mortifications by which sages of the past obtained influence over the gods themselves; nay, even the power wielded by certain archdemons over men and gods is supposed to have been acquired by the practice of religious austerities.1 How largely ascetic practices are due to the idea of expiation is indicated by the fact that they hardly occur among nations who have no vivid sense of sin, like the Chinese before the introduction of Taouism and Buddhism,2 and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians. In Greece, however, people sometimes voluntarily sacrificed a part of their happiness in order to avoid the envy of the gods, who would not allow to man more than a moderate share of good fortune.3 Self-mortification is also sometimes resorted to not so much to appease the anger of a god as rather to excite his compassion. In some of the Jewish fasts, as we have seen before, these two objects are closely interwoven.1 The Jewish custom of fasting in the case of a drought is in a way parallel to the Moorish practice of tying holy men and throwing them into a pond in order that their pitiful condition may induce God to send rain. Mr. Williams tells us of a Fijian priest who, "after supplicating his god for rain in the usual way without success, slept for several successive nights exposed on the top of a rock, without mat or pillow, hoping thus to move the obdurate deity to send a shower." 5 Not only is suffering voluntarily sought as a means of wiping off sins committed, but it is also endured with a view to preventing the commission of sin. This is the second or, in importance, the first great idea upon which Christian asceticism rests. The gratification of every worldly desire is sinful, the flesh should be the abject slave of the spirit intent upon unearthly things. Man was created for a life in spiritual communion with God, but he yielded to the seduction of evil demons, who availed themselves of the sensuous side of his nature to draw him away from the contemplation of the divine and lead him to the earthly. Moral goodness, therefore, consists in renouncing all sensuous pleasures, in separating from the world, in living solely after the spirit, in imitating the perfection and purity of God. The contrast between good and evil is the contrast between God and the world, and the conception of the world includes not only the objects of bodily appetites but all human institutions, as well as science and art.1 And still more than any theoretical doctrine, the personal example of Christ led to the glorification of spiritual joy and bodily suffering. The antithesis of spirit and body was not peculiar to Christianity. It was an old Platonic conception, which was regarded by the Fathers of the Church as the contrast between that which was precious and that which was to be mortified. The doctrine that bodily enjoyments are low and degrading was taught by many pagan philosophers; even a man like Cicero says that all corporeal pleasure is opposed to virtue and ought to be rejected. And in the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean schools of Alexandria an ascetic ideal of life was the natural outcome of their theory that God alone is pure and good, and matter impure and evil. Renunciation of the world was taught and practised by the Jewish sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. In India, Professor Kern observes, climate, institutions, the contemplative bent of the native mind, all tended to facilitate the growth of a persuasion that the highest aims of human life and real felicity cannot be obtained but by the seclusion from the busy world, by undisturbed pious exercises, and by a certain amount of mortification."3 We read in the Hitopadesa, "Subjection to the senses has been called the road to ruin, and 1 Harnack, op. cit. ii. 214 sqq.; iii. 258 sqq. von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 313 sqq. 2 Cicero, De officiis, i. 30; iii. 33. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, P. 73. their subjugation the path to fortune." 1 The Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful :-"What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life."2 According to Buddhism, there are two causes of the misery with which life is inseparably bound up-lust and ignorance; and so there are two cures the suppression of lust and desire and the removal of ignorance. It is said in the Dhammapada, "There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of gold pieces; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause pain, he is wise."4 Penances, as they were practised among the ascetics of India, were discarded by Buddha as vexatious, unworthy, unprofitable. "Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires."5 Where all contact with the earthly ceases, there, and there only, are deliverance and freedom. The idea that man ought to liberate himself from the bondage of earthly desires is the conclusion of a contemplative mind reflecting upon the short duration and emptiness of all bodily pleasures and the allurements by which they lead men into misery and sin. And separation from the material world is the ideal of the religious enthusiast whose highest aspiration is union with God conceived as an immaterial being, as pure spirit. 1 Hitopadesa, quoted by MonierWilliams, Indian Wisdom, p. 538. 2 Hopkins, op. cit. p. 291. Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 212 sq. Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 99. See also Oldenberg, ▲ Dhammapada, 186 sq. CHAPTER XL MARRIAGE MAN'S sexual nature gives rise to various modes of conduct on which moral judgments are passed. We shall first consider such relations between the sexes as are comprised under the heading Marriage. In a previous work I have endeavoured to show that in all probability there has been no stage in the social history of mankind where marriage has not existed, human marriage apparently being an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor.1 I then defined marriage as a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. This is marriage in the natural history sense of the term. As a social institution, on the other hand, it has a somewhat different meaning: it is a union regulated by custom or law. Society lays down rules relating to the selection of partners, to the mode of contracting marriage, to its form, and to its duration. These rules are essentially expressions of moral feelings. There is, first, a circle of persons within which marriage is prohibited. It seems that the horror of incest is wellnigh universal in the human race, and that the few cases in which this feeling is said to be absent can only be regarded 1 Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, ch. iii. sqq. 2 The best definition of marriage as a social institution which I have met with is the following one given by Dr. Friedrichs ('Einzeluntersuchungen zur vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. x. 255)—"Eine von der Rechtsordnung anerkannte und privilegirte Vereinigung geschlechtsdifferenter Personen, entweder zur Führung eines gemeinsamen Hausstandes und zum Geschlechtsverkehr, oder zum ausschliesslichen Geschlechtsverkehr." as abnormalities. But the degrees of kinship within which marriage is forbidden are by no means the same everywhere. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children. It is also held in general abhorrence between brothers and sisters who are children of the same mother as well as of the same father. Most of the exceptions to this rule refer to royal persons, for whom it is considered improper to contract marriage with individuals of less exalted birth; but among a few peoples incestuous unions are practised on a larger scale on account of extreme isolation or as a result of vitiated instincts.1 It seems, however, that habitual marriages between brothers and sisters have been imputed to certain peoples without sufficient reason.2 This is obviously true of the Veddahs of Ceylon, who have long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as the proper marriage.3"Such incest," says Mr. Nevill," never was allowed, and never could be, while the Vaedda " 1 Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xiv. sq. 2 This is apparently the case with various peoples mentioned by Sir J.G. Frazer (Pausanias's Description of Greece, ii. 84 sq.) as being addicted to incestuous unions. Mr. Turner's short statement (Samoa, p. 341) that among the New Caledonians no laws of consanguinity were observed in their marriages, and that even the nearest relatives united, radically differs from M. de Rochas' description of the same people. "Les Néo-Calédoniens," he says (Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 232), ne se marient pas entre proches parents du côté paternel; mais du côté maternel, ils se marient à tous les degrés de cousinage." Brothers and sisters, after they have reached years of maturity, are no longer permitted to entertain any social intercourse with each other; they are prohibited from keeping each other company even in the presence of a third person; and if they casually meet they must instantly go out of the way or, if that is impossible, the sister must throw herself on the ground with her face downwards. "Cet éloignement," M. de Rochas " adds (ibid. p. 239), " qui n'est certes l'effet ni du mépris ni de l'inimitié, me paraît né d'une exagération déraisonnable d'un sentiment naturel, l'horreur de l'inceste." Sir J. G. Frazer says that, according to Mr. Thomson, the marriage of brothers with sisters has been practised among the Masai; but a later and, as it seems, better informed authority tells us that "the Masai do not marry their near relations and that "incest is unknown among them" (Hinde, The Last of the Masai, p. 76). Again, the statement that among the Obongos, a dwarf race in West Africa, sisters marry with brothers, is only based on information derived from another people, the Ashangos, who have a strong antipathy to them (Du Chaillu, Journey to Ashango-Land, p. 320). Liebich's assertion (Die Zigeuner, p. 49) that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister is certainly not true of the Gypsies of Finland, who greatly abhor incest (Thesleff, 'Zigenarlif i Finland,' in Nya Pressen, 1897, no.331 B). Bailey, Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. ii. 294 sq. |