Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 24

See Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, pp. 386-390, 522.

[260]

Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, pp. 9, 159; also the whole of Ch. VII. Actions that are in accordance with custom call forth public approval, actions that are opposed to custom call forth public resentment, and Westermarck powerfully argues that such approval and such resentment are the foundation of moral judgments.

[261]

This is well recognized by legal writers (e.g., E. A. Schroeder, Das Recht in der Geschlechtlichen Ordnung, p. 5).

[262]

W. G. Sumner (Folkways, p. 418) even considers it desirable to change the form of the word in order to emphasize the real and fundamental meaning of morals, and proposes the word mores to indicate "popular usages and traditions conducive to societal reform." "'Immoral,'" he points out, "never means anything but contrary to the mores of the time and place." There is, however, no need whatever to abolish or to supplement the good old ancient word "morality," so long as we clearly realize that, on the practical side, it means essentially custom.

[263]

Westermarck, op. cit., vol. i, p. 19.

[264]

See, e.g., "Exogamy and the Mating of Cousins," in Essays Presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907, p. 53. "In many departments of primitive life we find a nave desire to, as it were, a.s.sist Nature, to affirm what is normal, and later to confirm it by the categorical imperative of custom and law. This tendency still flourishes in our civilized communities, and, as the worship of the normal, is often a deadly foe to the abnormal and eccentric, and too often paralyzes originality."

[265]

The spirit of Christianity, as ill.u.s.trated by Paulinus, in his Epistle XXV, was from the Roman point of view, as Dill remarks (Roman Society, p. 11), "a renunciation, not only of citizenship, but of all the hard-won fruits of civilization and social life."

[266]

It thus happens that, as Lecky said in his History of European Morals, "of all the departments of ethics the questions concerning the relations of the s.e.xes and the proper position of woman are those upon the future of which there rests the greatest uncertainty." Some progress has perhaps been made since these words were written, but they still hold true for the majority of people.

[267]

Concerning economic marriage as a vestigial survival, see, e.g., Bloch, The s.e.xual Life of Our Time, p. 212.

[268]

Senancour, De l'Amour, vol. ii, p. 233. The author of The Question of English Divorce attributes the absence of any widespread feeling against s.e.xual license to the absurd rigidity of the law.

[269]

Bruno Meyer, "Etwas von Positiver s.e.xualreform," s.e.xual-Probleme, Nov., 1908.

[270]

Elsie Clews Parsons, The Family, p. 351. Dr. Parsons rightly thinks such unions a social evil when they check the development of personality.

[271]

For evidence regarding the general absence of celibacy among both savage and barbarous peoples, see, e.g., Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, Ch. VII.

[272]

There are, for instance, two millions of unmarried women in France, while in Belgium 30 per cent, of the women, and in Germany sometimes even 50 per cent, are unmarried.

[273]

Such a position would not be biologically unreasonable, in view of the greatly preponderant part played by the female in the s.e.xual process which insures the conservation of the race. "If the s.e.xual instinct is regarded solely from the physical side," says D. W. H. Busch (Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, 1839, vol. i, p. 201), "the woman cannot be regarded as the property of the man, but with equal and greater reason the man may be regarded as the property of the woman."

[274]

Herodotus, Bk. i, Ch. CLXXIII.

[275]

That power and relationship are entirely distinct was pointed out many years ago by L. von Dargun, Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 1892. Westermarck (Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 655), who is inclined to think that Steinmetz has not proved conclusively that mother-descent involves less authority of husband over wife, makes the important qualification that the husband's authority is impaired when he lives among his wife's kinsfolk.

[276]

Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia; J. G. Frazer has pointed out (Academy, March 27, 1886) that the partially Semitic peoples on the North frontier of Abyssinia, not subjected to the revolutionary processes of Islam, preserve a system closely resembling beena marriage, as well as some traces of the opposite system, by Robertson Smith called ba'al marriage, in which the wife is acquired by purchase and becomes a piece of property.

[277]

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 358.

[278]

Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, The Welsh People, pp. 55-6; cf. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 93.

[279]

Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, op. cit., p. 214.

[280]

Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 41 et seq.) gives numerous instances.

[281]

Revillout, "La Femme dans l'Antiquite," Journal Asiatique, 1906, vol. vii, p. 57. See, also, Victor Marx, Beitrage zur a.s.syriologie, 1899, Bd. iv, Heft 1.

[282]

Donaldson, Woman, pp. 196, 241 et seq. Nietzold, (Die Ehe in "Agypten," p. 17), thinks the statement of Diodorus that no children were illegitimate, needs qualification, but that certainly the illegitimate child in Egypt was at no social disadvantage.

[283]

Amelineau, La Morale Egyptienne, p. 194; Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, vol. i, p. 187; Flinders Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, pp. 131 et seq.

[284]

Maine, Ancient Law, Ch. V.

[285]

Donaldson, Woman, pp. 109, 120.

[286]

Mercator, iv, 5.

[287]

Digest XLVIII, 13, 5.

[288]

Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, vol. i, p. 213.

[289]

For an account of the work of some of the less known of these pioneers, see a series of articles by Harriet McIlquham in the Westminster Review, especially Nov., 1898, and Nov., 1903.

[290]

The influence of Christianity on the position of women has been well discussed by Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 316 et seq., and more recently by Donaldson, Woman, Bk. iii.

[291]

Migne, Patrologia, vol. clviii, p. 680.

[292]

Rosa Mayreder, "Einiges uber die Starke Faust," Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit, 1905.