacrificed, and he might not eat of the flesh, "since the victim was in a sense his son," that is, took the place of his son as a vicarious sacrifice for himself. They also sacrificed their own infants.[1958] Child sacrifice expresses the deepest horror and suffering produced by experience of the human lot. Men must do it. Their interests demanded it, however much it might pain them. Human sacrifices may be said to have been universal. They lasted down to the half-civilized stage of all nations and sporadically even later,[1959] and they have barely ceased amongst the present half-civilized peoples.[1960] They are not primarily religious. They are a reaction of men under the experience of the ills of life, inventing a world philosophy and putting agents behind it, in order to have something, if it be only a delusion, to which hope of escape can attach. Human sacrifices are based on an inference or deduction. There is behind them an assumption as to the character and logic of the superior powers who rule the aleatory interest. It is not until skepticism arises as to this assumption that the usage can be given up.

+607. Beast sacrifice substituted for human sacrifice.+ In the case of Abraham and Isaac, the former was "tried" by God, apparently meaning that he underwent some doubt whether he ought not to sacrifice his son as other west Semites did theirs, and whether a beast would not suffice (Gen. xxii. 7). For his descendants the legend fixed the usage and doctrine (verse 13), different from that of the other west Semites, that a beast was a due substitute. The Chaldees followed the same reasoning.[1961] According to the mythology of the Egyptians there was a great destruction of men in the reign of the god Ra, but when he mounted to the sky he replaced the sacrifice of men by that of beasts.[1962] In the tragedy of Iphigenia, Iphigenia is not slain. Artemis snatches her away and puts a hind in her place. Robertson Smith[1963] thinks that the notion of the ancients that the sacrifice of human beings was anterior to that of beasts, and that the latter were substitutes, was a "false inference from traditional forms of ritual that had ceased to be understood." At Hierapolis sacrificed children were called oxen.[1964] All the Baals demanded human sacrifices.[1965] In every case in which the mores had overcome the terror which made human sacrifices, the mythology invented explanations. It was forbidden to the Jews to make their children "pass through the fire" to Molech.[1966] They often did it. This shows that their mores had not yet outgrown it, but that religious teachers were trying to forbid it.[1967] They held the same doctrine as the neighboring nations, that the firstborn belonged to God.[1968] The firstborn must be sacrificed or redeemed.[1969] They had doctrines of ransom by beasts, as above, or by money,[1970] or by circumcision, if the incoherent text is rightly interpreted.[1971] Nevertheless, they never were sure enough of their position before the captivity to hold to it against the faith and usage of neighboring nations.[1972] The doctrine in Micah vi. 6-8, as early as the end of the eighth century B.C., raised the real issue about the sense and utility of all sacrifices in its widest form, but that doctrine was much too far beyond the mores of the time to have any effect.

+608. Mexican doctrine of greater power through death.+ Preuss says: "In the ancient Mexican cultus I recognized, to my astonishment, that really spirits were killed in the sacrificed men, in order that they [the spirits] might thus be rendered capable of being born again, and rendering greater services to men."[1973] Death was believed to enhance the power of the spirits who ruled meteorological phenomena. The notion was that insects caused meteorological phenomena; then they were gods; the insects and beasts gave to the gods the magic power which they (insects and beasts) once had over rainfall, etc. The humming bird which hibernates and wakes again in spring was thought to cause the heat of summer. Therefore it was taken to be an envelope of the war god. Free flow of blood lets loose magic power. Hence the great bloodshedding in the Mexican cultus. "Human sacrifice is in Mexico the same in sense as beast sacrifice. In both cases, magic powers, magic beasts and spirits, are killed." By death new birth with greater magic power becomes possible.[1974]

+609. Motives of child sacrifice.+ The Semites adopted the world philosophy which lies back of human sacrifice and incorporated it with their religion, which thereby became gloomy and ferocious. What a man must sacrifice was what he loved most, and that was his firstborn child. It was rationalizing to argue that a beast could be substituted with equal effect, and we often find that people who had advanced to that point of philosophy, when face to face with a great calamity showed that they did not believe that the effect was equal. They went back to child sacrifice.[1975] The Hebrews in the seventh century thought that they felt the wrath of God and they tried to avert it in this way.[1976] Tiele thinks that there is no evidence of child sacrifice or of the temple consecration of women in the Euphrates valley in historical times, but in Syria and Arabia child sacrifice lasted on in spite of the culture of the Aramaeans and Phoenicians. In old Arabia fathers burned their little daughters as sacrifices to the goddess.[1977] Human sacrifices were used for auguries before any important enterprise, and as thank offerings for victory or success. Every year a number of children of the foremost families were sacrificed as an expiation for the sins of the nation, "while fiendish music drowned their cries and the lamentations of their mothers."[1978] The Carthaginians kept up the custom. The leading families were bound to furnish the sacrifice as representatives of the commonwealth. The children to be sacrificed were selected by lot from those who were liable. Children were exchanged in order to be saved. The parents might not lament, for to do so would deprive the sacrifice of its efficacy.[1979] The custom was an abomination to the Romans, but it was so firmly fixed in the mores of the Carthaginians that the conquerors could not stop it. The proconsul Tiberius put an end to it by hanging the priests of the cult to the trees of their own temple grove.[1980] As Tertullian says that soldiers who executed this order were still living when he wrote, the order of Tiberius must have been issued about the middle of the second century A.D. or a little later.

+610. Dedication by vows.+ The connection between child sacrifice and the temple consecration of girls is in the substitution of the latter for the former, as a ransom. The girl devoted to death belonged to the goddess in one way, if not in the other. Vows made in illness sometimes included such substitution. In the historic period, after child sacrifice had ceased in the Euphrates valley, many variations occurred. Barren women made vows. Children were vowed to the goddess for life or for a time. They were redeemed by money which they earned in the temple life. The accumulation of a dowry was only a variation.[1981] In later times (second century A.D.) we find the sacrifice of a woman's hair as a substitute for herself.[1982] Men were also dedicated in sex perversion.

+611. Degeneration of the customs of consecrating women.+ Evidently vicarious sacrifice and expiatory sacrifice are very ancient heathen ideas. They contain deductions and assumptions about the nature of the deity which are of the first theological importance. The cases of custom which have been described also show the power and persistency of theological dogma to override for centuries the strongest interests and sentiments. Evidently the variations in the custom marked the breaking down of the boundaries which held it firm in the religious mores. The Babylonian custom described by Herodotus seems to be a variation by which every woman was held bound to the goddess. Then sensuality, priestcraft, greed, and frivolity easily used such a custom until it became a root of corruption. This is what happened, and forms of the custom which had no sense but the gratification of licentiousness spread around the Mediterranean. The old female sex mores were very simple and austere, but they were corrupted after the middle of the second century B.C. Those of Roman Carthage, if we can trust Salvianus, became more corrupt than those of Punic Carthage ever had been. They were less ferocious and more frankly voluptuous. Salvianus's description of southern Gaul makes it as bad as Africa. According to him the Vandals were pure-minded, and their mores were so pure and firm that they successfully resisted the Roman corruption and put the sex relation back again on the basis of the "law of God."[1983]

+612. Our traditions from Israel.+ If now we turn back to the Israelites we can see the stream by which our own mores have come down to us. There arose amongst the Israelites, in the tenth century B.C., an opposition to the religion which was common to the west Semites. It was like the reform of the Iranian religion by the magi, who produced a religion which was too severe and exacting for any but priests to live by it. There have also been many attempts to reform Islam from within. They have taken the form of throwing off later additions and returning to primitive purity, that is, to the mode of life of Arabs in Mohammed's time. In some cases (e.g. the Wahabees of the nineteenth century) the reforms have originated with people who were on a lower grade of life than the mass of Moslems. Present-day scholars find the origin of the resistance of Israelitish prophets to the prevailing religion of western Asia in the hostility of a rustic population, with a primitive mode of life and archaic mores, to the luxury of Tyre and Sidon, wealthy cities of commerce and industry.[1984] The conflict was between two sets of mores. The biblical scholars now tell us that Jahveh was a Baal amongst other Palestinian Baals until this antagonism arose. Then he was made the god in whose name the ancient mores of Israel were defended against the introduction of luxury and licentiousness. The antagonism was between simple, rustic, largely pastoral modes of life and the ways of cities with wealth, culture, and luxury. This is a permanent social antagonism, but it carried with it the antagonism of simplicity to sensuality, materialism, formal manners, and luxury. For four or five centuries a succession of "prophets" developed the antagonism between the Jahveh religion and heathenism. They maintained that Jahveh was not only the single god of the Hebrews but the sole God of all the earth. Other gods were nullities. The prophets condemned idolatry, and all sensuality, licentiousness, and bestiality, with which they connected all sorcery and divination. They insisted on a broad and firm sex taboo and denounced sacral harlotry and child sacrifice together. It must be remembered that the peoples of that age generally regarded sex usages which seem to us the most abominable as trivial, unworthy of notice, matters of personal liberty and choice. Brahmins, a century ago, held that view of pederasty.[1985] The prophets also set in opposition to their own traditional ritual religion a doctrine of righteousness, by which religion was made ethical. It was a marvelous product for an insignificant hill people. It is, however, to be noticed that in the Zend-Avesta there was also a great revolt against sex vice.[1986]

+613. How the Jewish view of sensuality came to prevail.+ The religious system of the Jewish prophets never has become the actual popular religion of any people. The Old Testament contains the story of the protests and failures of the prophets. Their work did not issue from the mores of the Jewish nation, and did not influence the mores before the captivity. The prophets were trying to introduce a new world philosophy by virtue of its ethical value and by interpretations of current political history. In Jer. xliv we see the latter argument turned against the prophet. The people cite their own experience. When they served the Queen of Heaven they fared well. In the rabbinical period the Jews emphasized everything which could differentiate them from heathen, and in the New Testament we find that idolatry and sensuality are presented as the two great heathen characteristics which Christians are to avoid. It is impossible for us to know to what extent the mores of the masses, in the western Roman empire, were marked by the ancient Roman austerity in the sex mores. It is, however, reasonable to believe that the ancient mores prevailed most in the class amongst whom Christian converts were found. Salvianus also gives to the German nations very remarkable testimony as to their freedom from sensuality and sex vice. The experience of societies also went to prove that such vice can corrupt the finest brain and the most cultivated character; also that, if it becomes current in a society, as pederasty and prostitution did in the Greco-Roman world, it will eat out all manly virtues, all cooperative devotion, the love of children, the energy of invention and production, of an entire population. Thus by the syncretism of the mores of the nations, and by experience, the conviction was produced that the view of sensuality and sex vice which the Jewish prophets taught was true, and that that view was the most important part of the mores and of religion for the welfare of mankind.

[1885] Snouck-Hurgronje, De Atjehers, I, 64-66; Bur. Eth., XVIII, 285; Amer. Anthrop., XI, 56; Codrington, Melanesians, 102, 299; Serpa Pinto, Como eu Atravassei Africa, I, 82; Kubary, Karolinenarchipel., 47, 226, 244; Powers, _Calif. Indians_, 24.

[1886] Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 141.

[1887] Barton, Semitic Origins, 78.

[1888] Wellsted, Arabia, II, 12.

[1889] Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., 1890, XII, 383.

[1890] Herodotus, I, 193.

[1891] Wilken, Volkenkunde, 550.

[1892] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 576, 589.

[1893] Amer. Jo. Semit. Lang. and Lit., XV, 201.

[1894] Archiv f. Anthrop., XXIX, 156.

[1895] Archiv f. Anthrop., XXIX, 150.

[1896] Ibid., 183.

[1897] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 447.

[1898] Lucian, De Syria Dea, 6.

[1899] Herodotus, I, 93, 181, 199.

[1900] Globus, LXXXVI, 360.

[1901] Maurer, Voelkerkunde, Bibel, und Christenthum, 95.

[1902] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 56-59.

[1903] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 50, 126.

[1904] Archiv f. Religionsgesch., VII, 88.

[1905] Priester und Tempel im Hellen. Aeg., I, 316.

[1906] Valer., Max., II, 6, 15.

[1907] Lucian, De Syria Dea, 6; Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 229.

[1908] De Civit. Dei, II, 4.

[1909] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 56.

[1910] Ibid.

[1911] Strabo, XI, 14, 16.

[1912] Num. xxiii. 28; xxv. 1; Josh. xxii. 17.

[1913] Die Lustseuche im Alterthum, 77.

[1914] 1 Kings xv. 12.

[1915] 1 Kings xiv. 24.

[1916] 1 Kings xxii. 46; 2 Kings xxiii. 7.

[1917] Deut. xxiii. 18.

[1918] Cults of the Greek States, 635.

[1919] Athenaeus; XII, 11.

[1920] Cults of the Greek States, 641.

[1921] II, 3, 20.

[1922] Globus, LXXV, 286.

[1923] Scripta Hist. Islandorum, II, 67.

[1924] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, I, 123; II, 676.

[1925] Archiv f. Anthrop., XXIX, 138, 150.

[1926] Oliveira Martins, As Racas Humanas, II, 181.

[1927] Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, 145.

[1928] Laws, I, 5.

[1929] Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 181-183.

[1930] Dubois, Moeurs de l'Inde, I, 434-439; 478-480; II, 353, 366, 370, 377.

[1931] Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, 94, 216, 290; Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 451.

[1932] Wilkins, 242.

[1933] Jo. Roy. As. Soc., 1841, 239; Wilkins, 286.

[1934] Wilkins, 235.

[1935] Ibid., 317.

[1936] Ibid., 216.

[1937] Monier-Williams, 185, 190.

[1938] JASB, I, 477; III, 200; JAI, XXVI, 341; Monier-Williams, 87; Hopkins, Relig. of India, 491.

[1939] Hopkins, Relig. of India, 456; JASB, I, 477, 492; III, 201.

[1940] JASB, II, 322, 349; cf. JASB, I, 502.

[1941] Monier-Williams, 254.

[1942] Nivedita, Web of Indian Life, 212.

[1943] Nivedita, 212.

[1944] Monier-Williams, 78, 183, 224.

[1945] Dubois, I, 439.

[1946] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, II, 336; III, 377.

[1947] Ibid., II, 676.

[1948] Archiv f. Anthrop., XXIX, 153, 158, 164.

[1949] Ibid., 173.

[1950] Petri, Anthropology (russ.), 435.

[1951] Archiv f. Anthrop., XXIX, 169.

[1952] Globus, LXXXVII, 130.

[1953] Oliphant, China and Japan, II, 494.

[1954] Vererbung und Auslese, 200.

[1955] Tiele-Gehrich, Relig. in Alterthume, I, 169.

[1956] Herod., I, 199; Hosea iv. 14; W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 454.

[1957] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 141.

[1958] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, II, 305, 308-309.

[1959] Schrader, Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryans, 422.

[1960] Hopkins, Relig. of India, 363, 450.

[1961] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 680.

[1962] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 123.

[1963] Relig. of the Semites, 365.

[1964] Ibid., 366, 375.

[1965] Cf. Deut. xviii. 10; 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6.

[1966] Levit. xviii. 21; Deut. xviii. 10. Molech is a false word. It has the consonants of the word for "king" and the vowels of the word for "shameful thing" (W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 67).

[1967] 2 Kings xvi. 3; xvii. 7; xxi. 6; xxiii. 10.

[1968] Ex. xxii. 29.

[1969] Ex. xxxiv. 20.

[1970] Num. xviii. 15.

[1971] Ex. iv. 24.

[1972] Jer. xxxii. 35; Ezek. xx. 26, 31. According to 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, Ahaz offered his son in the stress of war (Hastings, Dict. of the Bible, Relig. of Israel).

[1973] Globus, LXXXVI, 321.

[1974] Globus, LXXXVI, 117-119.

[1975] Possibly 2 Kings iii. 27; 2 Chron. xxviii. 3; Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 167.

[1976] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 465.

[1977] Ibid., 370.

[1978] Tiele-Gehrich, Relig. im Alterthum, I, 212, 240; Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 680; Sanchuniathon apud Euseb., Prep. Evang., I, 10.

[1979] Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 229.

[1980] Tertullian, Apol., 9.

[1981] Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 222.

[1982] Lucian, De Syria Dea, 6.

[1983] De Gubernat. Dei, VII, 72-77; cf. VII, 15-16, 27, 86, 97-100.

[1984] Barton, Semitic Origins, 300.

[1985] Dubois, Moeurs de l'Inde, 439.

[1986] Darmstetter, Zend-Avesta, I, 100, 102.

XVII. POPULAR SPORTS, EXHIBITIONS, AND DRAMA

Limits of the study, Introduction.--Literature and drama in ethology.--Public amusements of the uncivilized; reversion to archaic, "natural" ways.--Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented.--Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.--Origin of the Athenian drama.--Drama and worship; customs derived from the mysteries.--The word "God."--Kinship yields to religion as social tie.--Religion and drama; syncretism.--Beginnings of the theater at Rome.-- Gladiatorial exhibitions.--Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.-- The folk drama.--The popular taste; realism; conventionality; satire.--Popular exhibitions.--Ancient popular festivals.--The mimus.--Modern analogies.--Biologs and ethologs.--Dickens as a biolog.--Early Jewish plays.--The Roman mimus.--The Suffering Christ; Pseudo-querolus.--The mimus and Christianity.--Popular phantasms.--Effects of vicious amusements.--Gladiatorial games.--Compromise between the church and popular customs.--The cantica.--Passion for the games.-- German sports.--The mimus from the third to the eighth century.--The drama in the Orient.--Marionettes.--The drama in India.--Punch in the West.--Resistance of the church to the drama.--Hrotsvitha.--The jongleurs; processions.--Adam de la Halle.--The flagellants.--Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions.--Protest against misuse of churches.--Toleration of jests by the ecclesiastics.--Fictitious literature.-- Romances of roguery.--Picaresque novels.--Books of beggars.-- At the beginning of the sixteenth century.--The theater at Venice.--Dancing; public sports.--Women in the theater and on the stage.--The commedia del arte.--Jest books; Italian comedy at Paris.--Commedia del arte in Italy.--Summary and review.--Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will.--Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress.

+Limits.+ The cases of public amusement and entertainment which shall here be mentioned are such as were within the limits of usage and accepted propriety at the time. They are not cases of vice or of disputed propriety at the time. Drunkenness, gambling, bull baiting, cockfighting, and prize fighting are amusements which have entered into the mores of groups and subgroups, as bullfighting still does in Spain, but they were limited to classes or groups, or they were important on account of the excess, or they were disapproved by great numbers or by the ecclesiastical authorities. They would, therefore, lie outside the mores, to which the cases to be noticed belonged. The theater in England in Charles II's time testified to a depraved taste and a low standard of morals, but it was temporary and indeed limited in time. In different groups also the moral standards are unequal at the same time, and the mores are on different levels. There is a wider limit now for romances and dramas in France than in English-speaking countries. The cases which now interest us are those of long and wide currency, which the mores have firmly established according to current standards, even though moralists may have inveighed against them sometimes, as the same class now sometimes denounces all dancing.

The cases here to be noticed are further illustrations of the fact that the mores can make anything right, and can protect anything from condemnation, in addition to those in the last two chapters.

+614. Literature and drama in ethology.+ Poetry, drama, and literary fiction are useful to ethology in one or the other of two ways: (1) they reveal facts of the mores; (2) they show the longings and ideals of the group,--in short, what the people like and wish for. The second division includes mythology, fairy tales, and extravaganzas. The taste for them, if it exists, is a feature of the mores, but in fact such a taste is hardly ever popular. It is a product of culture. Myths, legends, proverbs, fables, riddles, etc., are popular products.

+615. Public amusements of the uncivilized. Reversion to archaic, "natural" ways.+ We find in savage life, almost universally unless the group has been crushed by conquest or misfortune, festivals, games, dances, and orgies, which are often celebrated with masks and dramatic action. The motives are fidelity to the traditions of ancestors, entertainment, sex excitement, war enthusiasm, and occult influence in aid of the food quest. The dramatic representation of sex attraction and of the ways of animals is often intensely graphic, and it gives great pleasure to the spectators. An occult effect, to bring about what is desired in war or the chase by enacting it in a dance or play, involves demonism, the existing form of religion. Therefore religion, dramatic dances, music, songs, emotional suggestion, and sex stimulation are intertwined from low barbarism or savagery. Experience of the perils and pains of sexual excess and overpopulation force the development of folkways of restraint, which are customary and conventional regulations of primary natural impulses. At the recurring points of time at which the festivals are held there is often a reversion from the moral status created by the later mores to the ancient "natural" ways, because the later ways are a reflection on the ancestors who were "uncultivated." Their ghosts will be displeased at the new ways and will inflict ill fortune on the group. The festival is not a time at which to emphasize the novelty, but to set it aside and revert to old ways. How far back shall the reversion go? What is "natural"? As no one ever has known from what depths of beastliness, rendered more acute by some intelligence, man came, no one has ever known what "nature" would be. Men reverted actually to some ancient custom of their ancestors beyond which they knew nothing, and which therefore to them seemed primitive and original. The festivals were always outside of the routine of regular life. We, for a holiday frolic, relax, for ourselves and our children, the discipline of ordinary life; for instance, on the Fourth of July. In the theater we make allowances for what we would not tolerate in the street or parlor. That a thing is in jest is, and always has been, an excuse for what is a little beyond the limit otherwise observed. It was a favorite Arab jest to fasten the train of a woman's dress, while she was sitting, to the waist of it, so that when she arose her dress would be disordered.[1987] She must learn to guard herself.

+616. Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented.+ In the mythical period of Chaldea the worship of the Great Mother Ishtar (the patroness of sex attraction, but a goddess whose love was a calamity to all her husbands,[1988] perhaps a mythical representation of the perils and pains of sex) was a setting loose of sex passion from the later societal ("moral") regulations, in favor of the original passionate impulse of sex and reproduction. The festival was, therefore, a period of license. The seat of the licentious rites, and of sacral prostitution, was Uruk, the city of the dead (i.e. of ancestors), where men liked to be buried (in order to join their ancestors).[1989] The Tammuz (Adonis) worship was connected with the worship of Ishtar, the relation between the god and the goddess being different in different myths. The Tammuz worship was a dramatic enactment of the death and resurrection of the god (connected with the decay and renewal of the world of vegetation), with corresponding lamentations and rejoicings of the worshipers.[1990] In Mexico we find a parallel pantomime of the nature process at a religious harvest festival, the pantomime being used for occult magic, in order to get good crops in the next season. Obscene figures and rites were used. There is a maize goddess who is the "Mother of the Gods." The union of the sun god with the earth gives fertility, so that the food supply is at stake in these rites and notions.[1991] This most absorbing interest of mankind drove men's minds along the same lines of world philosophy. The "Mother of the Gods," by her sex activity, brought about growth on earth and became goddess of lewdness and filth, just as the German Corn-mother became a harlot. So the goddess by whose activity the earth bears flowers was honored at a festival at which boys and girls nine or ten years old became senselessly drunk and perpetrated sex vice. This was at a religious festival.[1992] Here then we find reversion to more primitive sex mores, and dramatic representation of a myth, conjoined in religion, on the very threshold of the higher civilization. The reversion to primitive sex mores to satisfy notions of duty to religion and ancestors comes to us as an incomprehensible violation of "primary instincts," which we have inferred from ideas that we can trace back beyond any known origin, which we suppose to be universally accepted, and which seem to us axiomatic as to social welfare. The only way to understand the case is to take the standpoint of the mores of that time. The mores contained the answer to the questions: How far back shall we go? What shall be the degree of license at the festival? At the limit fixed by custom the mores extend their sanction over the function and make it "right." Another source of barbaric festivals may be noticed. Men won victories over the elements and over beasts before they won victories over each other. This is true of remote antiquity and of primitive society. It is also true of the Middle Ages. The destruction of great beasts, demons, and other monsters led to dramatic and religious festivals. Magnin[1993] thinks that he could make a cycle of beasts, of which Reineke Fuchs would be the last link, anterior to the cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne.

+617. Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.+ Therefore: What shall be the limit of toleration in theatrical and other exhibitions with respect to dress, language, gesture, etc., in order to define propriety, is altogether a matter of the mores. It is not conceivable that the Lysistrata of Aristophanes could be presented on any public stage in Christendom. The whole play is beyond the toleration of modern mores. We meet with jugglers in Homer,[1994] also mountebanks and tumblers.[1995] The kubisteteres spun around on the perpendicular axis of the body, and are compared to the wheel of the potter. Then they pitched down head-foremost, like plungers or tumblers turning somersaults. Some archaeologs have thought that the play of these persons had some analogy with that of the cubic stones which were so prominent in the cult of the Phrygian Cybele. If that analogy is accepted, then the pyramidal dance must be regarded as originally hieratic and consecrated to Cybele. That dance was at first aristocratic, but speedily became popular and descended to the mountebanks.[1996]

+618. Origin of Athenian drama.+ The theater originated in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve. Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious doctrines, in order to get the powerful effects in suggestion which dramatic action exerts. Many myths presented acts such as later mores could not tolerate. Allowance had to be made for the representations, as we now make allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism, even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and ignorant. They were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation, except some ritual acts. There was no solemnity in the surroundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid."[1997] The Athenian drama, in the fifth century B.C., went through an amazing development and reached high perfection. The art of the theater was especially cultivated. As to the effect of the dramas on the character of the spectators, it is to be noticed that they were presented only once in the year, at the greater festival of Dionysus in the spring, and that then a large number of plays were represented. The spectators, at Athens, were a very mixed assemblage and included the populace, "who remained populace in spite of any beautiful verses which they might chance to hear." They cared only to be amused, "just like modern audiences."[1998]

+619. Dramatic taste and usage in worship. Customs derived from the mysteries.+ About the time of Christ, by syncretism all the religions took on a dramatic form in their ritual, with liturgies and responses, on account of the attractiveness of that form for worshipers. The Christian year was built up as a drama of the life of Christ. The ceremony of the mass was produced by an application of modes of worship which, so far as we can learn, were devised and used in the mysteries. "There is unmistakable evidence that a marriage ceremony of a religious nature existed, and that this ceremony stood in close relation to a part of the ritual of the mysteries. In fact, the marriage was, as it were, a reproduction by the bride and bridegroom of a scene from the divine life, i.e. from the mystic drama. The formula, 'I escaped evil: I found better,' was repeated by the celebrant who was initiated in the Phrygian mysteries; and the same formula was pronounced as part of the Athenian marriage ceremony. Another formula, 'I have drunk from the kymbalon,' was pronounced by the initiated; and drinking from the same cup has been proved to have formed part of a ceremony performed in the temple by the betrothed pair." "It is an extremely important fact that the human marriage ceremony was thus celebrated by forms taken from the mysteries; and the conclusion must be that the human pair repeat the action in the way in which the god and goddess first performed and consecrated it, and that, in fact, they play the parts of the god and goddess in the sacred drama. This single example is, as we may be sure, typical of a whole series of actions."[1999]

+620. The word "god."+ "That man when he dies becomes a god was considered already in the fourth century B.C. to be part of the teaching conveyed in the mysteries."[2000] This meant no more than the earlier notion that when a man died he became a ghost. The word "god" was used in senses very strange to our ears,[2001] and to quote an expression of any writer of the beginning of the Christian era in which he uses the word "god," and to give to that word our sense of it, is to be led into great error. The age was one which put all its religion in dramatic form and acted it out. It was an age with a gift for manufacturing rites and liturgies.

+621. Kin yields to religion as social tie.+ This was due to a great ethnological change which was then coming to its culmination. The kin tie, which had been the primitive mode of association and coherence of groups, began to break down in the sixth century B.C. in Greece. It was superseded by the social tie of a common religious faith and ritual. The Pythagorean and Orphic sects developed this tie. They had a revelation of the other world, a system of mystic and cathartic rites, which cleared men of ritual uncleanness, purified them, and "saved" them. The cathartic rites were a means of warding off evil spirits and did the work of the old shamans.[2002] The sectarian brotherhood of the initiated, the "church," the faith, the contrast of ordinary life with the ecstatic emotions of the mysteries, the consequent antagonism of the "flesh" or the "world," and the "spirit," were easy deductions from the teaching and ritual of the sects.[2003] It was all concentrated in the godlikeness, divinity, or immortality of the human soul, with the mystic notions of union between the soul and God. "Mysticism, as doctrine and theory, grew up from the soil of a more ancient practice in worship." "The worship of Dionysus must have furnished the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."[2004] The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was demonism, superstitious anxiety about the world of demons, who floated around men and stretched their hands out of the surrounding darkness to seize them. It was from these that men wanted to be "saved." Atonement was to be made to the chthonic gods, for they were displeased at ritual uncleanness, and the chthonic cults had the other world in view.[2005] The uncleanness was ritual, and hence it came from anything far out of the regular order, either by abomination or holiness. The rabbis held that the handling of the Scriptures defiled the hands and called for ceremonial washing (Num. xix. 8, 10).[2006]

+622. Combination of religion and drama. Syncretism.+ The interest of all this for our present purpose is the combination of religious ideas with dramatic representation. Processions of all kinds easily turn into such representations. Rites and ceremonies are but a form of drama. Symbols and emblems have the same character. The old religions were subjected to criticism, which means that they had lost their authority. They did not verify when the attempt was made to use them for societal needs. Slaves, merchants, soldiers, etc., afloat in the world, associated from choice and contributed traditions from the whole known world. Then syncretism began, and a body of sectarian notions was formed. There was a new totemism, a breaking down of national religion, a spirit of propaganda, and a setting forth of the whole in all dramatic forms.[2007] In the sects women were admitted, a fact of double significance. It was an emancipation for the women and a peril for the sect. The doubt with which the mysteries are now regarded is due to the uncertainty as to the relations of the sexes in them. The word "orgy" originally meant worship, or rites, then secret rites, that is, mysteries. The sense in which the word has come down to us shows the notion about secret meetings which became commonly accepted.

The customs which had grown out of religious interest had reached the desire for entertainment and pleasure. They satisfied it and stimulated it, and the religious element might be forgotten.

+623. Beginnings of the theater at Rome.+ The Floralia were instituted at Rome in 240 B.C. They were celebrated by courtesans with processions, lascivious pantomimes, etc. They are said to have come from Greece.[2008] In the same year Livius Andronicus presented at Rome the first play translated from the Greek. In 154 the first permanent theater was established there against great opposition. In 146 the first theater outside the circus, with seats, was provided.[2009] All mimic actions were foreign to the austere mores of the early Romans, but in the second century B.C. the mores changed through the growth of wealth and contact with other nations. Young Romans learned from actors to sing and dance, acts which their ancestors thought unworthy of free persons. The earliest plays were called saturae, because they were mixed dialogues, music, and dances. The sense of the word was closely that of "farce" in the Middle Ages,[2010] i.e. an episode or intermezzo of a comic character interjected into a drama. The saturae contained an Etruscan element, but atellans were entirely Etruscan. They were comic and grotesque, and got their name from Atella (i.e. Aversa or Santo Arpino) in Campania. They could be played by persons who did not on that account lose their places in their tribes or their right to serve in the legion. No personalities at all were allowed on the Roman stage. Cynicism and obscenity characterized the Oscan style.[2011] In 55 B.C. the younger Cato was present at the Floralia. The populace hesitated to call, in his presence, for the stripping of the mimae. He left in order not to hinder the celebration from taking its usual course.[2012] Valerius Maximus[2013] says that the pantomime was brought to Rome from Etruria, the Etruscans having brought it from their old home in Lydia. We see from the epigrams in the first book of Martial that at the Roman theater in the first century of the Christian era incidents of the Roman mythology were made into dramas and represented in pantomime.

+624. Gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The gladiatorial exhibitions are supposed to have been of Etruscan origin in the form of funeral games. Games to rejoice the ghosts, sacrifices of prisoners, a chance given to a prisoner to fight for his life, are steps of a development of which we find many examples. The Romans showed the pitilessness and inhumanity of their mores in the development they gave to the gladiatorial exhibitions. "Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the Second Punic War. It was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness."[2014] Some murmurs of dissent arose from the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era,--Plutarch, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,[2015]--but at that time the popular sentiment had not faltered at all in its love and zeal for the gladiatorial shows and beast contests on account of any doubt whether the exhibitions were "right." Tertullian, at the end of the second century, wrote a tract, Ad Nationes, in which he criticised the theater, and also another, De Spectaculis, against the public entertainments. Although the latter is chiefly controversial against heathen and heathenism, it contains direct and noble arguments against the games of the arena on account of their inhumanity. He says that the games were at first connected with funerals, and that the theater was a temple of Venus, under cover of which the games won a footing. That would mean, then, that they were at first under a convention of time, place, occasion, and religion. Correctly understood, therefore, what happened at Rome was that the convention was broken over and the exceptional rite was made the everyday usage, the religious sentiment being disregarded and the sensual entertainment alone being valued. When we have reached this point we can understand the original place of the games within the intellectual horizon of the nation, and also the deep demoralization which they caused in later times. They were consonant with early Roman mores which were warlike. Cicero thought them an excellent school to teach contempt for pain and death. He cited gladiators as examples of bodily exercise, courage, and discipline. He seems to have known that some disapproved of the exhibitions, and he was disposed to agree with them if the gladiators were others than criminals condemned to death.[2016] A usage which is consonant with the tastes, mores, and world philosophy of a people need work no corruption on them, for it is under taboos and conventions; but if all the restraints are taken away it enters into their life for just what it is in its character,--sensual, cruel, bloody, obscene, etc. What had been savage and bloodthirsty when the Romans were warriors became base and cowardly when they never risked their own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take roles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, in order to entertain the Roman crowd. Such roles were Prometheus, Daedalus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Attys; Pasiphae and the bull, and Leda and the swan were also enacted. In Martial's Epigrams, Book I, the cases are mentioned where a woman fought with a lion; Laureolus, a robber, was crucified and torn, as he hung on the cross, by a bear; Daedalus, when his wing broke, was precipitated amongst bears who tore him to pieces; and Orpheus was torn by a bear. These exhibitions were recognized as indecencies.[2017] Later the exhibitions had no limit.[2018] "From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Roman character became more and more indurated under the influence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendor."[2019] "It is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the stately buildings within whose enclosure for centuries the populace were regaled with the sufferings and the blood of the noblest creatures of the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers and lions to these scenes."[2020]

+625. Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The Romans carried gladiatorial exhibitions wherever their conquests extended. "The Teutonic regions of the North and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate traveling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows. Plutarch urges public men to banish or to restrain these exhibitions in their cities. When the Athenians, from an ambition to rival the splendor of Corinth, were meditating the establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first to overturn their altar of Pity. The apostles of Hellenism,--Dion, Plutarch, and Lucian,--were unanimous in condemning an institution which sacrificed the bravest men to the brutal passions of the mob."[2021] At Byzantium the lack of any standard of decency and propriety in the exhibitions was even more complete, and they lasted indefinitely.[2022] Constantine in 325 A.D. absolutely forbade gladiatorial exhibitions, because bloody shows were unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators. His laws, however, failed of effect.[2023] At the end of the fourth century Symmachus, "who was regarded as one of the most estimable pagans of his age," collected some prisoners to fight in honor of his son. They committed suicide to escape the destiny for which he designed them. He lamented the misfortune which had befallen him from their "impious hands," but endeavored to calm his feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates and the precepts of philosophy. He will not, he says, use such people any more, but Libyan lions, more docile than men.[2024] He serves to point a moral on the mores of his age.

+626. The folk drama.+ The culture classes pass by the sports of the "vulgar" with contempt; but the student of the mores cannot do so. The tastes of the crowd are manifested in them. We read the great dramas which have become a part of the world literature, and we form from them our ideas of the current intellectual interest of the time of their origin and of the society in which they were produced. Such inferences need to be corrected. They are certainly erroneous. The Greeks were not all of them, nor any of them all the time, on a plane of classical severity and correctness. Far from it. They were realistic, egoistic, cold, cruel, and fond of sensual pleasure.[2025] The great dramas, epics, etc., were enjoyed only by the real upper strata of the society, just as is the case in regard to Shakespeare amongst us. The great populace of no society has ever found its amusement in purely intellectual suggestions. With us popular amusement is found in the circus, negro minstrels, the variety show, opera bouffe, the spectacle, and ballet, and it attaches to parody and burlesque, "knock-down business," buffoonery, and broad allusion. Stupidity is always funny. Everything which breaks over the social taboo is funny. A violation of propriety, accidental disorder of the dress, grotesque postures, vulgar gestures of derision or defiance, blows, painful accidents and mishaps,--if not too serious,--deformations of the body (humpbacks), epithets and nicknames, slang and other abuses of language (like mispronunciation by foreigners), vituperation, caricature and burlesque of respectable types like the pedant, dandy, Puritan, imbecile, or the rich and great, always raise a laugh in the crowd and are relished by the crowd. They are constant elements of farce and fun. They have been so for three thousand years. Jugglery and feats of strength and skill excite wonder until they become familiar. They are proofs of individual capacity. They do not give amusement like the points which have just been mentioned and which have been repeated to generation after generation. The crowd always delights in any degradation of the things which the selected classes prefer and try to impose on all. They rejoice to see the restrictions trampled upon which they hear preached as the rules of life. In opera bouffe classical heroes, gods of the classical mythology, royalty, nobles of the mediaeval type, feudalism, dominies, are turned to ridicule. The crowd worships its heroes fanatically while they are in fashion, but it likes to turn about and roll them in the mud of satire, in order to teach them who made them and how easily it can unmake them. Aristophanes derided all which was serious in the Athenian social system. Long before Don Quixote was written chivalry was treated with derision. Satire is a reversal of respect and admiration.

+627. The popular taste. Realism. Conventionality. Satire.+ That which is realistic and graphic appeals to the popular and uneducated taste, not that which is conventional, regulated, and refined according to rule and standard. That which is realistic reproduces all the facts of life. If the mirror is held up to nature it will show some nasty things. The social taboos began in superstitious fear, but they formed a series of conventional folkways under which some acts and facts of life were veiled from sight, knowledge, speech, and publicity. Other lesser conventions were grafted on these, and produced the great mass of usages within which our lives are passed. That which is artistic is the highest form of conventional refinement. Realism antagonizes and breaks through all these conventions and taboos, which are always a strain upon those who are not brought up in them from infancy. Therefore we hear demands for realism and naturalness from those who weary of the strain and do not want to submit to it. The conventionalities define respectability, and respectability has always been sneered at. In all comedy it is made ridiculous. The husband was possessed of conventional rights in which he was protected by society so that he had a secured and uneventful status. In comedy his rights have been violated and his security has been broken. The crowd has always enjoyed this. It rejoiced to see the wife deceive the husband, and the adulterer fool him. The latter represented freedom and cleverness at war with philistinism. On the other hand, all the taboos and conventions which have penetrated the masses and become familiar to them from infancy are fiercely defended by them (e.g. female dress and the taboo on man's dress for females). The popular magazines and the "great moral shows" religiously respect the standards of the crowd. That which is broad is funny, but there is always a limit of toleration. What is prudish, puritanical, fastidious, affected, pharisaical, etc.? These adjectives are in use, and they apply to things which are beyond a line which is undefined and indefinable. It depends on the codes and standards of the group. Realism presents everyday experience, no humbug, the world as it is. It must, therefore, be cynical and ruthless to all conventions. It shows the meanness of greatness, the other side of virtue, the weakness of heroes. No doubt it is great fun to pour scorn and ridicule on all who assume to be better than we are, and to look down on us. The easiest way to do it is to show up their weaknesses, follies, and sins. Here is another task for the satirists. Satire in comedy may be a gratification of envy. The role of Pierrot is dangerous to him who exercises it. In fact no man is fit for it. Where does any one get a charter to be censor of all the rest? He will certainly become proud, arrogant, self-seeking, and tyrannical. Each one satirizes follies which are not to his taste, or sins to which he is not tempted. Satire to be artistic and permanently effective must be marked by light and shade. It always exaggerates what it wants to impress on the attention, but to do this artistically it must subdue other elements. This is very difficult to accomplish when for popular effect it must use big brushes and glaring colors.

+628. Popular exhibitions.+ From the time of Homer we can trace popular exhibitions which accompanied the theatrical forms above described as an inferior class of the same species. The popular exhibitions were marked by the features which have been described (sec. 626), to which we may add bloodshed and cruel rites.

+629. Ancient popular festivals.+ The thargelia were ancient sanguinary festivals celebrated in Greece in honor of Apollo and Diana. Two men, or a man and a woman, were immolated in Attica, to expiate the sins of the people. "The circular dances of the Greeks around the victims, or later around the altar, can only be compared with the songs and furious dances of the Iroquois and Brazilians around their prisoners."[2026] At Athens also the kronia were festivals of Saturn. The notion that there was a period of original liberty and equality "at the beginning" was entertained at that time, and this festival was held to represent it. Also on Crete there were festivals of Mercury. In Thessaly the peloria were a festival, the name of which was derived from Pelor, the man that brought news that an earthquake had drained the valley of Tempe. The sacea were a festival at Babylon similar to the saturnalia. A slave in each house, including the palace of the king, ruled as a house sovereign for five days. The leading idea was to reverse or invert everything in ordinary life. The kordax was an ancient dance of the old comedy, with indecent gestures, in which the human figure was caricatured according to all the deformations which it underwent by vice or sensuality. All the effects of gluttony and Bacchic excess were caricatured in the figure of Silenus. The old woman fond of wine lost all modesty under the influence of wine.[2027] The leaders of the choruses, in a later time at Athens, offered reminders of primitive barbarism and of the immolation of human beings, and a representation of savage nudity, but they presented no image which was ridiculous or base. Tragedy had a long struggle to become separate from lyric forms, but AEschylus at last accomplished the separation. This was really the separation of the high literary drama from the popular mimus. After ten centuries of glory in Greece tragedy was lost again under the lyric form.[2028] The popular drama, however, lasted on until to-day, and it has never changed its characteristic elements.

+630. The mimus.+ The essence of the mimus is in pantomime as the name denotes. It imitates facts of life and behavior and is, therefore, essentially realistic. It may well be derived from the mimetic dances of nature peoples, in which beasts, warriors, and lovers are imitated, with jest and satirical exaggeration of characteristic traits. In the folk drama in its simplest forms nothing has ever been written. The actor, assumed a role and improvised all which he had to say in trying to act it out. His responsibility for the role was far greater than that of an actor in a culture drama. The actor, by repeating a role, produced a representation of it which was personal to himself and which he perfected. The most interesting and marked characters became fixed. A large number of them are now established in literature and have become known all over the world. The latest instance of such a type is, perhaps, Lord Dundreary. The word mimus appears in Greece in the fifth century B.C. The mimus was a picture of life or, more exactly, an unwritten parody of life. It was divided into grades and the actors into castes. Women had previously appeared as jugglers and mountebanks. They now appeared amongst the actors of the popular drama. This made the exhibitions questionable according to Greek standards. The exhibitions were given by wandering companies. While actors of the culture drama always wore masks, those of the mimus were the first to appear unmasked;[2029] later others imitated them. At the present day the theatrical exhibitions which may be seen on the outskirts of a fair in central Europe well represent the ancient mimus. The marionettes were an early offshoot of the mimus, and the modern Punch-and-Judy show is a descendant in part of both. For the mores the mimus and the marionette theater are a thousandfold more important than the great tragedies, but the former have left no mark on history. They never were written down; the actors are dead; their reputation is forgotten. The mores contain the effect as a fact but no explanation of it. From the time of Alexander the Great that which is common, popular, realistic prevailed in politics and literature. The heroic and ideal-poetic declined and was made an object of satire in the mimus. "The trivial, prosaic, and libertine taste of the Macedonian princes of Egypt and Syria at last reigned alone in enslaved Greece." Then, under different forms and names, nothing remained but mimes, realistic representation of common life.[2030] The Olympian gods and Homeric heroes were burlesqued for fun. The mimus won acceptance at courts and in higher circles. It was developed into the so-called "hypothesis" and won a place on the stage. The most distinguished maker of hypotheses was Philistion,[2031] who lived at the beginning of the Christian era. They became popular throughout the Greco-Roman world in the first centuries of the Christian era.[2032] The emperor Tiberius caused actors to be expelled from Italy as disturbers of the peace, and because the old Oscan farce, once amusement for the common people, had become indecent.[2033] Out of the common origin of all dramatic exhibitions (sec. 616) the mimus kept the corn demons, or growth demons, which always commanded the interest of husbandmen. The actors of this role wore masks in which the features of a low and sensual countenance were greatly exaggerated. An artificial phallus (sec. 473) was worn outside of the dress, and the entire region of the hips was enlarged so as to produce a conventional, extravagant, and stereotyped figure, like the modern clown, punch, or Mephisto, being, in fact, in some measure, their ancestor.[2034] Greek vases represent these figures. The same set of ideas and course of thought has been traced in Mexico in connection with crop interests and growth demons.[2035] There also the public rites at festivals passed by imperceptible steps into dramatic representations with dogmatic meaning or magical significance.

+631. Modern analogies.+ The end man of the negro minstrel troupe is a modern creation like the Greek phlyax, for he is a buffoon of the plantation-negro type, with every feature exaggerated to the utmost, so that he is unreal and a caricature; but the exaggerations direct attention to familiar facts and display characteristic features which are a cause of merriment. The rise, development, and decline of negro ministrelsy illustrate, within our observation, many features in the history of popular comedy. It originated in fun making by the imitation of a foreign group, whose peculiar ways appeared to be ridiculous antics. Then the negro was used to burlesque and satirize the weaknesses, follies, and affectations of whites. The negro plantation hand is a type which is disappearing and interest in him is declining. He is no longer available for direct study or derived satire.

+632. Biologs and ethologs.+ The Greek phlyax (the play) passed to southern Italy in the fourth century B.C., whence it was transmitted to Rome and confused with the atellan. It became very popular, and lasted until the fifth century A.D.[2036] Reich divides the mimes into two classes: (1) biologs, i.e. those who represent individual types, e.g. an unfaithful wife, an imbecile husband, a fatuous nobleman, a physician, etc.; (2) ethologs, i.e. those who impersonate some feature in the mores of the time and satirize it, e.g. faith in miracles, fondness for drink or gambling, sycophancy to the rich, or "getting on in the world." This is a very important distinction and one which illuminates the connection between the drama and the mores. Socrates was an etholog, although not an actor. He spent sarcasm, irony, and humor on the ways of the Athenians of his time.[2037] Aristophanes was another, Rabelais was another, Erasmus was an inferior one. In his Colloquies and Praise of Folly he is more of a preacher, but his aim is to influence by graphic satirical description. In our day the comic papers attempt the task of the etholog. They try to satirize manners and men. A comic paper owned or subsidized by a political party is the sorriest representative of Pierrot that the world has yet seen. The biolog personates an individual type, like an aberration of human nature, which may be found anywhere and at any time. The etholog personates a specimen of a class which helps to characterize a period. Dandies exist at all times, but vary in detail. The fatuity and vanity of all dandies are features for the etholog; the follies of the dandy of a period belong to the biolog. Beau Brummel would be a model for a biolog. The etholog is apt to overlook his best subjects. He cannot himself escape from his own times enough to recognize them. He never satirizes the reigning features. The American etholog never satirizes democracy, or the politician, or the newspaper. The etholog wants a big party or a strong sentiment behind him. It is not until after skepticism about a ruling "way" has formed in the minds of a large section of the masses that the etholog makes himself the mouthpiece of it. We have no satire yet on militarism, or imperialism, or the Monroe doctrine. A protective tariff is a grand object for satire, but so long as the masses believe in it satire is powerless. The same is true of any folkway so long as it is not yet doubted. Satire is then blasphemy. While a way is prevalent there is pathos about it (sec. 178), as there is now amongst us about democracy, but there never can be satire, and pathos at the same time, in the same society, about the same thing. One might have believed that nothing need be sacred to the theaters of Paris, but a few years ago a play was written which set the French Revolution in a different light from the now consecrated commonplace in regard to it. It was found impossible to produce it. A marionette player and his wife made fun of Pere Duchesne on the boulevard during the Revolution. Both were guillotined.[2038] These facts limit very much the high moral function sometimes ascribed to satire. It never gets into action until the mischief is done. It never squelches a folly at its commencement. That function belongs to educated reason, but educated reason is not in the masses.

+633. Dickens as a biolog.+ Charles Dickens was a biolog. His novels contain very little evidence of the manners and customs of his time, and what they do contain is forced and untrue. He invented characters whose names have become common nouns and adjectives for individual types which are found in all societies at all times (Pecksniff, Micawber, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep, etc.), but which may, at a time, be especially common and produce fine specimens.

+634. Early Jewish plays.+ Ezekiel (an Alexandrian Jew, fl. c. 200 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the exodus from Egypt, with the same motive as the mystery plays,--the edification of the faithful. Herod Atticus ([Symbol: cross] c. 180 A.D.), having caused the death of his wife, Regilla, was not satisfied with the expiations in the usual funeral rites. He built, as a monument to her, a theater with a roof.[2039] Ezekiel's play on the exodus was presented in Herod's theater. Nicholas of Damascus (b. 74 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the story of Susanna.[2040]

+635. Roman mimus.+ The mimus, in the Greco-Roman empire, stereotyped its figures for a period, since of course they did not change suddenly or greatly. In the Roman mimus the recurring features were the pursuit of legacies, the impotency of men, the stupidity of the clown, blows and other physical violence. The fixed types were: old women as drunkards, sorceresses, go-betweens, peddlers, and panders; men as scholasticus (the pedant and learned imbecile), Ardalio (a character introduced by Philistion), the fatuous, fussy old man, and then the Christian, a type which was kept up for several centuries.[2041] These personages, remaining unchanged in character, were put in various assumed positions and conjunctures. The actors had to invent the dialogue and work out the situation. The characters have come down to us as Punch, Harlequin, Pantaloon, etc.[2042] Punch (=Pulcino, Pulcinella) is only a Neapolitan rendering of Maccus, a character in the atellans. "Maccus," in Etruscan, meant a little cock.[2043] Christian antiphonal singing, like the Greek mystery acts of Dionysus, helped to develop the drama.[2044] In the first centuries of the Christian era "obscenity dominated the theater." "It was no longer a school of patriotism, recalling the heroes of the early ages or criticising the misdoings of contemporaries. It was a scene of vice and corruption for actors and spectators. There was nothing represented but the adventures of deceived husbands, adulteries, intrigues of libertines, incidents in lupanars. The only characters represented were shameless women and effeminate men. The most shameful things were exhibited. Everything which ought to be respected was there degraded. Virtue was mocked and the gods were derided. The actor caused the taste for evil things to penetrate the mind of the spectator; he stimulated ignoble and criminal passions, and, familiar as he was with vice, he blushed sometimes at the shameful role which he was forced to play before the crowd."[2045]

+636. "The Suffering Christ." "Pseudo-Querolus."+ In the fourth century the Christians tried to use the theater for their purposes. The drama The Suffering Christ is attributed to Gregory of Nazianz. It represents the passion of Jesus as understood by the Nicene theologians. It consists of twelve hundred and seventy-three verses taken more or less exactly from the tragedies of Euripides and patched together. Lintilhac[2046] says it is now the accepted opinion that it cannot be of remoter origin than the eleventh century, so that the most noteworthy fact about it would be that it is a Greek liturgical play of even date with the earliest western plays of that class. In it the Virgin Mary is a pagan woman, who uses verses of Hecuba and Medea, and thinks of suicide.[2047] Another play of the fourth century, which is mentioned as important in the history of the drama, is the Pseudo-Querolus. It is an imitation of Plautus. Querolus is the forerunner of Moliere's Misanthrope and so a biolog,--a permanent type of person.[2048] Dramas representing martyrdom and other Christian incidents were presented with very great realism.[2049]

+637. The mimus and Christianity.+ The mimus opened war on Christianity. The religion was unpopular and hated. It set itself against the mores of the society at the time. It was scoffed at just as Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists have been scoffed at since and for the same reasons. It shared the unpopularity of the Jews, who came before the heathen world claiming the isolation of superiority, exclusive favor of God, ascendancy by rights over all the world. To the pagans the Christians seemed to make a great fuss about nothing. The mimus seized the popular sentiment and gave it expression. The Christian became the clown and simpleton. Christian rites were parodied and ridiculed. Martyrdoms were represented on the stage, the martyr being the buffoon. The heathen gods were taken under the protection of the mimus, instead of being burlesqued as they had been for several centuries. This mockery ran through the Roman empire until the end of the fourth century, when the church got the protection of the state against public insult, but Christianity fell under the dominion of heathen mores. The great ecclesiastics of the fifth century preached fiercely against the theater, not because of the insults of the theater against the church, for they were silenced, but on account of the action of the theater upon Christian mores. Chrysostom denounced the theater on account of the manners of actresses in the mimus, on account of false hair, paint, exposed bodies, uncovered heads, melodies, gross language, gestures, strife, representations of adultery and other sex vice, and because it was the school of intrigue and seduction. This became the attitude of the church towards the theater.[2050]

+638. Popular phantasms.+ Although the crowd likes to see realistic representations of life, and also likes to see in the drama that ridicule of the cultured classes which seems like a victory over them, yet it also loves fantastic scenes, and acts in which the limitations of reality are left behind and imaginary luck and joy are represented,--such as magical transformations, fairy tales, and realms of bliss. Extremes of realism and phantasm meet in the folk drama. After the fifth century the sense of societal decline and loss was strong in the popular mind. It was felt that the world was failing. There was a contempt for life.[2051] Pagan society was ennuye. "It wanted to laugh. It wanted games and dances to make gay the last hours which separated it from its fall."[2052] Salvianus says that the Roman world died laughing.[2053]

+639. Effects of vicious amusements.+ Vicious amusements provoke all kinds of vicious passions. Excitement, sensuality, frivolity, and meanness go together. Lecky[2054] points out the contrast between the conduct of the Romans of the time of Marius, who refused to plunder the houses of the opposing faction when Marius threw them open, and that of the Romans of the time of Vespasian, who enjoyed the fun and plunder of his war with Vitellius in the streets of Rome. "The moral condition of the empire is, indeed, in some respects one of the most appalling pictures on record."

+640. Gladiatorial games.+ The mores of the Romans of the third century B.C. (sec. 624) seized upon the gladiatorial contests as something suited to the genius of the Roman people, and, as the Romans gained wealth and power by conquest and plunder, with numerous war captives, they developed the sport of the arena to a very high point. Then the sport reacted on the mores and made them more cruel, licentious, and cowardly. It required more and more extravagant inventions to produce the former degree of pleasure. The Romans were fond of all torture and showed great invention in connection with it, both for beasts and men. Children amused themselves by torturing beasts and insects, making them draw loads, and making fowls and birds fight. They loved the sight of pain and bloodshed and found their greatest pleasure in it.[2055] Under Nero women fought in the arena. This was forbidden under Severus. A law, probably of the time of Nero, forbade masters to give their slaves to fight beasts. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. Marcus Aurelius forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators, and he tried to limit the gladiatorial exhibitions. They were far too popular.[2056] It is thus that amusements and mores react on each other to produce social degeneration. The whole social standard of "right" moves down with the moral degeneracy, and at no stage is there a sense of shame or wrongdoing in the public mind in connection with what is customary and traditional at the time. There is no contrast between facts and standards. The great Christian ecclesiastics of the fourth and fifth centuries denounced the public amusements and tried to keep the Christians away from them. They tried to convert actors. They pointed out the subtle corruption of character produced by feigning vice. Gladiators were not admitted to baptism unless they repented and renounced their profession.[2057] In 325 Constantine forbade gladiatorial combats as unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the use of condemned criminals in the arena. These laws were powerless.[2058]

+641. Compromise between church and customs.+ The maiuma (mock sea fight on the Tiber in May) was forbidden, probably under Constance, a prohibition which was repeated by Theodosius. Arcadius tried to allow it again, under conditions that propriety be observed, but it was impossible, and he forbade all immodest exhibitions. Theodosius forbade magistrates to be present at exhibitions after midday, when the most obscene and bloody were presented, except on the anniversaries of his own birth and accession. He also forbade actresses to use fine clothes and jewels, and forbade Christians to be actors. Leo I ([symbol: cross] 461) forbade that any Christian woman, free or slave, should be compelled to be an actress or meretrix.[2059] Salvianus describes,[2060] in very emphatic but general terms, the public exhibitions in Gaul and Africa in the second half of the fifth century. There was, he says, scarcely a crime or outrage which was not represented on the stage, and the spectators enjoyed seeing a man killed or cruelly lacerated. All the earth was ransacked for beasts. All the senses were outraged by indecencies. Nevertheless, on any day on which performances occurred the churches were empty. The Christians, as we see, lived in the mores of their age, and all these things had centuries of tradition behind them. Salvianus and other ecclesiastics were not heeded because they derived their standards from Christian dogmas, and those standards were far removed from the current mores. The church was forced to compromise. It allowed feasts, fairs, and games near the churches. It converted heathen festivals, with processions, lights, and garlands, into Christian festivals and usages. It borrowed the attractions of the worship of Isis, Mithra, and Cybele, and adopted all the means of suggestion employed in their rites. The great ecclesiastics were divided as to this policy. Augustine put an end, so far as his jurisdiction went, to the feasts in the churches in honor of martyrs, with singing, dancing, and drinking, although they were very popular.[2061] He complained earnestly of the indecency of the exhibitions of his time.[2062] "Especially at the festivals in honor of the heathen gods, and in civil celebrations, the ancient religious practices were renewed, not infrequently degenerating into shameless immorality, yet protecting civil usages. The patriot, the philosopher, the skeptic, and the pious man had to make a capitulation with those ancient religious practices, for they were not, in truth, emancipated from them at heart, and they did not know of anything better to replace what those practices did for society."[2063] So the philosopher, patriot, skeptic, and pious man always have to compromise with the ancient and existing mores. Salvianus[2064] says that poverty caused the great exhibitions to cease. It was advancing poverty and misery which put an end to all the old forms of amusement. It was not the church or Christianity. The Christian rites and festivals alone remained. Modern Spanish bullfights appear to be a survival of the old sports of the arena. Bullfights were introduced into Italy in the fourteenth century. They were general in the fifteenth century. The Aragonese brought them to Naples and the Borgias to Rome.[2065] We hear of a kind of gladiatorial exhibition at some festivals in India early in the nineteenth century.[2066] There were gladiators also in Japan[2067] and in Mexico.[2068]

+642. The cantica.+ Roman drama ran down to pantomime with explanatory recitation, that is, cantica. From the seventh to the tenth century few dramas were produced with dialogue. Some biblical narratives, legends of saints, and profane compositions from that time exist, which are probably cantica, to be accompanied by pantomime at fairs or in church porches.

+643. Passion for the games.+ It certainly was not on account of any decline in the taste for amusement that the games declined. In the fifth century, when the Vandals were besieging Carthage, "the church of Carthage was crazy for the games," and the cries of those dying in battle were confused with those of the applauding spectators at the games. The leading men of Treves were gratifying their love of feasting when the barbarians entered their city.[2069] The people of Antioch were in the theater when the Persians surprised them, about 265 A.D.[2070]

+644. German sports.+ Amongst the Germanic nations, from a very early period, popular amusements consisted in pantomimes, mummery with animal masks, horseplay by clowns, etc. The feast of Holda, or Berchta, during the first twelve days of January, was an especial period for those sports. From the sixth century there was also a pantomime of the strife of winter and spring.[2071]

+645. The mimus from the third to the eighth century.+ As the culture drama fell into neglect the mimus was left in possession of the field. The culture drama, as we have seen, was built upon and above the mimus, and has the character of a high product which could be maintained only in a peaceful and prosperous society whose other literary and artistic products were of a high grade. With a failure of societal power the highest products disappeared first, but the low and vulgar mimus, which had been disregarded but had amused the crowd during prosperity, continued to exist. In the third, fourth, and fifth centuries the mimus existed throughout the Roman world and was very popular. In the fifth century it flourished at Ravenna, and perhaps it continued later in the same form as in the East. It can be traced in Italy in the sixth century, after which its existence is doubtful. In the seventh century the theater was a thing of the past, but the mimus still existed. The ascetics of Charlemagne's time disapproved of it and got legislation against it, but the laws were of no avail. The ecclesiastics were fond of the mimus. It was in the hands of strolling players of the humblest kind. It coarsened with the general decay. All court festivals needed the mimus for the festivities.[2072]

+646. Drama in the Orient.+ There is no drama in Mohammedan literature and it appears that there is no original drama in the Orient.[2073] The mimus declined in the West in the disaster of the fifth century, but in the Byzantine empire it lasted until the Turkish conquest, so that it appears that if there is any historical connection between modern and ancient drama it must be through Byzantium.[2074] The actors at Byzantium kept a certain traditional license in the face of the emperor and court which was not without social and political value.[2075]

+647. Marionettes.+ Marionettes are mentioned in Xenophon's Symposium. They were of more ancient origin. The puppet play was used as a means of burlesquing the legitimate theater and drama. It passed to the Turks as the puppet shadow play, in which the hero Karagoez is the same as Punch in figure, character, and acts. This puppet play spread all over the Eastern world. Lane[2076] says of it in Egypt, in the first half of the nineteenth century, that it was very indecent. Reich[2077] describes an indecent shadow play. A special form of it was developed in Java, the wajang-poerva, with figures of the pantin type, operated by strings and levers. This amusement is very popular in Java and very representative of the mores. Whether these oriental forms of the mimus were derived from the Greco-Roman world is uncertain. The mimus is so original and of such spontaneous growth that it does not need to be borrowed.

+648. The drama in India.+ In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit,--realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.[2078] Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the story is that of a Brahmin of the noblest character, who marries a courtesan, she having great love for him. The courtesan gives to the Brahmin's son a toy wagon of gold for his own made of clay. The name of the play comes from this trivial incident in it. A wicked, vain, and shallow-pated prince intervenes and is taken as a biolog, or standing type of person. Modern Hindoo dramas require a whole night for the representation. They represent the loves and quarrels of the gods and other mythological stories. "The actors are dressed and painted in imitation of the deities they represent, and frequently the conversations are rendered attractive by sensual and obscene allusions, whilst in the interludes boys dressed in women's clothes dance with the most indecent gestures. The worst dances that I have ever seen have been in front of an image and as a part of the rejoicings of a religious festival. Crowds of men, women, and children sit to watch them the whole night through."[2079] The history of Ram is also enacted in pantomime in northern India. The text of the Ramayana is read and days are spent in acting it, by a great crowd, which moves from place to place, and naively plans to act city incidents in cities, forest incidents in forests, boat episodes on ponds, and war episodes or battles on great fields.[2080]

+649. Punch in the West.+ Punch was brought to Italy in the fifteenth century.[2081] Polichinelle, as developed in France, is distinctly French. The model is Henri IV. The hump is an immemorial sign of the French badin-es-farces. "Polichinelle seems to me to be a purely national (French) type, and one of the most spontaneous and vivacious creations of French fantasy."[2082] The puppet play of Punch and Judy has enjoyed immense popularity in western Europe. The Faust legend has been developed by the puppets.[2083] With the improvements in the arts people became more sophisticated. The puppets were left to children and to the simplest rural population, not because the mores improved, but because people were treated to more elaborate entertainments and the puppets became trivial. Punch is now a blackguard and criminal, who is conventionally tolerated on account of his antiquity. He is not in modern mores and is almost unknown in the United States. He is generally popular in southern Europe. To the Sicilians "a puppet play is a book, a picture, a poem, and a theater all in one. It teaches and amuses at the same time."[2084] Then it still is what it has been for three thousand years.

+650. Resistance of the church to the drama.+ The council in the palace of Trullo, at Constantinople in 692,[2085] adopted canons forbidding clerics to attend horse races or theatrical exhibitions, or to stay at weddings after play began, also pantomimes, beast combats, and theatrical dances, also heathen festivals, vows to Pan, bacchanal rites, public dances by women, the appearance of men dressed as women, or of women dressed as men, and the use of comic, tragic, or satyric masks. All the Dionysiac rites had been forbidden long before. These canons prove that those rites were still observed. These clerical rules and canons do not represent the mores and they never overruled the mores at Constantinople. They only bear witness to what existed in the mores late in the seventh century, and they were an attempt to purify the usages which had been taken over by compromise from heathenism. In the sixth century in the West dances in church were often forbidden. The only stock of ideas in the eighth and ninth centuries were fantastic notions of nature, heaven and hell, history, supernatural agents, etc., which notions the ecclesiastics had an interest to teach. Dramatic representation was a means of teaching. The external action corresponded closely with the mental concept or story. From the time of Charlemagne pantomimes, tableaux, etc., set forth incidents of biblical stories and the resurrection, ascension, etc. The mores of the age seized on these modes of representation and gave method and color to them. All the grossness, superstition, and bad taste of the age were put into them. Satan and his demons were realistically represented, and the mass was travestied by ecclesiastics in a manner which we should think would be deeply offensive to them.[2086] It was another case of conventionality for a limited time and place. Some of the clergy no doubt enjoyed the fun; others had to tolerate what was old and traditional. The folk drama reawakened as burlesque, parody, satire. The evil characters in the Scripture stories (Pharaoh, Judas, Caiaphas, the Jews) all fed this interest. All persons and institutions which pretended to be great and good and were not such provoked satire (clergy, nobles, warriors, women). The drama, introduced to show forth religious notions, served also to set forth others (social, political, city rivalry, class antagonisms). The "mass of fools" was a complete parody of the mass, with mock music and vestments and burlesque ceremony. In the "mass of innocents" children took the place of adults and carried out the ceremony as a parody. At the "feast of the ass" an ass was led into church and treated with mock respect. This last degenerated into obscenity, indecency, and disorder. Bulls and edicts against it were long vain. It was popular as a relief from restraint.[2087] It continued the function of the Saturnalia, which had been a grand frolic and relaxation. The ecclesiastics tolerated these outbursts, perhaps because they saw that the lines could not be drawn very tightly without such relaxation. From the eleventh century the ecclesiastics opposed any automatic figure. They construed the making of such a figure as an attempt to call the saints, etc., to life again. The skill employed also seemed to them like sorcery.[2088] "There was not an ecumenic, national, or diocesan council in whose canons may not be found severe and peremptory reproofs of all sorts and qualities of drama, of actors, and of those who run to see plays."[2089] This became the orthodox attitude of the church to the theater. There were complaints of the attendance of clerics and people at theatrical exhibitions until the tenth century. Then they cease because the church ceremonies were more interesting and better done.[2090] The Christian drama reached the height of its hieratic development between the ninth and twelfth centuries.[2091]

+651. Hrotsvitha.+ Klein[2092] puts as the next important literary work of dramatic composition after the Pseudo-Querolus the works of the nun Hrotsvitha. In the tenth century she wrote six comedies in Latin, in imitation of Terence, her purpose being to show the superiority of the conventual conception of love to the worldly theory, and of religious passion to erotic passion. In the introduction she apologizes for her realistic descriptions of erotic passion, which she says was necessary for the argument implicit in her plays. She introduces God as a character, and miracles as a means of bringing about the denouement at which she wants to arrive. It became the custom in mediaeval drama to reach, by introducing a miracle, the moral result which current dogma required.[2093] The situations and intrigue are generally very unedifying. To our taste the plays seem very unfit to be acted by nuns before nuns.

+652. Jongleurs. Processions.+ In the eleventh century abbeys and cathedrals were built. At the beginning of the century the basilicas of the churches were repaired throughout Latin Christendom.[2094] The Jongleurs of the twelfth century were the popular minstrels. "Poet, mountebank, musician, physician, beast showman, and to some extent diviner and sorcerer, the jongleur is also the orator of the public market place, the man adored by the crowd to whom he offers his songs and his couplets. Questions of morals and politics, toothache, pious legends, scandalous tales about priests, noble ladies, and cavaliers, gossip of grog shops, and news from the Holy Land were all in his domain."[2095] In the second third of the twelfth century the vulgar language began to displace the Latin in church, especially in dramas.[2096] Processions were in the taste and usage of the Middle Ages and Renaissance for both civil and religious pomp and display. The dresses, banners, arches, etc., contributed to the spectacle, and all took on a dramatic character for, on a saint's day or other occasion, the exhibition had a second sense of reference to the story of the saint, or the success in war of the king or potentate. The latter sense might be dramatically set forth, and generally was at least suggested. Tableaux and dramatic pantomime in the streets were combined with the processions. Mythological subjects as well as incidents of Christian history were so represented. All classes cooperated in these functions. Poets and artists of the first rank assisted. The contribution of these functions to the development of the drama is obvious. In modern times the taste for processions is lost, and the cultivated classes refuse to participate, but when the whole population of a city took part in setting forth something they all cared for, the social effect was great, and the whole proceeding nourished dramatic taste and power. In Italy the pantomime with song and dance, or ballet, had its origin in the procession.[2097] In the churches arrangements were made, with elaborate machinery, for exhibiting representations of Scripture incidents. Godfrey, Abbot of St. Albans ([Symbol: cross] 1146) wrote a play on the life of St. Catharine "such as was afterwards called a miracle." The Annunciation was represented in St. Mark's, Venice, in 1267. In Germany the mysteries were partly in German from the end of the thirteenth century.[2098]

+653. Adam de la Halle.+ De Julleville[2099] puts Adam de la Halle as the first comic writer in France, in point of time. He wrote the Jeu de la Feuillee about 1262. It is described as a "scenic satire rather than a comedy." It is local, personal, and satirical, and includes miracles and capricious inventions without much regard to probability. It stands by itself and is not the first of a series. The notion of a connection between comedy and bodily deformity was now so firmly established that Adam was called the "Humpback of Arras," although he was not humpbacked at all.[2100] Association of acts and ideas is always very important in all folkways and popular mores. At Florence, in 1304, on boats on the Arno, devils were represented at work. The bridge on which the spectators stood broke down under the crowd, and it was said that "many went to the real hell to find out about it."[2101] At Paris, in 1313, at the celebration of the knighting of the sons of Philippe le Bel, devils were represented tormenting souls.[2102]

+654. Flagellants.+ The flagellants exerted some of the suggestions of the processions, and they used dramatic devices to set forth their ideas, to say nothing of the dramatic element in the self-scourging. They were outside of the church system, and acted on their own conception of sin and discipline, like modern revivalists. They reappeared from time to time through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They meant to declare that the asserted correlation between goodness and blessing did not verify, and they were at a loss for a doctrine to replace it. Their antiphonal singing turned into dialogue, and then became drama at the end of the thirteenth century.[2103]

+655. Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions.+ The mediaeval plays were presented in churches or on the open spaces on the streets in front of them, at Florence. Later this became customary in all cities.[2104] The old idea had been that churches were common public property, a universal rendezvous for every common interest. Dedications of churches and feasts of martyrs had been general merrymakings. D'Ancona collects dicta of councils and popes condemning dramatic actions in churches, and the singing of lewd songs and dancing by women.[2105] The language used implies that the songs, gestures, acts, and suggestions connected with the performances in the churches were lewd and indecent. The populace, while using the license, well perceived its incongruity and impropriety, and this stimulated the satire, which was so strong a feature of the late Middle Ages and which produced the farce. The mysteries and moralities for a time gave entertainment, but they became tedious. The farce was at first "stuffing," put in to break up the dullness by fun making of some kind and to give spice to the entertainment, just as meats were farcies to give them more savor. It grew until it surpassed and superseded the sober drama. The populace did not want more preaching and instruction, but fun and frolic, relief from labor, thought, and care. The take-off, caricature, burlesque, parody, discerns and sets forth the truth against current humbug, and the pretenses of the successful classes. The fool comes into prominence again, not by inheritance but by rational utility. The fifteenth century offered him plenty of material. As a fool he escaped responsibility. This role,--that of the badin in France, the gracioso in Spain, arlequino in Italy, Hanswurst in Germany,--becomes fixed like the buffoon (maccus) in the classical comedy. In France, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the basochiens were young clerks and advocates who were studying law and who made fun of law proceedings. They met with only limited toleration. Their satire was not relished by the legal great men. In the fourteenth century they took up moralities overweighted with allegory but broken up by farces. In the fifteenth century the Enfans sans Souci were another variety of comediens. Their emblem was the cap with two horns or ass's ears.[2106] The life of St. Louis was represented in tableaux at Marseilles in 1517.[2107] The Passion was represented in the Coliseum until 1539, when Paul III forbade it. Riots against the Jews had been provoked by the exhibition.[2108]

+656. Protest against misuse of churches.+ It may be said that there was never wanting a dissenting opinion and protest amongst the ecclesiastics about the folk drama in the churches. In 1210 Innocent III forbade such exhibitions by ecclesiastics. Then the fraternities began to represent them on public market places. The "festival of fools" at Christmas time was originally invented to turn the heathen festivals into ridicule. When there were no more heathen it degenerated into extreme popular farce. Thomas Aquinas consented to the mimus, if it was not indecent.[2109] The synod of Worms, in 1316, forbade plays in churches. Such plays seem to have reached their highest perfection in the fourteenth century.[2110] Plays of this type gave way in the fifteenth century to "moralities," with allegorical characters, which prevailed for a long time, the taste for allegory marking the mental fashion of the time. The council of Basle forbade plays in churches (1440).[2111]

+657. Toleration of jests by the ecclesiastics.+ The ecclesiastical authorities were very patient with the folk theater for its satires on the clergy, the church, and religion. They heeded only attacks on "the faith." "We are astonished to meet, in a time which we always think of as crushed under authority, with such incredibly bold expressions against the papacy, the episcopate, chivalry, and the most revered doctrines of religion such as paradise, hell, etc."[2112] Lenient suggests as reasons the divisions and factions in church and state and the current contempt for popular poetry. In the fifteenth century, in France, the popular drama expressed the class envy of the poor against the rich. In the mystery play Job (1478) the "Pasteur" says: "The great lords have all the goods. The poor people have nothing but pain and adversity. Who would not be irritated [at such a state of things]?" The passion plays of the Rhine valley followed those of France. Those of the fourteenth century lacked the rude jests and ghoulish interest of those of France in the fifteenth. The street public never tired of the horrors of executions, or of the low gaiety of funerals, etc. The "sot" first appeared in the Passion de Troyes at the end of the fifteenth century. He was long popular.[2113]

+658. Fictitious literature.+ Fictitious literature, after printing became common, was greatly increased, especially in Italy and Spain. Through the dialogued story it led up to the drama. At the end of the fifteenth century F. de Rojas wrote a dialogued story, Calisto e Meliboea, about two distressed lovers. The heroine is Celestina, a bawd who helped them out of their troubles. The book is generally named after her, and she became a fixed character in drama and fiction. The noble bawd, however, is an artificial creation of literature and never could be a biolog. It is not true enough. The Spaniards also developed a new form of the mystery play,--the autos sacramentales. These plays represented some Scriptural incident, but the roles were taken by allegorical figures. They were regularly represented on the festival of Corpus Christi, in the afternoon, on the public square. They satisfied the taste of the people for religiosity, if not religion. Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote a story, Mandragore, which in its day enjoyed great popularity. A man in Paris heard of the beauty of a lady at Florence. He went to the latter place to see her and fell in love with her. Her husband was an imbecile who greatly desired a child. He persuaded his wife to receive the stranger. She and the lover contracted an enduring relation. Cardinal Bibbiena wrote a comedy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Calandra, which was esteemed as a great work. The intrigue consists of quiproquos produced by twins, a male and a female, who exchange dress. Many classical stories are introduced. Lope de Vega (1562-1635) wrote autos and comedies. He wrote eighteen hundred comedies, four hundred autos, and a great number of other pieces,--in all, it is said, twenty-one million verses.[2114] Calderon (1600-1681) continued on the same lines. The servant-buffoon was the time form of the buffoon. All these productions furnished models and material for the poets and dramatists of other countries. The comedies are always long and wordy and generally tedious. They run in fixed molds, and have unyielding conventions to obey. Rarely have they ethological value.

+659. Romances of roguery.+ The "romances of roguery" were closely akin to the popular drama as exponents of popular tastes and standards. It is very possible that the romances were derived from the tastes.[2115] The clever hero has been a very popular type in all ages and countries. He easily degenerates into the clever rogue. The rogue is an anti-hero to offset the epic hero. There was in France, in the thirteenth century, "a bold rogue, Eustache le Moine, who became the central hero of a roman, which set forth his life and deeds as thief and pirate."[2116] In Germany Till Eulenspiegel was a rascal who lived in the first part of the fourteenth century and around whose name anecdotes clustered until he became an anti-hero. There were in Germany popular tales which were picaresque novels in embryo. Those about Eulenspiegel were first reduced to a coherent narrative in 1519. Hemmerlein was an ugly and sarcastic buffoon of the fourteenth century. Hanswurst was a fat glutton of the fifteenth century who aimed to be clever but made blunders. Pickelhering, in Holland, was of the same type.[2117] In England, in the sixteenth century, Punch began to degenerate. He took away the role of "Old Vice," and became more and more depraved,--a popular Don Juan, a type of physical and moral deformity.[2118] The play was popular. The marionettes, being only dolls and sexless, escaped the onslaught of the Puritans.[2119]

+660. Picaresque novels.+ The picaresque novels do not deal with love, but with intrigues for material gain in the widest sense. Lazarillo de Tormes is counted as the first of these. It is attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and is thought to have been produced about 1500. The best known of the class is Gil Blas. The hero lives by his wits, has many vicissitudes, and plays and suffers many cruel practical jokes. The Spanish stories of Quevedo and Perez are coarse but never obscene. The view of women, however, is low. They are fickle, shallow, vain, and cunning. The church is "gingerly handled," but the clergy are derided for immorality, hypocrisy, and trickiness.

+661. Books of beggars.+ A variety of the picaresque species was the "books of beggars." An English specimen of this variety is Audley's Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561). Mediaeval social ways produced armies of vagabonds, beggars, and outcasts, who practiced vice and evil ways and cultivated criminal cleverness. The picaresque stories illustrate their ways.

+662. At the beginning of the sixteenth century.+ Isabella d'Este describes a play at Ferrara, in 1503, in which the Annunciation was represented, angels descending from heaven by concealed machinery, etc. There was also a moresca, a ballet or pantomime dance, with clowns and beasts, and blows and other clown tricks. Another very noteworthy incident is the enactment, at Urbino in 1504, of a "comedy," in which the recent history of that city was represented, including the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia, the conquest of Urbino by Cesar Borgia, the death of Alexander VI, and the return of the Duke of Urbino. This application of the dramatic method to their own recent history, which had been indeed dramatic, shows the high development of graphic and artistic power, which is also shown by the other arts of the time. Ladies did not then abdicate their prerogative to judge and condemn the propriety of artistic products offered to them. Isabella declared the Cassaria "lascivious and immoral beyond words," and forbade her ladies to attend the performance of it at the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to her (Isabella's) brother.[2120] In France, in the sixteenth century, imitations of classical dramas held the stage. The Protestants sought to use the drama for effect on the populace.[2121] St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), as Archbishop of Milan, carried on a war against exhibitions of all kinds. He maintained that they were indecent.[2122]

+663. The theater at Venice.+ The first tragedy produced in Italy was written by Albertino Mussato, a Paduan, early in the fourteenth century in imitation of Latin dramas. The subject was the conflicts of Padua with Ezzelino da Romano. Albertino's work was not imitated, for the mysteries held the stage until the end of the fifteenth century. They were represented on stages erected in public places of the cities. At Venice were invented momaria, in which there was no theatrical illusion, but brio, joviality, and irony. They began at weddings, where after the wedding feast some one, impersonating an heroic personage, narrated the great deeds of the ancestors of the spouses, with numberless exaggerations and jest, from which the name momaria, or bombaria, was derived. The companies of the calza figured in all gay assemblies at Venice from 1400 to the end of the sixteenth century. They renewed the Latin comedies and "carried festivity and good taste even into the churches." Theatrical exhibitions became the favorite amusement of the Venetians, and were presented not only in private houses but also in monasteries, although secular persons were not present.[2123]

+664. Dancing. Public sports.+ From the early Middle Ages the ecclesiastical authorities disapproved of dancing, but the people were very fond of it and never gave it up. The poems and romances are full of it.[2124] Some usages of dancing in Germany were very gross. The man swung his partner off the floor as far as he could. If any woman refused to dance with any man, it occurred sometimes that he slapped her face, but it was disputed whether this was not beyond the limit.[2125] The usages at the carnival were very gross and obscene.[2126] All popular sports were coarse and cruel. It seemed to be considered good fun to torment the weak and to watch their helpless struggles. Birds were shot, and beasts baited, in a way to give pain and prolong it. At Nuremberg the "cat knight" fought with a cat hung about his own neck, which he must bite to death in order to be knighted by the buergermeister. Blind people were shut in an inclosed space in the market place with a pig as a prize, which they were to beat with sticks. The fun was greatest when they struck each other. This amusement is reported from many places in central Europe.[2127] "Nothing amused our ancestors more than these blind encounters. Even kings took part at these burlesque representations." At Paris they were presented every year at mid-lent.[2128]

+665. Women in the theater and on the stage.+ No young women were allowed to be present at the commedia del arte in the first times of the principate at Florence. Masi[2129] says that this was true in general of all Italy. Later they were addressed in the prologue, which became customary, and so they must have been present. Popular opinion still held that they ought to stay at home, as of old. They were never on the stage. De Julleville says[2130] that women in France in the Middle Ages were present at the freest farces. In the middle of the sixteenth century, in Italy, wandering players began to employ women for female parts. The Italian comedians, when they went to Paris, continued this custom there.[2131] Philip II of Spain forbade women on the stage.[2132] French actresses appeared at London in 1629; they were allowed in 1659.[2133] Innocent XI, in 1676, forbade the employment of women on the stage.[2134]

+666. The "commedia del arte."+ In Italy the commedia del arte was the continuation or revival of the mimus. The speeches were impromptu; the characters and roles were stereotyped. The action and speeches must have grown by the contributions of talented men who played the parts from generation to generation. The characters have become traditional and universal.[2135] Such were Maccus (later Polichinella) of Naples, Manducus or the French Croquemitaine, Bucco, a half-stupid, half-sarcastic buffoon, Pappus (the later Venetian Pantalon) the fussy old man, and Casnar, the French Cassandre. Scaramucca or Fracassa was added to satirize the Spanish soldier. He was recognized as the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.[2136] The Spanish trooper was a boastful coward. He called himself the son of the earthquake and lightning, cousin of death, or friend of Beelzebub.[2137] At the marriage of Alphonso d'Este comedies of Plautus were acted for effect and conventional pretense, but they were considered tiresome, and interludes of pantomime, ballet, clown tricks, peasant farce, mythology, and fireworks were introduced to furnish entertainment.[2138]

+667. Jest books. Italian comedy at Paris.+ In the sixteenth century the theater became entirely secular, and amusement and religion were separated as a consequence of the general movement of the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages serious men collected jests and published jest books, which were collections of the jokes made by the mimus, just as modern jests have been made by negro minstrels, circus clowns, and variety actors.[2139] At the end of the sixteenth century the Italians, "suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties, and immortalizing street jokes by the genius of masked comedy."[2140] The commedia del arte took this course. It was open to every chance of political and social influence. It became the recognized Italian comedy and was transported to the north as such. In each province of Italy the fixed characters were independently developed, so that variations were produced. The type of play reached a climax in the middle of the seventeenth century. Then it declined for lack of competent actors. It was the realism of everyday life. It tended always back again to the mountebanks, jugglers, rope dancers, etc.[2141] The lazzi were "business" which gave the actors time to improvise. In the sixteenth century Italian comedians began to play at Paris in Italian. The Italian actresses undressed on the stage much and often, so that "Italian comedy" came to mean vulgar and licentious comedy. The Parlement of Paris held that the plays were immoral. Many of them are said to have been obscene.[2142] Madame de Maintenon having heard that they were immoral, they were forbidden in 1697.[2143] The Italian comedy struggled on, however. For a long time no women visited it, but in the eighteenth century a comedy called Arlequin, Empereur dans la Lune became celebrated. It was a satire on the France of the time. Women ignored the grossness for the sake of the satire.[2144] The plays of the Italians were all either farces for pure fun or satires on the mores of the time. "Many were satires on women." In one of these last, the saying was ascribed to Aristotle, upon seeing a tree from the limbs of which four women were hanging, "How happy men would be, if all trees bore that fruit." Women were currently represented as empty-headed, vain, fond of pleasure, frivolous, and fickle. Lawyers were also a favorite object of satire.[2145] In the Italian theater ecriteaux were hung up, on which the speeches were written and the audience joined in singing the couplets.[2146]

+668. "Commedia del arte" in Italy.+ In Italy the commedia del arte went through many vicissitudes. At Venice, late in the eighteenth century, Gozzi undertook to revive it by composing what he called "fables." They were fairy extravaganzas, based on Mother Goose stories or fairy tales. They were in part improvised, but in part written, either in prose or verse, in order to make sure of the essential points of the action. The older custom had been to prepare only a scenario, in which the story was told in brief outline, with the allotment of parts in the production.[2147] Pantaleone, in the commedia del arte, is sad,--an imbecile, dissolute old man. Gozzi gave him brio and bonarieta, with cordiality and humor. Goldoni, who got into a war with Gozzi, made Pantaleone a philistine, who used good sense against the follies of fashion. No women were present at these comedies at Venice at this time.[2148]

Scherillo[2149] quotes Perucci, that at the end of the seventeenth century the folk theater was obscene in word and act beyond the ancient comedies. If that is true, it is only a detail of the degeneracy of Italy from the middle of the sixteenth century.

+669. Summary and review.+ It is evident that amusement and relaxation are needs of men. The fondness for exhibitions and theatrical representations can be traced through history. The suggestion is direct and forcible. It can be made to play upon harmful tastes as well as upon good ones. There is nothing to guide it or decide its form and direction except the mores,--the consenting opinion of the masses as to what is beneficial or harmful. The leading classes try to mold this opinion. The history shows that the mores can make anything right, and protect any violation of the sex taboo or of ordinary propriety. There is no subject in regard to which the mores need more careful criticism than in regard to amusements. The standard and the usage degenerate together unless there is control by an active and well-trained taste and sense. The popular taste and sense are products of inherited mores. It is this reflex action of habitual acts and experiences which makes the subject difficult. All the primary facts and the secondary or remoter reflections are intertwined as in an organic growth, and all go together. The facts exert constant education, and every positive effort to interfere with the course of things by primitive education must be content to exert slight effects for a long time. Wealth and luxury exert their evil effects through amusement. Poverty cuts down these products of wealth and brings societies back to simplicity and virtue. Men renounce when they cannot get. The periods of economic and social decay have cut off the development of forms of amusement, arrested vice, and forced new beginnings.

+670. Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will.+ The history shows that amusements are a pitfall in which good mores may be lost and evil ones produced. They require conventional control and good judgment to guide them. This requirement cannot be set aside. Amusements always present a necessity for moral education and moral will. This fact has impressed itself on men in all ages, and all religions have produced Puritan and ascetic sects who sought welfare, not in satisfying but in counteracting the desire for amusement and pleasure. Their efforts have proved that there is no solution in that direction. There must be an educated judgment at work all the time, and it must form correct judgments to be made real by a cultivated will, or the whole societal interest may be lost without the evil tendency being perceived.

+671. Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress.+ It is clear from the history that amusements have gone through waves upward and downward, but that the amplitude of the waves is very small. It is true that the shows of the late Roman empire were very base, and that the great drama has gone very high by comparison, but the oscillation between the two entirely destroys anything like a steady advance in dramatic composition or dramatic art. This is a very instructive fact. It entirely negatives the current notion of progress as a sort of function of time which is to be expected to realize itself in a steady improvement and advance to better and better. The useful arts do show an advance. The fine arts do not. They return to the starting point, or near it, again and again. The dramatic art is partly literary and partly practical handicraft. Theater buildings improve; the machinery, lights, scenery, and manipulation improve. The literary products are like other artistic products: they have periods of glory and periods of decay. It is the literary products which are nearest to the mores. They lack all progress, or advance only temporarily from worse to better literary forms.

[1987] Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 85.

[1988] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 580.

[1989] Tiele-Gehrich, Relig. im Altert., I, 160.

[1990] Barton, Semitic Origins, 85.

[1991] Archiv fuer Anthrop., XXIX, 129.

[1992] Ibid., 138, 150.

[1993] Origines du Theatre Moderne, 60.

[1994] Il., XVI, 750; XVIII, 604.

[1995] Il., XVIII, 601.

[1996] Magnin, Origines du Theatre Moderne, 178.

[1997] Ramsay, Relig. of Greece and Asia Minor, Hastings's Dict., Addit. vol., 120.

[1998] Beloch, Griech. Gesch., I, 579, 592.

[1999] Ramsay in Hastings's Dict., Addit. vol., 129-130.

[2000] Ibid., 125.

[2001] Boissier, Religion Romaine, I, 132.

[2002] Rohde, Psyche, II, 70.

[2003] Ibid., 34.

[2004] Ibid., 3.

[2005] Wobbermin, Beeinflussung des Urchristenthums durch das Mysterienwesen, 21

[2006] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 426. See sec. 565.

[2007] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 357-359.

[2008] Wissowa, Relig. of the Romans, 163.

[2009] Magnin, Origines du Theatre Moderne, 324, 463.

[2010] Magnin, Origines, 304.

[2011] Ibid., 304-317.

[2012] Val. Max., II, x, 8.

[2013] II, IV, 7.

[2014] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 236.

[2015] Cf. Lecky, Eur. Morals, I, 285; Dill, _Nero to M. Aurel._, 235.

[2016] Tusc. Disp., II, 17.

[2017] Martial, II, Introd.

[2018] Scherr, Kult. Gesch., 181.

[2019] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 235.

[2020] Ibid., 238.

[2021] Ibid., 240.

[2022] Gibbon, Chap. XL, i.

[2023] Schmidt, La Societe Civile dans le Monde Romain et sa Transformation par le Christianisme, 469.

[2024] Ep., II, 46; Migne, Patrol. Latina, XVIII, 190.

[2025] Reich, Der Mimus, 32.

[2026] Magnin, Origines, du Theatre Moderne, 30.

[2027] Ibid., 51.

[2028] Magnin, Origines, 33, 38-40.

[2029] Reich, Der Mimus, 527.

[2030] Magnin, Origines, 161.

[2031] Reich, Der Mimus, 12.

[2032] Ibid., 27-29.

[2033] Tacitus, Annales, IV, 14.

[2034] Preuss (Archiv fuer Anthrop., XXIX, 182) suggests that Falstaff's fatness may be a survival of one of the physical features of the stereotyped buffoon.

[2035] Archiv fuer Anthrop., XXIX, 133.

[2036] Reich, Der Mimus, 679, 682.

[2037] Ibid., 360.

[2038] Magnin, Marionettes, 188.

[2039] Lucian, Demonax, 33.

[2040] D'Ancona, Origine del Teatro in Italia, I, 15.

[2041] Reich, Der Mimus, 58, 436, 470, 505.

[2042] Magnin, Origines du Theatre Moderne, 321.

[2043] Magnin, Origines, 47.

[2044] D'Ancona, I, 45.

[2045] Schmidt, La Societe Civile dans le Monde Romain, 98.

[2046] Theatre Serieux du M. A., 13 note.

[2047] D'Ancona, I, 372.

[2048] Klein, Gesch. des Dramas, III, 599, 638.

[2049] D'Ancona, I, 372.

[2050] Reich, 80, 93, 95, 107, 117.

[2051] Schmidt, La Societe Civile dans le Monde Romain, 113.

[2052] Ibid., 101.

[2053] De Gubernat. Dei., VII.

[2054] Eur. Morals, I, 264.

[2055] Grupp, Kulturgesch. der roem. Kaiserzeit, I, 200.

[2056] Magnin, Origines, 435.

[2057] Schmidt, 251-253.

[2058] Ibid., 469.

[2059] Ibid., 451, 466, 477.

[2060] De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 10, 15, 38, 44-55.

[2061] McCabe, St. Aug., 238.

[2062] De Civit. Dei, II, 27.

[2063] Harnack, Dogmengesch., I, 116.

[2064] De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 42.

[2065] Gregorovius, Lucret. Borgia, 220.

[2066] Dubois, Moeurs de l'Inde, II, 331.

[2067] JAI, XII, 222.

[2068] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, II, 305.

[2069] Salvianus, De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 69, 71, 77.

[2070] Ammianus Marcel., XXIII, v, 3.

[2071] Grimm, Deutsche Mythol., 166, 440.

[2072] Reich, Der Mimus, 785-810.

[2073] Ibid., 622.

[2074] Ibid., 48, 133.

[2075] Ibid., 191.

[2076] Mod. Egypt, II, 125.

[2077] Der Mimus, 656.

[2078] Klein, Gesch. des Dramas, III, 84.

[2079] Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, 225.

[2080] Globus, LXXXVII, 60.

[2081] Reich, Der Mimus, 669, 673, 676.

[2082] Magnin, Marionettes, 121-122.

[2083] Ibid., 343.

[2084] Alec-Tweedie, Sunny Sicily, 173, and Chap. XI.

[2085] Hefele, Conciliengesch., III, 304.

[2086] Scherr, D. F. W., I, 245.

[2087] Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 422; Du Cange, s. v. "Festum Asinorum."

[2088] Magnin, Marionettes, 58.

[2089] D'Ancona, Origini del teatro in Italia, I, 12.

[2090] Ibid., I, 49.

[2091] Magnin, Origines du Theatre Moderne, XXV.

[2092] Gesch. des Dramas, III, 646.

[2093] Magnin, Theatre de Hrotsvitha.

[2094] Lintilhac, Theatre Serieux du M. A., 18.

[2095] Lenient, La Satire, 23.

[2096] Lintilhac, Theatre Serieux du M. A., 34.

[2097] Burckhardt, Renaissance, 401.

[2098] D'Ancona, I, 62, 78, 86.

[2099] La Comedie en France au M. A., 19.

[2100] Magnin, Marionettes, 121.

[2101] D'Ancona, I, 88.

[2102] Ibid., 89.

[2103] Ibid., 98-107.

[2104] D'Ancona, Origini del Teatro in Italia, I, 344.

[2105] Ibid., I, 47.

[2106] Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 324-340.

[2107] Scherr, D. F. W., II, 124.

[2108] D'Ancona, I, 282.

[2109] Summa, II, 2, qu. 168, art. 3.

[2110] von Schack, Gesch. der Dramat. Lit., I, 35.

[2111] Session XXI, sec. 11.

[2112] Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 29.

[2113] Lintilhac, Theatre Serieux du Moyen Age, 106, 123, 133, 167.

[2114] Zarate, Liter. Espan., II, 308, 423, 451.

[2115] Chandler, Romances of Roguery, 191.

[2116] Ibid., 9.

[2117] Magnin, Marionettes, 298.

[2118] Ibid., 255-265.

[2119] Ibid., 233.

[2120] Gregorovius, Isabella d'Este, 212, 251, 255, 264; Burckhardt, Renaissance, 316.

[2121] De Julleville, La Comedie en France au M. A., 183, 331.

[2122] Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, Chap. VI.

[2123] Molmenti, Venezia nella Vita Privata, 297-299.

[2124] Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress of M. A., 241.

[2125] Angerstein, Volkstaenze, 30.

[2126] Schultz, D. L., 414.

[2127] Barthold, Hansa, III, 177.

[2128] Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress of M. A., 220; Schultz, D. L., 409; Scherr, Kult. Gesch., 623.

[2129] Teatro Ital. nel Sec. XVIII, 232.

[2130] Comedie en France au M. A., 23.

[2131] Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, 72.

[2132] Chandler, Romances of Roguery, 159.

[2133] Magnin, Marionettes, 233.

[2134] D'Ancona, Origine del Teatro in Italia, I, 341.

[2135] Burckhardt, Die Renaissance, 318. In Gozzi's Memoirs (ed. Symonds) may be seen good colored plates representing these fixed characters of the commedia del arte.

[2136] Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, 90, 114.

[2137] Ibid., 95.

[2138] Burckhardt, 316.

[2139] Reich, Der Mimus, 473.

[2140] Symonds, Catholic Reaction, I, 55.

[2141] Masi, Teatro Ital. nel Sec., XVIII, 229.

[2142] Bernardin, Comedie Ital. en France, 9, 12, 13.

[2143] Ibid., 52.

[2144] Bernardin, Com. Ital. en France, 27.

[2145] Ibid., 42.

[2146] Ibid., 90.

[2147] Gozzi's Memoirs (Symond's trans.).

[2148] Masi, Teatro Ital., 89, 232, 264.

[2149] La Commedia del Arte, 50.