as the most natural thing in the world, even though the perpetrator was a man of wealth and position, a man whom his brethren "shall praise" and before whom his "father's children shall bow down." Throughout the Muhammedan world chastity is regarded as an essential duty for a woman.3 In Persia an unmarried girl who gave birth to a child would surely be killed. Among the Fellaheen of Egypt a father or brother in most instances punishes an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of incontinence by throwing her into the Nile with a stone tied to her neck, or cutting her to pieces, and then throwing her remains into the river. Among the Jbâla and Rif Berbers of Morocco she is also frequently killed. For unmarried men, on the other hand, chastity is by Muhammedans at most looked upon as an ideal, almost out of reach. The Caliph Ali said that " with a man who is modest and chaste nobody should find fault." We are told that the Muhammedans of India consider it inconceivable that a Muslem should have illicit intercourse with a free Muhammedan woman; but connections with slave girls are regarded in a different light. 8 Among the Hindus sexual impurity is scarcely considered a sin in the men, but "in females nothing is held more execrable or abominable. The unhappy inhabitants of houses of ill fame are looked upon as the most degraded of the human species." In one of the Pahlavi texts continence is recommended from the point. of view of prudence :-" Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions." But in Zoroastrianism, also, chastity is chiefly a female duty. It is written in the Avesta, "Any woman. that has given up her body to two men in one day is sooner to be killed than a wolf, a lion, or a snake.' 9 1 Genesis, xxxviii. 15 sqq. 2 Ibid. xlix. 8. 3 Burton, Sindh, p. 295. + Polak, Persien, i. 217. 5 Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 209. 6 Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islam, p. 30. 7 Lane-Poole, Studies in a Mosque, p. 106. Dubois, 8 Calcutta Review, ii. 23. Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India, p. 193. Cf. Laws of Manu, ix. 51 sq. Diná-i-Mainôgî Khirad, ii. 23 sq. 10 Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. 206, n. I. Among the ancient Teutons an unmarried woman who belonged to an honourable family was severely punished for going wrong, and the seducer was exposed to the revenge of her family, or had to pay compensation for hist deed.1 The yet un-Romanised Saxons, down to the days of St. Boniface, compelled a maiden who had dishonoured her father's house, as well as an adulteress, to hang herself, after which her body was burned and her paramour hung over the blazing pile; or she was scourged or cut with knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.2 In Greece the chastity of an unmarried girl was anxiously guarded. According to Athenian law, the relatives of a maiden who had lost her virtue could with impunity kill the seducer on the spot. Virginity was an object of worship. Chastity was the pre-eminent attribute of sanctity ascribed to Athene and Artemis, and the Parthenon, or virgin's temple, was the noblest religious edifice of Athens. It is true that a certain class of courtesans occupied a remarkably high position in the social life of Greece, being admired and sought after even by the principal men. But they did so on account of their extraordinary beauty or their intellectual superiority; to the Greek mind the moral standard was by no means the only standard of excellence. The Romans, on the other hand, regarded the courtesan class with much contempt." In A.D. 19 the profligacy of women was checkedby stringent enactments, and it was provided that no woman whose grandfather, father, or husband had been a Roman knight should get money by prostitution. The names of prostitutes had to be published on the aedile's list, as Tacitus says, "according to a recognised custom 1 Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 659 sqq. Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 799 sqq. Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhalls-forfattningens historia, ii. 67. Maurer, Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes, ii. 154. 2 Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 54. 3 See Denis, Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l'antiquité, i. 69 sq. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 193. 5 See Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 105. 6 Ibid. ii. 300. 7 Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85. 3 1 of our ancestors, who considered it a sufficient punishment on unchaste women to have to profess their shame." But both in Rome and Greece pre-nuptial unchastity in men, when it was not excessive or did not take some especially offensive form, was hardly censured by public opinion. The elder Cato expressly justified it.* Cicero says "If there be any one who thinks that youth is to be wholly interdicted from amours with courtesans, he certainly is very strict indeed. I cannot deny what he says; but still he is at variance not only with the licence of the present age, but even with the habits of our ancestors, and with what they used to consider allowable. For when was the time that men were not used to act in this manner? When was such conduct found fault with? When was it not permitted? When, in short, was the time when that which is lawful was not lawful?" Epictetus only went a little step further. He said to his disciples :-"Concerning sexual pleasures, it is right to be pure before marriage, as much as in you lies. But if you indulge in them, let it be according to what is lawful. But do not in any case make yourself disagreeable to those who use such pleasures, nor be fond of reproving them, nor of putting yourself forward as not using them."" Here chastity in men is at all events recognised as an ideal. But even in pagan antiquity there were a few who enjoined it as a duty." Musonius Rufus emphatically asserted that no union of the sexes other than marriage was permissible, and Dio Chrysostom desired prostitution to be suppressed by law. Similar opinions grew up in connection with the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean philosophies, and may be traced back to the ancient masters themselves. We are told that Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of 1 Tacitus, Annales, ii. 85. 2 Valerius Maximus (Facta dictaque memorabilia, ii. 5. 6) praises "frugalitas" as "immoderato Veneris usu aversa." 3 Lecky, op. cit. ii. 314. Horace, Satire, i. 2. 31 sq. 5 Cicero, Pro Calio, 20 (48). 6 Epictetus, Enchiridion, xxxiii. 8. 7 Denis, op. cit. ii. 133 sqq. 8 Musonius Rufus, quoted by Stobæus, Florilegium, vi. 61. 9 Denis, op. cit. ii. 149 sqq. chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a beanfield, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans, which were supposed to have a mystic affinity with the seat of impure desires.1 Plato, again, is in favour of a law to the effect that "no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts." Our citizens, he says, ought not to be worse than birds and beasts, which live without intercourse, pure and chaste, until the age for procreation, and afterwards, when they have arrived at that period and the male has paired with the female and the female with the male, "live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact. 2 Much stronger was the censure which Christianity passed on pre-nuptial connections. While looking with suspicion even on the life-long union of one man with one woman, the Church pronounced all other forms of sexual intercourse to be mortal sins. In its Penitentials sins of unchastity were the favourite topic; and its horror of them finds an echo in the secular legislation of the first Christian emperors. Panders were condemned to have molten lead poured down their throats. In the case of forcible seduction both the man and woman, if she consented to the act, were put to death.* Even the innocent offspring of illicit intercourse were punished for their parents' sins with ignominy and loss of certain rights which belonged to other, more respectable, members of the Church and the State. Persons of different sex 1 Jamblichus, De Pythagorica vita, Codex Theodosianus, ix. 24. I. 1095, can. II (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, xx. 817):—“ Ut nulli filii concubinarum ad ordines vel aliquos honores ecclesiasticos promoveantur, nisi monchaliter vel canonice vixerint in ecclesia." See also supra, i. 47. who were not united in wedlock were forbidden by the Church to kiss each other; nay, the sexual desire itself, though unaccompanied by any external act, was regarded as sinful in the unmarried. In this standard of purity no difference of sex was recognised, the same obligations being imposed upon man and woman. 2 In this, as in so many other points of morals, however, there is a considerable discrepancy between Christian doctrine and public opinion in Christian countries. The gross and open immorality of the Middle Ages indicates how little the idea of sexual purity entered into the manners and opinions of the people. The influence of the ascetic doctrine of the Church was in fact quite contrary to its aspirations. The institution of clerical celibacy lowered the estimation of virtue by promoting vice. During the Middle Ages unchastity was regarded as an object of ridicule rather than censure, and in the comic literature of that period the clergy are universally represented as the great corrupters of domestic virtue. Whether the tenet of chastity laid down by the code of Chivalry was taken more seriously may be fairly doubted. A knight, it was said, should be abstinent and chaste; he should love only the virtues, talents, and graces of his lady; and love was defined as the "chaste union of two hearts by virtue wrought." " But whilst the knight had certain claims as regards the virtue of his lady, whilst he probably was inclined to draw his sword only for a woman of fair reputation, and whilst he himself professed to aspire only to her lip or hand, we have reason to believe that the amours in which he indulged with her were of a far less delicate kind. Sainte-Palaye observes, "Jamais 1 "Perit ergo et ipsa mente virginitas." Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, p. 114 sq. For the subject of kissing see also Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii. -ii. 154. 4. 2 Laurent, Etudes sur l'histoire de l'Humanité, iv. 114. 6 3 Wright, Essays on Archeological Subjects, ii. 238. Cf. idem, History of |
