XLII. FREE LOVE--ADULTERY…

XLII. FREE LOVE--ADULTERY

HARDLY less variable than the moral ideas relating to marriage are those concerning sexual relations of a non-matrimonial character.

Among many uncivilised peoples both sexes enjoy perfect freedom previous to marriage, and in some cases it is considered almost dishonourable for a girl to have no lover.

The East African Barea and Kunáma do not regard it as in the least disreputable for a girl to become pregnant, nor do they punish nor censure the seducer.[1] Among the Wanyoro "it constantly happens that young girls spend the night with their lovers, only returning to their father's house in the morning, and this is not considered scandalous.**"[2] The Wadigo regard it as disgraceful, or at least as ridiculous, for a girl to enter into marriage as a virgin.[3] Among the Bakongo, "womanly chastity is unknown, and a woman's honour is measured by the price she costs."[4] Over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, says Sir H. Johnston, "before a girl is become a woman (that is to say before she is able to conceive) it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about five years of age."[5] Among the Baronga "l'opinion publique se moque des gens continents plus qu'elle ne les admire."[6] According to Mr. Warner, "seduction of virgins, and cohabiting with unmarried women and {423} widows, are not punishable by Kafir law, neither does any disgrace attach to either sex by committing such acts."[7] In Madagascar "continence is not supposed to exist in either sex before marriage, . . . and its absence is not regarded as a vice."[8] Among the Maoris of New Zealand "girls were at perfect liberty to act as they pleased until married," and chastity in single women was held of little account.[9] In the Tonga Islands unmarried women might bestow their favours upon whomsoever they pleased without any opprobrium, although it was thought shameful for a woman frequently to change her lover.[10] In the Solomon Islands "female chastity is a virtue that would sound strangely in the ear of the native"; and in St. Christoval and the adjacent islands, "for two or three years after a girl has become eligible for marriage she distributes her favours amongst all the young men of the village."[11] In the Malay Archipelago intercourse between unmarried people is very commonly considered neither a crime nor a disgrace;[12] and the same is perhaps even more generally the case among the uncivilised races of India and Indo-China.[13] Among the Angami Nagas, for instance, "girls consider short hair, the symbol of virginity, a disgrace, and are anxious to become entitled to wear it long; men are desirous before marriage to have proof that their wives will not be barren. . . . Chastity begins with marriage."[14] The Jakuts see nothing immoral in free love, provided only that nobody suffers material loss by it.[15] Among the Votyaks it is disgraceful for a girl to be little sought after by the young men, and it is honourable for her to have children; she then gets a wealthier husband, and a higher price is paid for her to her father.[16] The Kamchadales set no great value on the virginity of their brides.[17] Of the Point Barrow Eskimo Mr. Murdoch writes:--"As to the relations between the sexes there seems to be the most complete absence of what we consider moral feelings. Promiscuous sexual {424} intercourse between married or unmarried people, or even among children, appears to be looked upon simply as a matter for amusement. As far as we could learn, unchastity in a girl was considered nothing against her. The immorality of these people among themselves, as we witnessed it, seems too purely animal and natural to be of recent growth or the result of foreign influence. Moreover, a similar state of affairs has been observed among Eskimo elsewhere."[18]

[Footnote 1: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 524.]

[Footnote 2: Emin Pasha in Central Africa, p. 82. Cf. ibid. p. 208 (Monbuttu).]

[Footnote 3: Baumann, Usambara, p. 152.]

[Footnote 4: Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 405.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid. p. 409, note.]

[Footnote 6: Junod, Les Ba-Ronga, p. 29.]

[Footnote 7: Warner, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 63.]

[Footnote 8: Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 137 sq.]

[Footnote 9: Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 33. Gisborne, _Colony of New Zealand_, p. 27.]

[Footnote 10: Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 174.]

[Footnote 11: Guppy, Solomon Islands, p. 43.]

[Footnote 12: Wilken, 'Plechtigheden en gebruiken bij verlovingen en huwelijken bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,' in Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, ser. v. vol. iv. 434 sqq.]

[Footnote 13: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 71. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, i. p. clxxxiv.]

[Footnote 14: Prain, 'Angami Nagas,' in Revue coloniale internationale, v. 491 sq.]

[Footnote 15: Sumner, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 96.]

[Footnote 16: Buch, 'Die Wotjäken,' in Acta Soc. Scientiarum Fennicæ, xii. 509.]

[Footnote 17: Georgi, Russia, iii. 156.]

[Footnote 18: Murdoch, 'Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 419 sq. See also Turner, 'Ethnology of the the Ungava District,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 189 (Koksoagmyut); Parry, _Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage_, p. 529 (Eskimo of Igloolik and Winter Island).]

Yet however commonly chastity is disregarded in the savage world, we must not suppose that such disregard is anything like a universal characteristic of the lower races. In a previous work I have given a list of numerous savage and barbarous peoples among whom unchastity before marriage is looked upon as a disgrace or a crime for a woman, sometimes punishable with banishment from the community or even with death;[19] and it is noteworthy that to this group of peoples belong savages of so low a type as the Veddahs of Ceylon,[20] the Igorrotes of Luzon,[21] and certain Australian tribes.[22] I have also called attention to facts which seem to prove that in several cases the wantonness of savages is largely due to foreign influence. The pioneers of a "higher civilisation" are very frequently unmarried men who go out to make their living in uncivilised lands, and, though unwilling to contract regular marriages with native women, they have no objection to corrupting their morals.[23] Moreover, in many tribes the {425} free intercourse which prevails between unmarried people is not of a promiscuous nature, and leads necessarily to marriage should the girl prove with child.[24] Nay, among various uncivilised races not only the girl, but the man who seduces her is subject to punishment or censure.

[Footnote 19: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 61 sqq.]

[Footnote 20: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 178.]

[Footnote 21: Meyer, 'Igorrotes von Luzon,' in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop._ 1883, p. 384 sq. Blumentritt, Ethnographie der Philippinen, p. 27.]

[Footnote 22: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 64 sq. Holden, in Taplin, Folklore of the South Australian Aborigines, p. 19.]

[Footnote 23: It is strange to hear from a modern student of anthropology, and especially from an Australian writer, that in sexual licence the savage has never anything to learn and that "all that the lower fringe of civilised men can do to harm the uncivilised is to stoop to the level of the latter instead of teaching them a better way" (Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 186). Mr. Edward Stephens ('Aborigines of Australia,' in Jour. & Proceed. Royal Soc. N. S. Wales, xxiii. 480) has a very different story to tell with reference to the tribes which once inhabited the Adelaide Plains in South Australia and whose acquaintance he made more than half a century ago.]

[Footnote 24: Westermarck, op. cit. pp. 23, 24, 71.]

Among the East African Takue a seducer may have to pay the same sum as if he had killed the girl, although the fine is generally reduced to fifty cows.[25] Among the Beni Amer and Marea he is killed, together with the girl and the child.[26] In Tessaua a fine of 100,000 kurdi is imposed on the father of a bastard child.[27] Among the Beni Mzab a man who seduces a girl has to pay two hundred francs and is banished for four years.[28] Among the Tedâ he is exposed to the revenge of her father.[29] The Baziba look upon illegitimate intercourse between the sexes as the most serious offence, though no action is taken until the birth of a child; "then the man and woman are bound hand and foot and thrown into Lake Victoria."[30] Among the Bakoki, whilst the girl was driven from home and remained for ever after an outcast, the man was fined three cows to her father and one to the chief.[31] Certain West African savages described by Mr. Winwood Reade, who banish from the clan a girl guilty of wantonness, inflict severe flogging on the seducer.[32] In Dahomey a man who seduces a girl is compelled by law to marry her and to pay eighty cowries to the parent or master.[33] Among some Kafir tribes the father or guardian of a woman who becomes pregnant can demand a fine of one head of cattle from the father of the child;[34] whilst in the Gaika tribe the mere seduction of a virgin incurs the fine of three or four head of cattle.[35] Casalis mentions an interesting custom prevalent among the Basutos, which on the one hand illustrates the belief that sexual intercourse in certain circumstances exposes a person to supernatural danger, and on the other hand indicates that unchastity in unmarried men is not looked upon with perfect indifference:--Immediately after the birth of a child the fire of the dwelling was kindled afresh. "For this purpose it was necessary that a young man of chaste habits should rub two {426} pieces of wood quickly one against another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to take upon himself this office, after having lost his innocence. As soon, therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the fathers took their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt themselves guilty confessed their crime, and submitted to be scourged rather than expose themselves to the consequences of a fatal temerity."[36] Livingstone, speaking of the good name which was given to him by the Bakwains, observes:--"No one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and uprightness. The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinised by both young and old, and seldom is the judgment pronounced, even by the heathen, unfair or uncharitable. I have heard women speaking in admiration of a white man, because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret immorality. Had he been, they would have known it, and, untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence."[37]

[Footnote 25: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 208.]

[Footnote 26: Ibid. p. 322.]

[Footnote 27: Barth, Reisen in Nord- und Central-Afrika, ii. 18.]

[Footnote 28: Chavanne, Die Sahara, p. 315.]

[Footnote 29: Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, i. 449.]

[Footnote 30: Cunningham, Uganda, p. 290.]

[Footnote 31: Ibid. p. 102.]

[Footnote 32: Reade, Savage Africa, p. 261.]

[Footnote 33: Forbes, Dahomey, i. 26.]

[Footnote 34: Warner, in Maclean, op. cit. p. 64.]

[Footnote 35: Brownlee, ibid. p. 112.]

[Footnote 36: Casalis, Basutos, p. 267 sq.]

[Footnote 37: Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 513.]

Of the Australian Maroura tribe, Lower Darling, we are told that before the advent of the whites "their laws were strict, especially those regarding young men and young women. It was almost death to a young lad or man who had sexual intercourse till married."[38] Among various tribes in Western Victoria "illegitimacy is rare, and is looked upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always severely beaten by her relatives, and sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is occasionally killed and burned with her. The father of the child is also punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed."[39]

[Footnote 38: Holden, in Taplin, _Folklore of the South Australian Aborigines_, p. 19.]

[Footnote 39: Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 28.]

In Nias the pregnancy of an unmarried girl is punished with death, inflicted not only upon her but upon the seducer as well.[40] Among the Bódo and Dhimáls of India chastity is prized in man and woman, married and unmarried.[41] Among the Tunguses "in irregular amours only the men are punished," the seducer being obliged either to purchase the girl at a certain price or, if he refuses, to submit to corporal punishment.[42] Among the Thlinkets, "if unmarried women prove frail the partner of their guilt, if discovered, is bound to make reparation to the parents, soothing their wounded honour with handsome {427} presents."[43] In certain North American tribes the seducer is said to be viewed with even more contempt than the girl whom he has dishonoured.[44]

[Footnote 40: Wilken, in Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, ser. v. vol. iv. 444.]

[Footnote 41: Hodgson, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 123.]

[Footnote 42: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 84.]

[Footnote 43: Douglas, quoted by Petroff, Report on Alaska, p. 177.]

[Footnote 44: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 66.]

Passing to more advanced races, we find that chastity is regarded as a duty for unmarried women, whilst a different standard of morality is generally applied to men. "Confucianism," says Mr. Griffis, "virtually admits two standards of morality, one for man, another for woman. . . . Chastity is a female virtue, it is a part of womanly duty, it has little or no relation to man personally."[45] Yet it is held up as an ideal even to men. It is said that in youth, when the physical powers are not yet settled, the superior man guards against lust.[46] Though licentious in their habits, the Chinese exalt and dignify chastity as a means of bringing the soul and body nearer to the highest excellence;[47] one of their proverbs even maintains that "of the myriad vices, lust is the worst."[48] Chastity for its own sake, when defended by a woman at the expense of her life, meets with a reward at the hands of the Government. "If a woman"--so the Ordinances run--"be compelled by her husband to prostitute herself for money, and takes her own life in order to preserve her chastity, or if an unmarried virgin loses her life in defending herself against violation, an honorary gate shall be erected in each case near the door of the paternal dwelling."[49] According to the Chinese Penal Code, "criminal intercourse by mutual consent with an unmarried woman shall be punished with seventy blows," whilst the punishment for such intercourse with a married woman is eighty blows.[50]

[Footnote 45: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 149.]

[Footnote 46: Lun Yü, xvi. 7.]

[Footnote 47: Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, ii. 193.]

[Footnote 48: Smith, Proverbs of the Chinese, p. 256.]

[Footnote 49: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 752 sq.]

[Footnote 50: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. ccclxvi. p. 404.]

Among the ancient Hebrews fornication was forbidden to women[51] but not to men. The action of Judah towards the supposed harlot on the way to Timnath is mentioned {428} as the most natural thing in the world,[52] even though the perpetrator was a man of wealth and position, a man whom his brethren "shall praise" and before whom his "father's children shall bow down."[53] Throughout the Muhammedan world chastity is regarded as an essential duty for a woman.[54] In Persia an unmarried girl who gave birth to a child would surely be killed.[55] Among the Fellaheen of Egypt a father or brother in most instances punishes an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of incontinence by throwing her into the Nile with a stone tied to her neck, or cutting her to pieces, and then throwing her remains into the river.[56] Among the Jbâla and Rif Berbers of Morocco she is also frequently killed. For unmarried men, on the other hand, chastity is by Muhammedans at most looked upon as an ideal, almost out of reach. The Caliph Ali said that "with a man who is modest and chaste nobody should find fault."[57] We are told that the Muhammedans of India consider it inconceivable that a Moslem should have illicit intercourse with a free Muhammedan woman;[58] but connections with slave girls are regarded in a different light.

[Footnote 51: Leviticus, xix. 29. Deuteronomy, xxiii. 18.]

[Footnote 52: Genesis, xxxviii. 15 sqq.]

[Footnote 53: Ibid. xlix. 8.]

[Footnote 54: Burton, Sindh, p. 295.]

[Footnote 55: Polak, Persien, i. 217.]

[Footnote 56: Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_, p. 209.]

[Footnote 57: Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islâm, p. 30.]

[Footnote 58: Lane-Poole, Studies in a Mosque, p. 106.]

Among the Hindus sexual impurity is scarcely considered a sin in the men, but "in females nothing is held more execrable or abominable. The unhappy inhabitants of houses of ill fame are looked upon as the most degraded of the human species."[59] In one of the Pahlavi texts continence is recommended from the point of view of prudence:--"Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions."[60] But in Zoroastrianism, also, chastity is chiefly a female duty. It is written in the Avesta, "Any woman that has given up her body to two men in one day is sooner to be killed than a wolf, a lion, or a snake."[61]

[Footnote 59: Calcutta Review, ii. 23. Dubois, Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India, p. 193. Cf. Laws of Manu, ix. 51 sq.]

[Footnote 60: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, ii. 23 sq.]

[Footnote 61: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. 206, n. 1.]

{429} Among the ancient Teutons an unmarried woman who belonged to an honourable family was severely punished for going wrong, and the seducer was exposed to the revenge of her family, or had to pay compensation for his deed.[62] The yet un-Romanised Saxons, down to the days of St. Boniface, compelled a maiden who had dishonoured her father's house, as well as an adulteress, to hang herself, after which her body was burned and her paramour hung over the blazing pile; or she was scourged or cut with knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.[63]

[Footnote 62: Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 659 sqq. Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 799 sqq. Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 67. Maurer, Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes, ii. 154.]

[Footnote 63: Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 54.]

In Greece the chastity of an unmarried girl was anxiously guarded.[64] According to Athenian law, the relatives of a maiden who had lost her virtue could with impunity kill the seducer on the spot.[65] Virginity was an object of worship. Chastity was the pre-eminent attribute of sanctity ascribed to Athene and Artemis, and the Parthenon, or virgin's temple, was the noblest religious edifice of Athens.[66] It is true that a certain class of courtesans occupied a remarkably high position in the social life of Greece, being admired and sought after even by the principal men. But they did so on account of their extraordinary beauty or their intellectual superiority; to the Greek mind the moral standard was by no means the only standard of excellence. The Romans, on the other hand, regarded the courtesan class with much contempt.[67] In A.D. 19 the profligacy of women was checked by stringent enactments, and it was provided that no woman whose grandfather, father, or husband had been a Roman knight should get money by prostitution. [68] The names of prostitutes had to be published on the aedile's list, as Tacitus says, "according to a recognised custom {430} of our ancestors, who considered it a sufficient punishment on unchaste women to have to profess their shame."[69] But both in Rome and Greece pre-nuptial unchastity in men, when it was not excessive[70] or did not take some especially offensive form, was hardly censured by public opinion.[71] The elder Cato expressly justified it.[72] Cicero says:--"If there be any one who thinks that youth is to be wholly interdicted from amours with courtesans, he certainly is very strict indeed. I cannot deny what he says; but still he is at variance not only with the licence of the present age, but even with the habits of our ancestors, and with what they used to consider allowable. For when was the time that men were not used to act in this manner? When was such conduct found fault with? When was it not permitted? When, in short, was the time when that which is lawful was not lawful?"[73] Epictetus only went a little step further. He said to his disciples:--"Concerning sexual pleasures, it is right to be pure before marriage, as much as in you lies. But if you indulge in them, let it be according to what is lawful. But do not in any case make yourself disagreeable to those who use such pleasures, nor be fond of reproving them, nor of putting yourself forward as not using them."[74] Here chastity in men is at all events recognised as an ideal. But even in pagan antiquity there were a few who enjoined it as a duty.[75] Musonius Rufus emphatically asserted that no union of the sexes other than marriage was permissible,[76] and Dio Chrysostom desired prostitution to be suppressed by law.[77] Similar opinions grew up in connection with the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean philosophies, and may be traced back to the ancient masters themselves. We are told that Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of {431} chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans, which were supposed to have a mystic affinity with the seat of impure desires.[78] Plato, again, is in favour of a law to the effect that "no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts." Our citizens, he says, ought not to be worse than birds and beasts, which live without intercourse, pure and chaste, until the age for procreation, and afterwards, when they have arrived at that period and the male has paired with the female and the female with the male, "live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact."[79]

[Footnote 64: See Denis, Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l'antiquité, i. 69 sq.]

[Footnote 65: Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 193.]

[Footnote 66: See Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 105.]

[Footnote 67: Ibid. ii. 300.]

[Footnote 68: Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85.]

[Footnote 69: Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85.]

[Footnote 70: Valerius Maximus (Facta dictaque memorabilia, ii. 5. 6) praises "frugalitas" as "immoderato Veneris usu aversa."]

[Footnote 71: Lecky, op. cit. ii. 314.]

[Footnote 72: Horace, Satiræ, i. 2. 31 sq.]

[Footnote 73: Cicero, Pro C[oe]lio, 20 (48).]

[Footnote 74: Epictetus, Enchiridion, xxxiii. 8.]

[Footnote 75: Denis, op. cit. ii. 133 sqq.]

[Footnote 76: Musonius Rufus, quoted by Stobæus, Florilegium, vi. 61.]

[Footnote 77: Denis, op. cit. ii. 149 sqq.]

[Footnote 78: Jamblichus, De Pythagorica vita, 31 (191). Cf. Jevons, in Plutarch's Romane Questions, p. lxxxviii. sq.]

[Footnote 79: Plato, Leges, viii. 840 sq. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia, i. 3. 8.]

Much stronger was the censure which Christianity passed on pre-nuptial connections. While looking with suspicion even on the life-long union of one man with one woman, the Church pronounced all other forms of sexual intercourse to be mortal sins. In its Penitentials sins of unchastity were the favourite topic; and its horror of them finds an echo in the secular legislation of the first Christian emperors. Panders were condemned to have molten lead poured down their throats.[80] In the case of forcible seduction both the man and woman, if she consented to the act, were put to death.[81] Even the innocent offspring of illicit intercourse were punished for their parents' sins with ignominy and loss of certain rights which belonged to other, more respectable, members of the Church and the State.[82] Persons of different sex {432} who were not united in wedlock were forbidden by the Church to kiss each other; nay, the sexual desire itself, though unaccompanied by any external act, was regarded as sinful in the unmarried.[83] In this standard of purity no difference of sex was recognised, the same obligations being imposed upon man and woman.[84]

[Footnote 80: Lecky, op. cit. ii. 316.]

[Footnote 81: Codex Theodosianus, ix. 24. 1.]

[Footnote 82: Concilium Claromontanum, A.D. 1095, can. 11 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, xx. 817):--"Ut nulli filii concubinarum ad ordines vel aliquos honores ecclesiasticos promoveantur, nisi monchaliter vel canonice vixerint in ecclesia." See also supra, i. 47.]

[Footnote 83: "Perit ergo et ipsa mente virginitas." Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, p. 114 sq. For the subject of kissing see also Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii.-ii. 154. 4.]

[Footnote 84: Laurent, Études sur l'histoire de l'Humanité, iv. 114.]

In this, as in so many other points of morals, however, there is a considerable discrepancy between Christian doctrine and public opinion in Christian countries. The gross and open immorality of the Middle Ages indicates how little the idea of sexual purity entered into the manners and opinions of the people. The influence of the ascetic doctrine of the Church was in fact quite contrary to its aspirations. The institution of clerical celibacy lowered the estimation of virtue by promoting vice. During the Middle Ages unchastity was regarded as an object of ridicule rather than censure, and in the comic literature of that period the clergy are universally represented as the great corrupters of domestic virtue.[85] Whether the tenet of chastity laid down by the code of Chivalry was taken more seriously may be fairly doubted. A knight, it was said, should be abstinent and chaste;[86] he should love only the virtues, talents, and graces of his lady;[87] and love was defined as the "chaste union of two hearts by virtue wrought."[88] But whilst the knight had certain claims as regards the virtue of his lady, whilst he probably was inclined to draw his sword only for a woman of fair reputation, and whilst he himself professed to aspire only to her lip or hand, we have reason to believe that the amours in which he indulged with her were of a far less delicate kind. Sainte-Palaye observes, "Jamais {433} on ne vit les m[oe]urs plus corrompues que du temps de nos Chevaliers, et jamais le règne de la débauche ne fut plus universel."[89] For a mediæval knight the chief object of life was love. He who did not understand how to win a lady was but half a man; and the difference between a lover and a seducer was apparently slight. The character of the seducer, as Mr. Lecky remarks, and especially of the passionless seducer who pursues his career simply as a kind of sport, and under the influence of no stronger motive than vanity or a spirit of adventure, has for many centuries been glorified and idealised in the popular literature of Christendom in a manner to which there is no parallel in antiquity.[90]

[Footnote 85: Wright, Essays on Archæological Subjects, ii. 238. Cf. Idem, _History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages_, pp. 54, 281, 420.]

[Footnote 86: Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 40.]

[Footnote 87: Sainte-Palaye, _Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie_, ii. 17.]

[Footnote 88: Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 214 sq.]

[Footnote 89: Sainte-Palaye, op. cit. ii. 19. Cf. Walter Scott, 'Essay on Chivalry,' in Miscellaneous Prose Works, vi. 48 sq.]

[Footnote 90: Lecky, op. cit. ii. 346. Cf. Delécluze, Roland ou la Chevalerie, i. 356.]

The Reformation brought about some change for the better, if in no other respect at least by making marriage lawful for a large class of people to whom illicit love had previously been the only means of gratifying a natural desire, and by abolishing the monasteries. In fits of religious enthusiasm even the secular legislators busied themselves with acts of incontinence in which two unmarried adults of different sex were consenting parties. In the days of the Commonwealth, according to an act of 1650, in cases of less serious breach of chastity than adultery and incest, each man or woman was for each offence to be committed to the common gaol for three months, and to find sureties for good behaviour during a whole year afterwards.[91] In Scotland, after the Reformation, fornication was punished with a severity nearly equal to that which attended the infraction of the marriage vow.[92] But the fate of these and similar laws has been either to be repealed or to become inactive.[93] For ordinary acts of incontinence public opinion is, practically at least, the only judge. In the case of female unchastity its sentence is {434} severe enough among the upper ranks of society, whilst, so far as the lower classes are concerned, it varies considerably even in different parts of the same country, and is in many cases regarded as venial. As to similar acts committed by unmarried men, the words which Cicero uttered on behalf of C[oe]lius might be repeated by any modern advocate who, in defending his client, ventured frankly to express the popular opinion on the subject. It seems to me that with regard to sexual relations between unmarried men and women Christianity has done little more than establish a standard which, though accepted perhaps in theory, is hardly recognised by the feelings of the large majority of people--or at least of men--in Christian communities, and has introduced the vice of hypocrisy, which apparently was little known in sexual matters by pagan antiquity.

[Footnote 91: Pike, History of Crime in England, ii. 182.]

[Footnote 92: Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, ii. 242.]

[Footnote 93: See Pike, op. cit. ii. 582; Hume, Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, ii. 333.]

Why has sexual intercourse between unmarried people, if both parties consent, come to be regarded as wrong? Why are the moral opinions relating to it subject to so great variations? Why is the standard commonly so different for man and woman? We shall now try to find an answer to these questions.

If marriage, as I am inclined to suppose, is based on an instinct derived from some ape-like progenitor, it would from the beginning be regarded as the natural form of sexual intercourse in the human race, whilst other more transitory connections would appear abnormal and consequently be disapproved of. I am not certain whether some feeling of this sort, however vague, is not still very general in the race. But it has been more or less or almost totally suppressed by social conditions which make it in most cases impossible for men to marry at the first outbreak of the sexual passion. We have thus to seek for some other explanation of the severe censure passed on pre-nuptial connections.

It seems to me obvious that this censure is chiefly due to the preference which a man gives to a virgin bride. As I have shown in another place, such a preference is a {435} fact of very common occurrence.[94] It partly springs from a feeling akin to jealousy towards women who have had previous connections with other men, partly from the warm response a man expects from a woman whose appetites he is the first to gratify, and largely from an instinctive appreciation of female coyness. Each sex is attracted by the distinctive characteristics of the opposite sex, and coyness is a female quality. In mankind, as among other mammals, the female requires to be courted, often endeavouring for a long time to escape from the male. Not only in civilised countries may courtship mean a prolonged making of love to the woman. Mariner's words with reference to the women of Tonga hold true of a great many, if not all, savage and barbarous races of men. "It must not be supposed," he says, "that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions and most fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no other lover in the way."[95] The marriage ceremonies of many peoples bear testimony to the same fact. One origin of the form of capture is the resistance of the pursued woman, due to coyness, partly real and partly assumed.[96] On the East Coast of Greenland, for instance, the only method of contracting a marriage is for a man to go to the girl's tent, catch her by her hair or anything else which offers a hold, and drag her off to his dwelling without further ado; violent scenes are often the result, as single women always affect the utmost bashfulness and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should lose their reputation for modesty.[97] It is certainly not the woman who most readily yields to the desires of a man that is most attractive to him; as an ancient writer puts it, all men love seasoned dishes, not plain meats, or plainly dressed {436} fish, and it is modesty that gives the bloom to beauty.[98] Conspicuous eagerness in a woman appears to a man unwomanly, repulsive, contemptible. His ideal is the virgin; the libertine he despises.

[Footnote 94: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 123 sq.]

[Footnote 95: Mariner, op. cit. ii. 174. Cf. Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, p. 445 (Bushmans).]

[Footnote 96: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 623 sq.; Idem, in Fortnightly Review, xxi. 897 sq.; Westermarck, op. cit. p. 388; Grosse, Die Formen der Familie, p. 107; Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 305 sq.]

[Footnote 97: Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, i. 316 sqq.]

[Footnote 98: Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, xiii. 16.]

Where marriage is the customary form of sexual intercourse pre-nuptial incontinence in a woman, as suggesting lack of coyness and modesty, is therefore apt to disgrace her. At the same time it is a disgrace to, and consequently an offence against, her family, especially where the ties of kinship are strong. Moreover, where wives are purchased the unchaste girl, by lowering her market value, deprives her father or parents of part of their property. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, says Major Ellis, "chastity per se is not understood. An unmarried girl is expected to be chaste because virginity possesses a marketable value, and were she to be unchaste her parents would receive little and perhaps no head-money for her."[99] Among the Rendile of Eastern Africa, we are told, the unchastity of unmarried girls meets with severe retribution, the girl invariably being driven out from her home, for the sole and simple reason that her market value to her parents has been decreased.[100] The same commercial point of view is expressed in the Mosaic rule:--"If a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins."[101] But the girl is not the only offender. Whilst the disgrace of incontinence falls on her alone, the offence against her relatives is divided between her and the seducer. Speaking of the presents which, among the Thlinkets, a man is bound to give to the parents of the girl whom he has seduced, Sir James Douglas observes, "The offender is simply regarded as a robber, who has committed depredation on their merchandise, their only anxiety being to make the {437} damages exacted as heavy as possible."[102] Marriage by purchase has thus raised the standard of female chastity, and also, to some extent, checked the incontinence of the men. But it can certainly not be regarded as the sole cause of the duty of chastity where such a duty is recognised by savages. Among the Veddahs, who do not make their daughters objects of traffic,[103] the unmarried girls are nevertheless protected by their natural guardians "with the keenest sense of honour."[104] In many of the instances quoted above where a seduction is followed by more or less serious consequences for the seducer, the penalty he has to pay is evidently something else than the mere market value of the girl.

[Footnote 99: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 286.]

[Footnote 100: Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert, p. 317.]

[Footnote 101: Exodus, xxii. 16 sq.]

[Footnote 102: Douglas, quoted by Petroff, op. cit. p. 177.]

[Footnote 103: Le Mesurier, 'Veddás of Ceylon,' in _Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc. Ceylon Branch_, ix. 340. Hartshorne, 'Weddas,' in Indian Antiquary, viii. 320.]

[Footnote 104: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 178.]

Thus the men, by demanding that the women whom they marry shall be virgins, indirectly give rise to the demand that they themselves shall abstain from certain forms of incontinence. From my collection of facts relating to savages I find that in the majority of cases where chastity is required of unmarried girls the seducer also is considered guilty of a crime. But, as was just pointed out, his act is judged from a more limited point of view. It is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offence against the parents or family of the girl; chastity per se is hardly required of savage men. Where prostitution exists they may without censure gratify their passions among its victims. Now, to anybody who duly reflects upon the matter it is clear that the seducer does a wrong to the woman also; but I find no indication that this idea occurs at all to the savage mind. Where the seducer is censured the girl also is censured, being regarded not as the injured party but as an injurer. Even in the case of rape the harm done to the girl herself is little thought of. Among the Tonga Islanders "rape, providing it be not upon a married woman or one to whom respect is due on the score of {438} superior rank from the perpetrator, is considered not as a crime but as a matter of indifference."[105] The same is the case in the Pelew Islands.[106] In the laws of the Rejangs of Sumatra referring to this offence, "there is hardly anything considered but the value of the girl's person to her relations, as a mere vendible commodity."[107] Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, the punishment for rape is based on the principle that the price of the woman has been depreciated, that the chances of marriage have been lessened, and that the act is an insult to her kindred, as implying contempt of their feelings and their power of protection.[108] Even the Teutons in early days hardly severed rape from abduction, the kinsmen of the woman feeling themselves equally wronged in either case.[109] If the girl's feelings are thus disregarded when she is an unwilling victim of violence, it can hardly be expected that she should be an object of pity when she is a consenting partner. Does not public opinion in the midst of civilisation turn against the dishonoured rather than the dishonourer?

[Footnote 105: Mariner, op. cit. ii. 107.]

[Footnote 106: Kubary, 'Die Verbrechen und das Strafverfahren auf den Pelau-Inseln,' in Original-Mittheil. aus der ethnol. Abtheil. der königl. Museen Berlin, i. 78.]

[Footnote 107: Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 130.]

[Footnote 108: Dorsey, 'Siouan Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xv. 226.]

[Footnote 109: Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte ii. 666. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. ii. 490. According to Salic law, the fine for the rape of an ingenua puella was 62½ solidi, or only a little higher than the fine for a connection with her to which she herself consented (Lex Salica, Herold's text, xiv. 4; xv. 3); whereas the fine for adultery with a free woman was 200 solidi (ibid. xv. 1).]

There is yet another party to be considered, namely, the offspring. One would imagine that to every thinking mind, not altogether destitute of sympathetic feelings, the question what is likely to happen to the child if the woman becomes pregnant should present itself as one of the greatest gravity. But in judging of matters relating to sexual morality men have generally made little use of their reason and been guilty of much thoughtless cruelty. Although marriage has come into existence solely for the sake of the offspring, it rarely happens that in sexual relations much unselfish thought is bestowed upon unborn {439} individuals. Legal provisions in favour of illegitimate children have made men somewhat more careful, for their own sake, but they have also nourished the idea that the responsibility of fatherhood may be bought off by the small sum the man has to pay for the support of his natural child. Custom or law may exempt him even from this duty. We are told that in Tahiti the father might kill a bastard child, but that, if he suffered it to live, he was eo ipso considered to be married to its mother.[110] This custom, it would seem, is hardly more inhuman than the famous law according to which "la recherche de la paternité est interdite."[111]

[Footnote 110: Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 157.]

[Footnote 111: Code Napoléon, § 340.]

The great authority on the ethics of Roman Catholicism tries to prove that simple fornication is a mortal sin chiefly because it "tends to the hurt of the life of the child who is to be born of such intercourse," or more generally, because "it is contrary to the good of the offspring."[112] But this tender care for the welfare of illegitimate children seems strange when we consider the manner in which such children have been treated by the Roman Catholic Church herself. It is obvious that the extreme horror of fornication which is expressed in the Christian doctrine is in the main a result of the same ascetic principle which declared celibacy superior to marriage and tolerated marriage only because it could not be suppressed.

[Footnote 112: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii.-ii. 154. 2.]

Moral ideas concerning unchastity have also been influenced by the close association which exists in a refined mind between the sexual impulse and a sentiment of affection which lasts long after the gratification of the bodily desire. We find the germ of this feeling in the abhorrence with which prostitution is regarded by savage tribes who have no objection to ordinary sexual intercourse previous to marriage,[113] and in the distinction which among ourselves is drawn between the prostitute and the woman {440} who yields to temptation because she loves. To indulge in mere sexual pleasure, unaccompanied by higher feelings, appears brutal and disgusting in the case of a man, and still more so in the case of a woman. After all, love is generally only an episode in a man's life, whereas for a woman it is the whole of her life.[114] The Greek orator said that in the moment when a woman loses her chastity her mind is changed.[115] On the other hand, when a man and a woman, tied to each other by deep and genuine affection, decide to live together as husband and wife, though not joined in legal wedlock, the censure which public opinion passes upon their conduct seems to an unprejudiced mind justifiable at most only in so far as it may be considered to have been their duty to comply with the laws of their country and to submit to a rule of some social importance.

[Footnote 113: E.g., the Chittagong Hill tribes (Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 348). Cf. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 70 sq.]

[Footnote 114: Cf. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, i. 201; Paulsen, System der Ethik, ii. 274.]

[Footnote 115: Lysias, quoted by Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, i. 273.]

Sexual intercourse between unmarried persons of opposite sex is thus regarded as wrong from different points of view under different conditions, social or psychical, and all of these conditions are not in any considerable degree combined at any special stage of civilisation. Sometimes the opinions on the subject are greatly influenced by the institution of marriage by purchase, sometimes they are influenced by the refinement of love; and between such causes there can be no co-operation. This is one reason for the singular complexity which characterises the evolution of the duty of chastity; but there is another reason perhaps even more important. The causes to which this duty may be traced are frequently checked by circumstances operating in an opposite direction. Thus the preference which a man is naturally disposed to give to a virgin bride may be overcome by his desire for offspring, inducing him to marry a woman who has proved capable of gratifying this desire.[116] It may also be ineffective for the simple reason that no virgin bride is to be found. Nothing has more generally prevented chastity {441} from being recognised as a duty than social conditions promoting licentious habits. Even in savage society, where almost every man and every woman marry and most of them marry early in life, there are always a great number of unmarried people of both sexes above the age of puberty; and, generally speaking, the number of the unmarried increases along with the progress of civilisation. This state of things easily leads to incontinence in men and women, and where such incontinence becomes habitual it can hardly incur much censure. Again, where the general standard of female chastity is high, the standard of male chastity may nevertheless be the lowest possible. This is the case where there is a class of women who can no longer be dishonoured, because they have already been dishonoured, whose virtue is of no value either to themselves or their families because they have lost their virtue, and who make incontinence their livelihood. Prostitution, being a safeguard of female chastity, has facilitated the enforcement of the rule which enjoins it as a duty, but at the same time it has increased the inequality of obligations imposed on men and women. It has begun to exercise this influence already at the lower stages of culture. Prostitution is by no means unknown in the savage world.[117] It is a recognised institution in many of the Melanesian islands; "at Santa Cruz," says Dr. Codrington, "where the separation of the sexes is so carefully maintained, there are certainly public courtesans."[118] Prostitution prevails in many or most Negro countries;[119] and so favourably, we are told, is this institution sometimes regarded, that rich Negro ladies on their death-beds buy female slaves and present them to the public, "in the same manner as in England they would have left a legacy to some public charity."[120] The Wanyoro even have a {442} definite system of prostitution, governed by stringent laws which seem to be very old.[121] In Greenland, where it was "reckoned the greatest of infamies" for an unmarried woman to become pregnant,[122] there were professional harlots already in early times;[123] and the same was the case among many of the North American Indians.[124] Thus among the Omahas extra-matrimonial intercourse is, as a rule, practised only with public women, called minckeda; and "so strict are the Omahas about these matters, that a young girl or even a married woman walking or riding alone, would be ruined in character, being liable to be taken for a minckeda, and addressed as such."[125] Public prostitution was tolerated, if not encouraged, among all the Maya nations, whilst intercourse with other unmarried women was punished with a fine or, if the affronted relatives insisted, with death.[126] "In order to avoid greater evils," the Incas of Peru permitted public prostitutes, who were treated with extreme contempt;[127] but, with this exception, "to be lewd with single women was capital."[128] Among all the civilised nations of the Old World prostitution has existed, and still exists, as a tolerated institution, even where legislators have endeavoured to suppress it.[129] Its prevalence in our modern society greatly increases the perplexity of public opinion in regard to sexual morality. Its victims are degraded and despised beyond description. At the same time their male customers {443} are tacitly allowed to support the trade. That the demand for a merchandise increases the production of it is in this case seldom thought of. But secrecy must be observed. In sexual matters openness is indecent, and the chief crime is to be found out.

[Footnote 116: See supra, ii. 423.]

[Footnote 117: See, e.g., Tutuila, 'Line Islanders,' in _Jour. Polynesian Soc._ i. 270; Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 261 (natives of New Britain); Davis, El Gringo, p. 221 (Indians of New Mexico); Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, i. 536, 540 sqq.]

[Footnote 118: Codrington, Melanesians, p. 234 sqq.]

[Footnote 119: Emin Pasha in Central Africa, p. 88.]

[Footnote 120: Reade, Savage Africa, p. 547 sq.]

[Footnote 121: Emin Pasha in Central Africa, p. 87. Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, ii. 49.]

[Footnote 122: Egede, Description of Greenland, p. 141.]

[Footnote 123: Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 176.]

[Footnote 124: Carver, _Travels through the Interior Parts of North America_, p. 375.]

[Footnote 125: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 365.]

[Footnote 126: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 676, 659.]

[Footnote 127: Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 321 sq.]

[Footnote 128: Herrera, General History of the West Indies, iv. 340.]

[Footnote 129: Dufour, Histoire de la prostitution, passim. Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, i. 348. Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, p. 412. Polak, 'Die Prostitution in Persien,' in Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, xi. 516, 517, 563 sqq. Lane, Modern Egyptians, i. 150. Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 259 (ancient Scandinavians). Desmaze, Les pénalités anciennes, p. 61 sq. n. 4; Mackintosh, History of Civilisation in Scotland, i. 428 (Middle Ages); &c. Since the thirteenth century even the Church tolerated the establishment of brothels in the larger cities (Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker, p. 149).]

There is, moreover, a form of religious prostitution, just as there is religious celibacy. In fact, the two customs are sometimes very closely connected with one another. Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast the chief business of the female kosi, or wife of the god to whom she is dedicated, is prostitution. "In every town there is at least one institution in which the best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of age, are received. Here they remain for three years, learning the chants and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves to the priests and the inmates of the male seminaries; and at the termination of their novitiate they become public prostitutes. This condition, however, is not regarded as one for reproach; they are considered to be married to the god, and their excesses are supposed to be caused and directed by him. Properly speaking, their libertinage should be confined to the male worshippers at the temple of the god, but practically it is indiscriminate. Children who are born from such unions belong to the god."[130] So also the priestesses on the Gold Coast, though not allowed to marry, are by no means debarred from sexual intercourse. They "are ordinarily most licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who may chance to take their fancy. A priestess who is favourably impressed by a man sends for him to her house, and this command he is sure to obey, through fear of the consequences of exciting her anger. She then tells him that the god she serves has directed her to love him, and the man thereupon lives with her until she grows tired of him, or a new object takes her fancy. Some priestesses have as many as half a dozen men in their train at one time, and may on great occasions be seen walking {444} in state, followed by them. Their life is one continual record of debauchery and sensuality, and when excited by the dance they frequently abandon themselves to the wildest excesses."[131] It seems that the "wife" of the Egyptian god at Thebes also in time became a libertine; Strabo tells us that the beautiful woman who was dedicated to him had sexual intercourse with any man she chose "till the natural purification of her body took place," after which she was given to a man.[132] In India every Hindu temple of any importance has its dancing girls, whose position is inferior only to that of the sacrificers.[133] Thus at J[)u]g[)u]nnat'h[)u]-ksh[)u]tr[)u] in Orissa a number of women of infamous character are employed to dance and sing before the god. They live in separate houses, not at the temple. The Brahmins who officiate there continually have adulterous connections with them, and these women also prostitute themselves to visitors.[134] In the Canaanitish cults there were women, called [k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th, who were consecrated to the deity with whose temple they were associated, and who at the same time acted as prostitutes.[135] At the local shrines of North Israel the worship of Yahveh itself was deeply affected by these practices;[136] but they were forbidden in the Deuteronomic code.[137] Perhaps this temple prostitution may be accounted for by a belief that it bestowed blessings upon the worshippers. According to notions which prevail to this day in countries with Semitic culture, sexual intercourse with a holy person is regarded as beneficial to him or her who indulges in it.[138]

[Footnote 130: Ellis, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples, p. 141.]

[Footnote 131: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 121 sq.]

[Footnote 132: Strabo, Geographica, xvii. i. 46. Cf. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 269.]

[Footnote 133: Warneck, quoted by Ploss-Bartels, op. cit. i. 534.]

[Footnote 134: Ward, View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 134.]

[Footnote 135: Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, p. 264. Cheyne, 'Harlot,' in Cheyne and Black, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1965.]

[Footnote 136: Hosea, iv. 14. Cf. Cheyne, in Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1965.]

[Footnote 137: Deuteronomy, xxiii. 17 sq.]

[Footnote 138: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of Holiness (Baraka)_, p. 85.]

Of a somewhat different character was the religious prostitution which prevailed in ancient Babylonia, in connection with the worship of Ishtar. Herodotus says that every woman born in that country was obliged once in her {445} life to go and sit down in the precinct of Aphrodite, and there consort with a stranger. A woman who had once taken her seat was not allowed to return home till one of the strangers threw a silver coin into her lap, and took her with him beyond the holy ground. The silver coin could not be refused because, since once thrown, it was sacred. The woman went with the first man who threw her money, rejecting no one. When she had gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, she returned home, and from that time forth no gift, however great, would prevail with her.[139] Several allusions in cuneiform literature to the sacred prostitution carried on at Babylonian temples confirm Herodotus' statement in general.[140] A cult very similar to this was also found in certain parts of the island of Cyprus,[141] at Heliopolis in Syria,[142] and at Byblus.[143] In the worship of Anaitis the Armenians even of the highest families prostituted their own daughters at least once in their lives, nor was this regarded as any bar to an honourable marriage afterwards.[144] Although such practices were generally excluded from the ordinary Greek worships of Aphrodite, unchastity in the temple cult of that goddess is reported to have occurred at Corinth[145] and in the city of the Locri Epizephyrii, who, according to the story, vowed to consecrate their daughters to this service in order to gain the goddess's aid in a war.[146]

[Footnote 139: Herodotus, i. 199.]

[Footnote 140: Jeremias, Izdubar-Nimrod, p. 59 sq. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 475 sq. Mürdter-Delitzsch, Geschichte Babyloniens, p. 41.]

[Footnote 141: Herodotus, i. 199. Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, xii. 11, p. 516 a.]

[Footnote 142: Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica, 18 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, lxvii. 123). Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica, v. 10 (Migne, Ser. Græca, lxvii. 1243). Eusebius, Vita Constantini, iii. 58 (Migne, Ser. Græca, xx. 1124).]

[Footnote 143: Lucian, De Syria Dea, 6.]

[Footnote 144: Strabo, xi. 14. 16.]

[Footnote 145: Ibid. viii. 6. 20.]

[Footnote 146: Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, ii. 636. Athenæus, xii. 11, p. 516 a.]

Various theories have been set forth to explain the religious prostitution of the Babylonian type. It has been interpreted as an expiation for individual marriage, as a temporary recognition of pre-existing communal rights at a time when "communal marriage" in the full sense of the term had already ceased to exist.[147] It {446} has been supposed to be nothing but ordinary immorality practised under the cloak of religion.[148] It has been represented as a form of sacrifice, either as a first-fruit offering[149] or as an act by which a worshipper sacrifices her most precious possession to the deity.[150] To Dr. Farnell it seems to be "a special modification of a wide-spread custom, the custom of destroying virginity before marriage so that the bridegroom's intercourse should be safe from a peril that is much dreaded by men in a certain stage of culture; and here, as in other ritual," he adds, "it is the stranger that takes the peril upon himself."[151] But why should the stranger have been more willing than the bridegroom to expose himself to this danger? Considering that the act was performed at the temple of the goddess of fecundity, I think its object most probably was to ensure fertility in the woman; this, in fact, is directly indicated by the words which the stranger, according to Herodotus, uttered when he threw the silver coin into her lap:--"The goddess Mylitta prosper thee!"[152] And from what has been said in a previous chapter about the semi-supernatural character ascribed to strangers, about the efficacy of their blessings and the benefits expected from their love,[153] we can see why a stranger was appointed to confer the blessing upon the girl.[154]

[Footnote 147: Avebury, Origin of Civilisation, p. 559.]

[Footnote 148: Jeremias, Izdubar-Nimrod, p. 60.]

[Footnote 149: Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 267 sq.]

[Footnote 150: Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 155.]

[Footnote 151: Farnell, 'Sociological Hypotheses concerning the Position of Women in Ancient Religion,' in _Archiv f. Religionswiss._ vii. 88.]

[Footnote 152: Herodotus, i. 199.]

[Footnote 153: Supra, i. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 154: Since the present chapter was in type, some fresh attempts have been made to explain this religious prostitution. Sir J. G. Frazer (Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 23 sq.) regards it as a rite intended to ensure the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast on the principle of hom[oe]opathic magic. A very similar opinion has been expressed by Dr. Havelock Ellis ('Ursprung und Entwicklung der Prostitution,' in Mutterschutz, iii. fasc. 1 sq.). According to Mr. Hartland, again ('Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 189 sqq.), it was a puberty rite involving a sacrifice of virginity to which every woman was subjected. [My own theory has subsequently been accepted by van Gennep, Les rites de passage, p. 242 sq.]]

Among ourselves an act of incontinence assumes a {447} different aspect if one of the parties, either the man or the woman, is married. Involving a breach of faith, adultery is an offence against him or her to whom faith is due, and at the same time the seducer commits an offence against the husband of the adulteress. But here again our own views are not universally shared.

Although it is hard to understand that the seducer could ever be regarded as guiltless, we are told that among a few peoples adultery is not held to be wrong;[155] and Mr. Morgan states that among the Iroquois "punishment was inflicted upon the woman alone, who was supposed to be the only offender."[156] But these cases are certainly quite exceptional. In a savage tribe a seducer may be thankful if he escapes by paying to the injured husband the value of the bride or some other fine, or if the penalty is reduced to a flogging, to his head being shaved, his ears cut off, one of his eyes destroyed, or his legs speared. Very commonly he has to pay with his life. We have seen that even among many peoples who generally prohibit self-redress an adulterer may be put to death by the aggrieved husband, especially if he be caught flagrante delicto;[157] and in other cases he may be subject to capital punishment, in the proper sense of the word.[158] In Albania, even in our days, custom not only allows, but compels, the injured husband to kill the adulterer.[159] Hebrew law enjoined the man who committed adultery with another man's wife to be put to death;[160] and Christian legislators followed the example. Constantine celebrated his new zeal for the sacramental idea of marriage by establishing the punishment of death for the seducer;[161] adultery was in point of {448} heinousness assimilated to murder, idolatry, and sorcery.[162] Various mediæval law-books punished the seducer with death;[163] whilst in Scotland notorious and manifest adultery was made capital as late as 1563.[164] This extreme severity, however, has been followed by extreme leniency. In Scotland, though adultery kept its place in the statute-book as a heinous and in some cases a capital crime, prosecution for it had ceased for many years before the time of Baron Hume;[165] and in England it is no crime at all in the eyes of the law, only an ecclesiastical offence.

[Footnote 155: Davis, El Gringo, p. 221 sq. (Indians of New Mexico). Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 146 (Cherokees). Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamschatka, p. 204. Prejevalsky, Mongolia, i. 70 (Mongols). Colquhoun, _Amongst the Shans_, p. 75 (Yendalines, one of the Karen tribes). Chanler, op. cit. p. 317 (Rendile in Eastern Africa). Lichtenstein, Travels in Southern Africa, ii. 48 (Bushmans).]

[Footnote 156: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 331.]

[Footnote 157: Supra, i. 290 sqq.]

[Footnote 158: Supra, i. 189.]

[Footnote 159: Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 177.]

[Footnote 160: Leviticus, xx. 10. Deuteronomy, xxii. 22.]

[Footnote 161: Codex Justinianus, ix. 9. 29. 4.]

[Footnote 162: Codex Theodosianus, xi. 36. i. St. Basil, quoted by Bingham, Works, vi. 432 sq.]

[Footnote 163: Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 606. Idem, Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne, p. 391.]

[Footnote 164: Erskine-Rankine, _Principles of the Law of Scotland_, p. 563.]

[Footnote 165: Hume, Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, ii. 302.]

The punishment of the seducer often varies according to his rank, or according to that of the husband, or according to the relative rank of both, or according to the rank of the adulteress. Among the Monbuttu, if the guilty woman belongs to the royal household, the adulterer is put to death, whereas otherwise he is only compelled to pay an indemnity to the offended husband.[166] Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast the fine imposed for adultery depends on the rank of the injured husband;[167] and the same principle is found in Anglo-Saxon law.[168] Among the Bakongo, again, the penalties for adultery "vary from capital punishment to a trifling fine, according to the station of the offender or the district he lives in."[169] Drury tells us that in the country of Anterndroea in Madagascar, "if a man lies with another man's wife who is superior to him, he forfeits thirty head of cattle besides beads and shovels a great number," whereas "if the men are of an equal rank, then twenty beasts are the fine."[170] According to the Chinese Penal Code, a slave who is guilty of criminal intercourse with the wife or daughter of a freeman, shall be punished at the least one degree more {449} severely than a freeman would have been under the same circumstances.[171] In India a man of one of the first three castes who committed adultery with a Sûdra woman was banished, but a Sûdra who committed adultery with a woman of one of the first three castes suffered capital punishment;[172] and an opinion is also quoted that for a Brâhmana who once was guilty of adultery with a married woman of equal class, the penance was one-fourth of that prescribed for an outcast.[173] In ancient Peru "an adulterer was punish'd with death, if the woman was of note, or else with the rack."[174]

[Footnote 166: Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 163.]

[Footnote 167: Ellis, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples, p. 202.]

[Footnote 168: Laws of Alfred, ii. 10.]

[Footnote 169: Johnston, River Congo, p. 404.]

[Footnote 170: Drury, Journal, p. 183.]

[Footnote 171: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. ccclxxiii. p. 409.]

[Footnote 172: Âpastamba, ii. 10. 27. 8 sq.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid. ii. 10. 27. 11.]

[Footnote 174: Herrera, op. cit. iv. 338.]

We find no difficulty in explaining all these facts. In early civilisation a husband has often extreme rights over his wife. The seducer encroaches upon a right of which he is most jealous, and with regard to which his passions are most easily inflamed. Adultery is regarded as an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an offence against property.[175] It is said in the 'Laws of Manu' that "seed must not be sown by any man on that which belongs to another."[176] How closely the seducer is associated with a thief is illustrated by the fact that among some peoples he is punished as such, having his hands, or one of them, cut off.[177] Yet even among savages the offence is something more than a mere infringement of the right of ownership. The Kurile Islanders, says Krasheninnikoff, have an extraordinary way of punishing adultery: the husband of the adulteress challenges the adulterer to a combat. The result is generally the death of both the combatants; but it is held to be "as great dishonour to refuse this combat as to refuse an invitation to a duel among the people of Europe."[178] The passion of jealousy, the feeling of ownership, and the sense of honour, {450} thus combine to make the seducer's act an offence, and often a heinous offence, in the eyes of custom or law; and for the same reasons as in other offences the magnitude of guilt is here also influenced by the rank of the parties concerned. Modern legislation, on the other hand, does not to the same extent as early law and custom allow a man to give free vent to his angry passion; it regards the dishonour of the aggrieved husband as a matter of too private a character to be publicly avenged; and the faithfulness which a wife owes her husband is no longer connected with any idea of ownership. Moreover, the severity of earlier European laws against adultery was closely connected with Christianity's abhorrence of all kinds of irregular sexual intercourse; and secular legislation has more and more freed itself from the bondage of religious doctrine.

[Footnote 175: See, e.g., Casalis, Basutos, p. 225; Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 77; Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 5; Letourneau, L'évolution de la morale, p. 154 sq.]

[Footnote 176: Laws of Manu, ix. 42.]

[Footnote 177: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 130.]

[Footnote 178: Krasheninnikoff, History of Kamschatka, p. 238.]

Among some savage peoples it is the seducer only who suffers, whilst the unfaithful wife escapes without punishment.[179] Jealousy, in the first place, turns against the rival, and the seducer is the dishonourer and the thief. But, as a general rule, the unfaithful wife is also looked upon as an offender, and the punishment falls on both. She is discarded, beaten, or ill-treated in some way or other, and not infrequently she is killed. Often, too, she is disfigured by her enraged husband, so that no man may fall in love with her ever after.[180] Indeed, so strong is the idea that a wife belongs exclusively to her husband, that among several peoples she has to die with him;[181] and frequently a widow is prohibited from remarrying either for ever or for a certain period after the husband's death.[182] In ancient Peru widows generally continued to live single, as "this virtue was much commended in their laws and ordinances."[183] Nor is it in China considered proper {451} for a woman to contract a second marriage after her husband's death, and a lady of rank, by doing so, exposes herself to a penalty of eighty blows.[184] "As a faithful minister does not serve two lords, neither may a faithful woman marry a second husband"--this is to the Chinese a principle of life, a maxim generally received as gospel.[185] Among so-called Aryan peoples the ancient custom which ordained sacrifice of widows survived in the prohibitions issued against their marrying a second time.[186] Even now the bare mention of a second marriage for a Hindu woman would be considered the greatest of insults, and, if she married again, "she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."[187] In Greece[188] and Rome[189] a widow's remarriage was regarded as an insult to her former husband; and so it is still regarded among the Southern Slavs.[190] The early Christians, especially the Montanists and Novatians, strongly disapproved of second marriages by persons of either sex;[191] a second marriage was described by them as a "kind of fornication,"[192] or as a "specious adultery."[193] It was looked upon as a manifest sign of incontinence, and also as inconsistent with the doctrine that marriage is an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church.[194]

[Footnote 179: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 133 (Kandhs). Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 189 sq. Scaramucci and Giglioli, 'Notizie sui Danakil,' in Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, xiv. 26.]

[Footnote 180: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122.]

[Footnote 181: Ibid. p. 125 sq. Supra, i. 472 sqq.]

[Footnote 182: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 127 sqq.]

[Footnote 183: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 305.]

[Footnote 184: Gray, China, i. 215.]

[Footnote 185: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 745.]

[Footnote 186: Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 391.]

[Footnote 187: Dubois, People of India, p. 132.]

[Footnote 188: Pausanias, ii. 21. 7.]

[Footnote 189: Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 262.]

[Footnote 190: Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, p. 578. Cf. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 115 (Bulgarians).]

[Footnote 191: Mayer, _Die Rechte der Israeliten, Athener und Römer_, ii. 290. Bingham, op. cit. vi. 427 sq.; viii. 13 sq.]

[Footnote 192: Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis, 9 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, ii. 924).]

[Footnote 193: Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 33 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, vi. 967).]

[Footnote 194: Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, ii. 187. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 326.]

Conjugal fidelity, whilst considered a stringent duty in the wife, is not generally considered so in the husband. This is obviously the rule among savage and barbarous tribes; but there are interesting exceptions to the rule. The Igorrotes of Luzon are so strictly monogamous that {452} in case of adultery the guilty party can be compelled to leave the hut and the family for ever,[195] and among various other monogamous savages adultery is said to be unknown.[196] The Dyak husband "preserves his vow of fidelity with a rectitude which makes jealousy a farce."[197] The Toungtha, who marry only one wife, do not consider it right for a master to take advantage of his position even with regard to the female slaves in his house.[198] Nay, the duty of fidelity in the husband has been recognised even by some savage peoples who allow polygamy. The Abipones, we are told, thought it both wicked and disgraceful to have any illicit intercourse with other women than their wives; hence adultery was almost unheard of among them.[199] Among the Omaha Indians, "if a woman's husband be guilty of adultery with another woman she may strike him or the guilty female in her anger," though she cannot claim damages.[200] In several tribes of Western Victoria a wife whose husband has been unfaithful to her "may make a complaint to the chief, who can punish the man by sending him away from his tribe for two or three moons";[201] and among some aborigines in New South Wales similar complaints may be made to the elders of the tribe, with the result that the adulterous husband may have to suffer for his conduct.[202] The Kandhs of India deny the married man certain prerogatives which are granted to his wife: whilst constancy to her husband is so far from being required in a wife, "that her pretensions do not, at least, suffer diminution in the eyes of either sex when fines are levied on her convicted lovers," infidelity in a married man is held to be highly dishonourable, and {453} is often punished with deprivation of many social privileges.[203]

[Footnote 195: Meyer, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop._ 1883, p. 385.]

[Footnote 196: Bailey, in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N. S. ii. 291 sq. Hartshorne, in Indian Antiquary, viii. 320 (Veddahs). Finsch, Neu-Guinea, p. 101; Earl, Papuans, p. 81 (Papuans of Dorey).]

[Footnote 197: Boyle, Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo, p. 236. See also Low, Sarawak, p. 300 (Hill Dyaks).]

[Footnote 198: Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 193 sq.]

[Footnote 199: Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 138.]

[Footnote 200: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 364.]

[Footnote 201: Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 33.]

[Footnote 202: Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System, p. 18.]

[Footnote 203: Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 133.]

The duty which savages thus in certain instances have imposed on the husband is hardly at all recognised in the archaic State. The Mexicans "did not consider, nor did they punish, as adultery the trespass of a husband with any woman who was free, or not joined in matrimony; wherefore the husband was not bound to so much fidelity as was exacted from the wife," adultery in her being inevitably punished with death.[204] In China, where adultery in a woman is branded as one of the vilest crimes and the guilty wife is oftentimes "cut into small pieces," concubinage is a recognised institution of the country.[205] In Corea "conjugal fidelity--obligatory on the woman--is not required of the husband. . . . Among the nobles, the young bridegroom spends three or four days with his bride, and then absents himself from her for a considerable time, to prove that he does not esteem her too highly. Etiquette dooms her to a species of widowhood, while he spends his hours of relaxation in the society of his concubines. To act otherwise would be considered in very bad taste, and highly unfashionable."[206] In Japan, "while the man is allowed a loose foot, the woman is expected not only to be absolutely spotless, but also never to show any jealousy, however wide the husband may roam, or however numerous may be the concubines in his family."[207] According to Hebrew law adultery was a capital offence, but it presupposed that the guilty woman was another man's wife.[208] The "Aryan" nations in early times generally saw nothing objectionable in the unfaithfulness of a married man, whereas an adulterous wife was subject to the severest penalties.[209] Until some time after the introduction of Christianity among the Teutons their {454} law-books made no mention of the infidelity of husbands, because it was permitted by custom.[210] The Romans defined adultery as sexual intercourse with another man's wife; on the other hand, the intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman was not regarded as adultery.[211] The ordinary Greek feeling on the subject is expressed in the oration against Neæra, ascribed to Demosthenes, where the licence accorded to husbands is spoken of as a matter of course:--"We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children and to be our faithful house-keepers."[212]

[Footnote 204: Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 356.]

[Footnote 205: Doolittle, op. cit. i. 339. Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 149.]

[Footnote 206: Griffis, Corea, p. 251 sq.]

[Footnote 207: Idem, Religions of Japan, p. 320.]

[Footnote 208: Leviticus, xx. 10. Deuteronomy, xxii. 22.]

[Footnote 209: Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 388.]

[Footnote 210: Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 821. Nordström, op. cit. ii. 67 sq. Stemann, _Den danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.'s Lov_, pp. 324, 633. Keyser, Efterladte Skrifter, vol. ii. pt. ii. 32 sq. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 662.]

[Footnote 211: Vinnius, In quatuor libros institutionum imperialium commentarius, iv. 18. 4, p. 993. Cf. Digesta, l. 16. 101. 1; Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 688 sq.]

[Footnote 212: Oratio in Neæram, p. 1386. Cf. Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 196 sq.]

At the same time the idea that fidelity in marriage ought to be reciprocal was not altogether unknown in classical antiquity.[213] In a lost chapter of his 'Economics,' which has come to us only through a Latin translation, Aristotle points out that it for various reasons is prudent for a man to be faithful to his wife, but that nothing is so peculiarly the property of a wife as a chaste and hallowed intercourse.[214] Plutarch condemns the man who, lustful and dissolute, goes astray with a courtesan or maid-servant; though at the same time he admonishes the wife not to be vexed or impatient, considering that "it is out of respect to her that he bestows upon another all his wanton depravity."[215] Plautus argues that it is unjust of a husband to exact a fidelity which he does not keep himself.[216]

[Footnote 213: Lecky, op. cit. ii. 312 sq. Schmidt, op. cit. ii. 195 sq.]

[Footnote 214: Aristotle, [OE]conomica, p. 341, vol. ii. 679. Cf. Isocrates, Nicocles sive Cyprii, 40.]

[Footnote 215: Plutarch, Conjugalia præcepta, 16.]

[Footnote 216: Plautus, Mercator, iv. 5.]

In its condemnation of adultery Christianity made no distinction between husband and wife.[217] If continence is a stringent duty for unmarried persons independently of {455} their sex, the observance of the sacred marriage vow must be so in a still higher degree. But here again there is a considerable discrepancy between the actual feelings of Christian peoples and the standard of their religion. Even in the laws of various European countries relating to divorce or judicial separation we find an echo of the popular notion that adultery is a smaller offence in a husband than in a wife.[218]

[Footnote 217: Laurent, op. cit. iv. 114. Gratian, Decretum, ii. 35. 5. 23.]

[Footnote 218: See supra, ii. 397.]

The judgment pronounced upon an unfaithful husband is of course influenced by the opinion about extra-matrimonial connections in general. Where it is considered wrong for a man to have intercourse with either an unmarried woman or another man's wife, adultery in a husband is eo ipso condemned. But whether, or how far, infidelity on his part is stigmatised as an offence against his wife, chiefly depends upon the degree of regard which is paid to the feelings of women. That a married man generally enjoys more liberty than a married woman is largely due to the same causes as make him the more privileged partner in other respects; but there are also special reasons for this inequality between the sexes. It was a doctrine of the Roman jurists that adultery is a crime in the wife, and in the wife only, on account of the danger of introducing strange children to the husband.[219] Moreover, the temptation to infidelity and the facility in indulging in it are commonly greater in the case of the husband than in that of the wife; and, as we have often noticed before, actual practice is always apt to influence moral opinion. And a still more important reason for the inequality in question is undoubtedly the general notion that unchastity of any kind is more discreditable for a woman than for a man.

[Footnote 219: Hunter, Exposition of Roman Law, p. 1071.]

XLIII. HOMOSEXUAL LOVE

OUR review of the moral ideas concerning sexual relations has not yet come to an end. The gratification of the sexual instinct assumes forms which fall outside the ordinary pale of nature. Of these there is one which, on account of the rôle which it has played in the moral history of mankind, cannot be passed over in silence, namely, intercourse between individuals of the same sex, what is nowadays commonly called homosexual love.

It is frequently met with among the lower animals.[1] It probably occurs, at least sporadically, among every race of mankind.[2] And among some peoples it has assumed such proportions as to form a true national habit.

[Footnote 1: Karsch, 'Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren,' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, ii. 126 sqq. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 'Sexual Inversion,' p. 2 sqq.]

[Footnote 2: Ives, Classification of Crimes, p. 49. The statement that it is unknown among a certain people cannot reasonably mean that it may not be practised in secret.]

In America homosexual customs have been observed among a great number of the native tribes. In nearly every part of the continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women, and living with other men as their concubines or wives.[3] Moreover, between {457} young men who are comrades in arms there are liaisons d'amitié, which, according to Lafitau, "ne laissent aucun soupçon de vice apparent, quoiqu'il y ait, ou qu'il puisse y avoir, beaucoup de vice réel."[4]

[Footnote 3: von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 246; von Martius, Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 27 sq.; Lomonaco, 'Sulle razze indigene del Brasile,' in Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, xix. 46; Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 246 (Brazilian Indians). Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, ii. 441 sqq.; Cieza de Leon, 'La crónica del Perú [primera parte],' ch. 49, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 403 (Peruvian Indians at the time of the Spanish conquest). Oviedo y Valdés, 'Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias,' ch. 81, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxii. 508 (Isthmians). Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 585 (Indians of New Mexico); ii. 467 sq. (ancient Mexicans). Diaz del Castillo, 'Conquista de Nueva-España,' ch. 208, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 309 (ancient Mexicans). Landa, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, p. 178 (ancient Yucatans). Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, 'Naufragios y relacion de la jornada que hizo a la Florida,' ch. 26, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxii. 538; Coreal, Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, i. 33 sq. (Indians of Florida). Perrin du Lac, Voyage dans les deux Louisianes et chez les nations sauvages du Missouri, p. 352; Bossu, Travels through Louisiana, i. 303. Hennepin, Nouvelle Découverte d'un très Grand Pays Situé dans l'Amerique, p. 219 sq.; 'La Salle's Last Expedition and Discoveries in North America,' in Collections of the New-York Historical Society, ii. 237 sq.; de Lahontan, Mémoires de l'Amérique septentrionale, p. 142 (Illinois). Marquette, Recit des voyages, p. 52 sq. (Illinois and Naudowessies). Wied-Neuwied, Travels in the Interior of North America, p. 351 (Manitaries, Mandans, &c.). McCoy, History of Baptist Indian Missions, p. 360 sq. (Osages). Heriot, Travels through the Canadas, p. 278; Catlin, North American Indians, ii. 214 sq. (Sioux). Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. iii. 365; James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, i. 267 (Omahas). Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians, 1.14 (Iroquois). Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, ii. 42 (Crees). Oswald, quoted by Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 314 (Indians of California). Holder, in New York Medical Journal, December 7th, 1889, quoted by Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 9 sq. (Indians of Washington and other tribes in the North-Western United States). See also Karsch, 'Uranismus oder Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Naturvölkern,' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iii. 112 sqq.]

[Footnote 4: Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, i. 603, 607 sqq.]

Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the peoples in the neighbourhood of Behring Sea.[5] In Kadiak it was the custom for parents who had a girl-like son to dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at woman's work, and letting him associate only with women and girls. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he was married to some wealthy man and was then called an achnuchik or shoopan.[6] Dr. Bogoraz gives the following account of a {458} similar practice prevalent among the Chukchi:--"It happens frequently that, under the supernatural influence of one of their shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman's attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of his sex takes a husband into the yurt and does all the work which is usually incumbent on the wife in most unnatural and voluntary subjection. Thus it frequently happens in a yurt that the husband is a woman, while the wife is a man! These abnormal changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community, and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans, who interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity." The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship; indeed, nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their sex.[7] Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman's attire and are believed to be transformed physically into women are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman's sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian tribes.[8] In some cases at least there can be no doubt that these transformations were connected with homosexual practices. In his description of the Koriaks, Krasheninnikoff makes mention of the ke'yev, that is, men occupying the position of concubines; and he compares them with the Kamchadale koe'k[vc]u[vc], as he calls them, that is, men transformed into women. Every koe'k[vc]u[vc], he says, is regarded as a magician and interpreter of dreams; but from his confused description Mr. Jochelson thinks it may be inferred that the most important feature of the institution of the koe'k[vc]u[vc] lay, not in their shamanistic power, but in their position with regard to the satisfaction of the {459} unnatural inclinations of the Kamchadales. The koe'k[vc]u[vc] wore women's clothes, did women's work, and were in the position of wives or concubines.[9]

[Footnote 5: Dall, Alaska, p. 402; Bancroft, op. cit. i. 92; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 314 (Aleuts), von Langsdorf, Voyages and Travels, ii. 48 (natives of Oonalaska). Steller, Kamtschatka, p. 289, n. a; Georgi, Russia, iii. 132 sq. (Kamchadales).]

[Footnote 6: Davydow, quoted by Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,' in _Acta Soc. Scientiarum Fennicæ_, iv. 400 sq. Lisiansky, _Voyage Round the World_, p. 199. von Langsdorf**, op. cit. ii. 64. Sauer, Billing's Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia, p. 176. Sarytschew, 'Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,' in Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, vi. 16.]

[Footnote 7: Bogoraz, quoted by Demidoff, Shooting Trip to Kamchatka, p. 74 sq.]

[Footnote 8: Jochelson, Koryak Religion and Myth, pp. 52, 53 n. 3.]

[Footnote 9: Jochelson, op. cit. p. 52 sq.]

In the Malay Archipelago homosexual love is common,[10] though not in all of the islands.[11] It is widely spread among the Bataks of Sumatra.[12] In Bali it is practised openly, and there are persons who make it a profession.[13] The basir of the Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery. They "are dressed as women, they are made use of at idolatrous feasts and for sodomitic abominations, and many of them are formally married to other men."[14] Dr. Haddon says that he never heard of any unnatural offences in Torres Straits;[15] but in the Rigo district of British New Guinea several instances of pederasty have been met with,[16] and at Mowat in Daudai it is regularly indulged in.[17] Homosexual love is reported as common among the Marshall Islanders[18] and in Hawaii.[19] From Tahiti we hear of a set of men called by the natives mahoos, who "assume the dress, attitude, and manners, of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the women, they adopt their peculiar employments. . . . The encouragement of this abomination is almost solely {460} confined to the chiefs."[20] Of the New Caledonians M. Foley writes:--"La plus grande fraternité n'est pas chez eux la fraternité uterine, mais la fraternité des armes. Il en est ainsi surtout au village de Poepo. Il est vrai que cette fraternité des armes est compliquée de pédérastie."[21]

[Footnote 10: Wilken, 'Plechtigheden en gebruiken bij verlovingen en huwelijken bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,' in Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxiii. (ser. v. vol. iv.) p. 457 sqq.]

[Footnote 11: Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 139. Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 261.]

[Footnote 12: Junghuhn, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 157, n.*]

[Footnote 13: Jacobs, Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs, pp. 14, 134 sq.]

[Footnote 14: Hardeland, Dajacksch-deutsches Wörterbuch, p. 53 sq. Schwaner, Borneo, i. 186. Perelaer, Ethnographische beschrijving der Dajaks, p. 32.]

[Footnote 15: Haddon, 'Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 315.]

[Footnote 16: Seligmann, 'Sexual Inversion among Primitive Races,' in The Alienist and Neurologist, xxiii. 3 sqq.]

[Footnote 17: Beardmore, 'Natives of Mowat, Daudai, New Guinea,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 464. Haddon, ibid. xix. 315.]

[Footnote 18: Hernsheim, Beitrag zur Sprache der Marshall-Inseln, p. 40. A different opinion is expressed by Senfft, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien, p. 437.]

[Footnote 19: Remy, Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, p. xliii.]

[Footnote 20: Turnbull, Voyage Round the World, p. 382. See also Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific, pp. 333, 361; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 246, 258.]

[Footnote 21: Foley, 'Sur les habitations et les m[oe]urs des Néo-Calédoniens,' in Bull. Soc. d'Anthrop. Paris, ser. iii. vol. ii. 606. See also de Rochas, Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 235.]

Among the natives of the Kimberley District in West Australia, if a young man on reaching a marriageable age can find no wife, he is presented with a boy-wife, known as chookadoo. In this case, also, the ordinary exogamic rules are observed, and the "husband" has to avoid his "mother-in-law," just as if he were married to a woman. The chookadoo is a boy of five years to about ten, when he is initiated. "The relations which exist between him and his protecting billalu" says Mr. Hardman, "are somewhat doubtful. There is no doubt they have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy."[22] Such marriages are evidently exceedingly common. As the women are generally monopolised by the older and more influential men of the tribe, it is rare to find a man under thirty or forty who has a wife; hence it is the rule that, when a boy becomes five years old, he is given as a boy-wife to one of the young men.[23] According to Mr. Purcell's description of the natives of the same district, "every useless member of the tribe" gets a boy, about five or seven years old; and these boys, who are called mullawongahs, are used for sexual purposes.[24] Among the Chingalee of South Australia, Northern Territory, old men are often noticed with no wives but accompanied by one or two boys, whom they jealously guard and with whom they have sodomitic intercourse.[25] {461} That homosexual practices are not unknown among other Australian tribes may be inferred from Mr. Hewitt's statement relating to South-Eastern natives, that unnatural offences are forbidden to the novices by the old men and guardians after leaving the initiation camp.[26]

[Footnote 22: Hardman, 'Notes on some Habits and Customs of the Natives of the Kimberley District,' in _Proceed. Roy. Irish Academy_, ser. iii. vol. i. 74.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. pp. 71, 73.]

[Footnote 24: Purcell, 'Rites and Customs of Australian Aborigines,' in Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop. 1893, p. 287.]

[Footnote 25: Ravenscroft, 'Some Habits and Customs of the Chingalee Tribe,' in Trans. Roy. Soc. South Australia, xv. 122. I am indebted to Mr. N. W. Thomas for drawing my attention to these statements.]

[Footnote 26: Howitt, 'Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xiii. 450.]

In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them.[27] In an old account of that island, dating from the seventeenth century, it is said: "II y a . . . quelques hommes qu'ils appellent Tsecats, qui sont hommes effeminez et impuissans, qui recherchent les garçons, et font mine d'en estre amoureux, en contrefaisans les filles et se vestans ainsi qu'elles leurs font des presents pour dormir auec eux, et mesmes se donnent des noms de filles, en faisant les honteuses et les modestes. . . . Ils haïssent les femmes et ne les veulent point hanter."[28] Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German South-West Africa[29] and the Diakité-Sarracolese in the French Soudan,[30] but as regards their sexual habits details are wanting. Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons.[31] But among the natives of Africa generally such practices seem to be comparatively rare,[32] except among Arabic-speaking {462} peoples and in countries like Zanzibar,[33] where there has been a strong Arab influence. In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequent among the peasants of Egypt[34] and universal among the Jbâla inhabiting the Northern mountains of Morocco. On the other hand, they are much less common or even rare among the Berbers and the nomadic Bedouins,[35] and it is reported that the Bedouins of Arabia are quite exempt from them.[36]

[Footnote 27: Lasnet, in Annales d'hygiène et de médecine coloniales, 1899, p. 494, quoted by Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 10. Cf. Rencurel, in Annales d'hygiène, 1900, p. 562, quoted ibid. p. 11 sq. See also Leguével de Lacombe, Voyage à Madagascar, i. 97 sq. Pederasty prevails to some extent in the island of Nossi-Bé, close to Madagascar, and is very common at Ankisimane, opposite to it, on Jassandava Bay (Walter, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 376).]

[Footnote 28: de Flacourt, _Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar_, p. 86.]

[Footnote 29: Rautanen, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 333.]

[Footnote 30: Nicole, ibid. p. 111.]

[Footnote 31: Ibid. p. 38.]

[Footnote 32: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 525 (Barea and Kunáma). Baumann, 'Conträre Sexual-Erscheinungen bei der Neger-Bevölkerung Zanzibars,' in Verhandl. der Berliner Gesellsch. für Anthropologie, 1899, p. 668. Felkin, 'Notes on the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,' in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 723. Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 404 (Bakongo). Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 57 (Negroes of Accra). Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Mbala,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 410. Nicole, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 111 (Muhammedan Negroes). Tellier, ibid. p. 159 (Kreis Kita in the French Soudan). Beverley, ibid. p. 210 (Wagogo). Kraft, ibid. p. 288 (Wapokomo).]

[Footnote 33: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 sq.]

[Footnote 34: Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 135.]

[Footnote 35: d'Escayrac de Lauture, Afrikanische Wüste, p. 93.]

[Footnote 36: Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, i. 364. See also von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients, ii. 269.]

Homosexual love is spread over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.[37] It is very prevalent among the Tartars and Karatchai of the Caucasus,[38] the Persians,[39] Sikhs,[40] and Afghans; in Kaubul a bazaar or street is set apart for it.[41] Old travellers make reference to its enormous frequency among the Muhammedans of India,[42] and in this respect time seems to have produced no change.[43] In China, where it is also extremely common, there are special houses devoted to male prostitution, and boys are sold by their parents about the age of four, to be trained for this occupation.[44] In Japan pederasty is said by some to have prevailed from the most ancient times, whereas others are of opinion that it was introduced by Buddhism about the sixth century of our era. The monks used to live with handsome youths, to whom they were often passionately devoted; and in feudal times nearly every knight had as {463} his favourite a young man with whom he entertained relations of the most intimate kind, and on behalf of whom he was always ready to fight a duel when occasion occurred. Tea-houses with male gheishas were found in Japan till the middle of the nineteenth century. Nowadays pederasty seems to be more prevalent in the Southern than in the Northern provinces of the country, but there are also districts where it is hardly known.[45]

[Footnote 37: Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 232.]

[Footnote 38: Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine, p. 340.]

[Footnote 39: Polak, 'Die Prostitution in Persien,' in Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, xi. 627 sqq. Idem, Persien, i. 237. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 233 sq. Wilson, Persian Life and Customs, p. 229.]

[Footnote 40: Malcolm, Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 140. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 5, n. 2. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 236.]

[Footnote 41: Wilson, Abode of Snow, p. 420. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 236.]

[Footnote 42: Stavorinus, Voyages to the East-Indies, i. 456. Fryer, New Account of East-India, p. 97. Chevers, _Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India_, p. 705.]

[Footnote 43: Chevers, op. cit. p. 708.]

[Footnote 44: Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 193. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, i. 836. Matignon, 'Deux mots sur la pédérastie en Chine,' in Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 38 sqq. Karsch, Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Ostasiaten, p. 6 sqq.]

[Footnote 45: Jwaya, 'Nan sho k,' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 266, 268, 270. Karsch, op. cit. p. 71 sqq.]

No reference is made to pederasty either in the Homeric poems or by Hesiod, but later on we meet with it almost as a national institution in Greece. It was known in Rome and other parts of Italy at an early period;[46] but here also it became much more frequent in the course of time. At the close of the sixth century, Polybius tells us, many Romans paid a talent for the possession of a beautiful youth.[47] During the Empire "il était d'usage, dans les families patriciennes, de donner au jeune homme pubère un esclave du même âge comme compagnon de lit, afin qu'il pût satisfaire . . . 'ses premiers élans' génésiques";[48] and formal marriages between men were introduced with all the solemnities of ordinary nuptials.[49] Homosexual practices occurred among the Celts,[50] and were by no means unknown to the ancient Scandinavians, who had a whole nomenclature on the subject.[51]

[Footnote 46: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, vii. 2. Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, xii. 14, p. 518 (Etruscans). Rein, Criminalrecht der Römer, p. 863.]

[Footnote 47: Polybius, Historiæ, xxxii. 11. 5.]

[Footnote 48: Buret, La syphilis aujourd'hui et chez les anciens, p. 197 sqq. Catullus, Carmina, lxi. ('In Nuptias Juliæ et Manlii'), 128 sqq. Cf. Martial, Epigrammata, viii. 44. 16 sq.]

[Footnote 49: Juvenal, Satiræ, ii. 117 sqq. Martial, op. cit. xii. 42.]

[Footnote 50: Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, v. 32. 7. Aristotle, Politica, ii. 9, p. 1269 b.]

[Footnote 51: 'Spuren von Konträrsexualität bei den alten Skandinaviern,' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 244 sqq.]

Of late years a voluminous and constantly increasing literature on homosexuality[52] has revealed its frequency in modern Europe. No country and no class of society is free from it. In certain parts of Albania it even exists as a popular custom, the young men from the age of sixteen {464} upwards regularly having boy favourites of between twelve and seventeen.[53]

[Footnote 52: See infra, Additional Notes.]

[Footnote 53: Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 168.]

The above statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices between men, but similar practices also occur between women.[54] Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave like women, but women who behave like men. Thus in certain Brazilian tribes women are found who abstain from every womanly occupation and imitate the men in everything, who wear their hair in a masculine fashion, who go to war with a bow and arrows, who hunt together with the men, and who would rather allow themselves to be killed than have sexual intercourse with a man. "Each of these women has a woman who serves her and with whom she says she is married; they live together as husband and wife."[55] So also there are among the Eastern Eskimo some women who refuse to accept husbands, preferring to adopt masculine manners, following the deer on the mountains, trapping and fishing for themselves.[56] Homosexual practices are said to be common among Hottentot[57] and Herero[58] women. In Zanzibar there are women who wear men's clothes in private, show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are won over by presents or other means.[59] In Egyptian harems every woman is said to have a "friend."[60] In Bali homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is exercised more secretly;[61] and the same seems to be the case in India.[62] From Greek antiquity we {465} hear of "Lesbian" love. The fact that homosexuality has been much more frequently noticed in men than in women does not imply that the latter are less addicted to it. For various reasons the sexual abnormalities of women have attracted much less attention,[63] and moral opinion has generally taken little notice of them.

[Footnote 54: Karsch, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iii. 85 sqq. Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, i. 517 sqq. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, p. 278 sqq. Moll, Die Conträre Sexualempfindung, p. 247 sqq. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 118 sqq.]

[Footnote 55: Magalhanes de Gandavo, Histoire de la Province de Sancta-Cruz, p. 116 sq.]

[Footnote 56: Dall, op. cit. p. 139.]

[Footnote 57: Fritsch, quoted by Karsch, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iii. 87 sq.]

[Footnote 58: Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, p. 227. Cf. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, pp. 173, 177.]

[Footnote 59: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 sq.]

[Footnote 60: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 123.]

[Footnote 61: Jacobs, Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs, p. 134 sq.]

[Footnote 62: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 124 sq.]

[Footnote 63: See ibid. p. 121 sq.]

Homosexual practices are due sometimes to instinctive preference, sometimes to external conditions unfavourable to normal intercourse.[64] A frequent cause is congenital sexual inversion, that is, "sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex."[65] It seems likely that the feminine men and the masculine women referred to above are, at least in many instances, sexual inverts; though, in the case of shamans, the change of sex may also result from the belief that such transformed shamans, like their female colleagues, are particularly powerful.[66] Dr. Holder affirms the existence of congenital inversion among the North-Western tribes of the United States,[67] Dr. Baumann among the people of Zanzibar;[68] and in Morocco, also, I believe it is common enough. But as regards its prevalence among non-European peoples we have mostly to resort to mere conjectures; our real knowledge of congenital inversion is derived from the voluntary confessions of inverts. The large majority of travellers are totally ignorant of the psychological side of the subject, and even to an expert it must very often be impossible to decide whether a certain case of inversion is congenital or acquired. Indeed, acquired inversion itself presupposes an innate disposition which under certain circumstances develops into actual inversion.[69] Even between inversion and normal sexuality {466} there seem to be all shades of variation. Professor James thinks that inversion is "a kind of sexual appetite, of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility."[70] This is certainly the case in early puberty.[71]

[Footnote 64: Another reason for such practices is given by Mr. Beardmore (in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 464), with reference to the Papuans of Mowat. He says that they indulge in sodomy because too great increase of population is undesired amongst the younger portion of the married people. Cf. infra, p. 484 sqq.]

[Footnote 65: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 1.]

[Footnote 66: Jochelson, op. cit. p. 52 sq.]

[Footnote 67: Holder, quoted by Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 9 sq.]

[Footnote 68: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 sq.]

[Footnote 69: Féré, L'instinct sexuel, quoted by Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 41.]

[Footnote 70: James, Principles of Psychology, ii. 439. See also Ives, op. cit. p. 56 sqq.]

[Footnote 71: Dr. Dessoir ('Zur Psychologie der Vita sexualis,' in Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, l. 942) even goes so far as to conclude that "an undifferentiated sexual feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of puberty." But this is certainly an exaggeration (cf. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 47 sq.).]

A very important cause of homosexual practices is absence of the other sex. There are many instances of this among the lower animals.[72] Buffon long ago observed that, if male or female birds of various species were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner than the females.[73] The West Australian boy-marriage is a substitute for ordinary marriage in cases when women are not obtainable. Among the Bororó of Brazil homosexual intercourse is said to occur in their men-houses only when the scarcity of accessible girls is unusually great.[74] Its prevalence in Tahiti may perhaps be connected with the fact that there was only one woman to four or five men, owing to the habit of female infanticide.[75] Among the Chinese in certain regions, for instance Java, the lack of accessible women is the principal cause of homosexual practices.[76] According to some writers such practices are the results of polygamy.[77] In Muhammedan countries they are no doubt largely due to the seclusion of women, preventing free intercourse between the sexes and compelling the unmarried people to associate almost exclusively with members of their own sex. Among the mountaineers of Northern Morocco the excessive indulgence in pederasty thus goes hand in hand with great isolation of the women {467} and a very high standard of female chastity, whereas among the Arabs of the plains, who are little addicted to boy-love, the unmarried girls enjoy considerable freedom. Both in Asia[78] and Europe[79] the obligatory celibacy of the monks and priests has been a cause of homosexual practices, though it must not be forgotten that a profession which imposes abstinence from marriage is likely to attract a comparatively large number of congenital inverts. The temporary separation of the sexes involved in a military mode of life no doubt accounts for the extreme prevalence of homosexual love among warlike races,[80] like the Sikhs, Afghans, Dorians, and Normans.[81] In Persia[82] and Morocco it is particularly common among soldiers. In Japan it was an incident of knighthood, in New Caledonia and North America of brotherhood in arms. At least in some of the North American tribes men who were dressed as women accompanied the other men as servants in war and the chase.[83] Among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons pederasty is practised especially by men who are long absent from their wives.[84] In Morocco I have heard it advocated on account of the convenience it affords to persons who are travelling.

[Footnote 72: Karsch, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, ii. 126 sqq. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 2 sq.]

[Footnote 73: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 2.]

[Footnote 74: von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 502.]

[Footnote 75: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 257 sq.]

[Footnote 76: Matignon, in Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 42. Karsch, op. cit. p. 32 sqq.]

[Footnote 77: Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 113. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 305 (Dahomans).]

[Footnote 78: Supra, ii. 462. Karsch. op. cit. pp. 7. (China), 76 sqq. (Japan), 132 (Corea).]

[Footnote 79: See Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, 'Amour Socratique' ([OE]uvres, vii. 82); Buret, _Syphilis in the Middle Ages and in Modern Times_, p. 88 sq.]

[Footnote 80: Cf. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 5.]

[Footnote 81: Freeman, Reign of William Rufus, i. 159.]

[Footnote 82: Polak, in Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, xi. 628.]

[Footnote 83: Marquette, op. cit. p. 53 (Illinois). Perrin du Lac, Voyage dans les deux Louisianes et chez les nations sauvages du Missouri, p. 352. Cf. Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, loc. cit. p. 538 (concerning the Indians of Florida):--" . . . tiran arco y llevan muy gran carga."]

[Footnote 84: Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 38.]

Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes that when homosexual attraction is due simply to the absence of the other sex we are not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the absence of the normal object.[85] But it seems to me probable that in such cases the homosexual {468} attraction in the course of time quite easily develops into genuine inversion. I cannot but think that our chief authorities on homosexuality have underestimated the modifying influence which habit may exercise on the sexual instinct. Professor Krafft-Ebing[86] and Dr. Moll[87] deny the existence of acquired inversion except in occasional instances; and Dr. Havelock Ellis takes a similar view, if putting aside those cases of a more or less morbid character in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to members of their own sex.[88] But how is it that in some parts of Morocco such a very large proportion of the men are distinctly sexual inverts, in the sense in which this word is used by Dr. Havelock Ellis,[89] that is, persons who for the gratification of their sexual desire prefer their own sex to the opposite one? It may be that in Morocco and in Oriental countries generally, where almost every individual marries, congenital inversion, through the influence of heredity, is more frequent than in Europe, where inverts so commonly abstain from marrying. But that this could not be an adequate explanation of the fact in question becomes at once apparent when we consider the extremely unequal distribution of inverts among different neighbouring tribes of the same stock, some of which are very little or hardly at all addicted to pederasty. I take the case to be, that homosexual practices in early youth have had a lasting effect on the sexual instinct, which at its first appearance, being somewhat indefinite, is easily turned into a homosexual direction.[90] In Morocco inversion is most prevalent among the scribes, who from childhood have lived in very close association with their fellow-students. Of course, influences of this kind "require a favourable organic predisposition to act on";[91] but this predisposition is probably no abnormality at all, only a {469} feature in the ordinary sexual constitution of man.[92] It should be noticed that the most common form of inversion, at least in Muhammedan countries, is love of boys or youths not yet in the age of puberty, that is, of male individuals who are physically very like girls. Voltaire observes:--"Souvent un jeune garçon, par la fraîcheur de son teint, par l'éclat de ses couleurs, et par la douceur de ses yeux, ressemble pendant deux ou trois ans à une belle fille; si on l'aime, c'est parce que la nature se méprend."[93] Moreover, in normal cases sexual attraction depends not only on sex, but on a youthful appearance as well; and there are persons so constituted that to them the latter factor is of chief importance, whilst the question of sex is almost a matter of indifference.

[Footnote 85: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 3.]

[Footnote 86: Krafft-Ebing, op. cit. p. 211 sq.]

[Footnote 87: Moll, op. cit. p. 157 sqq.]

[Footnote 88: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 50 sq. Cf. ibid. p. 181 sqq.]

[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 3.]

[Footnote 90: Cf. Norman, 'Sexual Perversion,' in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, ii. 1156.]

[Footnote 91: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 191.]

[Footnote 92: Dr. Havelock Ellis also admits (op. cit. p. 190) that, if in early life the sexual instincts are less definitely determined than when adolescence is complete, "it is conceivable, though unproved, that a very strong impression, acting even on a normal organism, may cause arrest of sexual development on the psychic side. It is a question," he adds, "I am not in a position to settle."]

[Footnote 93: Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, art. 'Amour Socratique,' ([OE]uvres, vii. 81). Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, x. 84 sq.]

In ancient Greece, also, not only homosexual intercourse but actual inversion, seems to have been very common; and although this, like every form of love, must have contained a congenital element, there can be little doubt, I think, that it was largely due to external circumstances of a social character. It may, in the first place, be traced to the methods of training the youth. In Sparta it seems to have been the practice for every youth of good character to have his lover, or "inspirator,"[94] and for every well-educated man to be the lover of some youth.[95] The relations between the "inspirator" and the "listener" were extremely intimate: at home the youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was supposed to be to him a model and pattern of life;[96] in battle they stood near one another and their fidelity and affection were often shown till death;[97] if his relatives were absent, the youth {470} might be represented in the public assembly by his lover;[98] and for many faults, particularly want of ambition, the lover could be punished instead of the "listener."[99] This ancient custom prevailed with still greater force in Crete, which island was hence by many persons considered to be the place of its birth.[100] Whatever may have been the case originally, there can be no doubt that in later times the relations between the youth and his lover implied unchaste intercourse.[101] And in other Greek states the education of the youth was accompanied by similar consequences. At an early age the boy was taken away from his mother, and spent thenceforth all his time in the company of men, until he reached the age when marriage became for him a civic duty.[102] According to Plato, the gymnasia and common meals among the youth "seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts."[103] Plato also mentions the effect which these habits had on the sexual instincts of the men: when they reached manhood they were lovers of youths and not naturally inclined to marry or beget children, but, if at all, they did so only in obedience to the law.[104] Is not this, in all probability, an instance of acquired inversion? But besides the influence of education there was another factor which, co-operating with it, favoured the development of homosexual tendencies, namely, the great gulf which mentally separated the sexes. Nowhere else has the difference in culture between men and women been so immense as in the fully developed Greek civilisation. The lot of a wife in Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in almost absolute seclusion, in a separate part of the house, together with her female slaves, deprived of all the educating influence of male society, and having no place at those public spectacles {471} which were the chief means of culture.[105] In such circumstances it is not difficult to understand that men so highly intellectual as those of Athens regarded the love of women as the offspring of the common Aphrodite, who "is of the body rather than of the soul."[106] They had reached a stage of mental culture at which the sexual instinct normally has a craving for refinement, at which the gratification of mere physical lust appears brutal. In the eyes of the most refined among them those who were inspired by the heavenly Aphrodite loved neither women nor boys, but intelligent beings whose reason was beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards began to grow.[107] In present China we meet with a parallel case. Dr. Matignon observes:--"Il y a tout lieu de supposer que certains Chinois, raffinés au point de vue intellectuel, recherchent dans la pédérastie la satisfaction des sens et de l'esprit. La femme chinoise est peu cultivée, ignorante même, quelle que soit sa condition, honnête femme ou prostituée. Or le Chinois a souvent l'âme poétique: il aime les vers, la musique, les belles sentences des philosophes, autant de choses qu'il ne peut trouver chez le beau sexe de l'Empire du Milieu."[108] So also it seems that the ignorance and dullness of Muhammedan women, which is a result of their total lack of education and their secluded life, is a cause of homosexual practices; Moors are sometimes heard to defend pederasty on the plea that the company of boys, who have always news to tell, is so much more entertaining than the company of women.

[Footnote 94: Servius, In Vergilii Æneidos, x. 325. For the whole subject of pederasty among the Dorians see Mueller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, ii. 307 sq.]

[Footnote 95: Aelian, Varia historia, iii. 10.]

[Footnote 96: Mueller, op. cit. ii. 308.]

[Footnote 97: Xenophon, Historia Græca, iv. 8. 39.]

[Footnote 98: Plutarch, Lycurgus, xxv. 1.]

[Footnote 99: Ibid. xviii. 8. Aelian, op. cit. iii. 10.]

[Footnote 100: Aelian, op. cit. iii. 9. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistæ, xiii. 77, p. 601.]

[Footnote 101: Cf. Symonds, 'Die Homosexualität in Griechenland,' in Havelock Ellis and Symonds, _Das konträre Geschlechtsgefühl_, p. 55.]

[Footnote 102: Ibid. p. 116. Döllinger, _The Gentile and the Jew_, ii. 244.]

[Footnote 103: Plato, Leges, i. 636. Cf. Plutarch, Amatorius, v. 9.]

[Footnote 104: Plato, Symposium, p. 192.]

[Footnote 105: 'State of Female Society in Greece,' in Quarterly Review, xxii. 172 sqq. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 287. Döllinger, op. cit. ii. 234.]

[Footnote 106: Plato, Symposium, p. 181. That the low state of the Greek women was instrumental to pederasty has been pointed out by Döllinger (op. cit. ii. 244) and Symonds (loc. cit. pp. 77, 100, 101, 116 sqq.).]

[Footnote 107: Plato, Symposium, p. 181.]

[Footnote 108: Matignon, in Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 41.]

We have hitherto dealt with homosexual love as a fact; we shall now pass to the moral valuation to which it is subject. Where it occurs as a national habit we may assume that no censure, or no severe censure, is passed on it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra there is no punishment {472} for it.[109] Of the bazirs among the Ngajus of Pula Patak, in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner says that "in spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited contempt."[110] The Society Islanders had for their homosexual practices "not only the sanction of their priests, but the direct example of their respective deities."[111] The tsekats of Madagascar maintained that they were serving the deity by leading a feminine life;[112] but we are told that at Ankisimane and in Nossi-Bé, opposite to it, pederasts are objects of public contempt.[113] Father Veniaminof says of the Atkha Aleuts that "sodomy and too early cohabitation with a betrothed or intended wife are called among them grave sins";[114] but apart from the fact that his account of these natives in general gives the impression of being somewhat eulogistic, the details stated by him only show that the acts in question were considered to require a simple ceremony of purification.[115] There is no indication that the North American aborigines attached any opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being wizards.[116] We have previously noticed the connection between homosexual practices and shamanism among various Siberian peoples; and it is said that such shamans as had changed their sex were greatly feared by the people, being regarded as very powerful.[117] Among the Illinois and Naudowessies the {473} effeminate men assist in all the juggleries and the solemn dance in honour of the calumet, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the Indians have such a deference that one may call it "the god of peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death"; but they are not permitted either to dance or sing. They are called into the councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living they are looked upon as manitous, or supernatural beings, and persons of consequence.[118] The Sioux, Sacs, and Fox Indians give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the Berdashe, or I-coo-coo-a, who is a man dressed in woman's clothes, as he has been all his life. "For extraordinary privileges which he is known to possess, he is driven to the most servile and degrading duties, which he is not allowed to escape; and he being the only one of the tribe submitting to this disgraceful degradation, is looked upon as 'medicine' and sacred, and a feast is given to him annually; and initiatory to it, a dance by those few young men of the tribe who can . . . . dance forward and publicly make their boast (without the denial of the Berdashe) . . . . Such, and such only, are allowed to enter the dance and partake of the feast."[119] Among some American tribes, however, these effeminate men are said to be despised, especially by the women.[120] In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices seem to have entered in the religious cult. In some particular places, says Cieza de Leon, boys were kept as priests in the temples, with whom it was rumoured that the lords joined in company on days of festivity. They did not meditate, he adds, the committing of such sin, but only the offering of sacrifice to the demon. If the Incas by chance had some knowledge of such proceedings in the temple, they might have {474} ignored them out of religious tolerance.[121] But the Incas themselves were not only free from such practices in their own persons, they would not even permit any one who was guilty of them to remain in the royal houses or palaces. And Cieza heard it related that, if it came to their knowledge that somebody had committed an offence of that kind, they punished it with such a severity that it was known to all.[122] Las Casas tells us that in several of the more remote provinces of Mexico sodomy was tolerated, if not actually permitted, because the people believed that their gods were addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times the same was the case in the entire empire.[123] But in a later age severe measures were adopted by legislators in order to suppress the practice. In Mexico people found guilty of it were killed.[124] In Nicaragua it was punished capitally by stoning,[125] and none of the Maya nations was without strict laws against it.[126] Among the Chibchas of Bogota the punishment for it was the infliction of a painful death.[127] However, it should be remembered that the ancient culture nations of America were generally extravagant in their punishments, and that their penal codes in the first place expressed rather the will of their rulers than the feelings of the people at large.[128]

[Footnote 109: Junghuhn, op. cit. ii. 157, n.]

[Footnote 110: Schwaner, op. cit. i. 186.]

[Footnote 111: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 258. Cf. Moerenhout, Voyages aux îles du Grand Océan, ii. 167 sq.]

[Footnote 112: de Flacourt, op. cit. p. 86.]

[Footnote 113: Walter, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 376.]

[Footnote 114: Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, Report on Alaska, p. 158.]

[Footnote 115: Ibid. p. 158:--"The offender desirous of unburdening himself selected a time when the sun was clear and unobscured; he picked up certain weeds and carried them about his person; then deposited them and threw his sin upon them, calling the sun as a witness, and, when he had eased his heart of all that had weighed upon it, he threw the grass or weeds into the fire, and after that considered himself cleansed of his sin."]

[Footnote 116: Davydow, quoted by Holmberg, loc. cit. p. 400 sq. Lisianski, op. cit. p. 199.]

[Footnote 117: Bogoraz, quoted by Demidoff, op. cit. p. 75. Jochelson, op. cit. p. 52 sq.]

[Footnote 118: Marquette, op. cit. p. 53 sq.]

[Footnote 119: Catlin, North American Indians, ii. 214 sq.]

[Footnote 120: 'La Salle's Last Expedition in North America,' in Collections of the New-York Historical Society, ii. 238 (Illinois). Perrin du Lac, Voyage dans les deux Louisianes et chez les nations sauvages du Missouri, p. 352. Bossu, op. cit. i. 303 (Chactaws). Oviedo y Valdés, loc. cit. p. 508 (Isthmians). von Martius, Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 28 (Guaycurús).]

[Footnote 121: Cieza de Leon, Segunda parte de Crónica del Perú, ch. 25, p. 99. See also Idem, Crónica del Perú [primera parte], ch. 64 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 416 sq.).]

[Footnote 122: Idem, Segunda parte de Crónica del Perú, ch. 25, p. 98. See also Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. ii. 132.]

[Footnote 123: Las Casas, quoted by Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 467 sq. Cf. ibid. ii. 677.]

[Footnote 124: Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 357.]

[Footnote 125: Squier, 'Archæology and Ethnology of Nicaragua,' in Trans. American Ethn. Soc. iii. pt. i. 128.]

[Footnote 126: Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 677.]

[Footnote 127: Piedrahita, Historia general de las conquistas del nuevo reyno de Granada, p. 46.]

[Footnote 128: See supra, i. 186, 195.]

Homosexual practices are said to be taken little notice of even by some uncivilised peoples who are not addicted to them. In the Pelew Islands, where such practices occur only sporadically, they are not punished, although, if I understand Herr Kubary rightly, the persons committing them may be put to shame.[129] The Ossetes of the Caucasus, {475} among whom pederasty is very rare, do not generally prosecute persons for committing it, but ignore the act.[130] The East African Masai do not punish sodomy.[131] But we also meet with statements of a contrary nature. In a Kafir tribe Mr. Warner heard of a case of it--the only one during a residence of twenty-five years--which was punished with a fine of some cattle claimed by the chief.[132] Among the Ondonga pederasts are hated, and the men who behave like women are detested, most of them being wizards.[133] The Washambala consider pederasty a grave moral aberration and subject it to severe punishment.[134] Among the Waganda homosexual practices, which have been introduced by the Arabs and are of rare occurrence, "are intensely abhorred," the stake being the punishment.[135] The Negroes of Accra, who are not addicted to such practices, are said to detest them.[136] In Nubia pederasty is held in abhorrence, except by the Kashefs and their relations, who endeavour to imitate the Mamelukes in everything.[137]

[Footnote 129: Kubary, 'Die Verbrechen und das Strafverfahren auf den Pelau-Inseln,' in Original-Mittheilungen aus der ethnologischen Abtheilung der königlichen Museen zu Berlin, i. 84.]

[Footnote 130: Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine, p. 340.]

[Footnote 131: Merker, Die Masai, p. 208. The Masai, however, slaughter at once any bullock or he-goat which is noticed to practise unnatural intercourse, for fear lest otherwise their herds should be visited by a plague as a divine punishment (ibid. p. 159).]

[Footnote 132: Warner, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 62.]

[Footnote 133: Rautanen, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 333 sq.]

[Footnote 134: Lang, ibid. p. 232.]

[Footnote 135: Felkin, in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 723.]

[Footnote 136: Monrad, op. cit. p. 57.]

[Footnote 137: Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 135.]

Muhammed forbade sodomy,[138] and the general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication--for which the punishment is, theoretically, severe enough[139]--unless the offenders make a public act of penitence. In order to convict, however, the law requires that four reliable persons shall swear to have been eye-witnesses,[140] and this alone would make the law a dead letter, even if it had the support of popular feelings; but such support is certainly wanting. In Morocco active {476} pederasty is regarded with almost complete indifference, whilst the passive sodomite, if a grown-up individual, is spoken of with scorn. Dr. Polak says the same of the Persians.[141] In Zanzibar a clear distinction is made between male congenital inverts and male prostitutes; the latter are looked upon with contempt, whereas the former, as being what they are "by the will of God," are tolerated.[142] The Muhammedans of India and other Asiatic countries regard pederasty, at most, as a mere peccadillo.[143] Among the Hindus it is said to be held in abhorrence,[144] but their sacred books deal with it leniently. According to the 'Laws of Manu,' "a twice-born man who commits an unnatural offence with a male, or has intercourse with a female in a cart drawn by oxen, in water, or in the day-time, shall bathe, dressed in his clothes"; and all these are reckoned as minor offences.[145]

[Footnote 138: Koran, iv. 20.]

[Footnote 139: Sachau, Muhammedanisches Recht nach Schafiitischer Lehre, pp. 809, 818:--"Sodomita si mu[h.][s.]an (that is, a married person in possession of full civic rights) est punitur lapidatione, si non est mu[h.][s.]an punitur et flagellatione et exsilio."]

[Footnote 140: Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 224.]

[Footnote 141: Polak, in Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, xi. 628 sq.]

[Footnote 142: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop._ 1899, p. 669.]

[Footnote 143: Chevers, op. cit. p. 708. Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 222 sqq.]

[Footnote 144: Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 237.]

[Footnote 145: Laws of Manu, xi. 175. Cf. _Institutes of Vishnu_, liii. 4; Âpastamba, i. 9. 26. 7; Gautama, xxv. 7.]

Chinese law makes little distinction between unnatural and other sexual offences. An unnatural offence is variously considered according to the age of the patient, and whether or not consent was given. If the patient be an adult, or a boy over the age of twelve, and consent, the case is treated as a slightly aggravated form of fornication, both parties being punished with a hundred blows and one month's cangue, whilst ordinary fornication is punished with eighty blows. If the adult or boy over twelve resist, the offence is considered as rape; and if the boy be under twelve, the offence is rape irrespective of consent or resistance, unless the boy has previously gone astray.[146] But, as a matter of fact, unnatural offences are regarded as less hurtful to the community than ordinary immorality,[147] and pederasty is not looked down upon. "L'opinion publique reste tout à fait indifférente à ce genre de distraction et la {477} morale ne s'en émeut en rien: puisque cela plaît à l'opérateur et que l'opéré est consentant, tout est pour le mieux; la loi chinoise n'aime guère à s'occuper des affaires trop intimes. La pédérastie est même considérée comme une chose de bon ton, une fantaisie dispendieuse et partout un plaisir élégant. . . . La pédérastie a une consécration officielle en Chine. Il existe, en effet, des pédérés pour l'Empereur."[148] Indeed, the only objection which Dr. Matignon has heard to be raised to pederasty by public opinion in China is that it has a bad influence on the eyesight.[149] In Japan there was no law against homosexual intercourse till the revolution of 1868.[150] In the period of Japanese chivalry it was considered more heroic if a man loved a person of his own sex than if he loved a woman; and nowadays people are heard to say that in those provinces of the country where pederasty is widely spread the men are more manly and robust than in those where it does not prevail.[151]

[Footnote 146: Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law, p. 367 sqq. Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Appendix, no. xxxii. p. 570.]

[Footnote 147: Alabaster, op. cit. p. 369.]

[Footnote 148: Matignon, in Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 42, 43, 52.]

[Footnote 149: Ibid. p. 44.]

[Footnote 150: Karsch, op. cit. p. 99.]

[Footnote 151: Jwaya, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 266, 270 sq.]

The laws of the ancient Scandinavians ignored homosexual practices; but passive pederasts were much despised by them. They were identified with cowards and regarded as sorcerers. The epithets applied to them--argr, ragr, blandr, and others assumed the meaning of "poltroon" in general, and there are instances of the word arg being used in the sense of "practising witchcraft." This connection between pederasty and sorcery, as a Norwegian scholar justly points out, helps us to understand Tacitus' statement that among the ancient Teutons individuals whom he describes as corpore infames were buried alive in a morass.[152] Considering that drowning was a common penalty for sorcery, it seems probable that this punishment was inflicted upon them not, in the first place, on account of their sexual practices, but in their capacity of wizards. It is certain that the opprobrium which the pagan Scandinavians attached to homosexual love was chiefly restricted to him who played the woman's part. In one of the poems {478} the hero even boasts of being the father of offspring borne by another man.[153]

[Footnote 152: Tacitus, Germania, 12.]

[Footnote 153: 'Spuren von Konträrsexualität bei den alten Skandinaviern (Mitteilungen eines norwegischen Gelehrten),' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 245, 256 sqq.]

In Greece pederasty in its baser forms was censured, though generally, it seems, with no great severity, and in some states it was legally prohibited.[154] According to an Athenian law, a youth who prostituted himself for money lost his rights as a free citizen and was liable to the punishment of death if he took part in a public feast or entered the agora.[155] In Sparta it was necessary that the "listener" should accept the "inspirator" from real affection; he who did so out of pecuniary considerations was punished by the ephors.[156] We are even told that among the Spartans the relations between the lover and his friend were truly innocent, and that if anything unlawful happened both must forsake either their country or their lives.[157] But the universal rule in Greece seems to have been that when decorum was observed in the friendship between a man and a youth, no inquiries were made into the details of the relationship.[158] And this attachment was not only regarded as permissible, but was praised as the highest and purest form of love, as the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite, as a path leading to virtue, as a weapon against tyranny, as a safeguard of civic liberty, as a source of national greatness and glory. Phaedrus said that he knew no greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth; for the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would lead a noble life cannot be implanted by any other motive so well as by love.[159] The Platonic Pausanias argued that if love of youths is held in ill repute it is so only because it is inimical to tyranny; "the interests of rulers require that their subjects should {479} be poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire."[160] The power of the Athenian tyrants was broken by the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius; at Agrigentum in Sicily the mutual love of Chariton and Melanippus produced a similar result; and the greatness of Thebes was due to the Sacred Band established by Epaminondas. For "in the presence of his favourite, a man would choose to do anything rather than to get the character of a coward."[161] It was pointed out that the greatest heroes and the most warlike nations were those who were most addicted to the love of youths;[162] and it was said that an army consisting of lovers and their beloved ones, fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, would overcome the whole world.[163]

[Footnote 154: Xenophon, Lacedæmoniorum respublica, ii. 13. Maximus Tyrius, Dissertationes, xxv. 4; xxvi. 9.]

[Footnote 155: Aeschines, Contra Timarchum, 21.]

[Footnote 156: Aelian, Varia historia, iii. 10. Cf. Plato, Leges, viii. 910.]

[Footnote 157: Aelian, op. cit. iii. 12. Cf. Maximus Tyrius, op. cit. xxvi. 8.]

[Footnote 158: Cf. Symonds, loc. cit. p. 92 sqq.]

[Footnote 159: Plato, Symposium, p. 178.]

[Footnote 160: Plato, Symposium, p. 182.]

[Footnote 161: Hieronymus, the Peripatetic, referred to by Athenaeus, op. cit. xiii. 78, p. 602. See also Maximus Tyrius, op. cit. xxiv. 2.]

[Footnote 162: Plutarch, Amatorius, xvii. 14.]

[Footnote 163: Plato, Symposium, p. 178.]

Herodotus asserts that the love of boys was introduced from Greece into Persia.[164] Whether his statement be correct or not, such love could certainly not have been a habit of the Mazda worshippers.[165] In the Zoroastrian books "unnatural sin" is treated with a severity to which there is a parallel only in Hebrewism and Christianity. According to the Vendîdâd, there is no atonement for it.[166] It is punished with torments in the other world, and is capital here below.[167] Even he who committed it involuntarily, by force, is subject to corporal punishment.[168] Indeed, it is a more heinous sin than the slaying of a righteous man.[169] "There is no worse sin than this in the good religion, and it is proper to call those who commit it worthy of death in reality. If any one comes forth to them, and shall see {480} them in the act, and is working with an axe, it is requisite for him to cut off the heads or to rip up the bellies of both, and it is no sin for him. But it is not proper to kill any person without the authority of high-priests and kings, except on account of committing or permitting unnatural intercourse."[170]

[Footnote 164: Herodotus, i. 135.]

[Footnote 165: Ammianus Marcellinus says (xxiii. 76) that the inhabitants of Persia were free from pederasty. But see also Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniæ hypotyposes, i. 152.]

[Footnote 166: Vendîdâd, i. 12; viii. 27.]

[Footnote 167: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxxxvi.]

[Footnote 168: Vendîdâd, viii. 26.]

[Footnote 169: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxxvi. 1 sqq.]

[Footnote 170: Sad Dar, ix. 2, sqq.]

Nor are unnatural sins allowed to defile the land of the Lord. Whosoever shall commit such abominations, be he Israelite or stranger dwelling among the Israelites, shall be put to death, the souls that do them shall be cut off from their people. By unnatural sins of lust the Canaanites polluted their land, so that God visited their guilt, and the land spued out its inhabitants.[171]

[Footnote 171: Leviticus, xviii. 22, 24 sqq.; xx. 13.]

This horror of homosexual practices was shared by Christianity. According to St. Paul, they form the climax of the moral corruption to which God gave over the heathen because of their apostasy from him.[172] Tertullian says that they are banished "not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities."[173] St. Basil maintains that they deserve the same punishment as murder, idolatry, and witchcraft.[174] According to a decree of the Council of Elvira, those who abuse boys to satisfy their lusts are denied communion even at their last hour.[175] In no other point of morals was the contrast between the teachings of Christianity and the habits and opinions of the world over which it spread more radical than in this. In Rome there was an old law of unknown date, called Lex Scantinia (or Scatinia), which imposed a mulct on him who committed pederasty with a free person;[176] but this law, of which {481} very little is known, had lain dormant for ages, and the subject of ordinary homosexual intercourse had never afterwards attracted the attention of the pagan legislators.[177] But when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, a veritable crusade was opened against it. Constantius and Constans made it a capital crime, punishable with the sword.[178] Valentinian went further still and ordered that those who were found guilty of it should be burned alive in the presence of all the people.[179] Justinian, terrified by certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, issued an edict which again condemned persons guilty of unnatural offences to the sword, "lest, as the result of these impious acts, whole cities should perish together with their inhabitants," as we are taught by Holy Scripture that through such acts cities have perished with the men in them.[180] "A sentence of death and infamy," says Gibbon, "was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant, . . . and pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed."[181]

[Footnote 172: Romans, i. 26 sq.]

[Footnote 173: Tertullian, De pudicitia, 4 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, ii. 987).]

[Footnote 174: St. Basil, quoted by Bingham, Works, vi. 432 sq.]

[Footnote 175: Concilium Eliberitanum, ch. 71 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 17).]

[Footnote 176: Juvenal, Satiræ, ii. 43 sq. Valerius Maximus, Facta dictaque memorabilia, vi. 1. 7. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, iv. 2. 69:--"Decem milia, quae poena stupratori constituta est, dabit." Christ, Hist. Legis Scatiniæ, quoted by Döllinger, op. cit. ii. 274. Rein, Criminalrecht der Römer, p. 865 sq. Bingham, op. cit. vi. 433 sqq. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 703 sq.]

[Footnote 177: Mommsen, op. cit. p. 704. Rein, op. cit. p. 866. The passage in Digesta, xlviii. 5. 35. 1, refers to stuprum independently of the sex of the victim.]

[Footnote 178: Codex Theodosianus, ix. 7. 3. _Codex Justinianus_, ix. 9. 30.]

[Footnote 179: Codex Theodosianus, ix. 7. 6.]

[Footnote 180: Novellæ, 77. See also ibid. 141, and Institutiones, iv. 18. 4.]

[Footnote 181: Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, v. 323.]

This attitude towards homosexual practices had a profound and lasting influence on European legislation. Throughout the Middle Ages and later, Christian lawgivers thought that nothing but a painful death in the flames could atone for the sinful act.[182] In England Fleta {482} speaks of the offender being buried alive;[183] but we are elsewhere told that burning was the due punishment.[184] As unnatural intercourse, however, was a subject for ecclesiastical cognizance, capital punishment could not be inflicted on the criminal unless the Church relinquished him to the secular arm; and it seems very doubtful whether she did relinquish him. Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Maitland consider that the statute of 1533, which makes sodomy felony, affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it for a very long time past.[185] It was said that the punishment for this crime--which the English law, in its very indictments, treats as a crime not fit to be named[186]--was determined to be capital by "the voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God";[187] and it remained so till 1861,[188] although in practice the extreme punishment was not inflicted.[189] In France persons were actually burned for this crime in the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century.[190] But in this, as in so many other respects, the rationalistic movement of that age brought about a change.[191] To punish sodomy with death, it was said, is atrocious; when unconnected with violence, the law ought to take no notice of it at all. It does not violate any other person's right, its influence on society is merely indirect, like that of drunkenness and free love; it is a disgusting vice, but its only proper punishment is contempt.[192] This view was adopted by the French 'Code pénal,' according to which homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely {483} unpunished. The homosexual act is treated as a crime only when it implies an outrage on public decency, or when there is violence or absence of consent, or when one of the parties is under age or unable to give valid consent.[193] This method of dealing with homosexuality has been followed by the legislators of various European countries,[194] and in those where the law still treats the act in question per se as a penal offence, notably in Germany, a propaganda in favour of its alteration is carried on with the support of many men of scientific eminence. This changed attitude of the law towards homosexual intercourse undoubtedly indicates a change of moral opinions. Though it is impossible to measure exactly the degree of moral condemnation, I suppose that few persons nowadays attach to it the same enormity of guilt as did our forefathers. And the question has even been put whether morality has anything at all to do with a sexual act, committed by the mutual consent of two adult individuals, which is productive of no offspring, and which on the whole concerns the welfare of nobody but the parties themselves.[195]

[Footnote 182: Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne, pp. 93, 403. Les Établissements de Saint Louis, i. 90, vol. ii. 147. Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, xxx. 11, vol. i. 413. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, xii. 6 ([OE]uvres, p. 283). Hume, Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, ii. 335; Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland, ii. 491, n. 2. Clarus, Practica criminalis, book v. § Sodomia, 4 (Opera omnia, ii. 151). Jarcke, Handbuch des gemeinen deutschen Strafrechts, iii. 172 sqq. Charles V.'s Peinliche Gerichtsordnung, art. 116. Henke, Geschichte des deutschen peinlichen Rechts, i. 289. Numa Praetorius, 'Die strafrechtlichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr,' in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, i. 124 sqq. In the beginning of the nineteenth century sodomy was still nominally subject to capital punishment by burning in Bavaria (von Feuerbach, Kritik des Kleinschrodischen Entwurfs zu einem peinlichen Gesetzbuche für die Chur-Pfalz-Bayrischen Staaten, ii. 13), and in Spain as late as 1843 (Du Boys, op. cit. p. 721).]

[Footnote 183: Fleta, i. 37. 3, p. 84.]

[Footnote 184: Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42.]

[Footnote 185: Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. ii. 556 sq.]

[Footnote 186: Coke, Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, p. 58 sq. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, iv. 218.]

[Footnote 187: Blackstone, op. cit. iv. 218.]

[Footnote 188: Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, i. 475.]

[Footnote 189: Blackstone, op. cit. iv. 218.]

[Footnote 190: Desmaze, Pénalités anciennes, p. 211. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 207.]

[Footnote 191: Numa Praetorius, loc. cit. p. 121 sqq.]

[Footnote 192: Note of the editors of Kehl's edition of Voltaire's 'Prix de la justice et de l'humanité,' in [OE]uvres complètes, v. 437, n. 2.]

[Footnote 193: Code pénal, 330 sqq. Cf. Chevalier, L'inversion sexuelle, p. 431 sqq.; Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 207 sq.]

[Footnote 194: Numa Praetorius, loc. cit. pp. 131-133, 143 sqq.]

[Footnote 195: See, e.g., Bax, Ethics of Socialism, p. 126.]

From this review of the moral ideas on the subject, incomplete though it be, it appears that homosexual practices are very frequently subject to some degree of censure, though the degree varies extremely. This censure is no doubt, in the first place, due to that feeling of aversion or disgust which the idea of homosexual intercourse tends to call forth in normally constituted adult individuals whose sexual instincts have developed under normal conditions. I presume that nobody will deny the general prevalence of such a tendency. It corresponds to that instinctive repugnance to sexual connections with women which is so frequently found in congenital inverts; whilst that particular form of it with which legislators have chiefly busied themselves evokes, in addition, a physical disgust of its own. And in a society where the {484} large majority of people are endowed with normal sexual desires their aversion to homosexuality easily develops into moral censure and finds a lasting expression in custom, law, or religious tenets. On the other hand, where special circumstances have given rise to widely spread homosexual practices, there will be no general feeling of disgust even in the adults, and the moral opinion of the society will be modified accordingly. The act may still be condemned, in consequence of a moral doctrine formed under different conditions, or of the vain attempts of legislators to check sexual irregularities, or out of utilitarian considerations; but such a condemnation would in most people be rather theoretical than genuine. At the same time the baser forms of homosexual love may be strongly disapproved of for the same reasons as the baser forms of intercourse between men and women; and the passive pederast may be an object of contempt on account of the feminine practices to which he lends himself, as also an object of hatred on account of his reputation for sorcery. We have seen that the effeminate men are frequently believed to be versed in magic;[196] their abnormalities readily suggest that they are endowed with supernatural power, and they may resort to witchcraft as a substitute for their lack of manliness and physical strength. But the supernatural qualities or skill in magic ascribed to men who behave like women may also, instead of causing hatred, make them honoured or reverenced.

[Footnote 196: See also Bastian, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. i. 88 sq. Speaking of the witches of Fez, Leo Africanus says (History and Description of Africa, ii. 458) that "they haue a damnable custome to commit vnlawfull Venerie among themselues." Among the Patagonians, according to Falkner (Description of Patagonia, p. 117), the male wizards are chosen for their office when they are children, and "a preference is always shown to those who at that early time of life discover an effeminate disposition." They are obliged, as it were, to leave their sex, and to dress themselves in female apparel.]

It has been suggested that the popular attitude towards homosexuality was originally an aspect of economics, a question of under- or over-population, and that it was forbidden or allowed accordingly. Dr. Havelock Ellis thinks it probable that there is a certain relationship {485} between the social reaction against homosexuality and against infanticide:--"Where the one is regarded leniently and favourably, there generally the other is also; where the one is stamped out, the other is usually stamped out."[197] But our defective knowledge of the opinions of the various savage races concerning homosexuality hardly warrants such a conclusion; and if a connection really does exist between homosexual practices and infanticide it may be simply due to the numerical disproportion between the sexes resulting from the destruction of a multitude of female infants.[198] On the other hand we are acquainted with several facts which are quite at variance with Dr. Ellis's suggestion. Among many Hindu castes female infanticide has for ages been a genuine custom,[199] and yet pederasty is remarkably rare among the Hindus. The ancient Arabs were addicted to infanticide,[200] but not to homosexual love,[201] whereas among modern Arabs the case is exactly the reverse. And if the early Christians deemed infanticide and pederasty equally heinous sins, they did so certainly not because they were anxious that the population should increase; if this had been their motive they would hardly have glorified celibacy. It is true that in a few cases the unproductiveness of homosexual love has been given by indigenous writers as a reason for its encouragement or condemnation. It was said that the Cretan law on the subject had in view to check the growth of population; but, like Döllinger,[202] I do not believe that this assertion touches the real root of the matter. More importance may be attached to the following passage in one of the Pahlavi texts:--"He who is wasting seed makes a practice of causing the death of progeny; when the custom is completely continuous, which produces an evil stoppage of the progress of the race, the creatures have become annihilated; and certainly, that action, from which, when it is universally proceeding, the depopulation {486} of the world must arise, has become and furthered the greatest wish of Aharman."[203] I am, however, of opinion that considerations of this kind have generally played only a subordinate, if any, part in the formation of the moral opinions concerning homosexual practices. And it can certainly not be admitted that the severe Jewish law against sodomy was simply due to the fact that the enlargement of the population was a strongly felt social need among the Jews.[204] However much they condemned celibacy, they did not put it on a par with the abominations of Sodom. The excessive sinfulness which was attached to homosexual love by Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, and Christianity, had quite a special foundation. It cannot be sufficiently accounted for either by utilitarian considerations or instinctive disgust. The abhorrence of incest is generally a much stronger feeling than the aversion to homosexuality. Yet in the very same chapter of Genesis which describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we read of the incest committed by the daughters of Lot with their father; [205] and, according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, unnatural intercourse is an even more heinous sin than incest and adultery.[206] The fact is that homosexual practices were intimately associated with the gravest of all sins: unbelief, idolatry, or heresy.

[Footnote 197: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 206. See Additional Notes.]

[Footnote 198: Cf. supra, ii. 466 (Tahitians).]

[Footnote 199: Supra, i. 407.]

[Footnote 200: Supra, i. 406 sq.]

[Footnote 201: von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients, ii. 129.]

[Footnote 202: Döllinger, op. cit. ii. 239.]

[Footnote 203: Dâdistân-î Dînîk, lxxvii. 11.]

[Footnote 204: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 206.]

[Footnote 205: Genesis, xix. 31 sqq.]

[Footnote 206: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii.-ii. 154. 12. Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, pp. 104, 118, 120. Clarus, Practica criminalis, book v. § Sodomia, Additiones, 1 (Opera omnia, ii. 152):--"Hoc vitium est majus, quam si quis propriam matrem cognosceret."]

According to Zoroastrianism, unnatural sin had been created by Angra Mainyu.[207] "Aharman, the wicked, miscreated the demons and fiends, and also the remaining corrupted ones, by his own unnatural intercourse."[208] Such intercourse is on a par with Afrâsiyâb, a Turanian king who conquered the Iranians for twelve years;[209] with Dahâk, a king or dynasty who is said to have conquered Yim and reigned for a thousand years;[210] with Tûr-i Brâdar-vakhsh, {487} a heterodox wizard by whom the best men were put to death.[211] He who commits unnatural sin is "in his whole being a Daêva";[212] and a Daêva-worshipper is not a bad Zoroastrian, but a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian system, a foreigner, a non-Aryan.[213] In the Vendîdâd, after the statement that the voluntary commission of unnatural sin is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever, the question is put, When is it so? And the answer given is:--If the sinner be a professor of the religion of Mazda, or one who has been taught in it. If not, his sin is taken from him, in case he makes confession of the religion of Mazda and resolves never to commit again such forbidden deeds.[214] This is to say, the sin is inexpiable if it involves a downright defiance of the true religion, it is forgiven if it is committed in ignorance of it and is followed by submission. From all this it appears that Zoroastrianism stigmatised unnatural intercourse as a practice of infidels, as a sign of unbelief. And I think that certain facts referred to above help us to understand why it did so. Not only have homosexual practices been commonly associated with sorcery, but such an association has formed, and partly still forms, an incident of the shamanistic system prevalent among the Asiatic peoples of Turanian stock, and that it did so already in remote antiquity is made extremely probable by statements which I have just quoted from Zoroastrian texts. To this system Zoroastrianism was naturally furiously opposed, and the "change of sex" therefore appeared to the Mazda worshipper as a devilish abomination.

[Footnote 207: Vendîdâd, i. 12.]

[Footnote 208: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, viii. 10.]

[Footnote 209: Sad Dar, ix. 5. West's note to Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, viii. 29 (**Sacred Books of the East, xxiv. 35, n. 4.)]

[Footnote 210: Sad Dar, ix. 5. West's note to Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, viii. 29 (Sacred Books of the East, xxiv. 35, n. 3).]

[Footnote 211: Sad Dar, ix. 5. West's note to _Dâdistân-î Dînîk_, lxxii. 8 (Sacred Books of the East, xviii. 218).]

[Footnote 212: Vendîdâd, viii. 32.]

[Footnote 213: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. li.]

[Footnote 214: Vendîdâd, viii. 27 sq.]

So also the Hebrews abhorrence of sodomy was largely due to their hatred of a foreign cult. According to Genesis, unnatural vice was the sin of a people who were not the Lord's people, and the Levitical legislation represents Canaanitish abominations as the chief reason {488} why the Canaanites were exterminated.[215] Now we know that sodomy entered as an element in their religion. Besides [k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th, or female prostitutes, there were [k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m, or male prostitutes, attached to their temples.[216] The word [k.]ad[=e]sh, translated "sodomite," properly denotes a man dedicated to a deity;[217] and it appears that such men were consecrated to the mother of the gods, the famous Dea Syria, whose priests or devotees they were considered to be.[218] The male devotees of this and other goddesses were probably in a position analogous to that occupied by the female devotees of certain gods, who also, as we have seen, have developed into libertines; and the sodomitic acts committed with these temple prostitutes may, like the connections with priestesses, have had in view to transfer blessings to the worshippers.[219] In Morocco supernatural benefits are expected not only from heterosexual, but also from homosexual intercourse with a holy person.[220] The [k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m are frequently alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in the period of the monarchy, when rites of foreign origin made their way into both Israel and Judah.[221] And it is natural that the Yahveh worshipper should regard their practices with the utmost horror as forming part of an idolatrous cult.

[Footnote 215: Leviticus, xx. 23.]

[Footnote 216: Deuteronomy, xxiii. 17. Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, p. 264.]

[Footnote 217: Driver, op. cit. p. 264 sq. Selbie, 'Sodomite,' in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 559.]

[Footnote 218: St. Jerome, In Osee, i. 4. 14 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 851). Cook's note to 1 Kings, xiv. 24, in his edition of The Holy Bible, ii. 571. See also Lucian, Lucius, 38.]

[Footnote 219: Rosenbaum suggests (Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume, p. 120) that the eunuch priests connected with the cult of the Ephesian Artemis and the Phrygian worship of Cybele likewise were sodomites.]

[Footnote 220: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of Holiness_, p. 85.]

[Footnote 221: 1 Kings, xiv. 24; xv. 12; xxii. 46. 2 Kings, xxiii. 7. Job, xxxvi. 14. Driver, op. cit. p. 265.]

The Hebrew conception of homosexual love to some extent affected Muhammedanism, and passed into Christianity. The notion that it is a form of sacrilege was here strengthened by the habits of the gentiles. St. Paul found the abominations of Sodom prevalent among nations who had "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the {489} Creator."[222] During the Middle Ages heretics were accused of unnatural vice as a matter of course.[223] Indeed, so closely was sodomy associated with heresy that the same name was applied to both. In 'La Coutume de Touraine-Anjou' the word herite, which is the ancient form of hérétique,[224] seems to be used in the sense of "sodomite";[225] and the French bougre (from the Latin Bulgarus, Bulgarian), as also its English synonym, was originally a name given to a sect of heretics who came from Bulgaria in the eleventh century, and was afterwards applied to other heretics, but at the same time it became the regular expression for a person guilty of unnatural intercourse.[226] In mediæval laws sodomy was also repeatedly mentioned together with heresy, and the punishment was the same for both.[227] It thus remained a religious offence of the first order. It was not only a "vitium nefandum et super omnia detestandum,"[228] but it was one of the four "clamantia peccata," or crying sins,[229] a "crime de Majestie, vers le Roy celestre."[230] Very naturally, therefore, it has come to be regarded with somewhat greater leniency by law and public opinion in proportion as they have emancipated themselves from theological doctrines. And the fresh light which the scientific study of the sexual impulse has lately thrown upon the subject of homosexuality must also necessarily influence the moral ideas relating to it, in so far as no scrutinising judge can fail to take into account the pressure which a powerful non-volitional desire exercises upon an agent's will.

[Footnote 222: Romans, i. 25 sqq.]

[Footnote 223: Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, i. 386, 'Bougre.' Haynes, Religious Persecution, p. 54.]

[Footnote 224: Littré, op. cit. i. 2010, 'Hérétique.']

[Footnote 225: Les Établissements de Saint Louis, i. 90, vol. ii. 147. Viollet, in his Introduction to the same work, i. 254.]

[Footnote 226: Littré, op. cit. i. 386, 'Bougre.' Murray, New English Dictionary, i. 1160, 'Bugger.' Lea, History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, i. 115, note.]

[Footnote 227: Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, xxx. 11, vol. i. 413:--"Qui erre contre le foi, comme en mescreance, de le quele il ne veut venir à voie de verité, ou qui fet sodomiterie, il doit estre ars, et forfet tout le sien en le maniere dessus." Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, xii. 6 ([OE]uvres, p. 283). Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne, pp. 486, 721.]

[Footnote 228: Clarus, Practica criminalis, book v. § Sodomia, 1 (Opera omnia, ii. 151).]

[Footnote 229: Coke, Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, p. 59.]

[Footnote 230: Mirror, quoted ibid. p. 58.]