4

3

The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter both of public and private importance. In various places criminal proceedings might be taken against celibates. Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity; and Isaeus says, "All those who think their end approaching look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs." So also the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children constituted a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep hold of the Roman mind in early times. Cicero's treatise De Legibus'which generally reproduces in a philosophical form the ancient laws of Rome-contains a law according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men. But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy-as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520 B.C.-naturally increased in proportion, especially among the upper classes. Among these marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon ;7 and later the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age, though with little or no result."

Celibacy is thus disapproved of for various reasons. It

1 Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, ii. 300 sq. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55. Hearn, op. cit. p. 72. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234 sq.

2 Pollux, Onomasticum, iii. 48. 3 Plato, Leges, vi. 773.

4 Isaeus, Oratio de Apollodori hereditate, 30, p. 66. Rohde observes (Psyche, 228), however, that such a belief did not exist in the Homeric age, when the departed souls in Hades

were supposed to be in no way dependent upon the survivors.

5 Mommsen, History of Rome, i. 74:

6 Cicero, De legibus, iii. 3. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55.

7 Mommsen, op. cit. iii. 121; iv.

186 sq.

8 Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 418. 9 Mackenzie, Studies in Roman Law, p. 104.

appears unnatural. It is taken as an indication of licentious habits. Where ancestors are worshipped after their death it inspires religious horror: the man who leaves himself without offspring shows reckless indifference to the religion of his people, to his own fate after death, and to the duties he owes the dead, whose spirits depend upon the offerings of their descendants for their comfort. The last point of view, as we have seen, is particularly prominent among peoples of archaic culture, but it is not unknown at a lower stage of civilisation. Thus the Eskimo about Behring Strait "appear to have great dread of dying without being assured that their shades will be remembered during the festivals, fearing if neglected that they would thereby suffer destitution in the future life"; hence a pair of childless Eskimo frequently adopt a child, so that when they die there will be some one left whose duty it will be to make the customary feast and offerings to their shades at the festival of the dead.' Finally, in communities with a keen public spirit, especially in ambitious states frequently engaged in war, celibacy is regarded as a wrong committed against the State.

Modern civilisation looks upon celibacy in a different light. The religious motive for marriage has ceased to exist, the lot of the dead being no longer supposed to depend upon the devotion of the living. It is said, in a general way, that marriage is a duty to the nation or the race, but this argument is hardly applied to individual cases. According to modern ideas the union between man and woman is too much a matter of sentiment to be properly classified among civic duties. Nor does the unmarried state strike us as particularly unnatural. The proportion of unmarried people is gradually growing larger and the age at which people marry is rising. The chief causes of this increasing celibacy are the difficulty of supporting a family under present conditions of life, and the luxurious habits of

1 Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn.

xviii. 290.

2 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 146

living in the upper classes of society. Another reason is that the domestic circle does not fill so large a place in life as it did formerly; the married state has in some measure lost its advantage over the single state, and there are many more pleasures now that can be enjoyed as well or even better in celibacy. Moreover, by the diffusion of a finer culture throughout the community, men and women can less easily find any one whom they are willing to take as a partner for life; their requirements are more exacting, they have a livelier sense of the serious character of the marriage union, and they are less willing to contract it from any lower motives.1

Nay, far from enjoining marriage as a duty incumbent upon all, enlightened opinion seems to agree that it is a duty for many people never to marry. In some European countries the marriages of persons in receipt of poor-law relief have been legally prohibited, and in certain cases the legislators have gone further still and prohibited all marriages until the contracting parties can prove that they possess the means of supporting a family. The opinion has also been expressed that the State ought to forbid the unions of persons suffering from certain kinds of disease, which in all probability would be transmitted to the offspring. People are beginning to feel that it entails a heavy responsibility to bring a new being into existence, and that many persons are wholly unfit for such a task. Future generations will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust.

Side by side with the opinion that marriage is a duty for all ordinary men and women we find among many peoples

1 Ibid. p. 147 sqq. Why is Single Life becoming more General?' in The Nation, vi. 190 sq.

Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, ii. 181.

* See Mr. Galton's papers on "Eugenics" and the discussions of the subject in Sociological Papers, vols. i. and ii.

the notion that persons whose function it is to perform religious or magical rites must be celibates.1 The Thlinkets believe that if a shaman does not observe continuous chastity his own guardian spirits will kill him.2 In Patagonia the male wizards were not allowed to marry.3 In some tribes of the Guaranies of Paraguay "the female Payes were bound to chastity, or they no longer obtained credit." Celibacy was compulsory on the priests of the Chibchas in Bogota." The Tohil priests in Guatemala were vowed to perpetual continence. In Ichcatlan the high-priest was obliged to live constantly within the temple, and to abstain from commerce with any woman whatsoever; and if he failed in this duty he was cut in pieces, and the bloody limbs were given as a warning to his successor. Of the women who held positions in the temples of ancient Mexico we are told that their chastity was most zealously guarded; during the performance of their duties they were required to keep at a proper distance from the male assistants, at whom they did not even dare to glance. The punishment to be inflicted upon those who violated their vow of chastity was death; whilst, if their trespass remained entirely secret, they endeavoured to appease the anger of the gods by fasting and austerity of life, dreading that in punishment of their crime their flesh would rot. In Yucatan there was, connected with the worship of the sun, an order of vestals the members of which generally enrolled themselves for a certain time, but were afterwards allowed to leave and enter the married state. Some of them, however, remained for ever in the service of the temple and were apotheosised. Their duty was to attend to the sacred fire, and to keep strictly chaste, those who broke

1 Some instances of this are stated by Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, p. 156 sq.

2 Veniaminof, quoted by Landtman, op. cit. p. 156.

3 Falkner, Description of Patagonia, p. 117.

4 Southey, History of Brazil, ii. 371.

5 Simon, quoted by Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 384. 6 Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 489.

7 Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 274.

8

8 Ibid. i. 275 sq. Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, ii. 188 sqq. Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 435 sq. Cf. Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. 333 sq.

In Peru

their vows being shot to death with arrows.1 there were likewise virgins dedicated to the sun, who lived in perpetual seclusion to the end of their lives, who preserved their virginity, and were forbidden to converse or have sexual intercourse with or to see any man, or even any woman who was not one of themselves.2 And besides the virgins who thus professed perpetual virginity in the monasteries, there were other women, of the blood royal, who led the same life in their own houses, having taken a vow of continence. These women" were held in great veneration for their chastity and purity, and, as a mark of worship and respect, they were called Ocllo, which was a name held sacred in their idolatry"; but if they lost their virtue, they were burnt alive or cast into "the lake of lions." 3

Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands there were virgins, called Magades or Harimagades, who presided over the cult under the direction of the high-priest, and there were other virgins, highly respected, whose function was to pour water over the heads of newborn children, and who could abandon their office and marry whenever they pleased. The priestesses of the Tshi- and Ewe-speaking peoples on the West Coast of Africa are forbidden to marry. In a wood near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives a priestly king who is allowed neither to leave his house nor to touch a woman."

In ancient Persia there were sun priestesses who were obliged to refrain from intercourse with men. The nine priestesses of the oracle of a Gallic deity in Sena were devoted to perpetual virginity. The Romans had their Vestal virgins, whose office, according to tradition, was instituted by Numa. They were compelled to continue 121. Idem, Ewe-speaking Peoples, p.

Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 473. Lopez Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, p. 198.

2 Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 291 sqq.

Ibid. i. 305.

Bory de St. Vincent, Essais sur les Isles Fortunées, p. 96 sq.

Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p.