"When we observe what pains these misguided savages took to unfit themselves for the business of war by abstaining from food, denying themselves rest, and lacerating their bodies, we shall probably not be disposed to attribute their practice of continence in war to a rational fear of dissipating their bodily energies by indulgence in the lusts of the flesh."[72]

The conception of woman as one heavily charged with supernatural potentialities, and, therefore, a source of danger to the community, seems to lie at the basis of the widespread belief in the religious 'uncleanness' of women. The real significance of the word 'unclean' in religious ritual has been obscured by our modern use of it in a hygienic or ethical sense. In reality it is but an illustration of the principle of 'taboo,' and 'taboo' may extend to anything, good or bad, useful or useless, hygienically clean or unclean. The primary meaning of 'taboo,' a Polynesian word, is something that is set aside or forbidden. The field covered by this word among savage and semi-savage races is, as Robertson Smith points out, "very wide, for there is no part of life in which the savage does not feel himself surrounded by mysterious agencies and recognise the need of walking warily."[73] Anything may thus become the object of a 'taboo.' Weapons, food, animals, places, special relations of one person to another at certain times and under certain conditions. It is enough that some special or particular degree of supernatural influence is associated with the object in question. The ancient Jews, for example, in prohibiting the eating of swine's flesh, were as far as possible removed in their thought from any connection with dietetics. They were simply following the well-known savage custom that the totem of a tribe is sacred. The pig was a totem with many of the Semitic tribes, and must not, therefore, be eaten.[74] It was not an unclean animal, in the modern sense, it was a 'holy' animal. With the Syrians the dove was so holy that even to touch it made a man 'unclean' for a whole day. No North American Indian will eat of the flesh of an animal that is a tribal totem, except under grave necessity, and even then with elaborate religious ceremonies. So, "a prohibition to eat the flesh of an animal of a certain species, that has its ground not in natural loathing but in religious horror and reverence, implies that something divine is ascribed to every animal of the species. And what seems to us to be a natural loathing often turns out, in the case of primitive peoples, to be based on a religious taboo, and to have its origin not in feelings of contemptuous disgust, but of reverential dread."[75]

The real significance of 'unclean' in connection with religious ritual is 'holy', something that partakes in a special manner of supernatural influence and therefore involves a certain danger in contact. As the writer just cited observes:—

"The acts that cause uncleanness are exactly the same which among savage nations place a man under taboo.... These acts are often involuntary, and often innocent, or even necessary to society. The savage, accordingly, imposes a taboo on a woman in childbed, or during her courses ... simply because birth and everything connected with the propagation of the species on the one, and disease and death on the other hand, seem to involve the action of supernatural agencies of a dangerous kind. If he attempts to explain, he does so by supposing that on these occasions spirits of deadly power are present; at all events the persons involved seem to him to be sources of mysterious danger, which has all the characters of an infection, and may extend to other people unless due precautions are observed.... It has nothing to do with respect for the gods, but springs from mere terror of the supernatural influences associated with the woman's physical condition."[76]

It is interesting to observe the manner in which this notion of the sacramentally 'unclean' nature of woman has affected her religious status, and by inference, her social status likewise. Among the Australians women are shut out from any part in the religious ceremonies. In the Sandwich Isles a woman's touch made a sacrifice unclean. If a Hindu woman touches a sacred image the divinity is destroyed. In Fiji women are excluded from the temples. The Papuans have the same custom. The Ainus of Japan allow a woman to prepare the sacrifice, but not to offer it. Women are excluded from many Mohammedan mosques. Among the Jews women have no part in the religious ceremonies. In the Christian Church women were excluded from the priestly office. A Council held at Auxerre at the end of the sixth century forbade women touching the Eucharist with their bare hands, and in various churches they were forbidden to approach the altar during Mass.[77] In the gospels Jesus forbids the woman to touch Him, after the resurrection, although Thomas was allowed to feel His wounds. "The Church of the Middle Ages did not hesitate to provide itself with eunuchs in order to supply cathedral choirs with the soprano tones inhering by nature in women alone."[78] The 'Churching' of women still in vogue has its origin in the same superstition that childbirth endows woman with a supernatural influence which must be removed in the interests of others. This ceremony was formerly called "The Order of the Purification of Women," and was read at the church door before the woman entered the building. Its connection with the ideas indicated above is obvious. The Tahitian practice of excluding women from intercourse with others for two or three weeks after childbirth, with similar practices amongst uncivilised peoples all over the world, led with various modifications up to the current practice of churching. They show that in the opinion of primitive peoples "a woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interests of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while, until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows."[79] The gradual change of this ceremony, from a getting rid of a dangerous supernatural infection to returning thanks for a natural danger passed, is on all fours with what takes place in other directions in relation to religious ideas and practices.

The important part played by this conception of woman's nature may be traced in the fierce invective directed against her in the early Christian writings. Of course, by that time society had reached a stage when the primitive form of this belief had been outgrown, but ideas and attitudes of mind persist long after their originating conditions have disappeared. In this particular case we have the primitive idea expressed in a form suitable to altered circumstances, and the primitive feeling seeking new warranty in ethical or social considerations. But in the main the old notion is there. Woman is a creature threatening danger to man's spiritual welfare.[80] In this connection we may note an observation of Westermarck's during his residence among the country people of Morocco. He was struck, he says, with the superstitious fear the men had of women. They are supposed to be much better versed in magic, and therefore one ran greater danger in offending them. The curses of women are, generally, much more feared than those of men. To this we have a parallel in Christianity which so often revived and strengthened the lower religious beliefs. During the witch mania an overwhelming proportion of those charged with and executed for sorcery were women. As a matter of fact, women were more prone than men to credit themselves with possessing supernatural power. But the theological explanation was that the devil had more power over women than men. This was, obviously, a heritage from the primitive belief above described.[81]

Another way in which religion becomes closely associated with sexualism is through the widely diffused phallic worship. The worship of the generative power in the form of stones, pillars, and carved representations of the male and female sexual organs plays an unquestionably important part in the history of religion, however hardly pressed it may have been by some enthusiastic theorisers. "The farther back we go," says Mr. Hargrave Jennings, "in the history of every country, the deeper we explore into all religions, ancient as well as modern, we stumble the more frequently upon the incessantly intensifying distinct traces of this supposedly indecent mystic worship."[82] On the lower Congo, says Sir H. H. Johnston:—

"Phallic worship in various forms prevails. It is not associated with any rites that might be called particularly obscene; and on the coast, where manners and morals are particularly corrupt, the phallus cult is no longer met with. In the forests between Manyanga and Stanley Pool it is not rare to come upon a little rustic temple, made of palm fronds and poles, within which male and female figures, nearly or quite life size, may be seen, with disproportionate genital organs, the figures being intended to represent the male and female principle. Around these carved and painted statues are many offerings, plates, knives, and cloth, and frequently also the phallic symbol may be seen dangling from the rafters. There is not the slightest suspicion of obscenity in all this, and anyone qualifying this worship of the generative power as obscene does so hastily and ignorantly. It is a solemn mystery to the Congo native, a force but dimly understood, and, like all mysterious natural manifestations, it is a power that must be propitiated and persuaded to his good."[83]

The Egyptian religion was permeated with phallicism. In India phallic worship is widely scattered. In Benares, the sacred city, "everywhere, in the temples, in the little shrines in the street, the emblem of the Creator is phallic." Symbols of the male and female sexual organs, the Lingam and the Yoni, have been objects of worship in India from the earliest times. With the Sakti ceremonies, Hindu religion dispenses with symbols, and devotion is paid to a naked woman selected for the occasion.[84] This worship of a nude female is a very familiar phenomenon in the history of religion. Some of the early Christian sects were said to have practised it, and it is a feature of some Russian religious sects to-day. The subject will be dealt with more fully hereafter.

In ancient Rome, in the month of April, "when the fertilising powers of nature begin to operate, and its powers to be visibly developed, a festival in honour of Venus took place; in it the phallus was carried in a cart, and led in procession by the Roman ladies to the temple of Venus outside the Colline gate, and then presented by them to the sexual part of the goddess."[85] In the Greek Bacchic religious processions huge phalli were carried in a chariot drawn by bulls, and surrounded by women and girls singing songs of praise. Phallic worship was also associated with the cults of Dionysos and Eleusis. It is met with among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, and also among the North American tribes. The famous Black Stone of Mecca, to which religious honours are paid, is also said by authorities to be a phallic symbol. The stone set up by Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 18-9) falls into the same category. References to phallic worship may be found in many parts of the Bible, and authoritative writers like Mr. Hargrave Jennings and Major-General Forlong have not hesitated to assert that the god of the Jewish Ark was a sexual symbol. Seeing the extent to which phallic worship exists in other religions, it would be surprising did this not also exist in the early Jewish religion.

In Christendom we have evidence of the perpetuation of the phallic cult in the decree of Mans, 1247, and of the Synod of Tours, 1396, against its practice. Quite unsuccessfully, however. Indeed, the architecture of medieval churches bear in their ornamentation numerous evidences of the failure at suppression. Of course, much of this ornamentation may have been due to mere imitation, but often enough it was deliberate. "The scholar," says Bonwick, "who gazed to-day at the roof of Temple Church, London, had the illustration before him. A symbol there, repeatedly displayed, is the popular Hindu one to express sex worship."[86] The belief found expression in other ways than ornamentation. When Sir William Hamilton visited Naples in 1781 he found in Isernia a Christian custom in vogue which he described in a letter to Sir William Banks, and which admitted of no doubt as to its Priapic character. Every September was celebrated a festival in the Church of SS. Cosmus and Damianus. During the progress of the festival vendors paraded the streets offering small waxen phalli, which were bought by the devout and placed in the church, much as candles are still purchased and given. At the same time, prayers are offered to St. Como by those who desire children. In Midlothian, in 1268, the clergy instructed their flock to sprinkle water with a dog's phallus in order to avert a murrain. The same practice existed in Inverkeithing, and in Easter week priest and people danced round a wooden phallus.[87] Mr. Westropp, quoting an eighteenth-century writer,[88] says: "When the Huguenots took Embrun, they found among the relics of the principal church a Priapus, of three pieces in the ancient fashion, the top of which was worn away from being constantly washed with wine." The temple of St. Eutropius, destroyed by the Huguenots, is said to have contained a similar figure. From Mr. Sidney Hartland's collection of practices for obtaining children I take the following:—

"At Bourg-Dieu, in the diocese of Bourges, a similar saint" (similar to the priapean figure previously described) "was called Guerlichon or Greluchon. There after nine days' devotions women stretched themselves on the horizontal figure of the saint, and then scraped the phallus for mixture in water as a drink. Other saints were worshipped elsewhere in France with equivalent rites. Down to the Revolution there stood at Brest a chapel of Saint Guignolet containing a priapean statue of the holy man. Women who were, or feared to be, sterile used to go and scrape a little of the prominent member, which they put into a glass of water from the well and drank. The same practice was followed at the Chapel of Saint Pierre-a-Croquettes in Brabant until 1837, when the archaeologist Schayes called attention to it, and thereupon the ecclesiastical authorities removed the cause of scandal. Women have, however, still continued to make votive offerings of pins down almost, if not quite, to the present day. At Antwerp stood at the gateway to the Church of Saint Walburga in the Rue des Pecheurs a statue, the sexual organ of which had been entirely scraped away by women for the same purpose."[89]

From what has been said, it will not be difficult to understand the existence of the custom of religious prostitution. Considering the sexual impulse as specially connected with a supernatural force, man pays it religious honour, and comes to identify its manifestations as an expression of the supernatural and also as an act of worship towards it. In India the practice existed, when most temples had their 'bayaderes.' In ancient Chaldea every woman was compelled to prostitute herself once in her life in the temple of the goddess Mylitta—the Chaldean Venus. This custom existed elsewhere, and by it the woman was compelled to remain within the temple enclosures until some man chose her, from whom she received a piece of money. The money, of course, belonged to the temple.[90] In Greece, Carthage, Syria, etc., we find the same custom. Among the Jews, so orthodox a commentary as Smith's Bible Dictionary admits that the 'Kadechim' attached to the temple were prostitutes. The frequent references to the service of the 'groves' surrounding the temple irresistibly suggest their likeness to the groves around the temples of Mylitta, and their use for the same purpose.

There is no necessity to prolong the subject,[91] nor is it necessary to my purpose to discuss the origin of phallic worship. It is enough to have shown the manner in which, from the very earliest times, religious belief and sexual phenomena have been connected in the closest possible manner. In this respect it is only on all fours with the relation of religion to phenomena in general, but here the attitude of mind is accentuated and prolonged by the startling facts of sexual development. The connection becomes consequently so close it is not surprising to find that the association has persisted down to the present time, and moods that have their origin in the sexual life are frequently attributed to religious influences. The primitive intelligence, frankly seeing in the phenomena of sex a manifestation of the supernatural, sees here a continuous endorsement of religious life. The more sophisticated mind raised above this point of view continues, with modifications, the primitive practices, and in ignorance of the physiological causes of its own states is only too ready to interpret ebullitions of sex feeling as evidence of the divine.

NOTE TO PAGE 104.

It is strange that so little attention has been paid to these primitive beliefs as important factors in determining the social position of women. It is too generally assumed that because woman is physically weaker than man it is her weakness that has determined her subordination. Both the advocates and the opponents of 'Woman's Rights' appear to have reached a common agreement on this point. During some of the debates in the House of Commons, for example, it was openly stated by prominent politicians, as an axiom of political philosophy, that all laws rest upon a basis of force, and if men say they will not obey woman-made laws there is no power that can compel them to do so. On the other side, women, while appealing to what they properly call higher considerations, themselves dwell upon the physical weakness of woman as the reason for her subordination in the past. Both parties are helped in their arguments by the facile division of social history into two periods, an earlier one in which club law plays the chief part, and a later period when mental and moral qualities assume a dominating position. The consequence is, runs the argument, that each sex has to battle with the dead weight of tradition and custom. The woman is oppressed by the tradition of subordination to the male; the man is inspired by that of dominance over the female.

It is when we ask for evidence of this that we see how flimsy the case is. Social phenomena in either civilised or uncivilised society furnishes no proof that institutions and customs rest upon a basis of physical force. The rulership of a tribe often rests with the old men of a tribe; with some tribes the women are consulted, and invariably custom and tradition plays a powerful part. The notion that the primitive chief is the primitive strong man of the tribe is as baseless as the belief in an original social contract, and owes its existence to the same kind of fanciful speculation. As Frazer says, "it is one of those facile theories which the arm-chair philosopher concocts with his feet on the fender without taking the trouble to consult the facts." The primitive chief may be a strong man. The tribal council or chief may use force or rely upon physical force to enforce certain decrees, just as the modern king or parliament may call on the help of policeman or soldier, but this no more proves that their rule is based upon force than Mr. Asquith's premiership proves his physical superiority to the rest of the Cabinet.

All political life, and to a smaller degree all social life, involves the direction of force, but neither appeal to force for an ultimate justification, nor do social institutions originate in an act of force. It is one of the commonplaces of historical study that when an institution is actually forced upon a people it very quickly becomes inoperative. Other things equal, one group of people may overcome another group because of physical superiority, but the conquest over, the question as to which group shall really rule, or which set of institutions shall survive, is settled on quite different grounds. The history of almost any country will give examples of the absorption of the conqueror by the conquered, and the bringing of imported institutions into line with native life and feeling. Fundamentally the relations binding people together into a society are not physical, but psychological. Society rests upon the foundations of a common mental life—upon sympathy, beliefs, the desire for companionship, etc. As Professor J. M. Baldwin puts it, the fundamental social facts are not things, but thoughts.[92] As a member of a social group man is born into an environment that is essentially psychological, and his attitude not only towards his fellow human beings, but towards nature in general, is determined by the psychological contents of the society to which he belongs.

Now if the relation of one man to another is not determined by physical superiority and inferiority, if the relations of classes within a society are not determined in this manner, why should it be assumed that as a sex woman's position is fixed by this means? It seems more reasonable to assume that some other principle than that of club law, a principle set in operation very early in the history of civilisation, fixed the main lines upon which the relations of the sexes were to develop, however much other forces helped its operation. I believe this desired factor is to be found in the superstitious notions savages develop concerning the nature and function of woman, and which society only very slowly outgrows. For, as Frazer says: "The continuity of human development has been such that most, if not all, of the great institutions which still form the framework of a civilised society have their roots in savagery, and have been handed down to us in these later days through countless generations, assuming new outward forms in the process of transmission, but remaining in their inmost core substantially unchanged."

In considering the play of primitive ideas as determining the lines of human evolution several things must be kept clearly in mind. One is that the course of biological development has made woman, as a sex, dependent upon man, as a sex, for protection and support. This is true quite apart from economic considerations or from those arising from the relative physical strength of the sexes. The prime function of woman, biologically, is that of motherhood. She is, so to speak, mother in a much more important and more pervasive sense than man is father. In the case of woman, her functions are of necessity subordinated to this one. With man this is not the case. It is with the woman that the nutrition of the child rests before birth, and a large portion of her strength is expended in the discharge of this function. The same is true for some period immediately after birth. Again to use a biological illustration, during the period of child-bearing and child-rearing the relation of the man to the woman may be likened to that which exists between the germ cells and the somatic cells. As the latter is the medium of protection and the conveyer of nutrition in relation to the former, so it falls to the male to protect and in some degree to provide for the woman as child-bearer. It would not, of course, be impossible for woman to provide for herself, but it would detract so considerably from social efficiency that any group in which it was done would soon disappear. It is the nature and supreme function of woman that makes her dependent upon man. And even though the dreams of some were realised, and society as a whole cared for woman in the discharge of this function, the issue would not be changed. It would mean that instead of a woman being dependent upon one man she would be dependent upon all men. Nor are the substantial facts of the situation changed by anyone pointing out that all women do not and cannot under ordinary circumstances become wives and mothers. Human nature will always develop on the lines of the normal functions of men and women, and there can be no question in this case as to what these are.

I have used the word 'dependence,' but this does not, of necessity, involve either subordination or subjection. It may provide the condition of either or of both, but the dependence of the woman on the man is, as I have said, biologically inescapable. Her subjection is quite another question. Dependence may be mutual. One class of society may be dependent upon another class, but the two may move on a perfect level of equality. And with uncivilised peoples the evidence goes to prove that, while the spheres of the sexes are more clearly differentiated than with us, this difference is seldom if ever expressed in terms of superior and inferior. Savages would say, as civilised people still say, there are many things that it is wrong for a woman to do, and they would add there are also things that a man must not do. They would be as shocked at woman doing certain things as some people among ourselves were when women first began to speak at public meetings. Their disapproval would not rest on the ground that these things were 'unwomanly', nor upon any question of weakness or strength, of inferiority or superiority, but for another and, to the savage, very urgent reason.

One can very easily exaggerate the extent of the subjection of women among uncivilised people. As a matter of fact, it usually is exaggerated. Not all travellers are capable of accurate observation, and very many are led astray by what are really superficial aspects of savage life. They are so impressed by the contemplation of a state of affairs different from our own that they mistake mere lines of demarcation for a moral valuation. Many travellers, for example, observing that women are strictly forbidden to do this or that, conclude that the woman has no rights as against the man. As in nearly all these cases the man is as strictly forbidden to encroach on the woman's sphere, one might as reasonably reverse the statement and dwell upon male subjection. As a matter of fact, both furnish examples of the all-powerful principle of 'taboo.' Some things are taboo to the man, others to the woman. And the key to the problem lies in the nature and origin of these taboos. But taboo does not extinguish rights; it confirms them. Under its operation, far from its being the truth that women are without status or rights or power, her position and rights are clearly marked, generally recognised, and quickly enforced. Some examples of this may be noted.

A Kaffir woman when ill-treated possesses the right of asylum with her parents, and remains there until the husband makes atonement. The same thing holds of the West African Fulahs. In the Marquesas a woman is prohibited the use of canoes; on the other hand, men are prohibited frequenting certain places belonging to the women. In Nicaragua no man may enter the woman's market-place under penalty of a beating. With most of the North-American tribes a woman has supreme power inside the lodge. The husband possesses no power of interference. In most cases the husband cannot give away anything belonging to the lodge without first getting the consent of his wife. With the Nootkas, women are consulted on all matters of business. Livingstone relates his surprise on finding that a native would not accompany him on a journey because he could not get his wife's consent. He found this to be one of the customs of the tribe to which the man belonged. Among the Kandhs of India nothing public is done without consulting the women. In the Pellew Islands the head of the family can do nothing of importance without consulting the oldest female relative. Among the Hottentots women have supreme rule in the house. If a man oversteps the line, his female relatives inflict a fine, which is paid to the wife. With the Bechuanas the mother of the chief is present at all councils, and he can hardly decide anything without her consent. These are only a few of the cases that might be cited, but they are sufficient to show that the common view of women among savages as without recognised status, or power, needs very serious qualification. Of course, ill-treatment of women does occur with uncivilised as with civilised people, and she may suffer from the expression of brutal passion or superior strength, but an examination of the facts justifies Starcke's opinion that "we are not justified in assuming that the savage feels a contempt for women in virtue of her sex."

In primitive life, in short, the dominant idea is not that of superiority in relation to woman, but that of difference. She is different from man, and this difference involves consequences of the gravest character, and against which due precautions must be taken. Superiority and inferiority are much later conceptions; they belong to a comparatively civilised period, and their development offers an admirable example of the way in which customs based on sheer superstitions become transformed into a social prejudice, with the consequent creation of numerous excuses for their perpetuation. What that initial prejudice is—a prejudice so powerful that it largely determines the future status of woman—has already been pointed out. Her place in society is marked out in uncivilised times by the powerful superstitions connected with sexual functions. Not that she is weaker—although that is, of course, plain—nor that she is inferior, a thought which scarcely exists with uncivilised peoples, but that she is dangerous, particularly so during her functional crises and in childbirth. And being dangerous, because charged with a supernatural influence inimical to others, she is excluded from certain occupations, and contact with her has to be carefully regulated. I agree with Mr. Andrew Lang that in the regulations concerning women amongst uncivilised people we have another illustration of the far-reaching principle of taboo (Social Origins and Primal Law, p. 239) she suffers because of her sex, and because of the superstitious dread to which her sex nature gives birth.

Of course, at a later stage other considerations begin to operate. Where, for example, as amongst the Kaffirs, women are not permitted to touch cattle because of this assumed spiritual infection, and where a man's wealth is measured by the cattle he possesses, it is easy to see that this would constitute a force preventing the political and social equality of the sexes. The pursuits from which women were primarily excluded for purely religious reasons would in course of time come to be looked upon as man's inalienable possessions. And here her physical weakness would play its part; for she could not take, as man could withhold, by force. Even when the primitive point of view is discarded, the social prejudices engendered by it long remains. And social prejudices, as we all know, are the hardest of all things to destroy.

A final consideration needs to be stated. This is that the customs determined by the views of woman (above outlined) fall into line, in a rough-and-ready fashion, with the biological tendency to consecrate the female to the function of motherhood and conserve her energies to that end, leaving other kinds of work to the male. It would be an obvious advantage to a tribe in which woman, relieved from the necessity of physical struggle for food and defence, was able to attend to children and the more peaceful side of family life. Children would not only benefit thereby, but the home with all its civilising, humanising influences would develop more rapidly. Assuming variations in tribal life in this direction, there is no question as to which tribe that would stand the better chance of survival. The development of life has proceeded here as elsewhere by differentiation and specialisation; and while the tasks demanding the more sustained physical exertions were left to man, and to the performance of which his sexual nature offered no impediment, woman became more and more specialised for maternity and domestic occupations. This, I hasten to add, is not at all intended as a plea for denying to women the right to participate in the wider social life of the species. I am trying to explain a social phase, and neither justifying nor condemning its perpetuation.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Dr. Iwan Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 97.

[66] E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, p. 401.

[67] The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity, p. 419.

[68] Primitive Paternity, 2 vols., 1909-10.

[69] The Mystic Rose, p. 191.

[70] See Frazer's Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 145-63, and Crawley's Mystic Rose.

[71] Man and Woman, p. 15.

[72] Taboo, pp. 163-4.

[73] Religion of the Semites, p. 142.

[74] A long list of animals that were sacred to various Semitic tribes has been compiled by Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 194-201.

[75] Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 306-7.

[76] Religion of the Semites, pp. 427-9. For a fuller discussion of the subject, see Studies in the Psychology of Sex, by Havelock Ellis, 1901.

[77] Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, p. 666.

[78] Westermarck, p. 666.

[79] Frazer, Taboo, p. 150.

[80] See the Rev. Principal Donaldson's Woman: her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and among the Early Christians, bk. iii.

[81] For the general influence of these beliefs about woman in determining her social position, see note at the end of this chapter.

[82] The Worship of Priapus, Pref. p. 9.

[83] The River Congo, p. 405.

[84] A description of the Sakti ceremony is given by Major-General Forlong, Faiths of Man, iii. pp. 228-9.

[85] Westropp, Primitive Symbolism, p. 30.

[86] Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, p. 256.

[87] Forlong, Faiths of Man, iii. p. 66.

[88] Primitive Symbolism, p. 36.

[89] Primitive Paternity, i. pp. 63-4.

[90] Major-General Forlong agrees with many other authorities in tracing our custom of kissing under the mistletoe to this ancient practice. "The mistletoe," he says, "marks in one sense Venus's temple, for any girl may be kissed if caught under its sprays—a practice, though modified, which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by Herodotus, where all women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in Mylitta's temple."—Rivers of Life, i. p. 91.

[91] Those who desire further and more detailed information may consult Forlong's great work, The Rivers of Life, Payne Knight's Worship of Priapus, Westropp and Wake's Phallicism in Ancient Religion, Brown's Dionysiak Myth, Westropp's Primitive Symbolism, R. A. Campbell's Phallic Worship, Hargrave Jennings's Worship of Priapus, etc.

[92] A good discussion of the topic will be found in this author's Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development.



CHAPTER FIVE

THE INFLUENCE OF SEXUAL AND PATHOLOGIC STATES ON RELIGIOUS BELIEF

In the preceding chapter we have been concerned with the various ways in which the phenomena attendant on the sexual life of man and woman become associated with religious beliefs. As a force that arises in the life of each individual, and intrudes, as it were, into consciousness, the phenomena of sex fill primitive man with an amazement that is not unmixed with terror. In strict accord with primitive psychology sexual phenomena are conceived as more or less connected with the supernatural world, and becoming thus entwined with religious convictions are made the nucleus of a number of superstitious ceremonies. The connection is close and obvious so long as we restrict our survey to uncivilised humanity. The only room for doubt or discussion is the exact meaning of certain ceremonies, or the order of certain phases of development. It is when we take man in a more advanced stage that obscurity gathers and difficulties arise. The sexual life is no longer lived, as it were, openly. Symbolism and mysticism develop; a more complex social life provides disguised outlets for primitive and indestructible feelings. Sexualism, instead of being something to be glorified, and, so to speak, annotated by religious ceremonies, becomes something to be hidden or decried. Ignored it may be. Decried it may be; but it will not be denied. That is a practical impossibility in the case of so powerful and so pervasive a fact as sex. We may disguise its expression, but only too often the disguise is the equivalent of undesirable and unhealthy manifestations.

The modern history of religion offers a melancholy illustration of the truth of the last sentence, and it is quite clearly exhibited in the history of Christianity itself. From the beginning it strove to suppress the power of sexual feeling. It was an enemy against whom one had to be always on guard, one that had to be crushed, or at least kept in subjection in the interests of spiritual development. And yet the very intensity of the efforts at suppression defeated the object aimed at. With some of the leaders of early Christianity sex became an obsession. Long dwelling upon its power made them unduly and unhealthily conscious of its presence. Instead of sex taking its place as one of the facts of life, which like most other facts might be good or bad as circumstances determined, it was so much dwelt upon as to often dwarf everything else. Asceticism is, after all, mainly a reversed sensualism, or at least confesses the existence of a sensualism that must not be allowed expression lest its manifestation becomes overpowering. Mortification confesses the supremacy of sense as surely as gratification. Moreover, mortification of sense as preached by the great ascetics does not prevent that most dangerous of all forms of gratification, the sensualism of the imagination. That remains, and is apt to gain in strength since the fundamentally healthful energies are denied legitimate and natural modes of expression. Thus it is that we find developing social life not always providing a healthy outlet for the sexual life, and thus it is that the intense striving of religious leaders against the power of the sexual impulse has often forced it into strange and harmful forms of expression. So we find throughout the history of religion, not only that a deal of what has passed for supernatural illumination to have undoubtedly had its origin in perverted sexual feeling, but the constant emergence of curious religio-erotic sects whose strange mingling of eroticism and religion has scandalised many, and offered a lesson to all had they but possessed the wit to discern it.

Although there is an understandable disinclination, amounting with some to positive revulsion, to recognise the sexual origin of much that passes for religious fervour, the fact is well known to competent medical observers, as the following citations will show. More than a generation since a well-known medical authority said:—

"I know of no fact in pathology more striking and more terrifying than the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic—which have often been seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual exaltation—may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent foolery of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive phenomena of nymphomania and satyriasis."[93]

Dr. C. Norman also observes:—

"Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. The same association is seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features in the conversation of acutely maniacal women is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas."[94]

This opinion is fully endorsed by Sir Francis Galton:—

"It has been noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which accompany the show of excessive piety and religious rapture in the insane, none are so frequent as disorders of the sexual organisation. Conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not infrequently ended in gross profligacy. The encouragement of celibacy by the fervent leaders of most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid connection between an over-restraint of the sexual desires and impulses towards extreme devotion."[95]

Dr. Auguste Forel, the eminent German specialist, points out that—

"When we study the religious sentiment profoundly, especially in the Christian religion, and Catholicism in particular, we find at each step its astonishing connection with eroticism. We find it in the exalted adoration of holy women, such as Mary Magdalene, Marie de Bethany, for Jesus, in the holy legends, in the worship of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages, and especially in art. The ecstatic Madonnas in our art galleries cast their fervent regards on Jesus or on the heavens. The expression in Murillo's 'Immaculate Conception' may be interpreted by the highest voluptuous exaltation of love as well as by holy transfiguration. The 'saints' of Correggio regard the Virgin with an amorous ardour which may be celestial, but appears in reality extremely terrestrial and human."[96]

Another German authority remarks:—

"I venture to express my conviction that we should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the sexual apparatus to be implicated."[97]

Dr. Bevan Lewis points out how frequently religious exaltation occurs with women at puberty, and religious melancholia at the period of sexual decline. And Dr. Charles Mercier puts the interchangeability of sexual and religious feelings in the following passage:—

"Religious observances provide an alternative, into which the amatory instinct can be easily and naturally diverted. The emotions and instinctive desires, which finds expression in courtship, is a vast body of vague feeling, which is at first undirected.... It is a voluminous state of exaltation that demands enthusiastic action. This is the state antecedent to falling in love, and if an object presents himself or herself, the torrent of emotion is directed into amatory passion. But if no object appears, or if the selected object is denied, then religious observances yield a very passable substitute for the expression of the emotion. Religious observances provide the sensuous atmosphere, the call for self-renunciation, the means of expressing powerful and voluminous feeling, that the potential or disappointed lover needs. The madrigal is transformed into the hymn; the adornment of the person that should have gone to allure the beloved now takes the shape of ecclesiastical vestments; the reverence that should have been paid to the loved one is transformed to a higher object; the enthusiasm that would have expanded in courtship is expressed in worship; the gifts that would have been made, the services that would have been rendered to the loved one, are transferred to the Church."[98]

Dr. Krafft-Ebing, after dwelling upon the substantial identity of sexual love and religious emotion, summarises his conclusions by saying:—

"Religious and sexual hyperaesthesia at the acme of development show the same volume of intensity and the same quality of excitement, and may, therefore, under given circumstances interchange. Both will in certain pathologic states degenerate into cruelty."[99]

Even so orthodox a writer as the Rev. S. Baring-Gould points out that—

"The existence of that evil, which, knowing the constitution of man, we should expect to find prevalent in mysticism, the experience of all ages has shown following, dogging its steps inevitably. So slight is the film that separates religion from sensual passion, that uncontrolled spiritual fervour roars readily into a blaze of licentiousness."[100]

No useful purpose would be served by lengthening this list of citations. Enough has been said to show that the point of view expressed is one endorsed by many sober, competent, and responsible observers. There exists among them a general, and one may add a growing, recognition of the important truth that the connection between religious and sexual feeling is of the closest character, and that one is very often mistaken for the other. Asceticism, usually taken as evidence to the reverse, is on the contrary, confirmative. The ascetic often presents us with a flagrant case of eroto-mania, expressing itself in terms of religion. It is highly significant that the biographies of Christian saints should furnish so many cases of men and women of strong sensual passions, and whose ascetic devotion was only the reaction from almost unbridled sensualism. No wonder that in the temptations experienced by the monks the figures of nude women so often appeared before their heated imaginations. Sexual feeling suppressed in one direction broke out in another. Feelings, in themselves perfectly normal, became, as a consequence of repression and misdirection, pathologic. And one consequence of this was that many of the early Christian writers brought to the consideration of the subject of sex a concentration of mind that resulted in disquisitions of such a nature that it is impossible to do more than refer to them. The sexual relation instead of being refined was coarsened. Marriage was viewed in its lowest form, more as a concession to the weakness of the flesh than as a desirable state for all men and women. Nor can it be said, after many centuries, that these ideas are quite eradicated from present-day life.

A field of investigation that yields much illuminating information is the biographies of the saints and of other religious characters. In many of these cases the acceptance of sexual feeling for religious illumination is very clear. Thus of St. Gertrude, a Benedictine nun of the thirteenth century, we read:—

"One day at chapel she heard supernaturally sung the words, 'Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.' The Son of God, leaning towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said to her at the second Sanctus, 'In the Sanctus addressed to My person, receive with this all the sanctity of My divinity and of My humanity.'... And the following Sunday, while she was thanking God for this favour, behold the Son of God, more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her to His arms as if He were proud of her, and presents her to God the Father, and in that perfection of sanctity with which He had endowed her."[101]

Of Juliana of Norwich, who was granted a revelation in 1373, we are told that she had for long 'ardently desired' a bodily sight of the Lord upon the cross; and that finally Jesus appeared to her and said, "I love thee and thou lovest Me, and our love shall never be disparted in two."[102] So, again, in the case of Sister Jeanne des Anges, Superior of the Convent of Ursulines of Loudun, and the principal character in the famous Grandier witchcraft case, we have a detailed account, in her own words, of the lascivious dreams, unclean suggestions, etc.—all attributed to Satan—and alternating with impressions of bodily union with Jesus.[103] Marie de L'Incarnation addresses Jesus as follows:—

"Oh, my love, when shall I embrace you? Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas! alas! My love! My beauty! My life! Instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms."[104]

Veronica Juliani, beatified by Pope Pius II., took a real lamb to bed with her, kissed it, and suckled it at her breasts. St. Catherine of Genoa threw herself on the ground to cool herself, crying out, "Love, love, I can bear it no longer." She also confessed to a peculiar longing towards her confessor.[105]

The blessed Mary Alacoque, foundress of the Sacred Heart, was subject from early life to a number of complaints—rheumatism, palsy, pains in the side, ulceration of the legs—and experienced visions early in her career. As a child she had so vivid a sense of modesty that the mere sight of a man offended her. At seventeen she took to wearing a knotted cord drawn so tightly that she could neither eat nor breathe without pain. She compressed her arms so tightly with iron chains that she could not remove them without anguish. "I made," she says, "a bed of potsherds, on which I slept with extreme pleasure." She fasted and tortured herself in a variety of ways, and the more her physical disorders increased the more numerous became her visions. Before she was eighteen years of age, in 1671, she entered a nunnery. From the time she donned the habit of a novice she was 'blessed' with visions. "Our Lord showed me that that day was the day of our spiritual wedding; He forthwith gave me to understand that He wished to make me taste all the sweetness of the caresses of His love. In reality, those divine caresses were from that moment so excessive, that they often put me out of myself." "Once," says one of her biographers, "having retired into her chamber, she threw off the clothes with which she had bedecked herself during the day, when the Son of God showed Himself to her in the state in which He was after His cruel flagellation—that is, with His body all wounded, torn, gory—and He said to her that it was her vanities that had brought Him into that condition." In one of these visions Jesus took the head of Mary, pressed it to His bosom, spoke to her in passionate words, opened her side and took out her heart, plunged it into His own, and then replaced it. He then explained His design of founding the Order of the Sacred Heart. Ever after, Mary was conscious of a pain in her side and a burning sensation in her chest—two plain symptoms of hysteria.[106]

Santa Teresa, who died at the early age of thirty-three, and in whose family more than one case of well-developed neurasthenia can be traced, was favoured with 'messages' at a very early age. She believed some of these were temptations from the devil suggesting an 'honourable alliance.' A nervous breakdown followed directly after entrance into a convent. She was then twenty years of age, was subject to fainting fits and longed for illness as a sign of divine favour. She was subject to convulsions, and soon after taking the veil fell into a cataleptic trance, which lasted three days. She was thought to be dead, but at the end of the time sat up and told those around that she had visited both heaven and hell, and seen the joys of the blessed and the torments of the damned. It is at least suggestive that, in spite of the longing for personal communion with Jesus, her first experience of the ecstasy of divine love was experienced after discovering a 'very realistic' picture of a martyred saint—St. Joseph. The significance of the intense contemplation of a tortured body—possibly made by one whose sexual nature was undergoing a process of suppression—is unmistakable.[107]

On these and similar cases Professor William James makes the following comment:—

"To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. To pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but enquire into their fruits for life."[108]

Now the question is really not what these ecstasies suggest to the 'medical mind,' as though that were a type of mind quite unfitted to pass judgment. It is a question of what the facts suggest to any mind judging the behaviour of a person under the influence of strong religious emotion exactly as it would judge anyone under any other strong emotional pressure. And if it be possible to explain these states in terms of known physiological and mental action, what warranty have we for rejecting this and preferring in its stead an explanation that is both unprovable and unnecessary? And one would be excused for thinking that cases which certainly involve some sort of abnormal nervous action are precisely those in which the medical mind should be called on to express an opinion. What is meant by passing 'a spiritual judgment' upon these states is not exactly clear, unless it means judging them in terms of the historic supernatural interpretation. But that is precisely the interpretation which is challenged by the 'medical mind.'

I do not see how any enquiry "into their fruits for life" can affect a rational estimate of the nature of these mystical states. Mysticism adds nothing to the native disposition of a person. It merely gives their energies a new turn, a new direction. What they were before the experience they remain, substantially, afterwards. That is why we find religious mystics of every variety. Some energetically practical; others dreamily unpractical. Professor James admits this in saying that "the other-worldliness encouraged by the mystical consciousness makes this over-abstraction from practical life peculiarly liable to befall mystics in whom the character is naturally passive and the intellect feeble; but in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite results."[109] And when it is further admitted that "the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of its own," but "is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood," mysticism seems reduced to an emotional development on all fours with emotional development in other directions. It is not peculiar to religious minds because "it has no specific intellectual content." It is amorphous, so to speak. And it may form diverse 'matrimonial alliances' precisely because it does not point to a hidden world of reality, but is merely indicative of tense emotional moods. In the face of nature the non-theistic Richard Jeffries experiences all the feelings of mental enlargement and emotional transports that Mary Alacoque or Santa Teresa experienced in their visions of the 'Risen Christ.'

It is idle, then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it as superficial. Many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. But it is really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. It is a mere matter of applying knowledge and common sense to the cases before us. Are we to take the subject's explanation of his or her mental states as authoritative, so far as their nature is concerned; or are we to treat them as symptoms demanding the skilled analysis of the specialist? If the former, how can we differentiate between the mystic and the admittedly hysterical patient? If the latter, what ground is there for placing the mystic in a category of his own? Rational and scientific analysis will certainly take far more notice of the nature of the feelings excited than of the object towards which they are directed. Here is the case of a young lady, given by Dr. Moreau, in his Morbid Psychology:—

"During my long hours of sleeplessness in the night my beloved Saviour began to make Himself manifest to me. Pondering over the meditations of St. Francois de Sales on the Song of Songs, I seemed to feel all my faculties suspended, and crossing my arms upon my chest, I awaited in a sort of dread what might be revealed to me.... I saw the Redeemer veritably in the flesh.... He extended Himself beside me, pressed me so closely that I could feel His crown of thorns, and the nails in His feet and hands, while He pressed His lips over mine, giving me the most ravishing kiss of a divine Spouse, and sending a delicious thrill through my entire body."[110]

Get rid of the narcotising effect of theological associations by eliminating the name of Jesus and other religious terms from this case, and from the others already cited, and no one would have the least doubt as to their real nature. Given a condition of physical health in these cases, with conditions that favoured social activity, healthy intercourse with the opposite sex, culminating in marriage and parenthood, can there be any doubt that this species of religious ecstasy would have been non-existent? If, as Tylor says, the refectory door would many a time have closed the gates of heaven, happy family life would in a vast number of cases have prevented those religio-erotic trances which have played so powerful a part in the history of supernaturalism. Most people will agree with Dr. Maudsley:—

"The ecstatic trances of such saintly women as Catherine Sienne and St. Theresa, in which they believed themselves to be visited by their Saviour and to be received as veritable spouses into His bosom, were, though they knew it not, little better than vicarious sexual orgasm; a condition of things which the intense contemplation of the naked male figure, carved or sculptured in all its proportions on a cross, is more fitted to produce in young women of susceptible nervous temperament than people are apt to consider. Every experienced physician must have met with instances of single and childless women who have devoted themselves with extraordinary zeal to habitual religious exercises, and who, having gone insane as a culmination of their emotional fervour, have straightway exhibited the saddest mixture of religious and erotic symptoms—a boiling over of lust in voice, face, gestures, under the pitiful degradation of disease.... The fanatical religious sects, such as the Shakers and the like, which spring up from time to time in communities and disgust them by the offensive way in which they mingle love and religion, are inspired in great measure by sexual feeling; on the one hand, there is probably the cunning of a hypocritical knave, or the self-deception of a half-insane one, using the weaknesses of weak women to minister to his vanity or his lust under a religious guise; on the other hand, there is an exaggerated self-feeling, often rooted in the sexual passion, which is unwittingly fostered under the cloak of religious emotion, and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. In such cases the holy kiss owes its warmth to the sexual impulse, which inspires it, consciously or unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes is fitted to issue in a less spiritual union."[111]

Many manuals of devotion will be found to furnish the same kind of evidence as biographical narratives concerning the intimate relations that exists between sexuality and religious feeling. What has just been said may be repeated here, namely, that if the religious associations were dispelled, there would be no mistaking the nature of feelings that originated much of this class of writing, or the feelings to which they appeal. The serious fact is that the appeal is there whether we recognise it or not, and it is a question worthy of serious consideration whether the unwary imagination of the young may be not as surely debauched by certain books of devotion as by a frankly erotic production. It is not without reason that d'Israeli the elder, in an essay omitted from all editions of his book after the first, remarked that "poets are amorous, lovers are poetical, but saints are both."[112] Take, for example, the following from a collection of old English homilies, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries:—

"Jesus, my holy love, my sure sweetness! Jesus, my heart, my joy, my soul-heal! Jesus, sweet Jesus, my darling, my life, my light, my balm, my honey-drop!... Kindle me with the blaze of Thy enlightening love. Let me be Thy leman, and teach me to love Thee.... Oh, that I might behold how Thou stretchedst Thyself for me on the cross. Oh, that I might cast myself between those same arms, so very wide outspread.... Oh, that I were in Thy arms, in Thy arms so stretchedst and outspread on the cross."

Or this, from the same collection:—

"Sweet Jesus, my love, my darling, my Lord, my Saviour, my balm, sweeter is the remembrance of Thee than honey in the mouth. Who is there that may not love Thy lovely face? Whose heart is so hard that may not melt at the remembrance of Thee? Oh! who may not love Thee, lovely Jesus? Jesus, my precious darling, my love, my life, my beloved, my most worthy of love, my heart's balm, Thou art lovesome in countenance, Thou art altogether bright. All angels' life is to look upon Thy face, for Thy cheer is so marvellously lovesome and pleasant to look upon.... Thou art so bright, and so white that the sun would be pale if compared to Thy blissful countenance. If I, then, love any man for beauty, I will love Thee, my dear life, my mother's fairest son."[113]

The language of erotic piety figures much more prominently in Roman Catholic medieval writings than in Protestant literature. This is not because an appeal to the same feelings is absent from the religious literature of Protestantism, it is mainly due to the fact that more modern conditions leads to a less intense religious appeal, while the broadening of social life encourages a more natural outlet for all aspects of human nature. Still, the following expression of a young lady convert of Wesley's offers a fair parallel to the specimen given above. It is taken from Southey's Life of Wesley:—

"Oh, mighty, powerful, happy change! The love of God was shed abroad in my heart, and a flame kindled there with pains so violent, and yet so very ravishing, that my body was almost torn asunder. I sweated, I trembled, I fainted, I sang. Oh, I thought my head was a fountain of water. I was dissolved in love. My beloved is mine, and I am His. He has all charms; He has ravished my heart; He is my comforter, my friend, my all. Oh, I am sick of love. He is altogether lovely, the chiefest among ten thousand. Oh, how Jesus fills, Jesus extends, Jesus overwhelms the soul in which He lives."

The Imitation of Christ has been described by more than one writer as a manual of eroticism, and certainly the chapters "The Wonderful Effects of Divine Love," and "Of the Proof of a True Lover," might well be cited in defence of this view. In the following canticle of St. Francis of Assisi it does not seem possible to distinguish a substantial difference between it and a frankly avowed love poem:—

"Into love's furnace I am cast, Into love's furnace I am cast, I burn, I languish, pine, and waste. Oh, love divine, how sharp thy dart! How deep the wound that galls my heart! As wax in heat, so, from above, My smitten soul dissolves in love. I live, yet languishing I die, While in thy furnace bound I lie."[114]

It would certainly be possible to furnish exact parallels from volumes of secular verse that would be strictly 'taboo' among those who fail to see anything objectionable in verses like the above when written in connection with religion. Such people fail to recognise that their attractiveness lies in the hidden appeal to amatory feeling, and owe their origin to the suppressed or perverted sexual passion of their author. We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the consideration as to whether the object of adoration be an earthly or a heavenly one. Men and women have not distinct feelings that are aroused as their objective differs, but the same feelings directed now in one direction, now in another. The direction of these feelings, their exciting cause, are sheer environmental accidents. How can one resist the implications of the following, from a devotional work widely circulated amongst the women of France:—

"Praise to Jesus, praise His power, Praise His sweet allurements. Praise to Jesus, when His goodness Reduces me to nakedness; Praise to Jesus when He says to me, My sister, my dove, my beautiful one! Praise to Jesus in all my steps, Praise to His amorous charms. Praise to Jesus when His loving mouth Touches mine in a loving kiss. Praise to Jesus when His gentle caresses Overwhelm me with chaste joys. Praise to Jesus when at His leisure He allows me to kiss Him."[115]

Against this we may place the following hymn, sung at an American camp meeting of some thousands of persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five:—

"Blessed Lily of the Valley, oh, how fair is He; He is mine, I am His. Sweeter than the angels' music is His voice to me; He is mine, I am His. Where the lilies fair are blooming by the waters calm There He leads me and upholds me by His strong right arm.

All the air is love around me—I can feel no harm; He is mine, I am His."[116]

Special significance is given to this reference by the age of those who composed the gathering. This period embraces the years during which sexual maturity is attained, and the organism experiences important physiological and psychological changes. The consequence is that the atmosphere is, so to say, charged with unsuspected sex feeling, and it is not surprising that many complaints have been made of immorality following such gatherings. The organism is then peculiarly liable to suggestion in all forms. Along with the imitativeness of early years there is something of the decisive initiative of maturity. These qualities wisely guided might be turned to the great advantage of both the individual and of the community. Mere incitement by religious revivalism can result in little else than misdirection and injury. It should be the most obvious of truths that the attractiveness of hymns such as the one given, with the keen delight in the suggested pictures, lies in their yielding—all unknown, perhaps, to those participating— satisfaction to feelings that are very frequently imperious in their demands, and are at all times astonishingly pervasive in their influence.

Much valuable light is thrown upon this aspect of the subject by a study of human behaviour under the influence of actual disease. Of late years much useful work has been done in this direction, and our knowledge of normal psychology greatly helped by a study of abnormal mental states.[117] This is mainly because in disease we are able to observe the operation of tendencies that are unobscured by the restraints and inhibitions created by education and social convention. And one of the most striking, and to many startling, things observed is the close relation existing between erotic mania and religious delusion. The person who at one time feels himself under direct religious inspiration, or who imagines himself to be the incarnation of a divine personage, will at another time exhibit the most shocking obscenity in action and language. Sir T. S. Clouston furnishes a very striking case of this character, which he cites in order to show "the common mixture of religious and sexual emotion."[118] I do not reproduce it here because of its grossly obscene character; but, save for coarseness of language, it does not differ materially from illustrations already given. Almost any of the text-books will supply cases illustrating the connection between sexualism and religion, a connection generally recognised as the opinions cited already clearly show.

Dr. Mercier, in dealing with the connection between sexualism and religion, which he says "has long been recognised, but never accounted for," traces it to a feeling of, or desire for self-sacrifice common to both. Certainly sacrifice in some form—of food, weapons, land, money, or bodily inconvenience—is a feature present in every religion more or less. And it is quite certain that not merely the fact, but the desire for some amount of sacrifice, forms "an integral, fundamental, and preponderating element" in the sexual emotion. Dr. Mercier further believes that the benevolence founded on religious emotion has its origin in sexual emotion, which is, again, extremely likely. This community of origin would allow for the transformation of one into the other, and supplies a key to the language of lover-like devotion and self-abnegation which is so prominent in religious devotional literature. The importance attached to dress is also very suggestive; for here, again, the element of sacrifice expresses itself in the cultivation of a studied repulsiveness to the normal attractiveness of costume. "Thus," says Dr. Mercier, "we find that the self-sacrificial vagaries of the rejected lover and of the religious devotee own a common origin and nature. The hook and spiny kennel of the fakir, the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites, the flagellum of the monk, the sombre garments of the nun, the silence of the Trappists, the defiantly hideous costume of the hallelujah lass, and the mortified sobriety of the district visitor, have at bottom the same origin as the rags of Cardenio, the cage of Don Quixote de la Mancha, and the yellow stockings and crossed garters of Malvolio."[119]

Professor Granger, who at times comes very near the truth, says:—

"There is something profoundly philosophical in the use of The Song of Songs to typify the communion of the soul with its ideal. The passion which is expressed by the Shulamite for her earthly lover in such glowing phrases becomes the type of the love of the soul towards God."[120]

One fails to see the profoundly philosophic nature of the selection. The Song of Songs is a frankly erotic love poem, written with no other aim than is common to such poetry, and its spiritualisation is due to the same process of reinterpretation that is applied to other parts of the Bible in order to make them agreeable to modern thought. Had it not been in the Bible, Christians would have found it neither profoundly philosophical nor spiritually illuminating; and, as a matter of fact, similar effusions are selected by Christians from non-Christian writings as proofs of their sensual character. The real significance of its use in religious worship is that it gives a marked expression to feelings that crave an outlet. And the lesson is that sexual feeling cannot be eliminated from life; it can only be diverted or disguised. Some expression it will find—here in open perversion resulting in positive vice, there in obsession that leads to a half-insane asceticism, and elsewhere the creation of the unconsciously salacious with an unhealthy fondness for dabbling in questions that refer to the illicit relations of the sexes.

"One of the reasons why popular religion in England," says Professor Granger, "seems to be coming to the limits of its power, is that it has contented itself so largely with the commonplace motives which, after all, find sufficient exercise in the ordinary duties of life." Here, again, is a curious obtuseness to a plain but important truth. With what else should a healthy religion associate itself but the ordinary motives or feelings of human life? With what else has religion always associated itself? Far from that being the source of the weakness of modern religion, it is its only genuine source of strength. If religion can so associate itself with the ordinary facts and feelings of life that these are unintelligible or poorer without religion, then religious people have nothing to fear. But if it be true, as Professor Granger implies, that life in its normal moods can receive complete gratification apart from religion, then the outlook is very different. From a merely historic point of view it is true that as men have found explanations of phenomena, and gratifications of feelings apart from religion, the latter has lost a deal of its power. This is seen in the growth of the physical sciences, and also, although in a smaller measure, in sociology and morals.

This, however, opens up the enquiry, previously indicated, as to how far the whole range of human life may be satisfactorily explained in the complete absence of religion or supernaturalism. And with this we are not now directly concerned. What we are concerned with is to show that from one direction at least supernaturalism has derived strength from a misinterpretation of the facts. These facts, once interpreted as clear evidence for supernaturalism, are now seen to be susceptible to a different explanation. But they have nevertheless played their part in creating as part of the social heritage a diffused sense of the reality of supernatural intercourse. It is not, then, a question of religion losing power because it has contented itself with commonplace motives, and because these have now found satisfaction in ordinary life. It is rather a question of the adequacy of science to deal with facts that have been taken to lie outside the scientific order. Has science the knowledge or the ability to deal with the extraordinary as well as with the ordinary facts of life? I believe it has. The facts we have passed in review are amenable to scientific treatment, for the reason that they belong to a class with which the physician of to-day finds himself in constant contact. And it is too often overlooked that the belief in the existence and influence of a supersensible world is itself only a theory put forward in explanation of certain classes of facts, and like all theories it becomes superfluous once a simpler theory is made possible.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] Article in The Lancet, Jan. 11, 1873.

[94] Article in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.

[95] Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 66-7.

[96] The Sexual Question, pp. 354-5.

[97] Cited by Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, pp. 233-4.

[98] Conduct and its Disorders, pp. 368-9.

[99] Psychopathia-Sexualis, pp. 9-11.

[100] Lost and Hostile Gospels, Preface.

[101] Cited by James, Varieties, pp. 345-6.

[102] Inge, Christian Mysticism, pp. 201-9.

[103] See Ellis, Psychology of Sex, pp. 240-2.

[104] Parkman's Jesuits in North America, p. 175.

[105] Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia-Sexualis, p. 8.

[106] See L. Asseline's Mary Alacoque and the Worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

[107] See St. Teresa of Spain, by H. H. Colvill, and Saint Teresa, by H. Joly.

[108] Varieties, p. 413.

[109] Varieties, p. 413.

[110] Cited by J. F. Nisbet, The Insanity of Genius, p. 248.

[111] Pathology of Mind, p. 144. Also Mercier, Sanity and Insanity, pp. 223, 281.

[112] Miscellanies, 1796, p. 365. From the same essay I take the following: "Even the ceremonies of religion, both in ancient and in modern times, have exhibited the grossest indecencies. Priests in all ages have been the successful panders of the human heart, and have introduced in the solemn worship of the divinity, incitements, gratifications, and representations, which the pen of the historian must refuse to describe. Often has the sensible Catholic blushed amidst his devotions, and I have seen chapels surrounded by pictures of lascivious attitudes, and the obsolete amours of saints revived by the pencil of some Aretine.... Their homilies were manuals of love, and the more religious they became, the more depraved were their imaginations. In the nunnery the love of Jesus was the most abandoned of passions, and the ideal espousal was indulged at the cost of the feeble heart of many a solitary beauty" (pp. 369-70).

[113] From a collection published by the Early English Text Society, 1868, pp. 182-4, 268.

[114] G. A. Coe, The Spiritual Life, p. 210.

[115] Les Perles de Saint Francois de Sales, 1871. Cited by Bloch, p. 111.

[116] Davenport's Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, p. 29.

[117] See, for example, Conduct and its Disorders, by Dr. C. Mercier; Psycho-Pathological Researches, by Dr. Boris Sidis; and Abnormal Psychology, by I. H. Coriat.

[118] Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, p. 584.

[119] Sanity and Insanity, chap. viii.

[120] The Soul of a Christian, p. 178.



CHAPTER SIX

THE STREAM OF TENDENCY

It should hardly need pointing out that the facts presented in the last chapter are not offered as an attempt at the—to use Professor William James's expression—"reinterpretation of religion as perverted sexuality." Nor, so far as the present writer is aware, has anyone ever so presented them. The expression, indeed, seems almost a deliberate mis-statement of a position in order to make its rebuttal easier. Obviously the idea of religion must be already in existence before it could be utilised for the purpose of explaining any group of phenomena. But if the biographic and other facts described have any value whatever, they are at least strong presumptive evidence in favour of the position that in very many cases a perverted or unsatisfied sexuality has been at the root of a great deal of the world's emotional piety. Of course, the strong religious belief must be in existence before-hand. But given this, and add thereto a sexual nature imperious in its demands and yet denied legitimate outlet, and we have the conditions present for its promptings being interpreted as the fruits of supernatural influence. It is not a reinterpretation of religion that is attempted, but a reinterpretation of phenomena that have been erroneously called religious. And on all sides the need for this reinterpretation is becoming clear. Over sixty years ago Renan wrote, "A rigorous psychological analysis would class the innate religious instinct of women in the same category with the sexual instinct,"[121] and since then a very much more detailed knowledge of both physiology and psychology has furnished a multitude of data for an exhaustive study of the whole question.

In the present chapter our interest is mainly historical. And for various reasons, chief amongst which is that interested readers may the more easily follow up the study should they feel so inclined, the survey has been restricted to the history of that religion with which we are best acquainted—Christianity. Moreover, if we are to form a correct judgment of the part played in the history of religions by the misinterpretations already noted, it is necessary to trace the extent to which they have influenced men and women in a collective capacity. For the striking fact is that, in spite of the purification of the sexual relations being one of the avowed objects of Christianity, in spite, too, of the attempts of the official churches to suppress them, the history of Christianity has been dogged by outbreaks of sexual extravagance, by the continuous emergence of erotico-religious sects, claiming Christian teachings as the authority for their actions. We need not discuss the legitimacy of their inferences. We are concerned solely with a chronicle of historic facts so far as they can be ascertained; and these have a certain significance of their own, as events, quite apart from their reasonableness or desirability.

A part cause of the movements we are about to describe may have been a violent reaction against an extravagant asceticism. Something may also be due to the fact that over-concentration of mind upon a particular evil is apt to defeat its end by the mere force of unconscious suggestion in the contrary direction. But in all probability much was due to the presence of certain elements inherited by Christianity from the older religions. At any rate, those whose minds are filled with the idea that sexual extravagance on a collective scale and under the cloak of religion is either a modern phenomenon, or was unknown to the early history of Christianity, would do well to revise their opinions in the light of ascertainable facts. No less a person than the Rev. S. Baring-Gould has reminded us that criticism discloses "on the shining face of primitive Christianity rents and craters undreamt of in our old simplicity," and also asserts "that there was in the breast of the newborn Church an element of antinomianism, not latent, but in virulent activity, is a fact as capable of demonstration as any conclusion in a science which is not exact."[122]

There would be little value in a study of these erotico-religious movements if they involved only a detection of individual lust consciously using religion as a cloak for its gratification. Such a conclusion is a fatally easy one, but it does little justice to the chief people concerned, and it is quite lacking in historical perspective. In most cases the initiators of these strange sects have put forward a philosophy of religion as a justification of their teaching, and only a slight knowledge of this is enough to prove that we are face to face with a phenomenon of much greater significance than mere immorality. This may be recognised even in the pages of the New Testament itself. It is not a practice that is there denounced; it is a teaching that is repudiated. And one sees the same thing at later periods. The conviction on the one side that certain actions are unlawful, is met on the other side with the conviction that they are perfectly legitimate. Conviction is met with conviction. Each side expresses itself in terms of religion; the ethical aspect is incidental or subordinate. It is a contest of opposing religious beliefs and practices.

The real nature of the conflict is often obscured by the fact of social opinion and the social forces generally being on the side of the more normal expression of sexual life. This, however, is no more than a necessity of the situation. The continuance of a healthful social life is dependent upon the maintenance of a certain balance in the relations of the sexes, and anything that strikes at this strikes at social life as a whole. In such cases we have, therefore, to allow for the operation of social selection, which is always on the side of the more normal type. From this it follows that although a small body of people may exemplify a variation that is in itself socially disastrous, the main forces of social life will prevent its ever assuming large dimensions. Moreover, a large body of people, such as is represented by a church holding a commanding position in society, will be forced to come to terms with the permanent tendencies of social life, and will either suppress undesirable variations or expel them. It thus happens that while the larger and more dominant churches have been on the side of normal, regularised expressions of the sexual life, abnormal variations have constantly arisen and have been denounced by them. But the significant feature is that they have arisen within the churches, and most commonly during periods of great religious stress or excitement.

These tendencies, as the Rev. S. Baring-Gould has pointed out, existed in the very earliest days of Christianity. It is quite apparent from Paul's writings that as early as the date of the First Epistle to the Corinthians some of the more objectionable features of the older Pagan worship had shown themselves in the Church. The doctrine of 'spiritual wifehood' appeared at a very early date in the Church, and its teachers cited even St. Paul himself as their authority. Their claim was based upon Paul's declaration (1 Cor. ix. 5) that he had power to lead about "a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas." Curiously enough, commentators have never agreed as to what Paul meant by this expression. The word translated may mean either wife, or sister, or woman. Had it been wife in the ordinary sense, it does not appear that at that date there would have been any room for scandal. The clear fact is, however, that others claimed a like privilege; the privilege was not always restricted to one woman, and the practice, if not general, became not uncommon, and furnished the ground for scandal for a long period. Two epistles, wrongly attributed to St. Clement of Rome, and dating from some time in the second century, condemn the practice of young people living together under the cloak of religion, and specially warns virgins against cohabiting with the clergy and so giving offence. That the practice was difficult to suppress is shown by its being condemned by several church councils—Antioch in 210, Nicea in 325, and Elvira in 350.[123] At a later date a much more elaborate theory has been built on Paul's claim. The Pauline Church has found several expressions both in England and America within recent times.[124] These sects have claimed that both St. Paul and the woman with whom he travelled were in a state of grace, and, therefore, above all law. We do not mean the maintenance of an ascetic relationship, but the normal relation of husband and wife. It is really the doctrine of 'Free Love' with a spiritual warranty instead of a secular one.

This doctrine of religious 'Free Love' rests upon a twofold basis. First, it was held that, apart from a wife after the flesh, one might also have a wife after the spirit, and this spiritual union might exist side by side with the fleshly one, and with different persons. A great impetus appears to have been given to this theory from Germany, many of the originators of the American sects of Free Lovers being Germans. Secondly, it was held that a Christian in a state of grace was absolved from laws that were binding upon other people. His actions were no longer subject to the categories of right and wrong; as it was said, to one in a state of grace all things were lawful, even though all things might not be expedient. Some went the length of teaching that not only were all things lawful, but all things were desirable. Separating by a sharp division things that influenced the soul from things that influenced the body, it was openly taught by some of the early sects that nothing done by the body could injure the soul, and so could not affect its salvation. Reversing the practice of asceticism, which sought to crush bodily passions by a course of deprivation, it was taught that all kinds of forbidden conduct might be practised in order to demonstrate the soul's superiority. There is no question whatever that this tendency was very prominent in the early Christian Church. It was not there as something hidden, something of which men ought to be ashamed; it was an avowed teaching, claiming full religious sanction. "The Church," says Baring-Gould, "trembled on the verge of becoming an immoral sect." The same writer also says:—

"This teaching of immorality in the Church is a startling feature, and it seems to have been pursued by some who called themselves apostles as well as by those who assumed to be prophets. In the Corinthian Church even the elders encouraged incest. Now, it is not possible to explain this phenomenon except on the ground that Paul's argument as to the Law being overridden had been laid hold of and elevated into a principle. These teachers did not wink at lapses into immorality, but defiantly urged on the converts to the Gospel to commit adultery, fornication, and all uncleanness ... as a protest against those who contended that the moral law as given on the tables was still binding upon the Church."[125]

A certain detachment from modern conditions, and from modern frames of mind, is essential to an adequate appreciation of what has been said. Looking at these events through the distorting medium of an altogether different social atmosphere, one is apt to attribute them to the operation of lawless desire, and so have done with it. This, however, is to overlook the fact that we are dealing with a society in which sexual symbols were common in religious worship, and in which theories of the religious life were propounded and accepted which to-day would be regarded as little less than maniacal. Unquestionably even then, once the situation had established itself it would be utilised by those of a coarser nature for mere sensual gratification. But practices such as we know existed, on the scale we have every reason for believing they were, could never have been had they not taken the form of an intense conviction. To assume otherwise is equal to arguing that because men have entered the Church from mere love of power or lust for wealth, the Church owed its establishment to the play of these motives. It is true that those who opposed these religio-erotic sects accused them of immorality, but it is the form these teachings assumed to the members of the impeached sects, not how they appeared to their enemies, that is important. Eroticism taught and practised as a religious conviction—that is the essential and significant feature of the situation. Not to grasp this is to fail to realise the vital fact embodied in the phenomena under consideration. We are not dealing with mere sensualists, even though we may be dealing with what is largely an expression of sensualism. It is sensualism expressed as, and sanctioned by, religious conviction that is the vital fact of the situation.

One of the earliest Christian institutions around which scandals gathered was that of the Agapae, or love-feasts. From the outset the Pagan writers asserted that these love-feasts were new versions of various old orgiastic practices, some of which were still current, others of which had been suppressed by the Roman government. There is no doubt that they were the grounds of very serious accusations against the Christians. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, at the outset at least, these charges were indignantly rejected by the Christians. The Agapae were called indiscriminately Feasts of Love and Feasts of Charity. Each member, male and female, greeted each other with a holy kiss, and the institution was described by Tertullian as "a support of love, a solace of purity, a check on riches, a discipline of weakness." These love-feasts were held on important occasions, such as a marriage, a death, or the anniversary of a martyrdom. Some churches celebrated them weekly. From the Acts of the Apostles we learn that the feasts began about nightfall, and continued till after midnight, or even till daybreak. It was only natural that mixed assemblies of men and women that gathered in this manner, and where there was eating and drinking, should create scandal. It is absolutely certain that some of this scandal had a basis in fact. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould confesses that "at Corinth, and certainly elsewhere, among excitable people, the wine, the heat, the exaltation of emotion, led to orgiastic ravings, the jabbering of disconnected, unintelligible words, to fits, convulsions, pious exclamations, and incoherent ravings." And unless St. Paul was deliberately slandering his fellow-believers worse things than these occurred.

Generally, even by non-Christian writers, it has been assumed that the Agapae commenced as a perfectly harmless, even admirable institution, and afterwards degenerated, and so gave genuine cause for scandal. It is not easy to see that this opinion rests on anything better than a mere prejudice. It is true that there is no unmistakable evidence to the contrary, but no clear evidence is to be found in its behalf. The Agapae was not, after all, an essentially Christian institution. Similar gatherings existed among the Pagans, more or less orgiastic in character. And even though at first some of the more extreme forms were avoided amongst the Christians, it is not improbable, on the face of it, that some kind of sexual extravagance or symbolism was present from the outset. At any rate, as I have said, the charges were made, first by Pagans, afterwards by Christians against other Christians. The charges were persistent, and were made in districts far removed from each other. Says Lecky: "When the Pagans accused the Christians of indulging in orgies of gross licentiousness, the first apologist, while repudiating the charge, was careful to add, of the heretics, 'Whether or not these people commit those shameful acts ... I know not.' In a few years the language of doubt and insinuation was exchanged for that of direct assertion; and if we may believe St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, the followers of Carpocrates, the Marcionites, and some other gnostic sects habitually indulged, in their secret meetings, in acts of impurity and licentiousness as hideous and as monstrous as can be conceived, and their conduct was one of the causes of the persecution of the orthodox."[126] Tertullian accused some of the sects of practising incestuous intercourse at the Agapae. Ambrose compared the institution to the Pagan Parentalia. Clement says, probably referring to the Agapae, "the shameless use of the rite occasions foul suspicion and evil reports." The first epistle on Virginity by the Pseudo-Clement (probably written in the second century) admits the existence of immorality by saying, "Others eat and drink with them (i.e. the virgins) at feasts, and indulge in loose behaviour and much uncleanness, such as ought not to be among those who have elected holiness for themselves." Justin Martyr, referring to certain sects, says more cautiously: "Whether or not these people commit these shameful acts (the putting out of lights, and indulging in promiscuous intercourse) I know not." Others are more precise in their charges. That the Agapae became the legitimate cause of complaint is admitted by all. The only question is whether it was the institution itself or the public mind in relation to it that underwent a change. Eventually, on the avowed ground of evil conduct, the Agapae were forbidden by the Council of Carthage, 391, of Orleans, 541, and of Constantinople, 680.

The whole subject is obscure, but the one certain and significant thing is that charges of licentiousness were connected with the Agapae from the outset. These may at first have been unfounded or exaggerated. On the other hand, it is quite probable that just as Christianity continued Pagan ceremonies in other directions, so there was also a carrying over into the Church of some of the sexual rites and ceremonies connected with earlier forms of worship. And we know that the principle of Antinomianism, a prolific cause of evil at all times, was active amongst the Christians from the outset.

It is almost impossible to say at this distance how many sects exhibiting marked erotic tendencies appeared in the early Christian centuries. Many must have disappeared and left no trace of their existence. But there can be no question that they were fairly numerous. The extensive sect, or sects, of the gnostics contained in its teachings elements that at least paved the way for the conduct with which other Christians charged them, although the charges made may not have been true of all. To some of the gnostic sects belongs the teaching—quite in accord with the doctrine of the evil nature of the world, that liberation from the 'Law' was one of the first conditions of spiritual freedom. From this came the teaching, subsequently held by numerous other sects, that those born of the Spirit could not be defiled by any acts of the flesh, and that so-called vicious actions were rather to be encouraged as providing experience useful to spiritual welfare. Some branches of the gnostics had 'spiritual marriages,' similar to what existed in India in the Sakti rites already described. Thus the Adamites, a rather obscure gnostic sect of the second century, attempted to imitate the Edenic state by condemning marriage and abandoning clothing. Their assemblies were held underground, and on entering the place of worship both sexes stripped themselves naked, and in that state performed their ceremonies. They called their church Paradise, from which all dissentients were promptly expelled. The Adamites themselves claimed that their object was to extirpate desire by familiarising the senses to strict control. Their religious opponents gave a very different account of the practice, and it is not difficult to realise, whatever may have been the motive of the founders, the consequences of such a practice. It is curious, by the way, to observe how strong religious excitement seems to lead people to discard clothing. Thus, during the Crusade of 1203-42 the women crusaders rushed about the streets in a state of nudity.[127] During the wars of the League in France, men and women walked naked in procession headed by the clergy.[128] Other examples of this curious practice might be given.