Religion & Sex Part 6

In primitive life, in short, the dominant idea is not that of superiority in relation to woman, but that of difference. She is different from man, and this difference involves consequences of the gravest character, and against which due precautions must be taken.

Superiority and inferiority are much later conceptions; they belong to a comparatively civilised period, and their development offers an admirable example of the way in which customs based on sheer superst.i.tions become transformed into a social prejudice, with the consequent creation of numerous excuses for their perpetuation. What that initial prejudice is--a prejudice so powerful that it largely determines the future status of woman--has already been pointed out. Her place in society is marked out in uncivilised times by the powerful superst.i.tions connected with s.e.xual functions. Not that she is weaker--although that is, of course, plain--nor that she is inferior, a thought which scarcely exists with uncivilised peoples, but that she is dangerous, particularly so during her functional crises and in childbirth. And being dangerous, because charged with a supernatural influence inimical to others, she is excluded from certain occupations, and contact with her has to be carefully regulated. I agree with Mr.

Andrew Lang that in the regulations concerning women amongst uncivilised people we have another ill.u.s.tration of the far-reaching principle of taboo (_Social Origins and Primal Law_, p. 239) she suffers because of her s.e.x, and because of the superst.i.tious dread to which her s.e.x nature gives birth.

Of course, at a later stage other considerations begin to operate.

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Dr. Iwan Bloch, _The s.e.xual Life of Our Time_, p. 97.

[66] E. D. Starbuck, _The Psychology of Religion_, p. 401.

[67] _The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity_, p. 419.

[68] _Primitive Paternity_, 2 vols., 1909-10.

[69] _The Mystic Rose_, p. 191.

[70] See Frazer's _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, pp. 145-63, and Crawley's _Mystic Rose_.

[71] _Man and Woman_, p. 15.

[72] _Taboo_, pp. 163-4.

[73] _Religion of the Semites_, p. 142.

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

[75] Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, pp. 306-7.

[76] _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 427-9. For a fuller discussion of the subject, see _Studies in the Psychology of s.e.x_, by Havelock Ellis, 1901.

[77] Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, p. 666.

[78] Westermarck, p. 666.

[79] Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 150.

[80] See the Rev. Princ.i.p.al Donaldson's _Woman: her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and among the Early Christians_, bk. iii.

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

[82] _The Worship of Priapus_, Pref. p. 9.

[83] _The River Congo_, p. 405.

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

[85] Westropp, _Primitive Symbolism_, p. 30.

[86] _Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought_, p. 256.

[87] Forlong, _Faiths of Man_, iii. p. 66.

[88] _Primitive Symbolism_, p. 36.

[89] _Primitive Paternity_, i. pp. 63-4.

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

[91] Those who desire further and more detailed information may consult Forlong's great work, _The Rivers of Life_, Payne Knight's _Worship of Priapus_, Westropp and Wake's _Phallicism in Ancient Religion_, Brown's _Dionysiak Myth_, Westropp's _Primitive Symbolism_, R. A. Campbell's _Phallic Worship_, Hargrave Jennings's _Worship of Priapus_, etc.

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

CHAPTER FIVE

THE INFLUENCE OF s.e.xUAL AND PATHOLOGIC STATES ON RELIGIOUS BELIEF

In the preceding chapter we have been concerned with the various ways in which the phenomena attendant on the s.e.xual life of man and woman become a.s.sociated with religious beliefs. As a force that arises in the life of each individual, and intrudes, as it were, into consciousness, the phenomena of s.e.x fill primitive man with an amazement that is not unmixed with terror. In strict accord with primitive psychology s.e.xual phenomena are conceived as more or less connected with the supernatural world, and becoming thus entwined with religious convictions are made the nucleus of a number of superst.i.tious ceremonies. The connection is close and obvious so long as we restrict our survey to uncivilised humanity. The only room for doubt or discussion is the exact meaning of certain ceremonies, or the order of certain phases of development. It is when we take man in a more advanced stage that obscurity gathers and difficulties arise. The s.e.xual life is no longer lived, as it were, openly. Symbolism and mysticism develop; a more complex social life provides disguised outlets for primitive and indestructible feelings.

s.e.xualism, instead of being something to be glorified, and, so to speak, annotated by religious ceremonies, becomes something to be hidden or decried. Ignored it may be. Decried it may be; but it will not be denied. That is a practical impossibility in the case of so powerful and so pervasive a fact as s.e.x. We may disguise its expression, but only too often the disguise is the equivalent of undesirable and unhealthy manifestations.

The modern history of religion offers a melancholy ill.u.s.tration of the truth of the last sentence, and it is quite clearly exhibited in the history of Christianity itself. From the beginning it strove to suppress the power of s.e.xual feeling. It was an enemy against whom one had to be always on guard, one that had to be crushed, or at least kept in subjection in the interests of spiritual development. And yet the very intensity of the efforts at suppression defeated the object aimed at.

With some of the leaders of early Christianity s.e.x became an obsession.

Long dwelling upon its power made them unduly and unhealthily conscious of its presence. Instead of s.e.x taking its place as one of the facts of life, which like most other facts might be good or bad as circ.u.mstances determined, it was so much dwelt upon as to often dwarf everything else.

Asceticism is, after all, mainly a reversed sensualism, or at least confesses the existence of a sensualism that must not be allowed expression lest its manifestation becomes overpowering. Mortification confesses the supremacy of sense as surely as gratification. Moreover, mortification of sense as preached by the great ascetics does not prevent that most dangerous of all forms of gratification, the sensualism of the imagination. That remains, and is apt to gain in strength since the fundamentally healthful energies are denied legitimate and natural modes of expression. Thus it is that we find developing social life not always providing a healthy outlet for the s.e.xual life, and thus it is that the intense striving of religious leaders against the power of the s.e.xual impulse has often forced it into strange and harmful forms of expression. So we find throughout the history of religion, not only that a deal of what has pa.s.sed for supernatural illumination to have undoubtedly had its origin in perverted s.e.xual feeling, but the constant emergence of curious religio-erotic sects whose strange mingling of eroticism and religion has scandalised many, and offered a lesson to all had they but possessed the wit to discern it.

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

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

Dr. C. Norman also observes:--

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

This opinion is fully endorsed by Sir Francis Galton:--

"It has been noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which accompany the show of excessive piety and religious rapture in the insane, none are so frequent as disorders of the s.e.xual organisation.

Conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not infrequently ended in gross profligacy. The encouragement of celibacy by the fervent leaders of most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid connection between an over-restraint of the s.e.xual desires and impulses towards extreme devotion."[95]

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