546. Parties to blood revenge. It was a very serious modification of blood revenge when it was extended so that any kinsman of the murdered man was bound to kill any kinsman of the murderer. Hagen[1738] says: "No regulated societal common life is possible where blood revenge is in full operation; not even on the primitive stage of the Bogjadim state," a village in German New Guinea. This is true if blood revenge is allowed in the in-group, or if the in-group has very low integration, for blood revenge sets every man against his neighbor and makes society impossible. Krieger[1739] says of the same people: "The comradeship of clansmen with each other in respect to their attitude towards out-groups is most definite in blood revenge during the stage between the kin-group organization and the lowest state organization." If a nation stops in that stage, or even degenerates a little, blood revenge becomes a symptom of a state of societal disease. It becomes firmly fixed, is elaborated, continues beyond the stage of other things at which it can be useful, and, as an institution, becomes a caricature. What is lacking is an authority which can impose commands on the in-group and extrude blood revenge from it. The Naga, in northeastern India, fifty years ago lived in villages in which, if two men quarreled, all the others took sides with one or the other and civil war ensued. The experience of these quarrels and of blood revenge produced "a reluctance to enter into quarrels which entailed consequences so disastrous, and hence a society living in general peace and honesty." The situation, however, was unstable, and once or twice a year they had grand fights in which the entire village participated by way of clearing off all old scores. Evidently they had no adequate government or administration of justice. Revenge is still, in case of a murder, "a sacred duty, never to be neglected or forgotten," although English rule has modified the old usages and may bring those people into a better political organization. Revenge is still a kin affair, not a civil affair. It is handed down from generation to generation, including innocent victims, women and children, and devastating whole villages. It becomes fanatical and men will sacrifice their most serious interests to it. If the male kinsmen die out or are unable to keep up the feud, others may be hired to fulfill the duty.[1740]

547. Blood revenge in ethnography. The Eskimo have no civil organization outside of the family. All justice depends on the immediate coercion of wrongdoers by force. Hence death often results. Retaliation is the sacred duty of every kinsman.[1741] That the deceased was in the wrong is quite immaterial. Blood revenge was almost universal amongst the American aborigines. In some tribes the stage had been reached where it was set aside by compensation.[1742] Amongst the Brazilian tribes it was a question to be decided in each case whether retaliation should be executed against the wrongdoer only or against all his kin.[1743] The Arawaks practiced blood revenge, like nature peoples, as late as 1830. Generally the cases were those of jealousy and adultery.[1744] The Australians of Victoria kill the elder brother of a murderer or his father. If these are not living they kill him. He is not allowed to defend himself. In some tribes the nearest relative of the murdered must take the life of a tribesman of the murderer. All deaths are attributed to human agency, and it is ascertained by divination to what tribe the murderer belonged. Public opinion enforces the duty of blood revenge. Any one who should neglect it would be despised.[1745] The Dyaks keep an account current of the number of lives which one tribe "owes" to another. The hill Dyaks, whose wars are constant and bloody, are very scrupulous about this account of heads due. They are more so than the sea Dyaks, who have perhaps been influenced by contact with outside peoples.[1746] Amongst the Ewe-speaking peoples of West Africa[1747] a family is collectively responsible for crimes and wrongs of which any one of its members is guilty, and each one is assessed for his share of the composition to be paid. Each member of a family also gets his share of any payment paid to it for wrongs to its members. Ellis says that formerly the village was the collective unit for paying or receiving compensation. This is noteworthy because, in general, composition by payment is later than the custom of equal retaliation, while civil units come later than kin units as the collective units which are responsible. The Somali attribute the duty of blood revenge to the kin, not to the tribe. They have a tariff for bodily injuries less than murder, and for age and sex. The blood money goes to the kin. Blood revenge is executed against any kinsman of the murderer. The Galla do not accept compensation for blood guilt, "no doubt on account of the density of population."[1748] In the Eumenides of AEschylus it is said (line 520), "Not all the wealth of the great earth can do away with blood guilt." In Japan blood revenge continued until very recently. The person who meant to seek it had to give notice in writing to the criminal court. He was then free to execute his purpose, but he must not make a riot. The Japanese father family is a religious corporation, and the family bond is that of a cult.[1749] The Japanese view is the half-civilized view, where the kin sentiment is highly developed and the civil interest is only imperfectly apprehended. In Scandinavia the feeling that it is base to take compensation for blood continued until a late time. We find in the saga of Grettir the Strong[1750] that banishment is used instead of blood revenge. This was thought to be a letting down of honor. Life and honor as well as property were under the protection of kin. Blood revenge was a holy duty. The son could not take his inheritance until he had avenged his father. Attempts were made to introduce the weregild. The fine for killing an old man or a woman was twice as much as for an able-bodied man. The slayer with twelve of his kin must swear that he would be content with the payment if the case were his, and the friends of the deceased must swear to let the matter drop.[1751] Amongst the tribes of the Caucasus, who live by custom, blood revenge is now a living institution. The Ossetes have the father family in its extremest development. The surname is the mark of kinship, and the duty of blood revenge falls on those with the same surname to the hundredth cousin. One's mother's brother is not in one's kin, and there is no duty of blood revenge for him. Sometimes blood revenge is superseded by the arbitration of a tribunal which is voluntarily accepted.[1752]

548. Blood revenge in Israel. The law of Israel was, "Ye shall take no ransom for the life of a manslayer, which is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death."[1753] This law upheld blood revenge by forbidding the first and most obvious alleviation of it, but verses 22 and 23 distinguished accidental from intentional homicide and verse 27 provided that the avenger of blood should not be guilty of blood. This arrested any feud. The institution of cities of refuge was derived from the Canaanites and developed in Israel.[1754] Blood revenge was a duty of the whole family and was originally directed against the entire family of the slayer.[1755] This the later law forbade.[1756] At first also every beast or inanimate object which caused death was guilty. In Deut. xxi provision is made for the case of a murdered man whose corpse is found, with customs of wide range for performing rites of purification, and washing hands to put away guilt or suspicion.

549. Peace units and peace pacts. The in-group when it is merged in a state by conquest and compounding becomes a peace unit. All in the same civil body are united by a peace pact. If the central authority cannot suppress local war and private war, it is inadequate, and the state is liable to disruption. The Roman empire was a peace unit of high integration and complete efficiency. It could not, however, maintain itself, and broke up by internal strife which the central authority could not suppress. The Roman law was the peace pact of that peace unit. It was so good a solution of the collisions of human interests that it has been borrowed, or used by modern states as a model. The Romish church in the Middle Ages tried to rule the world, not by force but by dogmas like catholicity. Catholicity was an attempt to build a peace pact on ideals, and big ideas, and sympathies. Islam also tries to serve as a peace pact, but Moslem states have freely fought with each other. Islam does not contain an adequate philosophy. Its theories of society are theocratic and do not meet the actual facts and problems. If a union of two or more states is made, even for the purpose of aggregating more force for war, it will necessarily be a peace union when regarded from within. A confederation is the highest organization yet invented for the purpose of making a great peace union without interfering with domestic autonomy. Norway and Sweden, Austria and Hungary, are states united in couples under a rational peace pact. The former couple has been disrupted; the latter is convulsed by quarrels between its members. The United States is a great peace unit, with a rational peace pact as a bond of union. It has gone through one great convulsion, from which it issued with the peace pact greatly strengthened. It tends to become a consolidated empire. This can be seen in the propositions to turn over various subjects of domestic importance to the federal authority. Happiness and prosperity have been due to the peace pact, valid over a continent, with immunity from powerful neighbors. We now think that we will renounce all this and go out after world power and glory so as to be like the other nations.

550. The instability of great peace unions. Now that we have the laws of Hammurabi we can see that the Euphrates valley was organized into a peace unit with a very complete and highly finished peace pact twenty-five hundred years before Christ. All the ordinary cases of discord and diverse interest were provided for under an elaborate system of laws as good as that of a modern European state. The later states of western Asia were involved in war by conflicting interests, ambition, and jealousy until the time of Alexander the Great. The smaller states were at last all submerged in the Roman empire. All the constructive work has been overthrown again and again. Only within a century or two has a structure been set up which has more stability, but it is all in jeopardy now. A union of the existing groups could not be brought about but by conquest, and that would mean very great wars, yet all are ready, by virtue of their institutions and ideas, to merge in a confederation in which peace would reign and incalculable blessings would result.

551. The Arabs. The Arabs in the time of Mohammed were a nation inhabiting a territory which kept them from feeling any national sentiment of unity.[1757] The tribe and kin group were their strongest societal units. At the time of Mohammed's birth blood revenge between the kin groups was so destructive that all were instinctively struggling towards devices which might supersede it. In the century preceding Mohammed's birth the nation had been agitated by social movements in which the old was falling and the new was pushing out to acceptance and establishment. "It seemed as if the persons were too big for the circumstances."[1758] If a tribe ever was a peace group amongst the Arabs, we have no proof of it. Islam was an attempt to unite the whole nation into a peace group by religion. The attempt succeeded, and the nation, in the elan of its new unity and energy, set out to conquer its neighbors. It had no state organization. The caliph was theological as well as civil head. The Arabs had no political experience. The leaders in the kin groups were the only chiefs they had, and they established a kind of aristocracy in Persia, but the first caliphs were pure despots, like negro heads of states. The Arabs plundered the conquered states. The greatest duty known to the Arabs was blood revenge. It was their only social engine by which to restrain crime and secure some measure of order. Blood was, in their view, more holy than anything else. It put religion in the background. The kin group was the realized ideal. The gods were comparatively insignificant.[1759] In old Arabia a man engaged in a blood feud must abstain from women, wine, and unguents.[1760] Within the kin group there was no blood revenge, but a guilty person was held personally responsible. A guest friend ("stranger within thy gates") was not liable to blood revenge with his own kin. His status was in the tribe in which he was a guest, by which he must be defended against his tribe of origin, if the case arose.[1761] The Arabs thought it dishonorable to take money for blood guilt. It was, they thought, like selling the blood of one's kin. Bedouin tribes in the nineteenth century refused to settle blood feuds by payments. Arbitration was admitted in the time of Mohammed, at Medina, where old blood feuds had become intolerable by their consequences.[1762] In Egypt, in the first half of the nineteenth century, blood revenge was still observed. Third cousins of the murderer and his victim were the limits of responsibility on either side.[1763]

552. Development of the philosophy of blood revenge. Blood revenge was nothing but an exercise of revenge and it had all the limitations of revenge. It produced a rude fear of consequences and had some of the effects of the administration of justice. However, it had no process of proof, no due notion of guilt, no means of following up responsibility. Therefore it could not infuse fear into the hearts of the guilty. It was entirely irrational. Therefore it ran into extravagance without due connection of guilt and punishment, and it cost very many lives of the innocent. In primitive society injuries consist in the invasion of a man's interests through his property, his wife, and his children, or by maiming or killing himself. Each one, when he considers himself injured, tries to redress himself. If he is not able to do it he falls back on others for aid. The kin group is the only body which has ties of sympathy and obligation to him. The kin group may be bound to give help without any regard to the justness of the quarrel, or it gets the function of a jury. Evidently the latter case is more reasonable and civilized than the former. In the original institution of blood revenge the individual was called on to sacrifice himself for others. He was a bad man if he began an inquiry into the conduct of the man who called for the sacrifice. He ought to obey the call whether it came from one who had done right or wrong.[1764] Evidently, in this view, the institution was a case of social duty, not of goblinistic service to the dead. It was a further application of rationalism and justice when the behavior of the deceased was weighed before decreeing blood revenge. If the kin group decides that the injury is real and that it is properly called on to interfere, routine of method of investigation will be developed, rights will be defined, the duty of blood revenge will be defined and limited, and proceedings of redress will be invented. All this work is done in the folkways and by the methods of folkways. The steps lie along the line of advancing civilization. The notion that a man who had committed a murder and had been killed for it had got what he deserved is a very recent and civilized notion. That would not keep his ghost from demanding to be laid by blood atonement. This was the root idea out of which the custom of blood revenge arose. Blood atonement was a notion in goblinism. It was one of the very earliest cases we can find in which there was a notion of duty and social obligation. The kin were those on whom the duty fell. The strong sympathy of men of the same kin was a consequence, not a cause, but it superseded, later, the original cause. At first, the play of revenge gave satisfaction to wounded vanity, but that could only last while the case was personal and close, not when the cases and the obligations were remote and institutional. Another remoter, and perhaps unforeseen, consequence was the deterrent effect on crime. The law of retaliation also, "an eye for an eye," was a law. It had a primitive and crude justice in it. It has come down to our own time in "reprisals" as practiced in international quarrels, which include also the solidarity of responsibility of all in a group for the torts of each member of it. By producing a solidarity of interest on both sides blood revenge helped to produce a social philosophy. It also made each interest group a peace group inside, because only by being a peace group could it conserve all its force. Thus the war interest against outsiders and the interest of concord inside worked together to produce order, government, law, and rights.

553. Alleviations of blood revenge. The Arabs, in their efforts to supersede blood revenge, tried compurgation, tribunals, payments in composition, banishment, and arbitration. Many tribes which have adopted Mohammedanism still practice blood revenge.[1765] Amongst the Kabyles a man falls under it if he kills another by accident, or by the fault of the victim, or in preventing a crime.[1766]

554. The king's peace. In the history of civilization the devices to do away with blood revenge are those which have been incidentally mentioned. The last means of suppressing all forms of private war was the king's peace. In modern states due respect to the king required that there should be no quarreling or fighting in his presence. His presence was interpreted to mean in or near his residence, his court, and his environs. Then his peace was interpreted to cover his highroads, and his jurisdiction was presently held to go as far as his peace, because he must have authority to enforce his peace. When small states were united into big ones the peace bond had to be extended over the larger unit. Gradually all petty jurisdictions were absorbed, all justice and redress came from the king or in his name, and private redress was forbidden. For a long time it seemed that the freeman's prerogative was being taken from him. As long as the duel survives the movement is incomplete.

555. Origin of criminal law. When the state took control of injuries and acts of violence and undertook to revenge them on behalf of the victims, as well as in vindication of public authority and order, injuries became crimes and revenge became punishment. Crimes were injuries which could be compensated for, and also violations of the king's peace, that is, of public welfare. In the latter point of view they brought the king's vanity into play. The German emperor Frederick II, by his ferocity against rebels, showed how potent wounded vanity is, as a motive, even in an able man. The crime of treason or rebellion always excites the vanity and fierce revenge of civil authority. It is beyond question that the state in its penalties simply took over the usages of kin groups in inflicting retaliation or gratifying revenge. It did not philosophize. It assumed functions, and with them it took the methods of procedure and the instrumentalities which it found in use for those functions. Criminal law, therefore, and criminal administration were developed out of blood revenge when it was rendered rational and its traditional processes were subjected to criticism.

[1720] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (Polish version), 248.

[1721] Clement, Das Recht der Salischen Franken, 243.

[1722] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 274.

[1723] JAI, XX, 53.

[1724] Ibid., XIV, 352.

[1725] Cunow, Verwandtschafts-organization der Austral., 126.

[1726] Spencer and Gillen, Cent. Austral., 265.

[1727] Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 18, 143.

[1728] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 379.

[1729] Bur. Eth., XVII, Part I, 199.

[1730] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 280.

[1731] Wilutzky, Mann und Weib, 121.

[1732] Smithson. Rep., 1893, 595.

[1733] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 265.

[1734] Geijer, Svenska Folkets Hist., I, 112.

[1735] Risley, Ethnog. of India, I, 67.

[1736] Deut. xix; Josh. xx.

[1737] Num. xxxv.

[1738] Unter den Papuas, 256.

[1739] Neu Guinea, 199.

[1740] JAI, XI, 67; XXVI, 174; XXVII, 25, 36.

[1741] Bur. Eth., VI, 582; XI, 186; XVIII, Part I, 292.

[1742] Powers, Calif. Indians, 21.

[1743] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 127.

[1744] Ibid., 693; Schomburgk, Brit. Guiana, II, 460.

[1745] Smyth, Aborig. of Vict., I, 129; II, 229.

[1746] Veth, Borneo's Wester Afdeeling, II, 283.

[1747] Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 208.

[1748] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afrikas, I, 262; II, 151, 156.

[1749] Hearn, Japan, 321.

[1750] P. 250.

[1751] Geijer, Svenska Folkets Hist., I, 300.

[1752] von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, 26, 29, 50.

[1753] Num. xxxv. 31.

[1754] Maurer, Voelkerkunde, Bibel, und Christenthum, I, 164.

[1755] 2 Sam. xiv. 7.

[1756] Deut. xxiv. 16; 2 Kings xiv. 6; Ezek. xviii. 19.

[1757] Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 182.

[1758] Ibid., 196.

[1759] Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 194.

[1760] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 482.

[1761] The Hebrew law was, "The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you" (Levit. xix. 34).

[1762] Proksch, Blutrache bei den Arabern, 18, 30, 33, 36, 51, 54.

[1763] Lane, Mod. Egypt., I, 295.

[1764] Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 194.

[1765] Proksch, Blutrache bei den Arabern.

[1766] Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie.



CHAPTER XIV

UNCLEANNESS AND THE EVIL EYE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1767] Levit. xii.

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

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

[1770] Globus, LXXXI, 337.

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

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

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

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

[1775] Powers, Calif. Indians, 31.

[1776] Gehring, Sued-Indien, 96.

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

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

[1779] Ibid., 133.

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

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

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

[1783] Darmsteter, Zend-Avesta, xcii.

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

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

[1786] Ibid. xii.

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

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

[1789] Levit. xi.

[1790] Ibid. xiv, xv.

[1791] Rohde, Psyche, II, 72.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1800] Heart of Africa, II, 406.

[1801] Ibid., I, 157.

[1802] Junker, Afrika, I, 69.

[1803] Globus, LXXV, 19.

[1804] Ibid., LXXII, 164.

[1805] Kubary, Karolinenarchipel., 292.

[1806] JASB, IV, 63.

[1807] Ibid., II, 598.

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

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

[1810] JASB, II, 170.

[1811] Ibid., I, 120.

[1812] Ibid.

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

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

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

[1816] Ibid., 371.

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

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

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

[1820] Pischon, Einfluss des Islam, 110.

[1821] Globus, LXXV, 193.

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

[1823] Symposium, V, 9.

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

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

[1826] Ibid., 384

[1827] Ibid., 385.

[1828] Ibid., 381.

[1829] Globus, LXXXIII, 316.

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XV

THE MORES CAN MAKE ANYTHING RIGHT AND PREVENT CONDEMNATION OF ANYTHING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1835] Hoef. Leben, I, 37.

[1836] Scherr, Kulturgesch., 377.

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

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

[1839] Lecky, Rationalism, I, 332.

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

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

[1842] Inquis., II, 228.

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

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

[1845] Barthold, Hansa, III, 291.

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

[1847] Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae, 4.

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

[1849] Achelis, 12.

[1850] Ibid., 74.

[1851] Achelis, 67.

[1852] Ibid., 58.

[1853] Ibid., 47.

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

[1855] Achelis, 32.

[1856] Ibid., 31.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1864] Cossacks of the Ukrain, 281.

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

[1866] Hist. of Connecticut, 325.

[1867] Stiles, Bundling, 80.

[1868] Stiles, Bundling, 75.

[1869] Stiles, Bundling, 112.

[1870] Page 172.

[1871] Deipnosophists, XIII, 25.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1879] Westerhout, Geslachtsleven onzer Voorouders, 198.

[1880] Scherr, Kulturgesch., 223.

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVI

SACRAL HARLOTRY. CHILD SACRIFICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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