Part 18

What a strangely apt picture in a few words (if we like to take it so) of the long pilgrimage of the Human Race, its early and pathetic clinging to the tradition of the Eden-garden, its careless and vigorous boyhood, its meditative youth, with consciousness of sin and endless expiatory ritual in Nature's bosom, its fleeting visions of salvation, and finally its complete disillusionment and despair in the world-slaughter and unbelief of the twentieth century!

Leaving Wordsworth, however, and coming back to our main line of thought, we may point out that while early peoples were intellectually mere babies--with their endless yarns about heroes on horseback leaping over wide rivers or clouds of monks flying for hundreds of miles through the air, and their utter failure to understand the general concatenations of cause and effect--yet practically and in their instinct of life and destiny they were, as I have already said, by no means fools; certainly not such fools as many of the arm-chair students of these things delight to represent them. For just as, a few years ago, we modern civilizees studying outlying nations, the Chinese for instance, rejoiced (in our vanity) to pick out every quaint peculiarity and absurdity and monstrosity of a supposed topsyturvydom, and failed entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still are, far too prone to catalogue their cruelties and obscenities and idiotic superstitions, and to miss the sane and balanced setting of their actual lives.

Mr. R. R. Marett, who has a good practical acquaintance with his subject, had in the Hibbert Journal for October 1918 an article on "The Primitive Medicine Man" in which he shows that the latter is as a rule anything but a fool and a knave--although like 'medicals' in all ages he hocuspocuses his patients occasionally! He instances the medicine-man's excellent management, in most cases, of childbirth, or of wounds and fractures, or his primeval skill in trepanning or trephining--all of which operations, he admits, may be accompanied with grotesque and superstitious ceremonies, yet show real perception and ability. We all know--though I think the article does not mention the matter--what a considerable list there is of drugs and herbs which the modern art of healing owes to the ancient medicine-man, and it may be again mentioned that one of the most up-to-date treatments--the use of a prolonged and exclusive diet of MILK as a means of giving the organism a new start in severe cases--has really come down to us through the ages from this early source. (1) The real medicine-man, Mr. Marett says, is largely a 'faith-healer' and 'soul-doctor'; he believes in his vocation, and undergoes much for the sake of it: "The main point is to grasp that by his special initiation and the rigid taboos which he practises--not to speak of occasional remarkable gifts, say of trance and ecstasy, which he may inherit by nature and have improved by art--he HAS access to a wonder-working power.... And the great need of primitive folk is for this healer of souls." Our author further insists on the enormous play and influence of Fear in the savage mind--a point we have touched on already--and gives instances of Thanatomania, or cases where, after a quite slight and superficial wound, the patient becomes so depressed that he, quite needlessly, persists in dying! Such cases, obviously, can only be countered by Faith, or something (whatever it may be) which restores courage, hope and energy to the mind. Nor need I point out that the situation is exactly the same among a vast number of 'patients' to-day. As to the value, in his degree, of the medicine-man many modern observers and students quite agree with the above. (2) Also as the present chapter is on Ritual Dancing it may not be out of place to call attention to the supposed healing of sick people in Ceylon and other places by Devil-dancing--the enormous output of energy and noise in the ritual possibly having the effect of reanimating the patient (if it does not kill him), or of expelling the disease from his organism.

(1) Milk ("fast-milk" or vrata) was, says Mr. Hewitt, the only diet in the Soma-sacrifice. See Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times (preface). The Soma itself was a fermented drink prepared with ceremony from the milky and semen-like sap of certain plants, and much used in sacrificial offerings. (See Monier-Williams. Sanskrit Dictionary.)

(2) See Winwood Reade (Savage Africa), Salamon Reinach (Cults, Myths and Religions), and others.

With regard to the practical intelligence of primitive peoples, derived from their close contact with life and nature, Bishop Colenso's experiences among the Zulus may appropriately be remembered. When expounding the Bible to these supposedly backward 'niggers' he was met at all points by practical interrogations and arguments which he was perfectly unable to answer--especially over the recorded passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites in a single night. From the statistics given in the Sacred Book these naughty savages proved to him absolutely conclusively that the numbers of fugitives were such that even supposing them to have marched--men, women and children--FIVE ABREAST and in close order, they would have formed a column 100 miles long, and this not including the baggage, sheep and cattle! Of course the feat was absolutely impossible. They could not have passed the Red Sea in a night or a week of nights.

But the sequel is still more amusing and instructive. Colenso, in his innocent sincerity, took the side of the Zulus, and feeling sure the Church at home would be quite glad to have its views with regard to the accuracy of Bible statistics corrected, wrote a book embodying the amendments needed. Modest as his criticisms were, they raised a STORM of protest and angry denunciation, which even led to his deposition for the time being from his bishopric! While at the same time an avalanche of books to oppose his heresy poured forth from the press. Lately I had the curiosity to look through the British Museum catalogue and found that in refutation of Colenso's Pentateuch Examined some 140 (a hundred and forty) volumes were at that time published! To-day, I need hardly say, all these arm-chair critics and their works have sunk into utter obscurity, but the arguments of the Zulus and their Bishop still stand unmoved and immovable.

This is a case of searching intelligence shown by 'savages,' an intelligence founded on intimate knowledge of the needs of actual life. I think we may say that a similarly instinctive intelligence (sub-conscious if you like) has guided the tribes of men on the whole in their long passage through the Red Sea of the centuries, from those first days of which I speak even down to the present age, and has in some strange, even if fitful, way kept them along the path of that final emancipation towards which Humanity is inevitably moving.

XII. THE SEX-TABOO

In the course of the last few chapters I have spoken more than once of the solidarity and continuity of Christianity, in its essential doctrines, with the Pagan rites. There is, however, one notable exception to this statement. I refer of course to Christianity's treatment of Sex. It is certainly very remarkable that while the Pagan cults generally made a great deal of all sorts of sex-rites, laid much stress upon them, and introduced them in what we consider an unblushing and shameless way into the instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,' on the whole took quite the opposite line--ignored sex, condemned it, and did much despite to the perfectly natural instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,' because there is nothing to show that Jesus himself (if we admit his figure as historical) adopted any such extreme or doctrinaire attitude; and the quite early Christian teachers (with the chief exception of Paul) do not exhibit this bias to any great degree. In fact, as is well known, strong currents of pagan usage and belief ran through the Christian assemblies of the first three or four centuries. "The Christian art of this period remained delightfully pagan. In the catacombs we see the Saviour as a beardless youth, like a young Greek god; sometimes represented, like Hermes the guardian of the flocks, bearing a ram or lamb round his neck; sometimes as Orpheus tuning his lute among the wild animals." (1) The followers of Jesus were at times even accused--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--of celebrating sexual mysteries at their love-feasts. But as the Church through the centuries grew in power and scope--with its monks and their mutilations and asceticisms, and its celibate clergy, and its absolute refusal to recognize the sexual meaning of its own acclaimed symbols (like the Cross, the three fingers of Benediction, the Fleur de Lys and so forth)--it more and more consistently defined itself as anti-sexual in its outlook, and stood out in that way in marked contrast to the earlier Nature-religions.

(1) Angels' Wings, by E. Carpenter, p. 104.

It may be said of course that this anti-sexual tendency can be traced in other of the pre-Christian Churches, especially the later ones, like the Buddhist, the Egyptian, and so forth; and this is perfectly true; but it would seem that in many ways the Christian Church marked the culmination of the tendency; and the fact that other cults participated in the taboo makes us all the more ready and anxious to inquire into its real cause.

To go into a disquisition on the Sex-rites of the various pre-Christian religions would be 'a large order'--larger than I could attempt to fill; but the general facts in this connection are fairly patent. We know, of course, from the Bible that the Syrians in Palestine were given to sexual worships. There were erect images (phallic) and "groves" (sexual symbols) on every high hill and under every green tree; (1) and these same images and the rites connected with them crept into the Jewish Temple and were popular enough to maintain their footing there for a long period from King Rehoboam onwards, notwithstanding the efforts of Josiah (2) and other reformers to extirpate them. Moreover there were girls and men (hierodouloi) regularly attached during this period to the Jewish Temple as to the heathen Temples, for the rendering of sexual services, which were recognized in many cases as part of the ritual. Women were persuaded that it was an honor and a privilege to be fertilized by a 'holy man' (a priest or other man connected with the rites), and children resulting from such unions were often called "Children of God"--an appellation which no doubt sometimes led to a legend of miraculous birth! Girls who took their place as hierodouloi in the Temple or Temple-precincts were expected to surrender themselves to men-worshipers in the Temple, much in the same way, probably, as Herodotus describes in the temple of the Babylonian Venus Mylitta, where every native woman, once in her life, was supposed to sit in the Temple and have intercourse with some stranger. (3) Indeed the Syrian and Jewish rites dated largely from Babylonia. "The Hebrews entering Syria," says Richard Burton (4) "found it religionized by Assyria and Babylonia, when the Accadian Ishtar had passed West, and had become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth, or Ashirah, the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician Astarte, and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess who is queen of Heaven and Love." The word translated "grove" as above, in our Bible, is in fact Asherah, which connects it pretty clearly with the Babylonian Queen of Heaven.

(1) 1 Kings xiv. 22-24.

(2) 2 Kings xxiii.

(3) See Herodotus i. 199; also a reference to this custom in the apocryphal Baruch, vi. 42, 43.

(4) The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886 edn.), vol. x, p. 229.

In India again, in connection with the Hindu Temples and their rites, we have exactly the same institution of girls attached to the Temple service--the Nautch-girls--whose functions in past times were certainly sexual, and whose dances in honor of the god are, even down to the present day, decidedly amatory in character. Then we have the very numerous lingams (conventional representations of the male organ) to be seen, scores and scores of them, in the arcades and cloisters of the Hindu Temples--to which women of all classes, especially those who wish to become mothers, resort, anointing them copiously with oil, and signalizing their respect and devotion to them in a very practical way. As to the lingam as representing the male organ, in some form or other--as upright stone or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower--it occurs all over the world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a memorial of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem and instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken. The pillars set up by Solomon in front of his temple were obviously from their names--Jachin and Boaz (1)--meant to be emblems of this kind; and the fact that they were crowned with pomegranates--the universally accepted symbol of the female--confirms and clinches this interpretation. The obelisks before the Egyptians' temples were signs of the same character. The well-known T-shaped cross was in use in pagan lands long before Christianity, as a representation of the male member, and also at the same time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna or whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same symbol combined with the oval (or yoni) formed THE Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian ritual--a figure which is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and confessedly indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one design. (2) MacLennan in The Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869) quotes with approval the words of Sanchoniathon, as saying that "men first worship plants, next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals, then 'pillars' (emblems of the Procreator), and last, the anthropomorphic gods."

(1) "He shall establish" and "In it is strength" are in the Bible the marginal interpretations of these two words.

(2) The connection between the production of fire by means of the fire-drill and the generation of life by sex-intercourse is a very obvious one, and lends itself to magical ideas. J. E. Hewitt in his Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times (1894) says (vol. i, p. 8) that "Magha, the mother-goddess worshipped in Asia Minor, was originally the socket-block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill." Hence we have, he says, the Magi of Persia, and the Maghadas of Indian History, also the word "Magic."

It is not necessary to enlarge on this subject. The facts of the connection of sexual rites with religious services nearly everywhere in the early world are, as I say, sufficiently patent to every inquirer. But it IS necessary to try to understand the rationale of this connection. To dispatch all such cases under the mere term "religious prostitution" is no explanation. The term suggests, of course, that the plea of religion was used simply as an excuse and a cover for sexual familiarities; but though this kind of explanation commends itself, no doubt, to the modern man--whose religion is as commercial as his sex-relationships are--and though in CASES no doubt it was a true explanation--yet it is obvious that among people who took religion seriously, as a matter of life and death and who did not need hypocritical excuses or covers for sex-relationships, it cannot be accepted as in general the RIGHT explanation. No, the real explanation is--and I will return to this presently--that sexual relationships are so deep and intimate a part of human nature that from the first it has been simply impossible to keep them OUT of religion--it being of course the object of religion to bring the whole human being into some intelligible relation with the physical, moral, and if you like supernatural order of the great world around him. Sex was felt from the first to be part, and a foundational part, of the great order of the world and of human nature; and therefore to separate it from Religion was unthinkable and a kind of contradiction in terms. (1)

(1) For further development of this subject see ch. xv.

If that is true--it will be asked--how was it that that divorce DID take place--that the taboo did arise? How was it that the Jews, under the influence of Josiah and the Hebrew prophets, turned their faces away from sex and strenuously opposed the Syrian cults? How was it that this reaction extended into Christianity and became even more definite in the Christian Church--that monks went by thousands into the deserts of the Thebaid, and that the early Fathers and Christian apologists could not find terms foul enough to hurl at Woman as the symbol (to them) of nothing but sex-corruption and delusion? How was it that this contempt of the body and degradation of sex-things went on far into the Middle Ages of Europe, and ultimately created an organized system of hypocrisy, and concealment and suppression of sex-instincts, which, acting as cover to a vile commercial Prostitution and as a breeding ground for horrible Disease, has lasted on even to the edge of the present day?

This is a fair question, and one which demands an answer. There must have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for this remarkable reaction and volte-face which has characterized Christianity, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, other both earlier and later cults like those of the Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, (1) and so forth.

(1) For the Aztecs, see Acosta, vol. ii, p. 324 (London, 1604).

It may be said--and this is a fair answer on the SURFACE of the problem--that the main reason WAS something in the nature of a reaction. The excesses and corruptions of sex in Syria had evidently become pretty bad, and that very fact may have led to a pendulum-swing of the Jewish Church in the opposite direction; and again in the same way the general laxity of morals in the decay of the Roman empire may have confirmed the Church of early Christendom in its determination to keep along the great high road of asceticism. The Christian followed on the Jewish and Egyptian Churches, and in this way a great tradition of sexual continence and anti-pagan morality came right down the centuries even into modern times.

This seems so far a reasonable theory; but I think we shall go farther and get nearer the heart of the problem if we revert to the general clue which I have followed already more than once--the clue of the necessary evolution of human Consciousnss. In the first or animal stage of human evolution, Sex was (as among the animals) a perfectly necessary, instinctive and unself-conscious activity. It was harmonious with itself, natural, and unproductive of evil. But when the second stage set in, in which man became preponderantly self-conscious, he inevitably set about deflecting sex-activities to his own private pleasure and advantage; he employed his budding intellect in scheming the derailment of passion and desire from tribal needs and Nature's uses to the poor details of his own gratification. If the first stage of harmonious sex-instinct and activity may be held as characteristic of the Golden Age, the second stage must be taken to represent the Fall of man and his expulsion from Paradise in the Garden of Eden story. The pleasure and glory of Sex having been turned to self-purposes, Sex itself became the great Sin. A sense of guilt overspread man's thoughts on the subject. "He knew that he was naked," and he fled from the voice and face of the Lord. From that moment one of the main objects of his life (in its inner and newer activities) came to be the denial of Sex. Sex was conceived of as the great Antagonist, the old Serpent lying ever in wait to betray him; and there arrived a moment in the history of every race, and of every representative religion, when the sexual rites and ceremonies of the older time lost their naive and quasi-innocent character and became afflicted with a sense of guilt and indecency. This extraordinarily interesting and dramatic moment in human evolution was of course that in which self-consciousness grew powerful enough to penetrate to the centre of human vitality, the sanctum of man's inner life, his sexual instinct, and to deal it a terrific blow--a blow from which it has never yet recovered, and from which indeed it will not recover, until the very nature of man's inner life is changed.

It may be said that it was very foolish of Man to deny and to try to expel a perfectly natural and sensible thing, a necessary and indispensable part of his own nature. And that, as far as I can see, is perfectly true. But sometimes it is unavoidable, it would seem, to do foolish things--if only to convince oneself of one's own foolishness. On the other hand, this policy on the part of Man was certainly very wise--wiser than he knew--for in attempting to drive out Sex (which of course he could not do) he entered into a conflict which was bound to end in the expulsion of SOMETHING; and that something was the domination, within himself, of self-consciousness, the very thing which makes and ever has made sex detestable. Man did not succeed in driving the snake out of the Garden, but he drove himself out, taking the real old serpent of self-greed and self-gratification with him. When some day he returns to Paradise this latter will have died in his bosom and been cast away, but he will find the good Snake there as of old, full of healing and friendliness, among the branches of the Tree of Life.