CHAPTER V.
THE FUNCTION OF CHASTITY.
Chastity Essential to the Dignity of Love—The Eighteenth Century Revolt
Against the Ideal of Chastity—Unnatural Forms of Chastity—The
Psychological Basis of Asceticism—Asceticism and Chastity as Savage
Virtues—The Significance of Tahiti—Chastity Among Barbarous
Peoples—Chastity Among the Early Christians—Struggles of the Saints with
the Flesh—The Romance of Christian Chastity—Its Decay in Mediæval
Times—Aucassin et Nicolette and the new Romance of Chaste Love—The
Unchastity of the Northern Barbarians—The Penitentials—Influence of the
Renaissance and the Reformation—The Revolt Against Virginity as a
Virtue—The Modern Conception of Chastity as a Virtue—The Influences That
Favor the Virtue of Chastity—Chastity as a Discipline—The Value of
Chastity for the Artist—Potency and Impotence in Popular Estimation—The
Correct Definitions of Asceticism and Chastity.
The supreme importance of chastity, and even of asceticism, has never at
any time, or in any greatly vital human society, altogether failed of
recognition. Sometimes chastity has been exalted in human estimation,
sometimes it has been debased; it has frequently changed the nature of its
manifestations; but it has always been there. It is even a part of the
beautiful vision of all Nature. "The glory of the world is seen only by a
chaste mind," said Thoreau with his fine extravagance. "To whomsoever this
fact is not an awful but beautiful mystery there are no flowers in
Nature." Without chastity it is impossible to maintain the dignity of
sexual love. The society in which its estimation sinks to a minimum is in
the last stages of degeneration. Chastity has for sexual love an
importance which it can never lose, least of all to-day.
It is quite true that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many
men of high moral and intellectual distinction pronounced very decidedly
their condemnation of the ideal of chastity. The great Buffon refused to
recognize chastity as an ideal and referred scornfully to "that kind of
insanity which has turned a girl's virginity into a thing with a real
existence," while William Morris, in his downright manner, once declared
at a meeting of the Fellowship of the New Life, that asceticism is "the
most disgusting vice that afflicted human nature." Blake, though he seems
always to have been a strictly moral man in the most conventional sense,
felt nothing but contempt for chastity, and sometimes confers a kind of
religious solemnity on the idea of unchastity. Shelley, who may have been
unwise in sexual matters but can scarcely be called unchaste, also often
seems to associate religion and morality, not with chastity, but with
unchastity, and much the same may be said of James Hinton.[69]
But all these men—with other men of high character who have pronounced
similar opinions—were reacting against false, decayed, and conventional
forms of chastity. They were not rebelling against an ideal; they were
seeking to set up an ideal in a place where they realized that a
mischievous pretense was masquerading as a moral reality.
We cannot accept an ideal of chastity unless we ruthlessly cast aside all
the unnatural and empty forms of chastity. If chastity is merely a
fatiguing effort to emulate in the sexual sphere the exploits of
professional fasting men, an effort using up all the energies of the
organism and resulting in no achievement greater than the abstinence it
involves, then it is surely an unworthy ideal. If it is a feeble
submission to an external conventional law which there is no courage to
break, then it is not an ideal at all. If it is a rule of morality imposed
by one sex on the opposite sex, then it is an injustice and provocative of
revolt. If it is an abstinence from the usual forms of sexuality, replaced
by more abnormal or more secret forms, then it is simply an unreality
based on misconception. And if it is merely an external acceptance of
conventions without any further acceptance, even in act, then it is a
contemptible farce. These are the forms of chastity which during the past
two centuries many fine-souled men have vigorously rejected.
The fact that chastity, or asceticism, is a real virtue, with fine uses,
becomes evident when we realize that it has flourished at all times, in
connection with all kinds of religions and the most various moral codes.
We find it pronounced among savages, and the special virtues of
savagery—hardness, endurance, and bravery—are intimately connected with
the cultivation of chastity and asceticism.[70] It is true that savages
seldom have any ideal of chastity in the degraded modern sense, as a state
of permanent abstinence from sexual relationships having a merit of its
own apart from any use. They esteem chastity for its values, magical or
real, as a method of self-control which contributes towards the attainment
of important ends. The ability to bear pain and restraint is nearly always
a main element in the initiation of youths at puberty. The custom of
refraining from sexual intercourse before expeditions of war and hunting,
and other serious concerns involving great muscular and mental strain,
whatever the motives assigned, is a sagacious method of economizing
energy. The extremely widespread habit of avoiding intercourse during
pregnancy and suckling, again, is an admirable precaution in sexual
hygiene which it is extremely difficult to obtain the observance of in
civilization. Savages, also, are perfectly well aware how valuable sexual
continence is, in combination with fasting and solitude, to acquire the
aptitude for abnormal spiritual powers.
Thus C. Hill Tout (Journal Anthropological Institute,
Jan.-June, 1905, pp. 143-145) gives an interesting account of the
self-discipline undergone by those among the Salish Indians of
British Columbia, who seek to acquire shamanistic powers. The
psychic effects of such training on these men, says Hill Tout,
is undoubted. "It enables them to undertake and accomplish feats
of abnormal strength, agility, and endurance; and gives them at
times, besides a general exaltation of the senses, undoubted
clairvoyant and other supernormal mental and bodily powers." At
the other end of the world, as shown by the Reports of the
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (vol. v, p. 321),
closely analogous methods of obtaining supernatural powers are
also customary.
There are fundamental psychological reasons for the wide
prevalence of asceticism and for the remarkable manner in which
it involves self-mortification, even acute physical suffering.
Such pain is an actual psychic stimulant, more especially in
slightly neurotic persons. This is well illustrated by a young
woman, a patient of Janet's, who suffered from mental depression
and was accustomed to find relief by slightly burning her hands
and feet. She herself clearly understood the nature of her
actions. "I feel," she said, "that I make an effort when I hold
my hands on the stove, or when I pour boiling water on my feet;
it is a violent act and it awakens me: I feel that it is really
done by myself and not by another.... To make a mental effort by
itself is too difficult for me; I have to supplement it by
physical efforts. I have not succeeded in any other way; that is
all: when I brace myself up to burn myself I make my mind freer,
lighter and more active for several days. Why do you speak of my
desire for mortification? My parents believe that, but it is
absurd. It would be a mortification if it brought any suffering,
but I enjoy this suffering, it gives me back my mind; it prevents
my thoughts from stopping: what would one not do to attain such
happiness?" (P. Janet, "The Pathogenesis of Some Impulsions,"
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April, 1906.) If we understand
this psychological process we may realize how it is that even in
the higher religions, however else they may differ, the practical
value of asceticism and mortification as the necessary door to
the most exalted religious state is almost universally
recognized, and with complete cheerfulness. "Asceticism and
ecstacy are inseparable," as Probst-Biraben remarks at the outset
of an interesting paper on Mahommedan mysticism ("L'Extase dans
le Mysticisme Musulman," Revue Philosophique, Nov., 1906).
Asceticism is the necessary ante-chamber to spiritual perfection.
It thus happens that savage peoples largely base their often admirable
enforcement of asceticism not on the practical grounds that would justify
it, but on religious grounds that with the growth of intelligence fall
into discredit.[71] Even, however, when the scrupulous observances of
savages, whether in sexual or in non-sexual matters, are without any
obviously sound basis it cannot be said that they are entirely useless if
they tend to encourage self-control and the sense of reverence.[72] The
would-be intelligent and practical peoples who cast aside primitive
observances because they seem baseless or even ridiculous, need a still
finer practical sense and still greater intelligence in order to realize
that, though the reasons for the observances have been wrong, yet the
observances themselves may have been necessary methods of attaining
personal and social efficiency. It constantly happens in the course of
civilization that we have to revive old observances and furnish them with
new reasons.
In considering the moral quality of chastity among savages, we
must carefully separate that chastity which among semi-primitive
peoples is exclusively imposed upon women. This has no moral
quality whatever, for it is not exercised as a useful discipline,
but merely enforced in order to heighten the economic and erotic
value of the women. Many authorities believe that the regard for
women as property furnishes the true reason for the widespread
insistence on virginity in brides. Thus A. B. Ellis, speaking of
the West Coast of Africa (Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, pp. 183 et
seq.), says that girls of good class are betrothed as mere
children, and are carefully guarded from men, while girls of
lower class are seldom betrothed, and may lead any life they
choose. "In this custom of infant or child betrothals we probably
find the key to that curious regard for ante-nuptial chastity
found not only among the tribes of the Gold and Slave Coasts, but
also among many other uncivilized peoples in different parts of
the world." In a very different part of the world, in Northern
Siberia, "the Yakuts," Sieroshevski states (Journal
Anthropological Institute, Jan.-June, 1901, p. 96), "see
nothing immoral in illicit love, providing only that nobody
suffers material loss by it. It is true that parents will scold a
daughter if her conduct threatens to deprive them of their gain
from the bride-price; but if once they have lost hope of marrying
her off, or if the bride-price has been spent, they manifest
complete indifference to her conduct. Maidens who no longer
expect marriage are not restrained at all, if they observe
decorum it is only out of respect to custom." Westermarck
(History of Human Marriage, pp. 123 et seq.) also shows the
connection between the high estimates of virginity and the
conception of woman as property, and returning to the question in
his later work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas
(vol. ii, Ch. XLII), after pointing out that "marriage by
purchase has thus raised the standard of female chastity," he
refers (p. 437) to the significant fact that the seduction of an
unmarried girl "is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an
offense against the parents or family of the girl," and there is
no indication that it is ever held by savages that any wrong has
been done to the woman herself. Westermarck recognizes at the
same time that the preference given to virgins has also a
biological basis in the instinctive masculine feeling of jealousy
in regard to women who have had intercourse with other men, and
especially in the erotic charm for men of the emotional state of
shyness which accompanies virginity. (This point has been dealt
with in the discussion of Modesty in vol. i of these Studies.)
It is scarcely necessary to add that the insistence on the
virginity of brides is by no means confined, as A. B. Ellis seems
to imply, to uncivilized peoples, nor is it necessary that
wife-purchase should always accompany it. The preference still
persists, not only by virtue of its natural biological basis, but
as a refinement and extension of the idea of woman as property,
among those civilized peoples who, like ourselves, inherit a form
of marriage to some extent based on wife-purchase. Under such
conditions a woman's chastity has an important social function to
perform, being, as Mrs. Mona Caird has put it (The Morality of
Marriage, 1897, p. 88), the watch-dog of man's property. The
fact that no element of ideal morality enters into the question
is shown by the usual absence of any demand for ante-nuptial
chastity in the husband.
It must not be supposed that when, as is most usually the case,
there is no complete and permanent prohibition of extra-nuptial
intercourse, mere unrestrained license prevails. That has
probably never happened anywhere among uncontaminated savages.
The rule probably is that, as among the tribes at Torres Straits
(Reports Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, vol. v, p. 275),
there is no complete continence before marriage, but neither is
there any unbridled license.
The example of Tahiti is instructive as regards the prevalence of
chastity among peoples of what we generally consider low grades
of civilization. Tahiti, according to all who have visited it,
from the earliest explorers down to that distinguished American
surgeon, the late Dr. Nicholas Senn, is an island possessing
qualities of natural beauty and climatic excellence, which it is
impossible to rate too highly. "I seemed to be transported into
the garden of Eden," said Bougainville in 1768. But, mainly under
the influence of the early English missionaries who held ideas of
theoretical morality totally alien to those of the inhabitants of
the islands, the Tahitians have become the stock example of a
population given over to licentiousness and all its awful
results. Thus, in his valuable Polynesian Researches (second
edition, 1832, vol. i, Ch. IX) William Ellis says that the
Tahitians practiced "the worst pollutions of which it was
possible for man to be guilty," though not specifying them. When,
however, we carefully examine the narratives of the early
visitors to Tahiti, before the population became contaminated by
contact with Europeans, it becomes clear that this view needs
serious modification. "The great plenty of good and nourishing
food," wrote an early explorer, J. R. Forster (Observations Made
on a Voyage Round the World, 1778, pp. 231, 409, 422), "together
with the fine climate, the beauty and unreserved behavior of
their females, invite them powerfully to the enjoyments and
pleasures of love. They begin very early to abandon themselves to
the most libidinous scenes. Their songs, their dances, and
dramatic performances, breathe a spirit of luxury." Yet he is
over and over again impelled to set down facts which bear
testimony to the virtues of these people. Though rather
effeminate in build, they are athletic, he says. Moreover, in
their wars they fight with great bravery and valor. They are, for
the rest, hospitable. He remarks that they treat their married
women with great respect, and that women generally are nearly the
equals of men, both in intelligence and in social position; he
gives a charming description of the women. "In short, their
character," Forster concludes, "is as amiable as that of any
nation that ever came unimproved out of the hands of Nature," and
he remarks that, as was felt by the South Sea peoples generally,
"whenever we came to this happy island we could evidently
perceive the opulence and happiness of its inhabitants." It is
noteworthy also, that, notwithstanding the high importance which
the Tahitians attached to the erotic side of life, they were not
deficient in regard for chastity. When Cook, who visited Tahiti
many times, was among "this benevolent humane" people, he noted
their esteem for chastity, and found that not only were betrothed
girls strictly guarded before marriage, but that men also who had
refrained from sexual intercourse for some time before marriage
were believed to pass at death immediately into the abode of the
blessed. "Their behavior, on all occasions, seems to indicate a
great openness and generosity of disposition. I never saw them,
in any misfortune, labor under the appearance of anxiety, after
the critical moment was past. Neither does care ever seem to
wrinkle their brow. On the contrary, even the approach of death
does not appear to alter their usual vivacity" (Third Voyage of
Discovery, 1776-1780). Turnbull visited Tahiti at a later period
(A Voyage Round the World in 1800, etc., pp. 374-5), but while
finding all sorts of vices among them, he is yet compelled to
admit their virtues: "Their manner of addressing strangers, from
the king to the meanest subject, is courteous and affable in the
extreme.... They certainly live amongst each other in more
harmony than is usual amongst Europeans. During the whole time I
was amongst them I never saw such a thing as a battle.... I never
remember to have seen an Otaheitean out of temper. They jest upon
each other with greater freedom than the Europeans, but these
jests are never taken in ill part.... With regard to food, it is,
I believe, an invariable law in Otaheite that whatever is
possessed by one is common to all." Thus we see that even among a
people who are commonly referred to as the supreme example of a
nation given up to uncontrolled licentiousness, the claims of
chastity were admitted, and many other virtues vigorously
flourished. The Tahitians were brave, hospitable,
self-controlled, courteous, considerate to the needs of others,
chivalrous to women, even appreciative of the advantages of
sexual restraint, to an extent which has rarely, if ever, been
known among those Christian nations which have looked down upon
them as abandoned to unspeakable vices.
As we turn from savages towards peoples in the barbarous and civilized
stages we find a general tendency for chastity, in so far as it is a
common possession of the common people, to be less regarded, or to be
retained only as a traditional convention no longer strictly observed. The
old grounds for chastity in primitive religions and tabu have decayed
and no new grounds have been generally established. "Although the progress
of civilization," wrote Gibbon long ago, "has undoubtedly contributed to
assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less
favorable to the virtue of chastity," and Westermarck concludes that
"irregular connections between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a
tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization."
The main difference in the social function of chastity as we pass from
savagery to higher stages of culture seems to be that it ceases to exist
as a general hygienic measure or a general ceremonial observance, and, for
the most part, becomes confined to special philosophic or religious sects
which cultivate it to an extreme degree in a more or less professional
way. This state of things is well illustrated by the Roman Empire during
the early centuries of the Christian era.[73] Christianity itself was at
first one of these sects enamored of the ideal of chastity; but by its
superior vitality it replaced all the others and finally imposed its
ideals, though by no means its primitive practices, on European society
generally.
Chastity manifested itself in primitive Christianity in two different
though not necessarily opposed ways. On the one hand it took a stern and
practical form in vigorous men and women who, after being brought up in a
society permitting a high degree of sexual indulgence, suddenly found
themselves convinced of the sin of such indulgence. The battle with the
society they had been born into, and with their own old impulses and
habits, became so severe that they often found themselves compelled to
retire from the world altogether. Thus it was that the parched solitudes
of Egypt were peopled with hermits largely occupied with the problem of
subduing their own flesh. Their pre-occupation, and indeed the
pre-occupation of much early Christian literature, with sexual matters, may
be said to be vastly greater than was the case with the pagan society they
had left. Paganism accepted sexual indulgence and was then able to dismiss
it, so that in classic literature we find very little insistence on sexual
details except in writers like Martial, Juvenal and Petronius who
introduce them mainly for satirical ends. But the Christians could not
thus escape from the obsession of sex; it was ever with them. We catch
interesting glimpses of their struggles, for the most part barren
struggles, in the Epistles of St. Jerome, who had himself been an athlete
in these ascetic contests.
"Oh, how many times," wrote St. Jerome to Eustochium, the virgin
to whom he addressed one of the longest and most interesting of
his letters, "when in the desert, in that vast solitude which,
burnt up by the heart of the sun, offers but a horrible dwelling
to monks, I imagined myself among the delights of Rome! I was
alone, for my soul was full of bitterness. My limbs were covered
by a wretched sack and my skin was as black as an Ethiopian's.
Every day I wept and groaned, and if I was unwillingly overcome
by sleep my lean body lay on the bare earth. I say nothing of my
food and drink, for in the desert even invalids have no drink but
cold water, and cooked food is regarded as a luxury. Well, I,
who, out of fear of hell, had condemned myself to this prison,
companion of scorpions and wild beasts, often seemed in
imagination among bands of girls. My face was pale with fasting
and my mind within my frigid body was burning with desire; the
fires of lust would still flare up in a body that already seemed
to be dead. Then, deprived of all help, I threw myself at the
feet of Jesus, washing them with my tears and drying them with my
hair, subjugating my rebellious flesh by long fasts. I remember
that more than once I passed the night uttering cries and
striking my breast until God sent me peace." "Our century," wrote
St. Chrysostom in his Discourse to Those Who Keep Virgins in
Their Houses, "has seen many men who have bound their bodies
with chains, clothed themselves in sacks, retired to the summits
of mountains where they have lived in constant vigil and fasting,
giving the example of the most austere discipline and forbidding
all women to cross the thresholds of their humble dwellings; and
yet, in spite of all the severities they have exercised on
themselves, it was with difficulty they could repress the fury of
their passions." Hilarion, says Jerome, saw visions of naked
women when he lay down on his solitary couch and delicious meats
when he sat down to his frugal table. Such experiences rendered
the early saints very scrupulous. "They used to say," we are told
in an interesting history of the Egyptian anchorites, Palladius's
Paradise of the Holy Fathers, belonging to the fourth century
(A. W. Budge, The Paradise, vol. ii, p. 129), "that Abbâ Isaac
went out and found the footprint of a woman on the road, and he
thought about it in his mind and destroyed it saying, 'If a
brother seeth it he may fall.'" Similarly, according to the rules
of St. Cæsarius of Aries for nuns, no male clothing was to be
taken into the convent for the purpose of washing or mending.
Even in old age, a certain anxiety about chastity still remained.
One of the brothers, we are told in The Paradise (p. 132) said
to Abbâ Zeno, "Behold thou hast grown old, how is the matter of
fornication?" The venerable saint replied, "It knocketh, but it
passeth on."
As the centuries went by the same strenuous anxiety to guard
chastity still remained, and the old struggle constantly
reappeared (see, e.g., Migne's Dictionnaire d'Ascétisme, art.
"Démon, Tentation du"). Some saints, it is true, like Luigi di
Gonzaga, were so angelically natured that they never felt the
sting of sexual desire. These seem to have been the exception.
St. Benedict and St. Francis experienced the difficulty of
subduing the flesh. St. Magdalena de Pozzi, in order to dispel
sexual desires, would roll on thorny bushes till the blood came.
Some saints kept a special cask of cold water in their cells to
stand in (Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. i, p. 124). On the
other hand, the Blessed Angela de Fulginio tells us in her
Visiones (cap. XIX) that, until forbidden by her confessor, she
would place hot coals in her secret parts, hoping by material
fire to extinguish the fire of concupiscence. St. Aldhelm, the
holy Bishop of Sherborne, in the eighth century, also adopted a
homeopathic method of treatment, though of a more literal kind,
for William of Malmsbury states that when tempted by the flesh he
would have women to sit and lie by him until he grew calm again;
the method proved very successful, for the reason, it was
thought, that the Devil felt he had been made a fool of.
In time the Catholic practice and theory of asceticism became
more formalized and elaborated, and its beneficial effects were
held to extend beyond the individual himself. "Asceticism from
the Christian point of view," writes Brénier de Montmorand in an
interesting study ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme," Revue
Philosophique, March, 1904) "is nothing else than all the
therapeutic measures making for moral purification. The Christian
ascetic is an athlete struggling to transform his corrupt nature
and make a road to God through the obstacles due to his passions
and the world. He is not working in his own interests alone,
but—by virtue of the reversibility of merit which compensates
that of solidarity in error—for the good and for the salvation
of the whole of society."
This is the aspect of early Christian asceticism most often emphasized.
But there is another aspect which may be less familiar, but has been by no
means less important. Primitive Christian chastity was on one side a
strenuous discipline. On another side it was a romance, and this indeed
was its most specifically Christian side, for athletic asceticism has been
associated with the most various religious and philosophic beliefs. If,
indeed, it had not possessed the charm of a new sensation, of a delicious
freedom, of an unknown adventure, it would never have conquered the
European world. There are only a few in that world who have in them the
stuff of moral athletes; there are many who respond to the attraction of
romance.
The Christians rejected the grosser forms of sexual indulgence, but in
doing so they entered with a more delicate ardor into the more refined
forms of sexual intimacy. They cultivated a relationship of brothers and
sisters to each other, they kissed one another; at one time, in the
spiritual orgy of baptism, they were not ashamed to adopt complete
nakedness.[74]
A very instructive picture of the forms which chastity assumed among the
early Christians is given us in the treatise of Chrysostom Against Those
who Keep Virgins in their Houses. Our fathers, Chrysostom begins, only
knew two forms of sexual intimacy, marriage and fornication. Now a third
form has appeared: men introduce young girls into their houses and keep
them there permanently, respecting their virginity. "What," Chrysostom
asks, "is the reason? It seems to me that life in common with a woman is
sweet, even outside conjugal union and fleshly commerce. That is my
feeling; and perhaps it is not my feeling alone; it may also be that of
these men. They would not hold their honor so cheap nor give rise to such
scandals if this pleasure were not violent and tyrannical.... That there
should really be a pleasure in this which produces a love more ardent than
conjugal union may surprise you at first. But when I give you the proofs
you will agree that it is so." The absence of restraint to desire in
marriage, he continues, often leads to speedy disgust, and even apart from
this, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, delivery, lactation, the bringing up
of children, and all the pains and anxieties that accompany these things
soon destroy youth and dull the point of pleasure. The virgin is free from
these burdens. She retains her vigor and youthfulness, and even at the age
of forty may rival the young nubile girl. "A double ardor thus burns in
the heart of him who lives with her, and the gratification of desire never
extinguishes the bright flame which ever continues to increase in
strength." Chrysostom describes minutely all the little cares and
attentions which the modern girls of his time required, and which these
men delighted to expend on their virginal sweethearts whether in public or
in private. He cannot help thinking, however, that the man who lavishes
kisses and caresses on a woman whose virginity he retains is putting
himself somewhat in the position of Tantalus. But this new refinement of
tender chastity, which came as a delicious discovery to the early
Christians who had resolutely thrust away the licentiousness of the pagan
world, was deeply rooted, as we discover from the frequency with which the
grave Fathers of the Church, apprehensive of scandal, felt called upon to
reprove it, though their condemnation is sometimes not without a trace of
secret sympathy.[75]
There was one form in which the new Christian chastity flourished
exuberantly and unchecked: it conquered literature. The most charming,
and, we may be sure, the most popular literature of the early Church lay
in the innumerable romances of erotic chastity—to some extent, it may
well be, founded on fact—which are embodied to-day in the Acta
Sanctorum. We can see in even the most simple and non-miraculous early
Christian records of the martyrdom of women that the writers were fully
aware of the delicate charm of the heroine who, like Perpetua at Carthage,
tossed by wild cattle in the arena, rises to gather her torn garment
around her and to put up her disheveled hair.[76] It was an easy step to
the stories of romantic adventure. Among these delightful stories I may
refer especially to the legend of Thekla, which has been placed,
incorrectly it may be, as early as the first century, "The Bride and
Bridegroom of India" in Judas Thomas's Acts, "The Virgin of Antioch" as
narrated by St. Ambrose, the history of "Achilleus and Nereus," "Mygdonia
and Karish," and "Two Lovers of Auvergne" as told by Gregory of Tours.
Early Christian literature abounds in the stories of lovers who had indeed
preserved their chastity, and had yet discovered the most exquisite
secrets of love.
Thekla's day is the twenty-third of September. There is a very
good Syriac version (by Lipsius and others regarded as more
primitive than the Greek version) of the Acts of Paul and
Thekla (see, e.g., Wright's Apocryphal Acts). These Acts
belong to the latter part of the second century. The story is
that Thekla, refusing to yield to the passion of the high priest
of Syria, was put, naked but for a girdle (subligaculum) into
the arena on the back of a lioness, which licked her feet and
fought for her against the other beasts, dying in her defense.
The other beasts, however, did her no harm, and she was finally
released. A queen loaded her with money, she modified her dress
to look like a man, travelled to meet Paul, and lived to old age.
Sir W. M. Ramsay has written an interesting study of these Acts
(The Church in the Roman Empire, Ch. XVI). He is of opinion
that the Acts are based on a first century document, and is
able to disentangle many elements of truth from the story. He
states that it is the only evidence we possess of the ideas and
actions of women during the first century in Asia Minor, where
their position was so high and their influence so great. Thekla
represents the assertion of woman's rights, and she administered
the rite of baptism, though in the existing versions of the
Acts these features are toned down or eliminated.
Some of the most typical of these early Christian romances are
described as Gnostical in origin, with something of the germs of
Manichæan dualism which were held in the rich and complex matrix
of Gnosticism, while the spirit of these romances is also largely
Montanist, with the combined chastity and ardor, the pronounced
feminine tone due to its origin in Asia Minor, which marked
Montanism. It cannot be denied, however, that they largely passed
into the main stream of Christian tradition, and form an
essential and important part of that tradition. (Renan, in his
Marc-Aurèle, Chs. IX and XV, insists on the immense debt of
Christianity to Gnostic and Montanist contributions). A
characteristic example is the story of "The Betrothed of India"
in Judas Thomas's Acts (Wright's Apocryphal Acts). Judas
Thomas was sold by his master Jesus to an Indian merchant who
required a carpenter to go with him to India. On disembarking at
the city of Sandaruk they heard the sounds of music and singing,
and learnt that it was the wedding-feast of the King's daughter,
which all must attend, rich and poor, slaves and freemen,
strangers and citizens. Judas Thomas went, with his new master,
to the banquet and reclined with a garland of myrtle placed on
his head. When a Hebrew flute-player came and stood over him and
played, he sang the songs of Christ, and it was seen that he was
more beautiful than all that were there and the King sent for him
to bless the young couple in the bridal chamber. And when all
were gone out and the door of the bridal chamber closed, the
bridegroom approached the bride, and saw, as it were, Judas
Thomas still talking with her. But it was our Lord who said to
him, "I am not Judas, but his brother." And our Lord sat down on
the bed beside the young people and began to say to them:
"Remember, my children, what my brother spake with you, and know
to whom he committed you, and know that if ye preserve yourselves
from this filthy intercourse ye become pure temples, and are
saved from afflictions manifest and hidden, and from the heavy
care of children, the end whereof is bitter sorrow. For their
sakes ye will become oppressors and robbers, and ye will be
grievously tortured for their injuries. For children are the
cause of many pains; either the King falls upon them or a demon
lays hold of them, or paralysis befalls them. And if they be
healthy they come to ill, either by adultery, or theft, or
fornication, or covetousness, or vain-glory. But if ye will be
persuaded by me, and keep yourselves purely unto God, ye shall
have living children to whom not one of these blemishes and hurts
cometh nigh; and ye shall be without care and without grief and
without sorrow, and ye shall hope for the time when ye shall see
the true wedding-feast." The young couple were persuaded, and
refrained from lust, and our Lord vanished. And in the morning,
when it was dawn, the King had the table furnished early and
brought in before the bridegroom and bride. And he found them
sitting the one opposite the other, and the face of the bride was
uncovered and the bridegroom was very cheerful. The mother of the
bride saith to her: "Why art thou sitting thus, and art not
ashamed, but art as if, lo, thou wert married a long time, and
for many a day?" And her father, too, said; "Is it thy great love
for thy husband that prevents thee from even veiling thyself?"
And the bride answered and said: "Truly, my father, I am in great
love, and am praying to my Lord that I may continue in this love
which I have experienced this night. I am not veiled, because the
veil of corruption is taken from me, and I am not ashamed,
because the deed of shame has been removed far from me, and I am
cheerful and gay, and despise this deed of corruption and the
joys of this wedding-feast, because I am invited to the true
wedding-feast. I have not had intercourse with a husband, the end
whereof is bitter repentance, because I am betrothed to the true
Husband." The bridegroom answered also in the same spirit, very
naturally to the dismay of the King, who sent for the sorcerer
whom he had asked to bless his unlucky daughter. But Judas Thomas
had already left the city and at his inn the King's stewards
found only the flute-player, sitting and weeping because he had
not taken her with him. She was glad, however, when she heard
what had happened, and hastened to the young couple, and lived
with them ever afterwards. The King also was finally reconciled,
and all ended chastely, but happily.
In these same Judas Thomas's Acts, which are not later than the
fourth century, we find (eighth act) the story of Mygdonia and
Karish. Mygdonia, the wife of Karish, is converted by Thomas and
flees from her husband, naked save for the curtain of the chamber
door which she has wrapped around her, to her old nurse. With the
nurse she goes to Thomas, who pours holy oil over her head,
bidding the nurse to anoint her all over with it; then a cloth is
put round her loins and he baptizes her; then she is clothed and
he gives her the sacrament. The young rapture of chastity grows
lyrical at times, and Judas Thomas breaks out: "Purity is the
athlete who is not overcome. Purity is the truth that blencheth
not. Purity is worthy before God of being to Him a familiar
handmaiden. Purity is the messenger of concord which bringeth the
tidings of peace."
Another romance of chastity is furnished by the episode of
Drusiana in The History of the Apostles traditionally
attributed to Abdias, Bishop of Babylon (Bk. v, Ch. IV, et
seq.). Drusiana is the wife of Andronicus, and is so pious that
she will not have intercourse with him. The youth Callimachus
falls madly in love with her, and his amorous attempts involve
many exciting adventures, but the chastity of Drusiana is finally
triumphant.
A characteristic example of the literature we are here concerned
with is St. Ambrose's story of "The Virgin in the Brothel"
(narrated in his De Virginibus, Migne's edition of Ambrose's
Works, vols. iii-iv, p. 211). A certain virgin, St. Ambrose tells
us, who lately lived at Antioch, was condemned either to
sacrifice to the gods or to go to the brothel. She chose the
latter alternative. But the first man who came in to her was a
Christian soldier who called her "sister," and bade her have no
fear. He proposed that they should exchange clothes. This was
done and she escaped, while the soldier was led away to death. At
the place of execution, however, she ran up and exclaimed that it
was not death she feared but shame. He, however, maintained that
he had been condemned to death in her place. Finally the crown of
martyrdom for which they contended was adjudged to both.
We constantly observe in the early documents of this romantic
literature of chastity that chastity is insisted on by no means
chiefly because of its rewards after death, nor even because the
virgin who devotes herself to it secures in Christ an ever-young
lover whose golden-haired beauty is sometimes emphasized. Its
chief charm is represented as lying in its own joy and freedom
and the security it involves from all the troubles,
inconveniences and bondages of matrimony. This early Christian
movement of romantic chastity was clearly, in large measure, a
revolt of women against men and marriage. This is well brought
out in the instructive story, supposed to be of third century
origin, of the eunuchs Achilleus and Nereus, as narrated in the
Acta Sanctorum, May 12th. Achilleus and Nereus were Christian
eunuchs of the bedchamber to Domitia, a virgin of noble birth,
related to the Emperor Domitian and betrothed to Aurelian, son
of a Consul. One day, as their mistress was putting on her jewels
and her purple garments embroidered with gold, they began in turn
to talk to her about all the joys and advantages of virginity, as
compared to marriage with a mere man. The conversation is
developed at great length and with much eloquence. Domitia was
finally persuaded. She suffered much from Aurelian in
consequence, and when he obtained her banishment to an island she
went thither with Achilleus and Nereus, who were put to death.
Incidentally, the death of Felicula, another heroine of chastity,
is described. When elevated on the rack because she would not
marry, she constantly refused to deny Jesus, whom she called her
lover. "Ego non nego amatorem meum!"
A special department of this literature is concerned with stories
of the conversions or the penitence of courtesans. St.
Martinianus, for instance (Feb. 13), was tempted by the courtesan
Zoe, but converted her. The story of St. Margaret of Cortona
(Feb. 22), a penitent courtesan, is late, for she belongs to the
thirteenth century. The most delightful document in this
literature is probably the latest, the fourteenth century Italian
devotional romance called The Life of Saint Mary Magdalen,
commonly associated with the name of Frate Domenico Cavalca. (It
has been translated into English). It is the delicately and
deliciously told romance of the chaste and passionate love of the
sweet sinner, Mary Magdalene, for her beloved Master.
As time went on the insistence on the joys of chastity in this
life became less marked, and chastity is more and more regarded
as a state only to be fully rewarded in a future life. Even,
however, in Gregory of Tours's charming story of "The Two Lovers
of Auvergne," in which this attitude is clear, the pleasures of
chaste love in this life are brought out as clearly as in any of
the early romances (Historia Francorum, lib. i, cap. XLII). Two
senators of Auvergne each had an only child, and they betrothed
them to each other. When the wedding day came and the young
couple were placed in bed, the bride turned to the wall and wept
bitterly. The bridegroom implored her to tell him what was the
matter, and, turning towards him, she said that if she were to
weep all her days she could never wash away her grief for she had
resolved to give her little body immaculate to Christ, untouched
by men, and now instead of immortal roses she had only had on her
brow faded roses, which deformed rather than adorned it, and
instead of the dowry of Paradise which Christ had promised her
she had become the consort of a merely mortal man. She deplored
her sad fate at considerable length and with much gentle
eloquence. At length the bridegroom, overcome by her sweet words,
felt that eternal life had shone before him like a great light,
and declared that if she wished to abstain from carnal desires he
was of the same mind. She was grateful, and with clasped hands
they fell asleep. For many years they thus lived together,
chastely sharing the same bed. At length she died and was buried,
her lover restoring her immaculate to the hands of Christ. Soon
afterwards he died also, and was placed in a separate tomb. Then
a miracle happened which made manifest the magnitude of this
chaste love, for the two bodies were found mysteriously placed
together. To this day, Gregory concludes (writing in the sixth
century), the people of the place call them "The Two Lovers."
Although Renan (Marc-Aurèle, Ch. XV) briefly called attention
to the existence of this copious early Christian literature
setting forth the romance of chastity, it seems as yet to have
received little or no study. It is, however, of considerable
importance, not merely for its own sake, but on account of its
psychological significance in making clear the nature of the
motive forces which made chastity easy and charming to the people
of the early Christian world, even when it involved complete
abstinence from sexual intercourse. The early Church
anathematized the eroticism of the Pagan world, and exorcized it
in the most effectual way by setting up a new and more exquisite
eroticism of its own.
During the Middle Ages the primitive freshness of Christian chastity began
to lose its charm. No more romances of chastity were written, and in
actual life men no longer sought daring adventures in the field of
chastity. So far as the old ideals survived at all it was in the secular
field of chivalry. The last notable figure to emulate the achievements of
the early Christians was Robert of Arbrissel in Normandy.
Robert of Arbrissel, who founded, in the eleventh century, the
famous and distinguished Order of Fontevrault for women, was a
Breton. This Celtic origin is doubtless significant, for it may
explain his unfailing ardor and gaiety, and his enthusiastic
veneration for womanhood. Even those of his friends who
deprecated what they considered his scandalous conduct bear
testimony to his unfailing and cheerful temperament, his
alertness in action, his readiness for any deed of humanity, and
his entire freedom from severity. He attracted immense crowds of
people of all conditions, especially women, including
prostitutes, and his influence over women was great. Once he went
into a brothel to warm his feet, and, incidentally, converted all
the women there. "Who are you?" asked one of them, "I have been
here twenty-five years and nobody has ever come here to talk
about God." Robert's relation with his nuns at Fontevrault was
very intimate, and he would often sleep with them. This is set
forth precisely in letters written by friends of his, bishops and
abbots, one of whom remarks that Robert had "discovered a new
but fruitless form of martyrdom." A royal abbess of Fontevrault
in the seventeenth century, pretending that the venerated founder
of the order could not possibly have been guilty of such
scandalous conduct, and that the letters must therefore be
spurious, had the originals destroyed, so far as possible. The
Bollandists, in an unscholarly and incomplete account of the
matter (Acta Sanctorum, Feb. 25), adopted this view. J. von
Walter, however, in a recent and thorough study of Robert of
Arbrissel (Die Ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, Theil I),
shows that there is no reason whatever to doubt the authentic and
reliable character of the impugned letters.
The early Christian legends of chastity had, however, their successors.
Aucassin et Nicolette, which was probably written in Northern France
towards the end of the twelfth century, is above all the descendant of the
stories in the Acta Sanctorum and elsewhere. It embodied their spirit
and carried it forward, uniting their delicate feeling for chastity and
purity with the ideal of monogamic love. Aucassin et Nicolette was the
death-knell of the primitive Christian romance of chastity. It was the
discovery that the chaste refinements of delicacy and devotion were
possible within the strictly normal sphere of sexual love.
There were at least two causes which tended to extinguish the primitive
Christian attraction to chastity, even apart from the influence of the
Church authorities in repressing its romantic manifestations. In the first
place, the submergence of the old pagan world, with its practice and, to
some extent, ideal of sexual indulgence, removed the foil which had given
grace and delicacy to the tender freedom of the young Christians. In the
second place, the austerities which the early Christians had gladly
practised for the sake of their soul's health, were robbed of their charm
and spontaneity by being made a formal part of codes of punishment for
sin, first in the Penitentials and afterwards at the discretion of
confessors. This, it may be added, was rendered the more necessary because
the ideal of Christian chastity was no longer largely the possession of
refined people who had been rendered immune to Pagan license by being
brought up in its midst, and even themselves steeped in it. It was clearly
from the first a serious matter for the violent North Africans to maintain
the ideal of chastity, and when Christianity spread to Northern Europe it
seemed almost a hopeless task to acclimatize its ideals among the wild
Germans. Hereafter it became necessary for celibacy to be imposed on the
regular clergy by the stern force of ecclesiastical authority, while
voluntary celibacy was only kept alive by a succession of religious
enthusiasts perpetually founding new Orders. An asceticism thus enforced
could not always be accompanied by the ardent exaltation necessary to
maintain it, and in its artificial efforts at self-preservation it
frequently fell from its insecure heights to the depths of unrestrained
license.[77] This fatality of all hazardous efforts to overpass humanity's
normal limits begun to be realized after the Middle Ages were over by
clear-sighted thinkers. "Qui veut faire l'ange," said Pascal, pungently
summing up this view of the matter, "fait la bête." That had often been
illustrated in the history of the Church.
The Penitentials began to come into use in the seventh century,
and became of wide prevalence and authority during the ninth and
tenth centuries. They were bodies of law, partly spiritual and
partly secular, and were thrown into the form of catalogues of
offences with the exact measure of penance prescribed for each
offence. They represented the introduction of social order among
untamed barbarians, and were codes of criminal law much more than
part of a system of sacramental confession and penance. In France
and Spain, where order on a Christian basis already existed, they
were little needed. They had their origin in Ireland and England,
and especially flourished in Germany; Charlemagne supported them
(see, e.g., Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, p.
96, also Ch. XVII; Hugh Williams, edition of Gildas, Part II,
Appendix 3; the chief Penitentials are reproduced in
Wasserschleben's Bussordnungen).
In 1216 the Lateran Council, under Innocent III, made confession
obligatory. The priestly prerogative of regulating the amount of
penance according to circumstances, with greater flexibility than
the rigid Penitentials admitted, was first absolutely asserted by
Peter of Poitiers. Then Alain de Lille threw aside the
Penitentials as obsolete, and declared that the priest himself
must inquire into the circumstances of each sin and weigh
precisely its guilt (Lea, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 171).
Long before this period, however, the ideals of chastity, so far
as they involved any considerable degree of continence, although
they had become firmly hardened into the conventional traditions
and ideals of the Christian Church, had ceased to have any great
charm or force for the people living in Christendom. Among the
Northern barbarians, with different traditions of a more vigorous
and natural order behind them, the demands of sex were often
frankly exhibited. The monk Ordericus Vitalis, in the eleventh
century, notes what he calls the "lasciviousness" of the wives of
the Norman conquerors of England who, when left alone at home,
sent messages that if their husbands failed to return speedily
they would take new ones. The celibacy of the clergy was only
established with the very greatest difficulty, and when it was
established, priests became unchaste. Archbishop Odo of Rouen, in
the thirteenth century, recorded in the diary of his diocesan
visitations that there was one unchaste priest in every five
parishes, and even as regards the Italy of the same period the
friar Salimbene in his remarkable autobiography shows how little
chastity was regarded in the religious life. Chastity could now
only be maintained by force, usually the moral force of
ecclesiastical authority, which was itself undermined by
unchastity, but sometimes even physical force. It was in the
thirteenth century, in the opinion of some, that the girdle of
chastity (cingula castitatis) first begins to appear, but the
chief authority, Caufeynon (La Ceinture de Chasteté, 1904)
believes it only dates from the Renaissance (Schultz, Das
Höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesänger, vol. i, p. 595; Dufour,
Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. v, p. 272; Krauss,
Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 247). In the sixteenth century
convents were liable to become almost brothels, as we learn on
the unimpeachable authority of Burchard, a Pope's secretary, in
his Diarium, edited by Thuasne who brings together additional
authorities for this statement in a footnote (vol. ii, p. 79);
that they remained so in the eighteenth century we see clearly in
the pages of Casanova's Mémoires, and in many other documents
of the period.
The Renaissance and the rise of humanism undoubtedly affected the feeling
towards asceticism and chastity. On the one hand a new and ancient
sanction was found for the disregard of virtues which men began to look
upon as merely monkish, and on the other hand the finer spirits affected
by the new movement began to realize that chastity might be better
cultivated and observed by those who were free to do as they would than by
those who were under the compulsion of priestly authority. That is the
feeling that prevails in Montaigne, and that is the idea of Rabelais when
he made it the only rule of his Abbey of Thelème: "Fay ce que vouldras."
A little later this doctrine was repeated in varying tones by
many writers more or less tinged by the culture brought into
fashion by the Renaissance. "As long as Danae was free," remarks
Ferrand in his sixteenth century treatise, De la Maladie
d'Amour, "she was chaste." And Sir Kenelm Digby, the latest
representative of the Renaissance spirit, insists in his Private
Memoirs that the liberty which Lycurgus, "the wisest human
law-maker that ever was," gave to women to communicate their
bodies to men to whom they were drawn by noble affection, and the
hope of generous offspring, was the true cause why "real chastity
flourished in Sparta more than in any other part of the world."
In Protestant countries the ascetic ideal of chastity was still further
discredited by the Reformation movement which was in considerable part a
revolt against compulsory celibacy. Religion was thus no longer placed on
the side of chastity. In the eighteenth century, if not earlier, the
authority of Nature also was commonly invoked against chastity. It has
thus happened that during the past two centuries serious opinion
concerning chastity has only been partially favorable to it. It began to
be felt that an unhappy and injurious mistake had been perpetrated by
attempting to maintain a lofty ideal which encouraged hypocrisy. "The
human race would gain much," as Sénancour wrote early in the nineteenth
century in his remarkable book on love, "if virtue were made less
laborious. The merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an
elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[78]
There can be no doubt that the undue discredit into which the idea of
chastity began to fall from the eighteenth century onwards was largely
due to the existence of that merely external and conventional physical
chastity which was arbitrarily enforced so far as it could be
enforced,—and is indeed in some degree still enforced, nominally or
really,—upon all respectable women outside marriage. The conception of
the physical virtue of virginity had degraded the conception of the
spiritual virtue of chastity. A mere routine, it was felt, prescribed to a
whole sex, whether they would or not, could never possess the beauty and
charm of a virtue. At the same time it began to be realized that, as a
matter of fact, the state of compulsory virginity is not only not a state
especially favorable to the cultivation of real virtues, but that it is
bound up with qualities which are no longer regarded as of high value.[79]
"How arbitrary, artificial, contrary to Nature, is the life now
imposed upon women in this matter of chastity!" wrote James
Hinton forty years ago. "Think of that line: 'A woman who
deliberates is lost.' We make danger, making all womanhood hang
upon a point like this, and surrounding it with unnatural and
preternatural dangers. There is a wanton unreason embodied in the
life of woman now; the present 'virtue' is a morbid unhealthy
plant. Nature and God never poised the life of a woman upon such
a needle's point. The whole modern idea of chastity has in it
sensual exaggeration, surely, in part, remaining to us from other
times, with what was good in it in great part gone."
"The whole grace of virginity," wrote another philosopher,
Guyau, "is ignorance. Virginity, like certain fruits, can only
be preserved by a process of desiccation."
Mérimée pointed out the same desiccating influence of virginity.
In a letter dated 1859 he wrote: "I think that nowadays people
attach far too much importance to chastity. Not that I deny that
chastity is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as
there are in vices. It seems to be absurd that a woman should be
banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who
is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. The
morality of this age is assuredly not that which is taught in the
Gospel. In my opinion it is better to love too much than not
enough. Nowadays dry hearts are stuck up on a pinnacle" (Revue
des Deux Mondes, April, 1896).
Dr. H. Paul has developed an allied point. She writes: "There are
girls who, even as children, have prostituted themselves by
masturbation and lascivious thoughts. The purity of their souls
has long been lost and nothing remains unknown to them, but—they
have preserved their hymens! That is for the sake of the future
husband. Let no one dare to doubt their innocence with that
unimpeachable evidence! And if another girl, who has passed her
childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm
impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even
only in passion, they all stand up and scream that she is
'dishonored!' And, not least, the prostituted girl with the
hymen. It is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the
biggest stones. Yet the 'dishonored' woman, who is sound and
wholesome, need not fear to tell what she has done to the man who
desires her in marriage, speaking as one human being to another.
She has no need to blush, she has exercised her human rights, and
no reasonable man will on that account esteem her the less" (Dr.
H. Paul, "Die Ueberschätzung der Jungfernschaft," Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 14, 1907).
In a similar spirit writes F. Erhard (Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft, Bd. i, p. 408): "Virginity in one sense has its
worth, but in the ordinary sense it is greatly overestimated.
Apart from the fact that a girl who possesses it may yet be
thoroughly perverted, this over-estimation of virginity leads to
the girl who is without it being despised, and has further
resulted in the development of a special industry for the
preparation, by means of a prudishly cloistral education, of
girls who will bring to their husbands the peculiar dainty of a
bride who knows nothing about anything. Naturally, this can only
be achieved at the expense of any rational education. What the
undeveloped little goose may turn into, no man can foresee."
Freud (Sexual-Probleme, March, 1908) also points out the evil
results of the education for marriage which is given to girls on
the basis of this ideal of virginity. "Education undertakes the
task of repressing the girl's sensuality until the time of
betrothal. It not only forbids sexual relations and sets a high
premium on innocence, but it also withdraws the ripening womanly
individuality from temptation, maintaining a state of ignorance
concerning the practical side of the part she is intended to play
in life, and enduring no stirring of love which cannot lead to
marriage. The result is that when she is suddenly permitted to
fall in love by the authority of her elders, the girl cannot
bring her psychic disposition to bear, and goes into marriage
uncertain of her own feelings. As a consequence of this
artificial retardation of the function of love she brings nothing
but deception to the husband who has set all his desires upon
her, and manifests frigidity in her physical relations with him."
Sénancour (De l'Amour, vol. i, p. 285) even believes that, when
it is possible to leave out of consideration the question of
offspring, not only will the law of chastity become equal for the
two sexes, but there will be a tendency for the situation of the
sexes to be, to some extent, changed. "Continence becomes a
counsel rather than a precept, and it is in women that the
voluptuous inclination will be regarded with most indulgence. Man
is made for work; he only meets pleasure in passing; he must be
content that women should occupy themselves with it more than he.
It is men whom it exhausts, and men must always, in part,
restrain their desires."
As, however, we liberate ourselves from the bondage of a compulsory
physical chastity, it becomes possible to rehabilitate chastity as a
virtue. At the present day it can no longer be said that there is on the
part of thinkers and moralists any active hostility to the idea of
chastity; there is, on the contrary, a tendency to recognize the value of
chastity. But this recognition has been accompanied by a return to the
older and sounder conception of chastity. The preservation of a rigid
sexual abstinence, an empty virginity, can only be regarded as a
pseudo-chastity. The only positive virtue which Aristotle could have
recognized in this field was a temperance involving restraint of the lower
impulses, a wise exercise and not a non-exercise.[80] The best thinkers of
the Christian Church adopted the same conception; St. Basil in his
important monastic rules laid no weight on self-discipline as an end in
itself, but regarded it as an instrument for enabling the spirit to gain
power over the flesh. St. Augustine declared that continence is only
excellent when practised in the faith of the highest good,[81] and he
regarded chastity as "an orderly movement of the soul subordinating lower
things to higher things, and specially to be manifested in conjugal
relationships"; Thomas Aquinas, defining chastity in much the same way,
defined impurity as the enjoyment of sexual pleasure not according to
right reason, whether as regards the object or the conditions.[82] But for
a time the voices of the great moralists were unheard. The virtue of
chastity was swamped in the popular Christian passion for the annihilation
of the flesh, and that view was, in the sixteenth century, finally
consecrated by the Council of Trent, which formally pronounced an anathema
upon anyone who should declare that the state of virginity and celibacy
was not better than the state of matrimony. Nowadays the pseudo-chastity
that was of value on the simple ground that any kind of continence is of
higher spiritual worth than any kind of sexual relationship belongs to the
past, except for those who adhere to ancient ascetic creeds. The mystic
value of virginity has gone; it seems only to arouse in the modern man's
mind the idea of a piquancy craved by the hardened rake;[83] it is men who
have themselves long passed the age of innocence who attach so much
importance to the innocence of their brides. The conception of life-long
continence as an ideal has also gone; at the best it is regarded as a mere
matter of personal preference. And the conventional simulation of
universal chastity, at the bidding of respectability, is coming to be
regarded as a hindrance rather than a help to the cultivation of any real
chastity.[84]
The chastity that is regarded by the moralist of to-day as a virtue has
its worth by no means in its abstinence. It is not, in St. Theresa's
words, the virtue of the tortoise which withdraws its limbs under its
carapace. It is a virtue because it is a discipline in self-control,
because it helps to fortify the character and will, and because it is
directly favorable to the cultivation of the most beautiful, exalted, and
effective sexual life. So viewed, chastity may be opposed to the demands
of debased mediæval Catholicism, but it is in harmony with the demands of
our civilized life to-day, and by no means at variance with the
requirements of Nature.
There is always an analogy between the instinct of reproduction and the
instinct of nutrition. In the matter of eating it is the influence of
science, of physiology, which has finally put aside an exaggerated
asceticism, and made eating "pure." The same process, as James Hinton well
pointed out, has been made possible in the sexual relationships; "science
has in its hands the key to purity."[85]
Many influences have, however, worked together to favor an insistence on
chastity. There has, in the first place, been an inevitable reaction
against the sexual facility which had come to be regarded as natural. Such
facility was found to have no moral value, for it tended to relaxation of
moral fibre and was unfavorable to the finest sexual satisfaction. It
could not even claim to be natural in any broad sense of the word, for, in
Nature generally, sexual gratification tends to be rare and difficult.[86]
Courtship is arduous and long, the season of love is strictly delimited,
pregnancy interrupts sexual relationships. Even among savages, so long as
they have been untainted by civilization, virility is usually maintained
by a fine asceticism; the endurance of hardship, self-control and
restraint, tempered by rare orgies, constitute a discipline which covers
the sexual as well as every other department of savage life. To preserve
the same virility in civilized life, it may well be felt, we must
deliberately cultivate a virtue which under savage conditions of life is
natural.[87]
The influence of Nietzsche, direct and indirect, has been on the side of
the virtue of chastity in its modern sense. The command: "Be hard," as
Nietzsche used it, was not so much an injunction to an unfeeling
indifference towards others as an appeal for a more strenuous attitude
towards one's self, the cultivation of a self-control able to gather up
and hold in the forces of the soul for expenditure on deliberately
accepted ends. "A relative chastity," he wrote, "a fundamental and wise
foresight in the face of erotic things, even in thought, is part of a fine
reasonableness in life, even in richly endowed and complete natures."[88]
In this matter Nietzsche is a typical representative of the modern
movement for the restoration of chastity to its proper place as a real and
beneficial virtue, and not a mere empty convention. Such a movement could
not fail to make itself felt, for all that favors facility and luxurious
softness in sexual matters is quickly felt to degrade character as well as
to diminish the finest erotic satisfaction. For erotic satisfaction, in
its highest planes, is only possible when we have secured for the sexual
impulse a high degree of what Colin Scott calls "irradiation," that is to
say a wide diffusion through the whole of the psychic organism. And that
can only be attained by placing impediments in the way of the swift and
direct gratification of sexual desire, by compelling it to increase its
force, to take long circuits, to charge the whole organism so highly that
the final climax of gratified love is not the trivial detumescence of a
petty desire but the immense consummation of a longing in which the whole
soul as well as the whole body has its part. "Only the chaste can be
really obscene," said Huysmans. And on a higher plane, only the chaste can
really love.
"Physical purity," remarks Hans Menjago ("Die Ueberschätzung der
Physischen Reinheit," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii,
Part VIII) "was originally valued as a sign of greater strength
of will and firmness of character, and it marked a rise above
primitive conditions. This purity was difficult to preserve in
those unsure days; it was rare and unusual. From this rarity rose
the superstition of supernatural power residing in the virgin.
But this has no meaning as soon as such purity becomes general
and a specially conspicuous degree of firmness of character is no
longer needed to maintain it.... Physical purity can only possess
value when it is the result of individual strength of character,
and not when it is the result of compulsory rules of morality."
Konrad Höller, who has given special attention to the sexual
question in schools, remarks in relation to physical exercise:
"The greatest advantage of physical exercises, however, is not
the development of the active and passive strength of the body
and its skill, but the establishment and fortification of the
authority of the will over the body and its needs, so much given
up to indolence. He who has learnt to endure and overcome, for
the sake of a definite aim, hunger and thirst and fatigue, will
be the better able to withstand sexual impulses and the
temptation to gratify them, when better insight and æsthetic
feeling have made clear to him, as one used to maintain authority
over his body, that to yield would be injurious or disgraceful"
(K. Höller, "Die Aufgabe der Volksschule," Sexualpädagogik, p.
70). Professor Schäfenacker (id., p. 102), who also emphasizes
the importance of self-control and self-restraint, thinks a youth
must bear in mind his future mission, as citizen and father of a
family.
A subtle and penetrative thinker of to-day, Jules de Gaultier,
writing on morals without reference to this specific question,
has discussed what new internal inhibitory motives we can appeal
to in replacing the old external inhibition of authority and
belief which is now decayed. He answers that the state of feeling
on which old faiths were based still persists. "May not," he
asks, "the desire for a thing that we love and wish for
beneficently replace the belief that a thing is by divine will,
or in the nature of things? Will not the presence of a bridle on
the frenzy of instinct reveal itself as a useful attitude adopted
by instinct itself for its own conservation, as a symptom of the
force and health of instinct? Is not empire over oneself, the
power of regulating one's acts, a mark of superiority and a
motive for self-esteem? Will not this joy of pride have the same
authority in preserving the instincts as was once possessed by
religious fear and the pretended imperatives of reason?" (Jules
de Gaultier, La Dépendance de la Morale et l'Indépendance des
Mœurs, p. 153.)
H. G. Wells (in A Modern Utopia), pointing out the importance of
chastity, though rejecting celibacy, invokes, like Jules de
Gaultier, the motive of pride. "Civilization has developed far
more rapidly than man has modified. Under the unnatural
perfection of security, liberty, and abundance our civilization
has attained, the normal untrained human being is disposed to
excess in almost every direction; he tends to eat too much and
too elaborately, to drink too much, to become lazy faster than
his work can be reduced, to waste his interest upon displays, and
to make love too much and too elaborately. He gets out of
training, and concentrates upon egoistic or erotic broodings. Our
founders organized motives from all sorts of sources, but I think
the chief force to give men self-control is pride. Pride may not
be the noblest thing in the soul, but it is the best king there,
for all that. They looked to it to keep a man clean and sound and
sane. In this matter, as in all matters of natural desire, they
held no appetite must be glutted, no appetite must have
artificial whets, and also and equally that no appetite should be
starved. A man must come from the table satisfied, but not
replete. And, in the matter of love, a straight and clean desire
for a clean and straight fellow-creature was our founders' ideal.
They enjoined marriage between equals as the duty to the race,
and they framed directions of the precisest sort to prevent that
uxorious inseparableness, that connubiality, that sometimes
reduces a couple of people to something jointly less than
either."
With regard to chastity as an element of erotic satisfaction,
Edward Carpenter writes (Love's Coming of Age, p. 11): "There
is a kind of illusion about physical desire similar to that which
a child suffers from when, seeing a beautiful flower, it
instantly snatches the same, and destroys in a few moments the
form and fragrance which attracted it. He only gets the full
glory who holds himself back a little, and truly possesses, who
is willing, if need be, not to possess. He is indeed a master of
life who, accepting the grosser desires as they come to his body,
and not refusing them, knows how to transform them at will into
the most rare and fragrant flowers of human emotion."
Beyond its functions in building up character, in heightening and
ennobling the erotic life, and in subserving the adequate fulfilment of
family and social duties, chastity has a more special value for those who
cultivate the arts. We may not always be inclined to believe the writers
who have declared that their verse alone is wanton, but their lives
chaste. It is certainly true, however, that a relationship of this kind
tends to occur. The stuff of the sexual life, as Nietzsche says, is the
stuff of art; if it is expended in one channel it is lost for the other.
The masters of all the more intensely emotional arts have frequently
cultivated a high degree of chastity. This is notably the case as regards
music; one thinks of Mozart,[89] of Beethoven, of Schubert, and many
lesser men. In the case of poets and novelists chastity may usually seem
to be less prevalent but it is frequently well-marked, and is not seldom
disguised by the resounding reverberations which even the slightest
love-episode often exerts on the poetic organism. Goethe's life seems, at
a first glance, to be a long series of continuous love-episodes. Yet when
we remember that it was the very long life of a man whose vigor remained
until the end, that his attachments long and profoundly affected his
emotional life and his work, and that with most of the women he has
immortalized he never had actual sexual relationships at all, and when we
realize, moreover, that, throughout, he accomplished an almost
inconceivably vast amount of work, we shall probably conclude that sexual
indulgence had a very much smaller part in Goethe's life than in that of
many an average man on whom it leaves no obvious emotional or intellectual
trace whatever. Sterne, again, declared that he must always have a
Dulcinea dancing in his head, yet the amount of his intimate relations
with women appears to have been small. Balzac spent his life toiling at
his desk and carrying on during many years a love correspondence with a
woman he scarcely ever saw and at the end only spent a few months of
married life with. The like experience has befallen many artistic
creators. For, in the words of Landor, "absence is the invisible and
incorporeal mother of ideal beauty."
We do well to remember that, while the auto-erotic manifestations through
the brain are of infinite variety and importance, the brain and the
sexual organs are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and that
there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigor and extreme sexual
vigor, even although they may sometimes both appear at different periods
in the same individual.[90] In this sense there is no paradox in the
saying of Ramon Correa that potency is impotence and impotence potency,
for a high degree of energy, whether in athletics or in intellect or in
sexual activity, is unfavorable to the display of energy in other
directions. Every high degree of potency has its related impotencies.
It may be added that we may find a curiously inconsistent proof
of the excessive importance attached to sexual function by a
society which systematically tries to depreciate sex, in the
disgrace which is attributed to the lack of "virile" potency.
Although civilized life offers immense scope for the activities
of sexually impotent persons, the impotent man is made to feel
that, while he need not be greatly concerned if he suffers from
nervous disturbances of digestion, if he should suffer just as
innocently from nervous disturbances of the sexual impulse, it is
almost a crime. A striking example of this was shown, a few years
ago, when it was plausibly suggested that Carlyle's relations
with his wife might best be explained by supposing that he
suffered from some trouble of sexual potency. At once admirers
rushed forward to "defend" Carlyle from this "disgraceful"
charge; they were more shocked than if it had been alleged that
he was a syphilitic. Yet impotence is, at the most, an infirmity,
whether due to some congenital anatomical defect or to a
disturbance of nervous balance in the delicate sexual mechanism,
such as is apt to occur in men of abnormally sensitive
temperament. It is no more disgraceful to suffer from it than
from dyspepsia, with which, indeed, it may be associated. Many
men of genius and high moral character have been sexually
deformed. This was the case with Cowper (though this significant
fact is suppressed by his biographers); Ruskin was divorced for a
reason of this kind; and J. S. Mill, it is said, was sexually of
little more than infantile development.
Up to this point I have been considering the quality of chastity and the
quality of asceticism in their most general sense and without any attempt
at precise differentiation.[91] But if we are to accept these as modern
virtues, valid to-day, it is necessary that we should be somewhat more
precise in defining them. It seems most convenient, and most strictly
accordant also with etymology, if we agree to mean by asceticism or
ascesis, the athlete quality of self-discipline, controlling, by no
means necessarily for indefinitely prolonged periods, the gratification of
the sexual impulse. By chastity, which is primarily the quality of purity,
and secondarily that of holiness, rather than of abstinence, we may best
understand a due proportion between erotic claims and the other claims of
life. "Chastity," as Ellen Key well says, "is harmony between body and
soul in relation to love." Thus comprehended, asceticism is the virtue of
control that leads up to erotic gratification, and chastity is the virtue
which exerts its harmonizing influence in the erotic life itself.
It will be seen that asceticism by no means necessarily involves perpetual
continence. Properly understood, asceticism is a discipline, a training,
which has reference to an end not itself. If it is compulsorily perpetual,
whether at the dictates of a religious dogma, or as a mere fetish, it is
no longer on a natural basis, and it is no longer moral, for the restraint
of a man who has spent his whole life in a prison is of no value for life.
If it is to be natural and to be moral asceticism must have an end outside
itself, it must subserve the ends of vital activity, which cannot be
subserved by a person who is engaged in a perpetual struggle with his own
natural instincts. A man may, indeed, as a matter of taste or preference,
live his whole life in sexual abstinence, freely and easily, but in that
case he is not an ascetic, and his abstinence is neither a subject for
applause nor for criticism.
In the same way chastity, far from involving sexual abstinence, only has
its value when it is brought within the erotic sphere. A purity that is
ignorance, when the age of childish innocence is once passed, is mere
stupidity; it is nearer to vice than to virtue. Nor is purity consonant
with effort and struggle; in that respect it differs from asceticism. "We
conquer the bondage of sex," Rosa Mayreder says, "by acceptance, not by
denials, and men can only do this with the help of women." The would-be
chastity of cold calculation is equally unbeautiful and unreal, and
without any sort of value. A true and worthy chastity can only be
supported by an ardent ideal, whether, as among the early Christians, this
is the erotic ideal of a new romance, or, as among ourselves, a more
humanly erotic ideal. "Only erotic idealism," says Ellen Key, "can arouse
enthusiasm for chastity." Chastity in a healthily developed person can
thus be beautifully exercised only in the actual erotic life; in part it
is the natural instinct of dignity and temperance; in part it is the art
of touching the things of sex with hands that remember their aptness for
all the fine ends of life. Upon the doorway of entrance to the inmost
sanctuary of love there is thus the same inscription as on the doorway to
the Epidaurian Sanctuary of Aesculapius: "None but the pure shall enter
here."
It will be seen that the definition of chastity remains somewhat
lacking in precision. That is inevitable. We cannot grasp purity
tightly, for, like snow, it will merely melt in our hands.
"Purity itself forbids too minute a system of rules for the
observance of purity," well says Sidgwick (Methods of Ethics,
Bk. iii, Ch. IX). Elsewhere (op. cit., Bk. iii, Ch. XI) he
attempts to answer the question: What sexual relations are
essentially impure? and concludes that no answer is possible.
"There appears to be no distinct principle, having any claim to
self-evidence, upon which the question can be answered so as to
command general assent." Even what is called "Free Love," he
adds, "in so far as it is earnestly advocated as a means to a
completer harmony of sentiment between men and women, cannot be
condemned as impure, for it seems paradoxical to distinguish
purity from impurity merely by less rapidity of transition."
Moll, from the standpoint of medical psychology, reaches the same
conclusion as Sidgwick from that of ethics. In a report on the
"Value of Chastity for Men," published as an appendix to the
third edition (1899) of his Konträre Sexualempfindung, the
distinguished Berlin physician discusses the matter with much
vigorous common sense, insisting that "chaste and unchaste are
relative ideas." We must not, he states, as is so often done,
identify "chaste" with "sexually abstinent." He adds that we are
not justified in describing all extra-marital sexual intercourse
as unchaste, for, if we do so, we shall be compelled to regard
nearly all men, and some very estimable women, as unchaste. He
rightly insists that in this matter we must apply the same rule
to women as to men, and he points out that even when it involves
what may be technically adultery sexual intercourse is not
necessarily unchaste. He takes the case of a girl who, at
eighteen, when still mentally immature, is married to a man with
whom she finds it impossible to live and a separation
consequently occurs, although a divorce may be impossible to
obtain. If she now falls passionately in love with a man her love
may be entirely chaste, though it involves what is technically
adultery.
In thus understanding asceticism and chastity, and their beneficial
functions in life, we see that they occupy a place midway between the
artificially exaggerated position they once held and that to which they
were degraded by the inevitable reaction of total indifference or actual
hostility which followed. Asceticism and chastity are not rigid
categorical imperatives; they are useful means to desirable ends; they are
wise and beautiful arts. They demand our estimation, but not our
over-estimation. For in over-estimating them, it is too often forgotten,
we over-estimate the sexual instinct. The instinct of sex is indeed
extremely important. Yet it has not that all-embracing and supereminent
importance which some, even of those who fight against it, are accustomed
to believe. That artificially magnified conception of the sexual impulse
is fortified by the artificial emphasis placed upon asceticism. We may
learn the real place of the sexual impulse in learning how we may
reasonably and naturally view the restraints on that impulse.
[69]
For Blake and for Shelley, as well as, it may be added, for
Hinton, chastity, as Todhunter remarks in his Study of Shelley, is "a
type of submission to the actual, a renunciation of the infinite, and is
therefore hated by them. The chaste man, i.e., the man of prudence and
self-control, is the man who has lost the nakedness of his primitive
innocence."
[70]
For evidence of the practices of savages in this matter, see
Appendix A to the third volume of these Studies, "The Sexual Instinct
in Savages." Cf. also Chs. IV and VII of Westermarck's History of Human
Marriage, and also Chs. XXXVIII and XLI of the same author's Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii; Frazer's Golden Bough contains
much bearing on this subject, as also Crawley's Mystic Rose.
[71]
See, e.g., Westermarck, Origin and Development of the
Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 412 et seq.
[72]
Thus an old Maori declared, a few years ago, that the
decline of his race has been entirely due to the loss of the ancient
religious faith in the tabu. "For," said he (I quote from an Auckland
newspaper), "in the olden-time our tapu ramified the whole social
system. The head, the hair, spots where apparitions appeared, places which
the tohungas proclaimed as sacred, we have forgotten and disregarded.
Who nowadays thinks of the sacredness of the head? See when the kettle
boils, the young man jumps up, whips the cap off his head, and uses it for
a kettle-holder. Who nowadays but looks on with indifference when the
barber of the village, if he be near the fire, shakes the loose hair off
his cloth into it, and the joke and the laughter goes on as if no sacred
operation had just been concluded. Food is consumed on places which, in
bygone days, it dared not even be carried over."
[73]
Thus, long before Christian monks arose, the ascetic life of
the cloister on very similar lines existed in Egypt in the worship of
Serapis (Dill, Roman Society, p. 79).
[74]
At night, in the baptistry, with lamps dimly burning, the
women were stripped even of their tunics, plunged three times in the pool,
then anointed, dressed in white, and kissed.
[75]
Thus Jerome, in his letter to Eustochium, refers to those
couples who "share the same room, often even the same bed, and call us
suspicious if we draw any conclusions," while Cyprian (Epistola, 86) is
unable to approve of those men he hears of, one a deacon, who live in
familiar intercourse with virgins, even sleeping in the same bed with
them, for, he declares, the feminine sex is weak and youth is wanton.
[76]
Perpetua (Acta Sanctorum, March 7) is termed by Hort and
Mayor "that fairest flower in the garden of post-Apostolic Christendom."
She was not, however, a virgin, but a young mother with a baby at her
breast.
[77]
The strength of early Christian asceticism lay in its
spontaneous and voluntary character. When, in the ninth century, the
Carlovingians attempted to enforce monastic and clerical celibacy, the
result was a great outburst of unchastity and crime; nunneries became
brothels, nuns were frequently guilty of infanticide, monks committed
unspeakable abominations, the regular clergy formed incestuous relations
with their nearest female relatives (Lea, History of Sacerdotal
Celibacy, vol. i, pp, 155 et seq.).
[78]
Sénancour, De l'Amour, vol. ii, p. 233. Islam has placed
much less stress on chastity than Christianity, but practically, it would
appear, there is often more regard for chastity under Mohammedan rule than
under Christian rule. Thus it is stated by "Viator" (Fortnightly Review,
Dec., 1908) that formerly, under Turkish Moslem rule, it was impossible to
buy the virtue of women in Bosnia, but that now, under the Christian rule
of Austria, it is everywhere possible to buy women near the Austrian
frontier.
[79]
The basis of this feeling was strengthened when it was shown
by scholars that the physical virtue of "virginity" had been masquerading
under a false name. To remain a virgin seems to have meant at the first,
among peoples of early Aryan culture, by no means to take a vow of
chastity, but to refuse to submit to the yoke of patriarchal marriage. The
women who preferred to stand outside marriage were "virgins," even though
mothers of large families, and Æschylus speaks of the Amazons as
"virgins," while in Greek the child of an unmarried girl was always "the
virgin's son." The history of Artemis, the most primitive of Greek
deities, is instructive from this point of view. She was originally only
virginal in the sense that she rejected marriage, being the goddess of a
nomadic and matriarchal hunting people who had not yet adopted marriage,
and she was the goddess of childbirth, worshipped with orgiastic dances
and phallic emblems. It was by a late transformation that Artemis became
the goddess of chastity (Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii,
pp. 442 et seq.; Sir W. M. Ramsay, Cities of Phrygia, vol. i, p. 96;
Paul Lafargue, "Les Mythes Historiques," Revue des Idées, Dec., 1904).
[80]
See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. iii, Ch. XIII.
[81]
De Civitate Dei, lib. xv, cap. XX. A little further on
(lib. xvi, cap. XXV) he refers to Abraham as a man able to use women as a
man should, his wife temperately, his concubine compliantly, neither
immoderately.
[82]
Summa, Migne's edition, vol. iii, qu. 154, art. I.
[83]
See the Study of Modesty in the first volume of these
Studies.
[84]
The majority of chaste youths, remarks an acute critic of
modern life (Hellpach, Nervosität und Kultur, p. 175), are merely
actuated by traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal
infections, lack of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any
consideration for a future wife, and that indeed would be a tragi-comic
error, for a woman lays no importance on intact masculinity. Moreover, he
adds, the chaste man is unable to choose a wife wisely, and it is among
teachers and clergymen—the chastest class—that most unhappy marriages
are made. Milton had already made this fact an argument for facility of
divorce.
[85]
"In eating," said Hinton, "we have achieved the task of
combining pleasure with an absence of 'lust.' The problem for man and
woman is so to use and possess the sexual passion as to make it the
minister to higher things, with no restraint on it but that. It is
essentially connected with things of the spiritual order, and would
naturally revolve round them. To think of it as merely bodily is a
mistake."
[86]
See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," and Appendix, "The
Sexual Instinct in Savages," in vol. iii of these Studies.
[87]
I have elsewhere discussed more at length the need in modern
civilized life of a natural and sincere asceticism (see Affirmations,
1898) "St. Francis and Others."
[88]
Der Wille zur Macht, p. 392.
[89]
At the age of twenty-five, when he had already produced much
fine work, Mozart wrote in his letters that he had never touched a woman,
though he longed for love and marriage. He could not afford to marry, he
would not seduce an innocent girl, a venial relation was repulsive to
him.
[90]
Reibmayr, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und
Genies., Bd. i, p. 437.
[91]
We may exclude altogether, it is scarcely necessary to
repeat, the quality of virginity—that is to say, the possession of an
intact hymen—since this is a merely physical quality with no necessary
ethical relationships. The demand for virginity in women is, for the most
part, either the demand for a better marketable article, or for a more
powerful stimulant to masculine desire. Virginity involves no moral
qualities in its possessor. Chastity and asceticism, on the other hand,
are meaningless terms, except as demands made by the spirit on itself or
on the body it controls. |
