With the development of the patriarchal system and the custom of marriage by capture or purchase, woman came to be regarded as a part of man's property, and as inviolate as any other of his possessions. Under these circumstances virginity came to be more and more of an asset, since no man wished his property to be denied by the touch of another. Elaborate methods for the preservation of chastity both before and after marriage were developed, and in many instances went so far as to consider a woman defiled if she were accidentally touched by any other man than her husband. Here we have once more the working of sympathetic magic, where the slightest contact works contamination.

We have in other connections alluded to the seclusion of young girls in Korea, among the Hindus, among the North American Indians, and in the South Seas. One of the most beautiful examples of this custom is found in New Britain. From puberty until marriage the native girls are confined in houses with a bundle of dried grass across the entrance to show that the house is strictly taboo. The interior of these houses is divided into cells or cages in each of which a girl is confined. No light and little or no air enters, and the atmosphere is hot and stifling.

The seclusion of women after marriage is common among many peoples. In the form in which it affected western civilization it probably originated among the Persians or some other people of central Asia, and spread to the Arabs and Mohammedans. That it did not originate with the Arabs is attested by students of their culture. It was common among the Greeks, whose wives were secluded from other men than their husbands. In modern Korea it is not even proper to ask after the women of the family. Women have been put to death in that country when strange men have accidentally touched their hands.[36, p.341]

The saddest outcome of the idea of woman as property was the status of widows. In uncivilized society a widow is considered dangerous because the ghost of her husband is supposed to cling to her. Hence she must be slain that his spirit may depart in peace with her, as well as with the weapons and other possessions which are buried with him or burned upon his funeral pyre. The Marathi proverb to the effect that "the husband is the life of the woman" thus becomes literally true.

The best known case of widow slaying is of course the custom of "suttee" in India. The long struggle made against this custom by the British government is a vivid illustration of the strength of these ancient customs. The Laws of Manu indicate that the burning of widows was practised by primitive Aryans. In the Fiji Islands, where a wife was strangled on her husband's grave, the strangled women were called "the carpeting of the grave."[54] In Arabia, as in many other countries, while a widow may escape death, she is very often forced into the class of vagabonds and dependents. One of the most telling appeals made by missionaries is the condition of child widows in countries in which the unfortunates cannot be killed, but where the almost universal stigma of shame is attached to second marriages. A remarkable exception to this, when in ancient Greece the dying husband sometimes bequeathed his widow to a male friend, emphasized the idea of woman as property.

Although the taboos which are based on the idea of ownership are somewhat aside from the main theme of our discussion, they nevertheless reinforce the other taboos of the seclusion and segregation of woman as unclean. Moreover, as will be shown in a later chapter, the property idea has certain implications which are important for the proper understanding of the status of woman and the attitude toward her at the present time.

In the face of the primitive aversion to woman as the source of contamination through sympathetic magic, or as the seat of some mystic force, whether of good or evil, it may well be asked how man ever dared let his sexual longings overcome his fears and risk the dangers of so intimate a relationship. Only by some religious ceremonial, some act of purification, could man hope to counteract these properties of woman; and thus the marriage ritual came into existence. By the marriage ceremonial, the breach of taboo was expiated, condoned, and socially countenanced.[1, p.200] This was very evident in the marriage customs of the Greeks, which were composed of purification rites and other precautions.[55] The injunctions to the Hebrews given in Leviticus illustrate the almost universal fact that even under the sanction of marriage the sexual embrace was taboo at certain times, as for example before the hunt or battle.

We are now prepared to admit that throughout the ages there has existed a strongly dualistic or "ambivalent" feeling in the mind of man toward woman. On the one hand she is the object of erotic desire; on the other hand she is the source of evil and danger. So firmly is the latter feeling fixed that not even the sanction of the marriage ceremony can completely remove it, as the taboos of intercourse within the marital relationship show.

There are certain psychological and physiological reasons for the persistence of this dualistic attitude in the very nature of the sex act itself. Until the climax of the sexual erethism, woman is for man the acme of supreme desire; but with detumescence the emotions tend to swing to the opposite pole, and excitement and longing are forgotten in the mood of repugnance and exhaustion. This tendency would be very much emphasized in those primitive tribes where the corroboree with its unlimited indulgence was common, and also among the ancients with their orgiastic festivals. In the revulsion of feeling following these orgies woman would be blamed for man's own folly. In this physiological swing from desire to satiety, the apparent cause of man's weakness would be looked upon as the source of the evil—a thing unclean. There would be none of the ethical and altruistic element of modern "love" to protect her. Students agree that these elements in the modern sentiment have been evolved, "not from the sexual instinct, but from the companionship of the battlefield."[56] It is therefore probable that in this physiological result of uncontrolled sex passion we shall find the source of the dualism of the attitude toward sex and womanhood present in taboo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER I

1. Crawley, A.E. The Mystic Rose. 492 pp. Macmillan. London, 1902.

2. Jevons, F.B. History of Religion. 443 pp. Methuen & Co. London, 1896.

3. Tylor, E.B. Early History of Mankind, 3d. ed. 388 pp. J. Murray. London, 1878.

4. Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough: Part I, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings. 2 vols. Macmillan. London, 1911.

5. First published in Anthropological Essays presented to E.B. Tylor in honour of his 75th birthday. Oct. 2, 1907. 416 pp. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907.

6. Sumner, W.G. Folkways. 692 pp. Ginn & Co. Boston, 1907.

7. Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man. 294 pp. Macmillan. N.Y., 1911.

8. Wallace, Alfred Russel. Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. 541 pp. Reeve & Co., London, 1853.

9. Williams, Thomas, and Calvert, James. Fiji and the Fijians. 551 pp. Appleton. N.Y., 1859.

10. Ploss, Dr Hermann H. Das Weib. 2 vols. Th. Grieben's Verlag. Leipzig, 1885.

11. Greiger, Ostiranische Kultur. Erlangen, 1882. Quoted from Folkways [6], p. 513.

12. Robertson Smith, W. Religion of the Semites. 508 pp. A. & C. Black. Edinburgh, 1894.

13. Thompson, R.C. Semitic Magic. 286 pp. Luzac & Co. London, 1908.

14. Ellis, A.B. Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa. 343 pp. Chapman & Hall. London, 1887.

15. Powers, Stephen. Tribes of California. Contributions to North American Ethnology, Third Volume. Washington, 1877.

16. Morice, Rev. Father A.G. The Canadian Denes. Annual Archeological Report, 1905. Toronto, 1906. Quoted from Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul.

17. Dawson, James. Australian Aborigines. 111 pp., with Appendix. George Robertson. Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, 1881. Citation from Latin note to Chap. XII.

18. Tregear, Edward. The Maoris of New Zealand. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, v. xix, 1889.

19. Armit, Capt. W.E. Customs of the Australian Aborigines. Jour. Anthr. Inst., ix, 1880, p. 459. See also [18].

20. Ridley, W. Report on Australian Languages and Traditions. Jour. Anthr. Inst., ii, 1872.

21. Roscoe, Rev. John. Manners and Customs of the Baganda. Jour. Anthr, Inst., xxxii, 1902.

22. Zend-Avesta. Sacred Books of the East Series. Oxford 1880, 1883.

23. Leviticus xii.

24. Ellis, A.B. Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa. Chapman & Hall. London, 1890. 331 pp.

25. Dall, W.H. Alaska and Its Resources. 627 pp. Lee & Shepard. Boston, 1870.

26. Biddulph, Maj. J. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh. 164 pp. Gov't. Printing Office. Calcutta, 1880.

27. Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough: Part II, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. 446 pp. Macmillan. London, 1911.

28. Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies. 227 pp. Macmillan. N.Y., 1908.

29. Guppy, H.B. The Solomon Islands and Their Natives. 384 pp. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. London, 1887.

30. Melville, H. The Marquesas Islands. 285 pp. John Murray. London, 1846.

31. Taylor, Rev. Richard. Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and Its Inhabitants. 713 pp. 2d. ed. Macintosh. London, 1870.

32. Shooter, Rev. Joseph. The Kaffirs of Natal and the Zulu Country. 403 pp. E. Stanford. London, 1857.

33. Jones, Rev. Peter. History of the Ojibway Indians. 217 pp. A.W. Bennett. London, 1861.

34. Featherman, A. Social History of the Races of Mankind. 5 vols. Truebner & Co. London, 1881.

35. Ellis, Rev. Wm. Polynesian Researches. 4 vols. G. Bohn. London, 1853.

36. Bishop, Mrs Isabella Bird. Korea and Her Neighbours. 480 pp. Fleming H. Revell Co. N.Y., 1898.

37. Somerville, Lieut. Boyle T. The New Hebrides. Jour. Anthr. Inst., xxiii, 1894.

38. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. Appleton, N.Y., 1904.

39. Musters, G.C. At Home with the Patagoniana. 340 pp. J. Murray. London, 1873.

40. Hearne, Samuel. A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean. Publications of the Champlain Society, No. 6. London, 1795.

41. Low, Hugh. Sarawak. 416 pp. Richard Bentley. London, 1848.

42. Codrington, Rev. R.H. The Melanesians. 419 pp. Oxford, 1891.

43. Romilly, Hugh Hastings. The Western Pacific and New Guinea, 2d. ed., 284 pp. John Murray. London, 1887.

44. Sproat, G.M. Scenes and Studies of Savage Life. 317 pp. Smith, Elder & Co. London, 1868.

45. Wissler, Clark. The American Indian. 435 pp. D.C. McMurtrie. N.Y., 1917.

46. Lawes, W.G. Ethnographical Notes on the Motu, Koitapu, and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea. Jour. Anthr. Inst., viii, 1879.

47. Callaway, Rev. Canon Henry. Religious System of the Amazulu. 448 pp. Truebner & Co. London, 1870.

48. Crooke, W. Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India. 2 vols. Archibald Constable & Co. Westminster, 1896.

49. Crawley, A.E. Sexual Taboo. Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxiv, 1895.

50. Man, E.H. The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. Jour. Anthr. Inst., xii, 1882.

51. Crantz, David. History of Greenland. Trans, fr. the German, 2 vols. Longmans, Green. London, 1820.

52. Holub, E. Central South African Tribes. Jour. Anthr. Inst., x, 1881.

53. Morgan, Lewis H. Ancient Society. 560 pp. Henry Holt & Co. N.Y., 1907. (First edition, 1877).

54. Fison, Rev. Lorimer. Figian Burial Customs, jour. Anthr. Inst., x. 1881.

55. Rohde, Erwin. Psyche. 711 pp. Freiburg und Leipzig, 1894.

56. Benecke, E.F.M. Women in Greek Poetry. 256 pp. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. London, 1896.



CHAPTER II

FROM THE DAWN OF HISTORY: WOMAN AS SAINT AND WITCH

Taboos of first chapter indicate that in the early ages the fear of contamination by woman predominated; Later, emphasis fell on her mystic and uncanny power; Ancient fertility cults; Temple prostitution, dedication of virgins, etc.; Ancient priestesses and prophetesses; Medicine early developed by woman added to belief in her power; Woman's psychic quality of intuition: its origin—theories—conclusion that this quality is probably physiological in origin, but aggravated by taboo repressions; Transformation in attitude toward woman in the early Christian period; Psychological reasons for the persistence in religion of a Mother Goddess; Development of the Christian concept; Preservation of ancient women cults as demonology; Early Christian attitude toward woman as unclean and in league with demons; Culmination of belief in demonic power of woman in witchcraft persecutions; All women affected by the belief in witches and in the uncleanness of woman; Gradual development on the basis of the beliefs outlined of an ideally pure and immaculate Model Woman.

From the data of the preceding chapter, it is clear that the early ages of human life there was a dualistic attitude toward woman. On the one hand she was regarded as the possessor of the mystic mana force, while on the other she was the source of "bad magic" and likely to contaminate man with her weaknesses. Altogether, the study of primitive taboos would indicate that the latter conception predominated in savage life, and that until the dawn of history woman was more often regarded as a thing unclean than as the seat of a divine power.

At the earliest beginnings of civilization man's emotions seem to have swung to the opposite extreme, for emphasis fell on the mystic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. Thus it was that in ancient nations there was a deification of woman which found expression in the belief in feminine deities and the establishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn of the Christian era was the emphasis once more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon communication, and stripped of her divinity, she became the witch to be excommunicated and put to death.

All the ancient world saw something supernatural, something demoniacal, in generation. Sometimes the act was deified, as in the phallic ceremonials connected with nature worship, where the procreative principle in man became identified with the creative energy pervading all nature, and was used as a magic charm at the time of springtime planting to insure the fertility of the fields and abundant harvest,[1] It was also an important part of the ritual in the Phrygian cults, the cult of the Phoenician Astarte, and the Aphrodite cults. These mystery religions were widely current in the Graeco-Roman world in pre-Christian times. The cult of Demeter and Dionysius in Greece and Thrace; Cybele and Attis in Phrygia; Atagartes in Cilicia; Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria; Ashtart and Eshmun (Adon) in Phoenicia; Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylonia; Isis, Osiris and Serapis in Egypt, and Mithra in Persia—all were developed along the same lines.[2] The custom of the sacrifice of virginity to the gods, and the institution of temple prostitution, also bear witness to the sacred atmosphere with which the sex act was surrounded among the early historic peoples.[3] It was this idea of the mysterious sanctity of sex which did much to raise woman to her position as divinity and fertility goddess.

The dedication of virgins to various deities, of which the classic example is the institution of the Vestal Virgins at Rome, and the fact that at Thebes and elsewhere even the male deities had their priestesses as well as priests, are other indications that at this time woman was regarded as divine or as capable of ministering to divinity. The prophetic powers of woman were universally recognized. The oracles at Delphi, Argos, Epirus, Thrace and Arcadia were feminine. Indeed the Sibylline prophetesses were known throughout the Mediterranean basin.[A]

[Footnote A: Farnell[4] found such decided traces of feminine divinity as to incline him to agree with Bachofen that there was at one time an age of Mutterrecht which had left its impress on religion as well as on other aspects of social life. As we have said before, it is now fairly well established that in the transition from metronymic to patronymic forms, authority did not pass from women to men but from the brothers and maternal uncles of the women of the group to husbands and sons. This fact does not, however, invalidate the significance of Farnell's data for the support of the view herein advanced, i.e., that woman was at one time universally considered to partake of the divine.]

The widespread character of the woman-cult of priestesses and prophetesses among the peoples from whom our culture is derived is evidenced in literature and religion. That there had been cults of ancient mothers who exerted moral influence and punished crime is shown by the Eumenides and Erinyes of the Greeks. The power of old women as law-givers survived in Rome in the legend of the Cumaean Sibyl.[5] An index of the universality of the sibylline cult appears in the list of races to which Varro and Lactantius say they belonged: Persian, Libyan, Delphian, Cimmerian, Erythrian, Trojan, and Phrygian.[6] These sibyls were believed to be inspired, and generations of Greek and Roman philosophers never doubted their power. Their carmina were a court of last resort, and their books were guarded by a sacred taboo.

Among the Greeks and neighbouring nations the women of Thessaly had a great reputation for their charms and incantations.[7] Among the writers who speak of a belief in their power are: Plato, Aristophanes, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Tibullus, Seneca, Lucan, Menander, and Euripides.

All of the northern European tribes believed in the foresight of future events by women. Strabo says of the Cimbri that when they took the field they were accompanied by venerable, hoary-headed prophetesses, clothed in long, white robes. Scandinavians, Gauls, Germans, Danes and Britons obeyed, esteemed and venerated females who dealt in charms and incantations. These sacred women claimed to foretell the future and to interpret dreams, and among Germans, Celts and Gauls they were the only physicians and surgeons. The druidesses cured disease and were believed to have power superior to that of the priests.[8] The Germans never undertook any adventure without consulting their prophetesses.[9] The Scandinavian name for women endowed with the gift of prophecy was fanae, fanes. The English form is fay. The ceremonies of fays or fairies, like those of the druidesses, were performed in secluded woods.[A]

[Footnote A: Joan of Arc was asked during her trial if she were a fay.]

Magic and medicine went hand in hand in ancient times, and remained together down to the middle ages. Old herbals largely compiled from the lore of ancient women form a link in the chain of tradition, the first ring of which may have been formed in Egypt or in Greece. There is no doubt that women from an early date tried to cure disease. Homer makes mention of Hecamede and her healing potions. There seems little doubt that there were Greek women who applied themselves to a complete study of medicine and contributed to the advance of medical science. This traditional belief in the power of women to cure disease survives in the folk to-day.[10]

In view of the widespread veneration of a peculiar psychic quality of woman, a power of prophecy and a property of divinity which has made her an object of fear and worship, it may be well to review the modern explanations of the origin of this unique feminine power. Herbert Spencer was of the opinion that feminine penetration was an ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around and was the result of long ages of barbarism during which woman as the weaker sex was obliged to resort to the arts of divination and to cunning to make up for her lack of physical force and to protect herself and her offspring.[11] In like vein Kaethe Schirmacher, a German feminist, says: "The celebrated intuition of woman is nothing but an astonishing refinement of the senses through fear.... Waiting in fear was made the life task of the sex."[12]

Lester F. Ward had a somewhat different view.[13] He thought that woman's psychic power came from the sympathy based on the maternal instinct, which "though in itself an entirely different faculty, early blended with or helped to create, the derivative reason-born faculty of altruism." With Ward's view Olive Schreiner agrees, saying: "We have no certain proof that it is so at present, but woman's long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as childbearer and protector of infancy, may be found in the future to have endowed her ... with an exceptional width of human sympathy and instinctive comprehension."[14]

In all probability Lombroso came nearer to the truth in his explanation of feminine penetration. "That woman is more subject to hysteria is a known fact," he says, "but few know how liable she is to hypnotic phenomena, which easily opens up the unfoldment of spiritual faculties.... The history of observation proves that hysteria and hypnotism take the form of magic, sorcery, and divination or prophecy, among savage peoples. 'Women,' say the Pishawar peoples, 'are all witches; for several reasons they may not exert their inborn powers.' ... In the Slave Coast hysterical women are believed to be possessed with spirits. The Fuegians believed that there had been a time when women wielded the empire through her possession of the secrets of sorcery."[8, pp.85f.]

The history of modern spiritualism has so well confirmed this view of Lombroso's that we are safe in accepting it as the partial explanation of the attribute of a mysterious and uncanny power which man has always given to the feminine nature. The power of prophecy and divination which was possessed by women at the dawn of history and for some time thereafter was probably not different in its essentials from the manifestations of hysterical girls who have puzzled the wisest physicians or the strange phenomena of those spiritualistic mediums who have been the subject of research well into our own times.[15]

If we wish to push our inquiry still further and ask why woman should be so much more subject than man to hysterical seizures and to hypnotic suggestion, we shall probably find that it is an essential part of her femininity. Modern psychology and physiology have pointed out that the menstrual cycle of woman has a vast influence not only on her emotional nature but on her whole psychic life, so that there are times when she is more nervously tense, more apt to become hysterical or to yield to the influence of suggestion. Moreover, because of the emphasis on chastity and the taboos with which she was surrounded, any neurotic tendencies which might be inherent in her nature were sure to be developed to the utmost.

As Lombroso suggests, hysteria and other neurotic phenomena are classed as evidence of spirit possession by the untutored mind. Thus it happened that observing the strange psychic manifestations to which woman was periodically subject, the ancient peoples endowed her with spiritualistic forces which were sometimes held to be beneficent and at other times malefic in character. Whatever the attitude at any time whether her mana were regarded as evil or benignant, the savage and primitive felt that it was well to be on his guard in the presence of power; so that the taboos previously outlined would hold through the swing of man's mind from one extreme to the other.

As goddess, priestess and prophetess, woman continued to play her role in human affairs until the Christian period, when a remarkable transformation took place. The philosophy of dualism that emanated from Persia had affected all the religions of the Mediterranean Basin and had worked its way into Christian beliefs by way of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Neo-Platonism. Much of the writing of the church fathers is concerned with the effort to harmonize conflicting beliefs or to avoid the current heresies. To one who reads the fathers it becomes evident to what extent the relation of man to woman figures in these controversies.[16]

The Manicheanism which held in essence Persian Mithraism and which had so profound an influence on the writings of St. Augustine gave body and soul to two distinct worlds and finally identified woman with the body. But probably as a result of the teachings of Gnosticism with its Neo-Platonic philosophy which never entirely rejected feminine influence, some of this influence survived in the restatement of religion for the folk. When the restatement was completed and was spreading throughout Europe in the form which held for the next millennium, it was found that the early goddesses had been accepted among the saints, the priestesses and prophetesses were rejected as witches, while the needs of men later raised the Blessed Virgin to a place beside her son.

Modern psychology has given us an explanation of the difficulty of eradicating the worship of such a goddess as the Great Mother of Asia Minor from the religion of even martial peoples who fear the contamination of woman's weakness; or from a religion obsessed with hatred of woman as unclean by men who made the suppression of bodily passions the central notion of sanctity. The most persistent human relationship, the one charged with a constant emotional value, is not that of sex, which takes manifold forms, but that of the mother and child. It is to the mother that the child looks for food, love, and protection. It is to the child that the mother often turns from the mate, either because of the predominance of mother love over sex or in consolation for the loss of the love of the male. We have only recently learned to evaluate the infantile patterns engraved in the neural tissue during the years of childhood when the mother is the central figure of the child's life. Whatever disillusionments may come about other women later in life, the mother ideal thus established remains a constant part of man's unconscious motivations. It is perhaps possible that this infantile picture of a being all-wise, all-tender, all-sacrificing, has within it enough emotional force to create the demand for a mother-goddess in any religion.

To arrive at the concept of the Madonna, a far-reaching process of synthesis and reinterpretation must have been carried out before the Bible could be brought into harmony with the demands made by a cult of a mother goddess. Just as the views brought into the church by celibate ideals spread among heathen people, so the church must have been in its turn influenced by the heathen way of looking at things.[17] One of the great difficulties was the reconciliation of the biological process of procreation with divinity. But there had for ages been among primitive peoples the belief that impregnation was caused by spirit possession or by sorcery. This explanation had survived in a but slightly altered form in the ancient mythologies, all of which contained traditions of heroes and demi-gods who were born supernaturally of a divine father and a human mother. In the myths of Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato, it was intimated that the father had been a god or spirit, and that the mother had been, and moreover remained after the birth, an earthly virgin. These old and precious notions of the supernatural origin of great men were not willingly renounced by those who accepted the new religion; nor was it necessary to make such a sacrifice, because men thought that they could recognize in the Jewish traditions something corresponding to the heathen legends.[18]

The proper conditions for the development of a mother cult within Christianity existed within the church by the end of the second century. At the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it was settled that the Son was of the same nature as the Father. The question of the nature of Mary then came to the fore. The eastern fathers, Athanasius, Ephraim Syrus, Eusebius and Chrysostom, made frequent use in their writings of the term Theotokos, Mother of God. When Nestorius attacked those who worshipped the infant Christ as a god and Mary as the mother of God rather than as the mother of Christ, a duel began between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius "which in fierceness and importance can only be compared with that between Arius and Athanasius."[19]

In 431 A.D. the Universal Church Council at Ephesus assented to the doctrine that Mary was the Mother of God. Thus Ephesus, home of the great Diana, from primitive times the centre of the worship of a goddess who united in herself the virtues of virginity and motherhood, could boast of being the birthplace of the Madonna cult. And thus Mary, our Lady of Sorrows, pure and undefiled, "the church's paradox," became the ideal of man. She was "a woman, virgin and mother, sufficiently high to be worshipped, yet sufficiently near to be reached by affection. ... If we judge myths as artistic creations we must recognize that no god or goddess has given its worshippers such an ideal as the Mary of Christian art and poetry."[19: p.183] [20: v. ii., pp.220f.]

Although Christianity thus took over and embodied in its doctrines the cult of the mother-goddess, at the same time it condemned all the rites which had accompanied the worship of the fertility goddesses in all the pagan religions. The power of these rites was still believed in, but they were supposed to be the work of demons, and we find them strictly forbidden in the early ecclesiastical laws. The phallic ceremonials which formed so large a part of heathen ritual became marks of the devil, and the deities in whose honour they were performed, although losing none of their power, were regarded as demonic rather than divine in nature. Diana, goddess of the moon, for example, became identified with Hecate of evil repute, chief of the witches. "In such a fashion the religion of Greece, that of Egypt, of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, of Assyria and of Persia, became mingled and confused in a simple demonology."[21]

In addition to the condemnation of Pagan deities and their ritualistic worship, there was a force inherent in the very nature of Christianity which worked toward the degradation of the sex life. After the death of Christ, his followers had divorced their thoughts from all things earthly and set about fitting themselves for their places in the other world. The thought of the early Christian sects was obsessed by the idea of the second coming of the Messiah. The end of the world was incipient, therefore it behooved each and every one to purge himself from sin. This emphasis on the spiritual as opposed to the fleshly became fixated especially on the sex relationship, which came to be the symbol of the lusts of the body which must be conquered by the high desires of the soul. Consequently the feelings concerning this relation became surcharged with all the emotion which modern psychology has taught us always attaches to the conscious symbol of deeply underlying unconscious complexes. In such a situation man, who had come to look with horror on the being who reminded him that he was flesh as well as spirit saw in her "the Devil's gateway," or "a fireship continually striving to get along side the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces."[22][A]

[Footnote A: Dr Donaldson, translator of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, says: "I used to believe ... that woman owes her present position to Christianity ... but in the first three centuries I have not been able to see that Christianity had any favourable effect on the position of woman."]

With the rejection of the idea of the sanctity of sex as embodied in the phallic rituals of the pagan cults, the psychic power of woman became once more a thing of fear rather than of worship, and her uncleanness was emphasized again more than her holiness, even as in primitive times. The power of woman to tell the course of future events which in other days had made her revered as priestess and prophetess now made her hated as a witch who had control of what the Middle Ages knew as the Black Art.[23] The knowledge of medicine which she had acquired through the ages was now thought to be utilized in the making of "witch's brew," and the "ceremonies and charms whereby the influence of the gods might be obtained to preserve or injure"[21: v.1, p.12] became incantations to the evil one. In addition to her natural erotic attraction for the male, woman was now accused of using charms to lure him to his destruction. The asceticism of the church made it shameful to yield to her allurements, and as a result woman came to be feared and loathed as the arch-temptress who would destroy man's attempt to conform to celibate ideals. This sex antagonism culminated in the witchcraft persecutions which make so horrible a page of the world's history.

Among the pagans, witches had shared with prophetesses and priestesses a degree of reverence and veneration. Medea had taught Jason to tame the brazen-footed bulls and dragons which guarded the Golden Fleece. Hecate was skilled in spells and incantations. Horace frequently mentions with respect Canidia, who was a powerful enchantress. Gauls, Britons and Germans had obeyed and venerated women who dealt in charms and incantations. The doctrines of Christianity had changed the veneration into hatred and detestation without eradicating the belief in the power of the witch. It was with the hosts of evil that she was now believed to have her dealings, however. When this notion of the alliance between demons and women had become a commonplace, "the whole tradition was directed against woman as the Devil's instrument, basely seductive, passionate and licentious by nature."[24] Man's fear of woman found a frantic and absurd expression in her supposed devil-worship. As a result, the superstitions about witchcraft became for centuries not only a craze, but a theory held by intelligent people.

Among the female demons who were especially feared were: Nahemah, the princess of the Succubi; Lilith, queen of the Stryges; and the Lamiae or Vampires, who fed on the living flesh of men. Belief in the Vampires still persists as a part of the folklore of Europe. Lilith tempted to debauchery, and was variously known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a witch who changed true offspring for fairy or phantom children.[A] The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient apocryphal book called the Testament of Soloman, and dates probably from the first or second century of the Christian Era.[25]

[Footnote A: The name of Lilith carries us as far back as Babylon, and in her charms and conjurations we have revived in Europe the reflection of old Babylonian charms.]

Laws against the malefici (witches) were passed by Constantine. In the Theodosian Code (Lib. 9. Tit. 16. Leg. 3.) they are charged with making attempts by their wicked arts upon the lives of innocent men, and drawing others by magical potions (philtra et pharmaca) to commit misdemeanours. They are further charged with disturbing the elements, raising tempests, and practising abominable arts. The Council of Laodicea (343-381. Can. 36) condemned them. The Council of Ancyra forbade the use of medicine to work mischief. St. Basil's canons condemned witchcraft. The fourth Council of Carthage censured enchantment.[26] John of Salisbury tells of their feasts, to which they took unbaptized children. William of Auverne describes the charms and incantations which they used to turn a cane into a horse. William of Malmesbury gives an account of two old women who transformed the travellers who passed their door into horses, swine or other animals which they sold. From some of the old Teuton laws we learn that it was believed that witches could take a man's heart out of his body and fill the cavity with straw or wood so that he would go on living.

One of the famous witchcraft trials was that of the Lady Alice Kyteler,[27] whose high rank could not save her from the accusation. It was claimed that she used the ceremonies of the church, but with some wicked changes. She extinguished the candles with the exclamation, "Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen!" She was also accused of securing the love of her husbands, who left much property to her, by magic charms. These claims were typical of the accusations against witches in the trials which took place.

By the sixteenth century, the cumulative notion of witches had penetrated both cultivated and uncultivated classes, and was embodied in a great and increasing literature. "No comprehensive work on theology, philosophy, history, law, medicine, or natural science could wholly ignore it," says Burr, "and to lighter literature it afforded the most telling illustrations for the pulpit, the most absorbing gossip for the news-letter, the most edifying tales for the fireside."[28]

As a result of this belief in the diabolic power of woman, judicial murder of helpless women became an institution, which is thus characterized by Sumner: "After the refined torture of the body and nameless mental sufferings, women were executed in the most cruel manner. These facts are so monstrous that all other aberrations of the human race are small in comparison.... He who studies the witch trials believes himself transferred into the midst of a race which has smothered all its own nobler instincts, reason, justice, benevolence and sympathy."[24]

Any woman was suspect. Michelet, after a thirty years' study, wrote: "Witches they are by nature. It is a gift peculiar to woman and her temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her subtlety ... she becomes a witch and works her spells."[29]

Just how many victims there were of the belief in the power of women as witches will never be known. Scherr thinks that the persecutions cost 100,000 lives in Germany alone.[30] Lord Avebury quotes the estimate of the inquisitor Sprenger, joint author of the "Witch Hammer," that during the Christian period some 9,000,000 persons, mostly women, were burned as witches.[31] Seven thousand victims are said to have been burned at Treves, 600 by a single bishop of Bamburg, 800 in a single year in the bishopric of Wurtzburg. At Toulouse 400 persons perished at a single burning.[29: ch.1] [20: v.1. ch.1] One witch judge boasted that he executed 900 witches in fifteen years. The last mass burning in Germany was said to have taken place in 1678, when 97 persons were burned together. The earliest recorded burning of a witch in England is in Walter Mapes' De Nugis Curialium, in the reign of Henry II. An old black letter tract gloats over the execution at Northampton, 1612, of a number of persons convicted of witchcraft.[32] The last judicial sentence was in 1736, when one Jane Wenham was found guilty of conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of a cat.[33]

The connection between the witchcraft delusion and the attitude toward all women has already been implied.[34] The dualistic teaching of the early church fathers, with its severance of matter and spirit and its insistence on the ascetic ideal of life, had focussed on sexuality as the outstanding manifestation of fleshly desires. The contact of the sexes came to be looked upon as the supreme sin. Celibacy taught that through the observance of the taboo on woman the man of God was to be saved from pollution. Woman was the arch temptress who by the natural forces of sex attraction, reinforced by her evil charms and incantations, made it so difficult to attain the celibate ideal. From her ancestress Eve woman was believed to inherit the natural propensity to lure man to his undoing. Thus the old belief in the uncleanness of woman was renewed in the minds of men with even greater intensity than ever before, and in addition to a dangerous adventure, even within the sanction of wedlock the sex act became a deed of shame. The following quotations from the church fathers will illustrate this view:

Jerome said, "Marriage is always a vice; all we can do is to excuse and cleanse it. ... In Paradise Eve was a virgin. Virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt."[35]

Tertullian addressed women in these words: "Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age. ... You are the devil's gateway. ... You destroy God's image, Man."[35: Bk.1.]

Thus woman became degraded beyond all previous thought in the teaching of the early church. The child was looked upon as the result of an act of sin, and came into the world tainted through its mother with sin. At best marriage was a vice. All the church could do was to cleanse it as much as possible by sacred rites, an attempt which harked back to the origin of marriage as the ceremonial breaking of taboo. Peter Lombard's Sentences affirmed marriage a sacrament. This was reaffirmed at Florence in 1439. In 1565, the Council of Trent made the final declaration. But not even this could wholly purify woman, and intercourse with her was still regarded as a necessary evil, a concession that had to be unwillingly made to the lusts of the flesh.

Such accounts as we have of the lives of holy women indicate that they shared in the beliefs of their times. In the account of the life of a saint known as the Blessed Eugenia preserved in an old palimpsest[36] we read that she adopted the costume of a monk,—"Being a woman by nature in order that I might gain everlasting life." The same account tells of another holy woman who passed as a eunuch, because she had been warned that it was easier for the devil to tempt a woman. In another collection of lives of saints is the story[37] of a holy woman who never allowed herself to see the face of a man, even that of her own brother, lest through her he might go in among women. Another holy virgin shut herself up in a tomb because she did not wish to cause the spiritual downfall of a young man who loved her.

This long period of religious hatred of and contempt for woman included the Crusades, the Age of Chivalry,[38] and lasted well into the Renaissance.[39] Students of the first thousand years of the Christian era like Donaldson,[22] McCabe,[40] and Benecke argue that the social and intellectual position of women was probably lower than at any time since the creation of the world. It was while the position of woman as wife and mother was thus descending into the slough which has been termed the Dark Age of Woman that the Apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin was accomplished. The attitude toward human love, generation, the relation of the earthly mother to the human child because of Eve's sin, all made the Immaculate Conception a logical necessity. The doctrine of the virgin birth disposed of sin through the paternal line. But if Mary was conceived in sin or was not purified from sin, even that of the first parent, how could she conceive in her body him who was without sin? The controversy over the Immaculate Conception which began as early as the seventh century lasted until Pius IX declared it to be an article of Catholic belief in 1854. Thus not only Christ, but also his mother became purged of the sin of conception by natural biological processes, and the same immaculacy and freedom from contamination was accorded to both. In this way the final step in the differentiation between earthly motherhood and divine motherhood was completed.

The worship of the virgin by men and women who looked upon the celibate life as the perfect life, and upon the relationship of earthly fatherhood and motherhood as contaminating, gave the world an ideal of woman as "superhuman, immaculate, bowing in frightened awe before the angel with the lily, standing mute and with downcast eyes before her Divine Son."[41] With all its admitted beauty, this ideal represented not the institution of the family, but the institution of the church. Chivalry carried over from the church to the castle this concept of womanhood and set it to the shaping of The Lady,[42] who was finally given a rank in the ideals of knighthood only a little below that to which Mary had been elevated by the ecclesiastical authorities. This concept of the lady was the result of the necessity for a new social standardization which must combine beauty, purity, meekness and angelic goodness. Only by such a combination could religion and family life be finally reconciled. By such a combination, earthly motherhood could be made to approximate the divine motherhood.

With the decline of the influence of chivalry, probably as the result of industrial changes, The Lady was replaced by a feminine ideal which may well be termed the "Model Woman." Although less ethereal than her predecessor, The Lady, the Model Woman is quite as much an attempt to reconcile the dualistic attitude, with its Divine Mother cult on the one hand, and its belief in the essential evil of the procreative process and the uncleanness of woman on the other, to human needs. The characteristics of the Model Woman must approximate those of the Holy Virgin as closely as possible. Her chastity before marriage is imperative. Her calling must be the high art of motherhood. She must be the incarnation of the maternal spirit of womanhood, but her purity must remain unsullied by any trace of erotic passion.

A voluminous literature which stated the virtues and duties of the Model Woman blossomed out in the latter part of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century.[43] The Puritan ideals also embodied this concept. It was by this attempt to make woman conform to a standardized ideal that man sought to solve the conflict between his natural human instincts and desires and the early Christian teaching concerning the sex life and womanhood.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II

1. Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. Part I. The Magic Art. 2 vols. Macmillan. London, 1911. Part V. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild. 2 vols. London, 1912.

2. Farnell, L.R. Evolution of Religion. 235 pp. Williams and Norgate. London, 1905. Crown Theological Library, Vol 12.

3. Frazer, J.G. Part IV. of The Golden Bough; Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. Chaps. III and IV. Macmillan. London, 1907.

—— Sumner, W.G. Folkways. 692 pp. Ginn & Co. Boston, 1907. Chap. XVI, Sacral Harlotry.

—— Lombroso, Cesare, and Lombroso-Ferrero, G. La donna delinquente. 508 pp. Fratelli Bocca. Milano, 1915.

4. Farnell, L.R. Sociological Hypotheses Concerning the Position of Woman in Ancient Religion. Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft. Siebenter Band, 1904.

5. Fowler, W. Warde. The Religious Experiences of the Roman People. 504 pp. Macmillan. London, 1911.

6. For a description of these sibyls with a list of the works in which they are mentioned, see:

—— Fullom, Steven Watson. The History of Woman. Third Ed. London, 1855.

—— Rohmer, Sax. (Ward, A.S.) The Romance of Sorcery. 320 pp. E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1914.

7. Maury, L.F. La Magie et L'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen Age. Quatrieme ed. 484 pp. Paris, 1877.

8. Lombroso, Cesare. Priests and Women's Clothes. North American Review. Vol. 192, 1910.

9. For an extensive compilation of facts from ancient literature and history concerning sacred women, see:

—— Alexander, W. History of Women from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time. 2 vols. W. Strahan. London, 1779.

10. Mason, Otis T. Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. 295 pp. Appleton. New York, 1894.

—— Dyer, T.F.S. Plants in Witchcraft. Popular Science Monthly. Vol. 34, 1889, pp. 826-833.

—— Donaldson, Rev. James. Woman, Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome. 278 pp. Longmans, Green. London, 1907.

11. Spencer, Herbert. Study of Sociology. 431 pp. Appleton. N.Y., 1880.

12. Schirmacher, Kaethe. Das Raetsel: Weib. 160 pp. A Duncker. Weimar, 1911.

13. Ward, Lester F. Psychic Factors in Civilization. 369 pp. Ginn & Co., Boston and New York, 1906. Chap. XXVI.

—— Pure Sociology. 607 pp. Macmillan. N.Y., 1903.

14. Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labour. 299 pp. Frederick A. Stokes Co. N.Y., 1911.

15. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. Appleton. N.Y., 1904.

—— Dupouy, Edmund. Psychologie morbide. Librairie des Sciences Psychiques, 1907.

16. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translation by the Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, LL.D., and others. American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition. Buffalo, 1889.

17. Hatch, Edwin. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church. Ed. by A.M. Fairbairn. 4th ed. London, 1892. Hibbert Lectures, 1888.

18. Gilbert, George Holley. The Greek Strain in Our Oldest Gospels. North American Review. Vol. 192, 1910.

19. Hirn, Yrjo. The Sacred Shrine. 574 pp. Macmillan. London, 1912.

20. Lecky, W.E.H. Rationalism in Europe. 2 vols. Appleton. N.Y. and London, 1910. Vol. II, pp. 220 f.

21. Wright, Thomas. Narratives of Sorcery and Magic. 2 vols. R. Bentley. London, 1851.

22. Donaldson, Rev. James. The Position of Woman Among the Early Christians. Contemporary Review. Vol. 56, 1889.

23. Bingham, Joseph. Antiquities of the Christian Church. 2 vols. London, 1846.

24. Sumner, W.G. Witchcraft. Forum. Vol. 41, 1909, pp. 410-423.

25. Gaster, M. Two Thousand Years of a Charm Against the Child-stealing Witch. Folklore. Vol. XI, No. 2, June, 1900.

26. For discussion of the dates of the Church Councils see Rev. Charles J. Hefele, Councils of the Church. Trans, fr. the German by C.W. Bush, 1883.

27. Alice Kyteler. A contemporary narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for sorcery by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, 1324. Edited by Thomas Wright. London, 1843.

28. Burr, George L. The Literature of Witchcraft. Papers of the American Historical Association. Vol IV, pp. 37-66. G.P. Putnam's Sons. N.Y., 1890.

29. Michelet, J. La Sorciere. 488 pp. Paris, 1878. Trans. of Introduction by L.J. Trotter.

30. Scherr, Johannes. Deutsche Frauenwelt. Band II.

31. Avebury, Right Hon. Lord (Sir John Lubbock). Marriage, Totemism and Religion. 243 pp. Longmans, Green. London, 1911. Footnote, p. 127.

32. Wood, Wm. Witchcraft. Cornhill Magazine. Vol. V, 1898.

—— Lea, H.C. Superstition and Force. 407 pp. Philadelphia, 1866.

33. Bragge, F. Jane Wenham. 36 pp. E. Curll. London 1712.

34. Paulus, Nikolaus. Die Rolle der Frau in der Geschichte des Hexenwahns. Historisches Jahrbuch. XXIX Band. Muenchen. Jahrgang 1918.

35. Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2d. series. Vol. 6, Letter xxii, Ad Eustachium.

36. Studia Sinaitica No. IX. Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest as written above the old Syriac Gospels by John the Stylite, of Beth-Mari Ianun in A.D. 778. Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis, M.R.A.S. London, 1900.

37. Lady Meux Mss. No. VI. British Museum. The Book of Paradise, being the Histories and Sayings of the Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert by Palladius, Hieronymus and others. English Trans. by E.A. Wallis Budge. (From the Syriac.) Vol. I.

38. Gautier, Emile Theodore Leon. La Chevalerie. 850 pp. C. Delagrave. Paris, 1890.

39. Maulde la Claviere, R. de. The Women of the Renaissance. Trans. by G.H. Ely. 510 pp. Swan Sonnenschein, 1900.

40. McCabe, Joseph. Woman in Political Evolution. Watts & Co. London, 1909.

41. Barnes, Earl. Woman in Modern Society. 257 pp. B.W. Huebsch. N.Y., 1913.

42. Putnam, Emily James. The Lady. 323 pp. Sturgis & Walton Co. N.Y., 1910.

43. Excellent examples of this literature are Kenrick's "The Whole Duty of a Woman, or A Guide to the Female Sex," published some time in the eighteenth century (a copy in the Galatea Collection, Boston Public Library); and Duties of Young Women, by E.H. Chapin. 218 pp. G.W. Briggs. Boston, 1848.



CHAPTER III

THE DUALISM IN MODERN LIFE: THE INSTITUTIONAL TABOO

The taboo and modern institutions; Survival of ideas of the uncleanness of woman; Taboo and the family; The "good" woman; The "bad" woman; Increase in the number of women who do not fit into the ancient classifications.

With the gradual accumulation of scientific knowledge and increasing tendency of mankind toward a rationalistic view of most things, it might be expected that the ancient attitude toward sex and womanhood would have been replaced by a saner feeling. To some extent this has indeed been the case. It is surprising, however, to note the traces which the old taboos and superstitions have left upon our twentieth century social life. Men and women are becoming conscious that they live in a world formed out of the worlds that have passed away. The underlying principle of this social phenomenon has been called the principle of "the persistence of institutions."[1] Institutionalized habits, mosaics of reactions to forgotten situations, fall like shadows on the life of to-day. Memories of the woman shunned, of the remote woman goddess, and of the witch, transmit the ancient forms by which woman has been expected to shape her life.

It may seem a far cry from the savage taboo to the institutional life of the present; but the patterns of our social life, like the infantile patterns on which adult life shapes itself, go back to an immemorial past. Back in the early life of the peoples from which we spring is the taboo, and in our own life there are customs so analogous to many of these ancient prohibitions that they must be accounted survivals of old social habits just as the vestigial structures within our bodies are the remnants of our biological past.

The modern preaching concerning woman's sphere, for example, is an obvious descendant of the old taboos which enforced the division of labour between the sexes. Just as it formerly was death for a woman to approach her husband's weapons, so it has for a long time been considered a disgrace for her to attempt to compete with man in his line of work. Only under the pressure of modern industrialism and economic necessity has this ancient taboo been broken down, and even now there is some reluctance to recognize its passing. The exigencies of the world war have probably done more than any other one thing to accelerate the disappearance of this taboo on woman from the society of to-day.

A modern institution reminiscent of the men's house of the savage races, where no woman might intrude, is the men's club. This institution, as Mr Webster has pointed out,[2] is a potent force for sexual solidarity and consciousness of kind. The separate living and lack of club activity of women has had much to do with a delay in the development of a sex consciousness and loyalty. The development of women's organizations along the lines of the men's clubs has been a powerful factor in enabling them to overcome the force of the taboos which have lingered on in social life. Only through united resistance could woman ever hope to break down the barriers with which she was shut off from the fullness of life.

Perhaps the property taboo has been as persistent as any other of the restrictions which have continued to surround woman through the ages. Before marriage, the girl who is "well brought up" is still carefully protected from contact with any male. The modern system of chaperonage is the substitute for the old seclusion and isolation of the pubescent girl. Even science was influenced by the old sympathetic magic view that woman could be contaminated by the touch of any other man than her husband, for the principle of telegony, that the father of one child could pass on his characteristics to offspring by other fathers, lingered in biological teaching until the very recent discoveries of the physical basis of heredity in the chromosomes. Law-making was also influenced by the idea of woman as property. For a long time there was a hesitancy to prohibit wife-beating on account of the feeling that the wife was the husband's possession, to be dealt with as he desired. The laws of coverture also perpetuated the old property taboos, and gave to the husband the right to dispose of his wife's property.

The general attitude towards such sexual crises as menstruation and pregnancy is still strongly reminiscent of the primitive belief that woman is unclean at those times. Mothers still hesitate to enlighten their daughters concerning these natural biological functions, and as a result girls are unconsciously imbued with a feeling of shame concerning them. Modern psychology has given many instances of the rebellion of girls at the inception of menstruation, for which they have been ill prepared. There is little doubt that this attitude has wrought untold harm in the case of nervous and delicately balanced temperaments, and has even been one of the predisposing factors of neurosis.[3]

The old seclusion and avoidance of the pregnant woman still persists. The embarrassment of any public appearance when pregnancy is evident, the jokes and secrecy which surround this event, show how far we are from rationalizing this function.

Even medical men show the influence of old superstitions when they refuse to alleviate the pains of childbirth on the grounds that they are good for the mother. Authorities say that instruction in obstetrics is sadly neglected. A recent United States report tells us that preventable diseases of childbirth and pregnancy cause more deaths among women than any other disease except tuberculosis.[4]

The belief in the possession by woman of an uncanny psychic power which made her the priestess and witch of other days, has crystallized into the modern concept of womanly intuition. In our times, women "get hunches," have "feelings in their bones," etc., about people, or about things which are going to happen. They are often asked to decide on business ventures or to pass opinions on persons whom they do not know. There are shrewd business men who never enter into a serious negotiation without getting their wives' intuitive opinion of the men with whom they are dealing. The psychology of behaviour would explain these rapid fire judgments of women as having basis in observation of unconscious movements, while another psychological explanation would emphasize sensitiveness to suggestion as a factor in the process. Yet in spite of these rational explanations of woman's swift conclusions on matters of importance, she is still accredited with a mysterious faculty of intuition.

A curious instance of the peculiar forms in which old taboos linger on in modern life is the taboos on certain words and on discussion of certain subjects. The ascetic idea of the uncleanness of the sex relation is especially noticeable. A study of 150 girls made by the writer in 1916-17 showed a taboo on thought and discussion among well-bred girls of the following subjects, which they characterize as "indelicate," "polluting," and "things completely outside the knowledge of a lady."

1. Things contrary to custom, often called "wicked" and "immoral."

2. Things "disgusting," such as bodily functions, normal as well as pathological, and all the implications of uncleanliness.

3. Things uncanny, that "make your flesh creep," and things suspicious.

4. Many forms of animal life which it is a commonplace that girls will fear or which are considered unclean.

5. Sex differences.

6. Age differences.

7. All matters relating to the double standard of morality.

8. All matters connected with marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth.

9. Allusions to any part of the body except head and hands.

10. Politics.

11. Religion.

It will be noted that most of these taboo objects are obviously those which the concept of the Model Woman has ruled out of the life of the feminine half of the world.

As might well be expected, it is in the marriage ceremony and the customs of the family institution that the most direct continuation of taboo may be found. The early ceremonials connected with marriage, as Mr Crawley has shown, counteracted to some extent man's ancient fear of woman as the embodiment of a weakness which would emasculate him. Marriage acted as a bridge, by which the breach of taboo was expiated, condoned, and socially countenanced. Modern convention in many forms perpetuates this concept. Marriage, a conventionalized breach of taboo, is the beginning of a new family. In all its forms, social, religious, or legal, it is an accepted exception to the social injunctions which keep men and women apart under other circumstances.

The new family as a part of the social order comes into existence through the social recognition of a relationship which is considered especially dangerous and can only be recognized by the performance of elaborate rites and ceremonies. It is taboo for men and women to have contact with each other. Contact may occur only under ceremonial conditions, guarded in turn by taboo, and therefore socially recognized. The girl whose life from puberty on has been carefully guarded by taboos, passes through the gateway of ceremonial into a new life, which is quite as carefully guarded. These restrictions and elaborate rituals which surround marriage and family life may appropriately be termed institutional taboos. They include the property and division of labour taboos in the survival forms already mentioned, as well as other religious and social restrictions and prohibitions.

The foundations of family life go far back of the changes of recent centuries. The family has its source in the mating instinct, but this instinct is combined with other individual instincts and social relationships which become highly elaborated in the course of social evolution. The household becomes a complex economic institution. While the processes of change may have touched the surface of these relations, the family itself has remained to the present an institution established through the social sanctions of communities more primitive than our own. The new family begins with the ceremonial breach of taboo,—the taboo which enjoins the shunning of woman as a being both sacred and unclean. Once married, the woman falls under the property taboo, and is as restricted as ever she was before marriage, although perhaps in slightly different ways. In ancient Rome, the wife was not mistress of the hearth. She did not represent the ancestral gods, the lares and penates, since she was not descended from them. In death as in life she counted only as a part of her husband. Greek, Roman and Hindu law, all derived from ancestor worship, agreed in considering the wife a minor.[5]

These practices are of the greatest significance in a consideration of the modern institutional taboos which surround the family. Students agree that our own mores are in large part derived from those of the lowest class of freedmen in Rome at the time when Christianity took over the control which had fallen from the hands of the Roman emperors. These mores were inherited by the Bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages, and were passed on by them as they acquired economic supremacy. Thus these practices have come down to us unchanged in spirit even if somewhat modified in form, to fit the changed environment of our times.

The standardization of the family with its foundations embedded in a series of institutional taboos, added its weight to the formulation of the Model Woman type referred to at the close of the preceding chapter. The model wife appears in the earliest literature. In The Trojan Women, Hecuba tells how she behaved in wedlock. She stayed at home and did not gossip. She was modest and silent before her husband. The patient Penelope was another ideal wife. To her, her son Telemachus says:

"Your widowed hours apart, with female toil, And various labours of the loom, beguile, There rule, from palace cares remote and free, That care to man belongs, and most to me."

The wifely type of the Hebrews is set forth in Proverbs xxxi, 10-31. Her virtues consisted in rising while it was yet night, and not eating the bread of idleness. In her relation to her husband, she must never surprise him by unusual conduct, and must see that he was well fed.

The Romans, Hindus, and Mohammedans demanded similar virtues in their wives and mothers. The wives of the medieval period were to remain little girls, most admired for their passive obedience. Gautier puts into the mouth of a dutiful wife of the Age of Chivalry the following soliloquy:

"I will love no one but my husband. Even if he loves me no longer, I will love him always. I will be humble and as a servitor. I will call him my sire, or my baron, or domine..."[6]

The modern feminine ideal combines the traits demanded by the worship of the madonna and the virtues imposed by the institutional taboos which surround the family. She is the virgin pure and undefiled before marriage. She is the protecting mother and the obedient, faithful wife afterward. In spite of various disrupting influences which are tending to break down this concept, and which will presently be discussed, this is still the ideal which governs the life of womankind. The average mother educates her daughter to conform to this ideal woman type which is the synthesized product of ages of taboo and religious mysticism. Home training and social pressure unite to force woman into the mould wrought out in the ages when she has been the object of superstitious fear to man and also a part of his property to utilize as he willed. Being thus the product of wholly irrational forces, it is little wonder that only in recent years has she had any opportunity to show what she in her inmost soul desired, and what capabilities were latent within her personality.

In sharp contrast to the woman who conforms to the standards thus created for her, is the prostitute, who is the product of forces as ancient as those which have shaped the family institution. In the struggle between man's instinctive needs and his mystical ideal of womanhood, there has come about a division of women into two classes—the good and the bad. It is a demarcation as sharp as that involved in the primitive taboos which set women apart as sacred or unclean. In building up the Madonna concept and requiring the women of his family to approximate this mother-goddess ideal, man made them into beings too spiritual to satisfy his earthly needs. The wife and mother must be pure, as he conceived purity, else she could not be respected. The religious forces which had set up the worship of maternity had condemned the sex relationship and caused a dissociation of two elements of human nature which normally are in complete and intimate harmony. One result of this divorce of two biologically concomitant functions was the institution of prostitution.

Prostitution is designed to furnish and regulate a supply of women outside the mores of the family whose sex shall be for sale, not for purposes of procreation but for purposes of indulgence. In the ancient world, temple prostitution was common, the proceeds going to the god or goddess; but the sense of pollution in the sex relation which came to be so potent an element in the control of family life drove the prostitute from the sanctuary to the stews and the brothel, where she lives to-day. She has become the woman shunned, while the wife and mother who is the centre of the family with its institutional taboos is the sacred woman, loved and revered by men who condemn the prostitute for the very act for which they seek her company. Such is the irrational situation which has come to us as a heritage from the past.

Among the chief causes which have impelled women into prostitution rather than into family life are the following: (1) Slavery; (2) poverty; (3) inclination. These causes have been expanded and re-grouped by specialists, but the only addition which the writer sees as necessary in consequence of the study of taboo is the fact that the way of the woman transgressor is peculiarly hard because of the sex taboo, the ignorance and narrowness of good women, and the economic limitations of all women. Ignorance of the results of entrance into a life which usually means abandonment of hope may be a contributing cause. Boredom with the narrowness of family life and desire for adventure are also influences.

That sex desire leads directly to the life of the prostitute is unlikely. The strongly sexed class comes into prostitution by the war of irregular relationships with men to whom they have been attached, and who have abandoned them or sold them out. Many authorities agree on the frigidity of the prostitute. It is her protection from physical and emotional exhaustion. This becomes evident when it is learned that these women will receive thirty men a day, sometimes more. A certain original lack of sensitiveness may be assumed, especially since the investigations of prostitutes have shown a large proportion, perhaps one-third, who are mentally inferior. It is an interesting fact that those who are sensitive to their social isolation defend themselves by dwelling on their social necessity. Either intuitively or by a trade tradition, the prostitute feels that "she remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, blasted for the sins of the people." A beautiful young prostitute who had been expelled from a high grade house after the exposures of the Lexow Investigation, once said to the writer: "It would never do for good women to know what beasts men are. We girls have got to pay."

The lady, dwelling on her pedestal of isolation, from which she commands the veneration of the chivalrous gentleman and the adoration of the poet, is the product of a leisure assured by property. At the end of the social scale is the girl who wants to be a lady, who doesn't want to work, and who, like the lady, has nothing to sell but herself. The life of the prostitute is the nearest approach for the poor girl to the life of a lady with its leisure, its fine clothes, and its excitement. So long as we have a sex ethics into which are incorporated the taboo concepts, the lady cannot exist without the prostitute. The restrictions which surround the lady guard her from the passions of men. The prostitute has been developed to satisfy masculine needs which it is not permitted the lady to know exist.

But in addition to the married woman who has fulfilled the destiny for which she has been prepared and the prostitute who is regarded as a social leper, there is a large and increasing number of unmarried women who fall into neither of these classes. For a long time these unfortunates were forced to take refuge in the homes of their luckier sisters who had fulfilled their mission in life by marrying, or to adopt the life of the religieuse. Economic changes have brought an alteration in their status, however, and the work of the unattached woman is bringing her a respect in the modern industrial world that the "old maid" of the past could never hope to receive.

Although at first often looked upon askance, the working woman by the sheer force of her labours has finally won for herself a recognized place in society. This was the first influence that worked against the old taboos, and made possible the tentative gropings toward a new standardization of women. The sheer weight of the number of unattached women in present day life has made such a move a necessity. In England, at the outbreak of the war, there were 1,200,000 more women than men. It is estimated that at the end of the war at least 25% of English women are doomed to celibacy and childlessness. In Germany, the industrial census of 1907 showed that only 9-1/2 millions of women were married, or about one-half the total number over eighteen years of age. In the United States, married women constitute less than 60% of the women fifteen years of age and over.

The impossibility of a social system based on the old sex taboos under the new conditions is obvious. There must be a revaluation of woman on the basis of her mental and economic capacity instead of on the manner in which she fits into a system of institutional taboos. But the old concepts are still with us, and have shaped the early lives of working women as well as the lives of those who have fitted into the old grooves. Tenacious survivals surround them both, and are responsible for many of the difficulties of mental and moral adjustment which make the woman question a puzzle to both conservative and radical thinkers on the subject.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER III

1. Davis, Michael M. Psychological Interpretations of Society. 260 pp. Columbia University. Longmans. Green & Co. N.Y., 1909.

2. Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies. 227 pp. Macmillan. N.Y., 1908.

3. Blanchard, Phyllis. The Adolescent Girl. 243 pp. Kegan Paul & Co., London, 1921.

—— Peters, Iva L. A Questionnaire Study of Some of the Effects of Social Restrictions on the American Girl. Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1916, Vol. XXIII, pp. 550-569.

4. Report of the U.S. Children's Bureau, 1917.

5. Fowler, W. Warde. The Religious Experience of the Roman People. 504 pp. Macmillan. London, 1911.

—— Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. The Ancient City. Trans. from the latest French edition by Willard Small. 10th ed. Lee and Shepard. Boston, 1901. 529 pp.

6. Gautier, Emile Theodore Leon. La Chevalerie. 850 pp. C. Delagrave. Paris, 1890.



CHAPTER IV

DYSGENIC INFLUENCES OF THE INSTITUTIONAL TABOO

Taboo survivals act dysgenically within the family under present conditions; Conventional education of girls a dysgenic influence; Prostitution and the family; Influence of ancient standards of "good" and "bad." The illegitimate child; Effect of fear, anger, etc., on posterity; The attitude of economically independent women toward marriage.

It is evident that in the working of old taboos as they have been preserved in our social institutions there are certain dysgenic influences which may well be briefly enumerated. For surely the test of the family institution is the way in which it fosters the production and development of the coming generation. The studies made by the Galton Laboratory in England and by the Children's Bureau in Washington combine with our modern knowledge of heredity to show that it is possible to cut down the potential heritage of children by bad matrimonial choices. If we are to reach a solution of these population problems, we must learn to approach the problem of the sex relation without that sense of uncleanness which has led so many generations to regard marriage as giving respectability to an otherwise wicked inclination. The task of devising a sane approach is only just begun. But the menace of prostitution and of the social diseases has become so great that society is compelled from an instinct of sheer self-preservation to drag into the open some of the iniquities which have hitherto existed under cover.

In the first place, the education of girls, which has been almost entirely determined by the standardized concepts of the ideal woman, has left them totally unprepared for wifehood and motherhood, the very calling which those ideals demand that they shall follow. The whole education of the girl aims at the concealment of the physiological nature of men and women. She enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as "romantic." Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor to the proper care of the child either before or after its birth.

A second dysgenic influence which results from the taboo system of sexual ethics is the institution of prostitution, the great agency for the spread of venereal disease through the homes of the community, and which takes such heavy toll from the next generation in lowered vitality and defective organization.

The 1911 report of the Committee on the Social Evil in Baltimore showed that at the time there was in that city one prostitute to every 500 inhabitants. As is the case everywhere, such statistics cover only prostitutes who have been detected. Hospital and clinic reports for Baltimore gave 9,450 acute cases of venereal disease in 1906 as compared with 575 cases of measles, 1,172 cases of diphtheria, 577 of scarlet fever, 175 of chickenpox, 58 of smallpox and 733 cases of tuberculosis.

Statistics on the health of young men shown by the physical examinations of the various draft boards throughout the country give us a more complete estimate of the prevalence of venereal disease among the prospective fathers of the next generation than any other figures for the United States. In an article in the New York Medical Journal for February 2, 1918, Dr. Isaac W. Brewer of the Medical Reserve Corps presents tables showing the percentage of rejections for various disabilities among the applicants for enlistment in the regular army from January 1, 1912, to December 31, 1915. Among 153,705 white and 11,092 coloured applicants, the rejection rate per 1,000 for venereal disease was 196.7 for whites and 279.9 for coloured as against 91.3 for whites and 75.0 for coloured for heart difficulties, next on the list. In foreshadowing the results under the draft, Dr. Brewer says: "Venereal disease is the greatest cause for rejection, and reports from the cantonments where the National Army has assembled indicate that a large number of the men had these diseases when they arrived at the camp. It is probably true that venereal diseases cause the greatest amount of sickness in our country."

Statistics available for conditions among the American Expeditionary Forces must be treated with great caution. Detection of these diseases at certain stages is extremely difficult. Because of the courtesy extended to our men by our allies, cases were treated in French and English hospitals of which no record is available. But it is fairly safe to say that there was no such prevalence of disease as was shown by the Exner Report to have existed on the Mexican Border. It may even be predicted that the education in hygienic measures which the men received may in time affect favourably the health of the male population and through them their wives and children. But all who came in contact with this problem in the army know that it is a long way to the understanding of the difficulties involved before we approach a solution. We do know, on the basis of the work, of Neisser, Lesser, Forel, Flexner and others, that regulation and supervision seem to increase the incidence of disease. Among the reasons for this are: (1) difficulties of diagnosis; (2) difficulties attendant on the apprehension and examination of prostitutes; (3) the infrequency of examination as compared with the number of clients of these women; and perhaps as important as any of these reasons is the false sense of security involved.

The model woman of the past has known very little of the prostitute and venereal disease. It is often stated that her moral safety has been maintained at the expense of her fallen and unclean sister. But such statements are not limited as they should be by the qualification that her moral safety obtained in such a fashion is often at the expense of her physical safety. If the assumption has a basis in fact that there is a relation between prostitution and monogamic marriage, the complexity of the problem becomes evident. It is further complicated by the postponement of marriage from economic reasons, hesitation at the assumption of family responsibilities at a time of life when ambition as well as passion is strong, when the physiological functions are stimulated by city life and there is constant opportunity for relief of repression for a price. It is here that the demarcation between the man's and the woman's world shows most clearly. It may well be that the only solution of this problem is through the admission of a new factor—the "good" woman whom taboo has kept in ignorance of a problem that is her own. If it be true that the only solution for the double standard whose evils show most plainly here is a new single standard which has not yet been found, then it is high time that we find what that standard is to be, for the sake of the future.

The third dysgenic influence which works under cover of the institutional taboo is akin to the first in its ancient standards of "good" and "bad." We are only recently getting any standards for a good mother except a man's choice and a wedding ring. Men's ideals of attractiveness greatly complicate the eugenic situation. A good matchmaker, with social backing and money, can make a moron more attractive than a pushing, energetic girl with plenty of initiative, whose contribution to her children would be equal or superior to that of her mate. A timid, gentle, pretty moron, with the attainment of a girl of twelve years, will make an excellent match, and bring into the world children who give us one of the reasons why it is "three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves." For such a girl, the slave to convention, exactly fits the feminine ideal which man has built up for himself. And she will be a good wife and mother in the conventional sense all her life. This following of an ideal feminine type conceived in irrational processes in former days inclines men to marry women with inferior genetic possibilities because they meet the more insistent surface requirements. The heritage of our children is thus cut down, and many a potential mother of great men remains unwed.

The same survival of ancient sex taboos is seen in the attitude toward the illegitimate child. The marriage ceremony is by its origin and by the forms of its perpetuation the only sanction for the breaking of the taboo on contact between men and women. The illegitimate child, the visible symbol of the sin of its parents, is the one on whom most heavily falls the burden of the crime. Society has for the most part been utterly indifferent to the eugenic value of the child and has concerned itself chiefly with the manner of its birth. Only the situation arising out of the war and the need of the nations for men has been able to partially remedy this situation.

The taboos on illegitimacy in the United States have been less affected by the practical population problems growing out of war conditions than those of other countries. As compared with the advanced stands of the Scandinavian countries, the few laws of progressive states look painfully inadequate. Miss Breckinridge writes:[1]

"The humiliating and despised position of the illegitimate child need hardly be pointed out. He was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without name or kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or of succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a way belong to his mother as the legitimate child never did in common law, for, while the right of the unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her shame was not so noble and dignified a thing as the right of the father to the legitimate child, she had in fact a claim, at least so long as the child was of tender years, not so different from his and as wide as the sky from the impotence of the married mother. The contribution of the father has been secured under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in amounts totally inadequate to her and the child's support. In Illinois, $550 over 5 years; Tennessee, $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy, September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situation was so desperate that physicians, social workers and relatives have conspired to save the girl's respectability at the risk of the child's life and at the cost of all spiritual and educative value of the experience of motherhood. This has meant a greatly higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher crime and a higher dependency rate."

The fifth of the dysgenic influences which has been fostered by the institutional taboo is uncovered by recent studies of the effect of certain emotions on the human organism. The life of woman has long been shadowed by the fact that she has been the weaker sex; that even when strong she has been weighted by her child; and that throughout the period of private property she has been the poor sex, dependent on some male for her support. In an age of force, fear has been her strong emotion. If she felt rage it must be suppressed. Disappointment and discouragement had also to be borne in silence and with patience. Of such a situation Davies says:

"The power of the mind over the body is a scientific fact, as is evidenced by hypnotic suggestion and in the emotional control over the chemistry of health through the agency of the internal secretions. The reproductive processes are very susceptible to chemic influences. Thus the influences of the environment may in some degree carry through to the offspring."[2]

The studies of Drs Crile and Cannon show that the effects of fear on the ganglionic cells are tremendous. Some of the cells are exhausted and completely destroyed by intensity and duration of emotion. Cannon's experiments on animals during fear, rage, anger, and hunger, show that the entire nervous system is involved and that internal and external functions change their normal nature and activity. The thyroid and adrenal glands are deeply affected. In times of intense emotion, the thyroid gland throws into the system products which cause a quickened pulse, rapid respiration, trembling, arrest of digestion, etc. When the subjects of experiments in the effect of the emotions of fear, rage, etc., are examined, it is found that the physical development, especially the sexual development, is retarded. Heredity, age, sex, the nervous system of the subject, and the intensity and duration of the shock must all have consideration. Griesinger, Amard and Daguin emphasize especially the results of pain, anxiety and shock, claiming that they are difficult or impossible to treat.

To the bride brought up under the old taboos, the sex experiences of early married life are apt to come as a shock, particularly when the previous sex experiences of her mate have been gained with women of another class. Indeed, so deeply has the sense of shame concerning the sexual functions been impressed upon the feminine mind that many wives never cease to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance throughout the marital relationship. Especially would this be intensified in the case of sexual intercourse during the periods of gestation and lactation, when the girl who had been taught that the sexual functions existed only in the service of reproduction would see her most cherished illusions rudely dispelled. The effect of this long continued emotional state with its feeling of injury upon the metabolism of the female organism would be apt to have a detrimental effect upon the embryo through the blood supply, or upon the nursing infant through the mother's milk. There can be no doubt that anxiety, terror, etc., affect the milk supply, and therefore the life of the child.

The sixth dysgenic effect of the control by taboos is the rebellion of economically independent women who refuse motherhood under the only conditions society leaves open to them. The statistics in existence, though open to criticism, indicate that the most highly trained women in America are not perpetuating themselves.[3] Of the situation in England, Bertrand Russell said in 1917: "If an average sample were taken out of the population of England, and their parents were examined, it would be found that prudence, energy, intellect and enlightenment were less common among the parents than in the population in general; while shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupidity and superstition were more common than in the population in general ... Mutual liberty is making the old form of marriage impossible while a new form is not yet developed."[4]

It must be admitted that to-day marriage and motherhood are subject to economic penalties. Perhaps one of the best explanations of the strength of the present struggle for economic independence among women is the fact that a commercial world interested in exchange values had refused to properly evaluate their social contribution. A new industrial system had taken away one by one their "natural" occupations. In the modern man's absorption in the life of a great industrial expansion, home life has been less insistent in its claims. His slackening of interest and attention, together with the discovery of her usefulness in industry, may have given the woman of initiative her opportunity to slip away from her ancient sphere into a world where her usefulness in other fields than that of sex has made her a different creature from the model woman of yesterday. These trained and educated women have hesitated to face the renunciations involved in a return to the home. The result has been one more factor in the lessening of eugenic motherhood, since it is necessarily the less strong who lose footing and fall back on marriage for support. These women wage-earners who live away from the traditions of what a woman ought to be will have a great deal of influence in the changed relations of the sexes. The answer to the question of their relation to the family and to a saner parenthood is of vital importance to society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER IV

1. Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. Social Control of Child Welfare. Publications of the American Sociological Society. Vol. XII, p. 23 f.

2. Davies, G.R. Social Environment. 149 pp. A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1917.

3. Popenoe, Paul. Eugenics and College Education. School and Society, pp. 438-441. Vol. VI. No. 146.

4. Russell, Bertrand. Why Men Fight. 272 pp. The Century Co., N.Y., 1917.



PART III

THE SEX PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

BY

PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, PH.D.



CHAPTER I

SEX IN TERMS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

Bearing of modern psychology on the sex problem; Conditioning of the sexual impulse; Vicarious expression of the sexual impulse; Unconscious factors of the sex life; Taboo control has conditioned the natural biological tendencies of individuals to conform to arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity; Conflict between individual desires and social standards.

An adequate treatment of the sex problem in society must necessarily involve a consideration of the sexual impulse in the individual members of that society. Recent psychological research, with its laboratory experiments and studies of pathology has added a great deal of information at this point. The lately acquired knowledge of the warping effect of the environment upon the native biological endowment of the individual by means of the establishment of conditioned reflexes, the discovery that any emotion which is denied its natural motor outlet tends to seek expression through some vicarious activity, and the realization of the fundamental importance of the unconscious factors in shaping emotional reactions,—such formulations of behaviouristic and analytic psychology have thrown a great deal of light upon the nature of the individual sex life.

There are certain modifications of the erotic life which are explicable only when we recollect that under environmental influences situations which originally did not call up an emotional response come later to do so. This fact, which was first noted by Setchenov, was experimentally demonstrated by Pavlov and his students.[7] They found that when some irrelevant stimulus, such as a musical tone or a piece of coloured paper was presented to a dog simultaneously with its food for a sufficiently long period, the presentation of the tone or paper alone finally caused the same flow of saliva that the food had originally evoked. The irrelevant stimulus was named a food sign, and the involuntary motor response of salivary secretion was called a conditioned reflex to differentiate it from the similar response to the biologically adequate stimulus of food, which was termed an unconditioned reflex.

"The significance of the conditioned reflex is simply this, that an associated stimulus brings about a reaction; and this associated stimulus may be from any receptor organ of the body; and it may be formed of course not merely in the laboratory by specially devised experiments, but by association in the ordinary environment."[1] Thus it is evident that the formation of conditioned reflexes takes place in all fields of animal and human activity.

Watson has recently stated that a similar substitution of one stimulus for another occurs in the case of an emotional reaction as well as at the level of the simple physiological reflex response.[8] This means that when an emotionally exciting object stimulates the subject simultaneously with one not emotionally exciting, the latter may in time (or even after one joint stimulation) arouse the same emotional response as the former. Kempf considers this capacity of the emotion to become thus conditioned to other than the original stimuli "of the utmost importance in determining the selections and aversions throughout life, such as mating, habitat, friends, enemies, vocations, professions, religious and political preferences, etc."[5]

Just as Pavlov and his followers found that almost anything could become a food sign, so the study of neurotics has shown that the sexual emotion can be fixed upon almost any love object. For example, a single characteristic of a beloved person (e.g.,—eye colour, smile posture, gestures) can become itself a stimulus to evoke the emotional response originally associated only with that person. Then it happens that the affection may centre upon anyone possessing similar traits. In most psychological literature, this focussing of the emotion upon some particular characteristic is termed fetishism, and the stimulus which become capable of arousing the conditioned emotional response is called an erotic fetish. In extreme cases of fetishism, the sexual emotions can only be aroused in the presence of the particular fetish involved. Krafft-Ebing[6] and other psychopathologists describe very abnormal cases of erotic fetishism in which some inanimate object becomes entirely dissociated from the person with whom it was originally connected, so that it serves exclusively as a love object in itself, and prevents a normal emotional reaction to members of the opposite sex.

The development of romantic love has depended to a great extent upon the establishment of a wide range of stimuli capable of arousing the erotic impulses. As Finck has pointed out, this romantic sentiment is inseparable from the ideals of personal beauty.[3] As criteria of beauty he lists such characteristics as well-shaped waist, rounded bosom, full and red underlip, small feet, etc., all of which have come to be considered standards of loveliness because the erotic emotion has been conditioned to respond to their stimulation. Literature is full of references to such marks of beauty in its characters (Jane Eyre is almost the only well-known book with a plain heroine), and is therefore one of the potent factors in establishing a conditioned emotional reaction to these stimuli.