CHAPTER XXXIX. Cleanliness and Uncleanliness--Asceticism in General

CLEANLINESS AND UNCLEANLINESS--ASCETICISM IN GENERAL

IT seems that man, like many other animals, is naturally endowed with a certain tendency to cleanliness or aversion to filth. Of Caspar Hauser--the boy who had been kept in a dungeon separated from all communication with the world from early childhood to about the age of seventeen--Feuerbach tells us that "uncleanliness, or whatever he considered as such, whether in his own person or in others, was an abomination to him." And the savage boy of Aveyron, though filthy at first, soon became so scrupulously clean in his habits that "he constantly threw away, in a pet, the contents of his plate, if any particle of dirt or dust had fallen upon it; and, after he had broken his walnuts under his feet, he took pains to clean them in the nicest and most delicate manner."

Many savages are praised for their cleanliness. The Veddahs of Ceylon wash their bodies every few days, as opportunity occurs. Among the South Sea Islanders {347} bathing is a very common practice; the Tahitians bathe in fresh water once or twice a day, and the natives of Ni-afu, in the Tonga Islands, are said to spend half their life in the water. So, also, many Indian tribes both in North, Central, and South America are very fond of bathing. The Omahas generally bathe every day in warm weather, early in the morning and at night, and some of them also at noon. Among the Guiana Indians it is a custom for men and women to troop down together to the nearest water early in the morning and many times during the day. The Tehuelches of Patagonia not only make morning ablutions and, when encamped near a river, enjoy bathing for hours, but are also scrupulously careful as to the cleanliness of their houses and utensils, and will, if they can obtain soap, wash up everything they may be possessed of. The Moquis and Pueblos of New Mexico are remarkable both for their personal cleanliness and the neatness of their dwellings. Cleanliness is a common characteristic of many natives of Africa. The Negroes of the Gold Coast wash their whole persons once, if not oftener, during the day. The Megé, a people subject to the Monbuttu, wash two or three times a day, and when engaged in work constantly adjourn to a neighbouring stream to cleanse themselves. The Marutse-Mabundas, rather than lose their bath, are always ready {348} to run the risk of being snapped up by crocodiles, and they are in the habit of keeping their materials in well-washed wooden or earthenware bowls or in suitable baskets or calabashes. The cleanliness of the Dinka in every thing that concerns the preparation of food is said to be absolutely exemplary. Among the Bari tribes the dwellings "are the perfection of cleanliness." So also the Bachapins, a Bechuana tribe, are remarkable for the cleanliness of their dwellings, showing the greatest carefulness to remove all rubbish and everything unsightly; but at the same time they are lacking in personal cleanliness.

We commonly find that savages who are clean in certain respects are dirty in others. The Wanyoro bathe frequently and always wash their hands before and after eating, but their dwellings are very filthy and swarm with vermin. The Nagas of India and the natives of the interior of Sumatra, though cleanly in their persons, are very dirty in their apparel. The Mayas of Central America make frequent use of cold water, but neither in their persons nor in their dwellings do they present an appearance of cleanliness. So also the Californian Indians, whilst exceedingly fond of bathing, are unclean about their lodges and clothing. The Aleuts, though they wash daily, allow dirt to be piled up close to their dwellings, prepare their food very carelessly, and never wash their household utensils. The New Zealander, again, whilst not over-clean in his person, is very particular respecting his food and also keeps his dwelling in as much order as possible. On the other hand there are very many uncivilised peoples who are described as generally filthy in their habits--for instance, the Fuegians, many {349} Indian tribes in the Pacific States, several Eskimo tribes, various Siberian peoples, the Ainu of Japan, most hill tribes in India, many Australian tribes, the Bushmans, and, generally, the dwarf races of Africa. But although these peoples never or hardly ever wash their bodies, or do not change their dress until it is worn to pieces, or eat out of the same vessels as their dogs without cleaning them, or feed on disgusting substances, or regard vermin as a delicacy--we may assume that their toleration of filth is not absolutely boundless.

The prevalence of cleanly or dirty habits among a certain people may depend on a variety of circumstances: the occupations of life, sufficiency or want of water, climatic conditions, industry or laziness, wealth or poverty, religious or superstitious beliefs. Castrén observes that filthiness is a characteristic of fishing peoples; among the Ostyaks only those who live by fishing are conspicuous for their uncleanliness, whereas the nomads and owners of {350} reindeer are not. It has been observed that the inland negro is clean when he dwells in the neighbourhood of rivers. In West Australia those tribes only which live by large rivers or near the sea are said to have an idea of cleanliness. Concerning the filthy habits of the Kukis and other hill peoples in India, Major Butler remarks that they may probably be accounted for by the scarcity of water in the neighbourhood of the villages, as also by the coldness of the climate. Dr. Kane believes that the indifference of many Eskimo to dirt or filth is largely due to the extreme cold, which by rapid freezing resists putrefaction and thus prevents the household, with its numerous dogs, from being intolerable. Their well-known habit of washing themselves with freshly passed urine arises partly from scarcity of water and the difficulty of heating it, but partly also from the fact that the ammonia of the urine is an excellent substitute for soap in removing the grease with which the skin necessarily becomes soiled. A cold climate, moreover, leads to uncleanliness because it makes garments necessary; and among some savages the practice of greasing their bodies to protect the skin from the effects of a parching air produces a similar result. Lord Kames maintains that the greatest promoter of cleanliness is industry, whereas its greatest antagonist is indolence. In Holland, he observes, the people were cleaner than all their neighbours because they were more industrious, at a time when in England industry was as great a stranger as cleanliness. Kolben says that the general laziness of the Hottentots accounts for the fact that "they are in the matter of diet {351} the filthiest people in the world." Of the Siberian Burats Georgi writes that "from their laziness they are as dirty as swine"; and the Kamchadales are described as a "dirty, lazy race." Poverty, also, is for obvious reasons a cause of uncleanliness; "a starving vulture neglects to polish his feathers, and a famished dog has a ragged coat." Very commonly cleanliness is a class distinction. Thus among the Point Barrow Eskimo the poorer people are often careless about their clothes and persons, whereas most of the wealthier individuals appear to take pride in being well clad, and, except when actually engaged in some dirty work, always have their faces and hands scrupulously clean and their hair neatly combed. Dr. Schweinfurth maintains that domestic cleanliness and care in the preparation of food are everywhere signs of a higher grade of external culture and answer to a certain degree of intellectual superiority. But already Lord Kames pointed out the fact indicated above, that "cleanness is remarkable in several nations which have made little progress in the arts of life."

The factors which determine the cleanliness of a people also naturally influence the moral valuation of it. Aversion to dirt not only leads to cleanly habits, but makes a filthy person an object of disgust and disapprobation; indeed, this aversion is generally stronger with reference to other individuals than with reference to one's own person. But where for some reason or other dirtiness becomes habitual, it at the same time ceases to be disgusting; and it is often astonishing how soon {352} people get used to filthy surroundings. Thus, when cleanliness is insisted upon it is so in the first instance because dirt is directly disagreeable to other persons, and when uncleanness is tolerated it is so because it gives no offence to the senses of the public. But at the higher stages of civilisation, at least, cleanliness is besides inculcated on hygienic grounds.

In many cases cleanliness, either temporary or habitual, is also practised and enjoined from religious or superstitious motives. A Lappish noaide, or wizard, had to wash all his body before he offered a sacrifice. The Siberian shamans have compulsory water purifications once a year, sometimes every month, as also on special occasions when they feel themselves defiled by contact with unclean things. The Shinto priests in Japan bathed and put on clean garments before making the sacred offerings or chanting the liturgies. Herodotus speaks of the cleanliness observed by the Egyptian priests when engaged in the service of the gods. As a preliminary to an act of worship the ancient Greeks washed their hands or bathed and put on clean clothes. One of the legal maxims of the Romans required that men should approach the deity in a state of purity. According to Zoroastrianism it is the great business of life to avoid impurity, and, when it is involuntarily contracted, to remove it in the correct manner as quickly as possible; and by impurity is then understood not an inward state of the soul, but mainly a physical state of the body, everything going out of the human body being considered polluting. For a Brahmin bathing is the chief part of the minute ceremonial of daily worship, whilst further washings and aspersions enter into more solemn religious acts; and not only Brahmins but most Hindus regard {353} it as a religious duty to bathe daily if this is at all convenient. Lamaism enjoins personal ablution as a sacerdotal rite preparatory to worship, though the ceremony seldom extends to more than dipping the tips of the fingers in water. Jewish Rabbis are compelled to wash their hands before they begin to pray. Tertullian mentions that a similar ablution was practised by the Christians before prayer. According to Islam, the clothes and person of the worshipper should be clean, and so also the ground, mat, carpet, or whatever else it be, upon which he prays; and every act of worship must be preceded by an ablution, though, where water cannot be got, sand may be used as a substitute. But a polluting influence is not ascribed to everything which we regard as dirt. For instance, Muhammedans consider the excrements of men and dogs defiling, but not the dung of cows and sheep; cow-dung is even used as a means of purification.

These practices and rules spring from the idea that the contact of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by injurious consequences--an idea which will be more fully discussed in connection with sexual abstinences. Such contact is supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its holiness, or otherwise be detrimental to it, and therefore to excite its anger against him who causes the defilement. So also a sacred act is believed to lose its sacredness by being performed by an unclean individual. Moreover, as a polluting substance is itself held to contain mysterious energy of a baneful kind, it is looked upon as a direct danger even to persons who are not engaged in religious worship. We have previously noticed the rites of purification which a manslayer has to undergo in order to get rid of the blood-pollution. We have also seen that ablutions and other purificatory ceremonies {354} are performed for the purpose of removing sins and misfortunes. And bathing or sprinkling with water is a common method of clearing mourners or persons who have come in contact with a corpse from the contagion of death.

But whilst religious or superstitious beliefs have thus led to ablutions and cleanliness, they have in other instances had the very opposite effect. Among Arabs young children are often left dirty and ill-dressed purposely, to preserve them from the evil eye. The Obbo natives in Central Africa declare that if they do not wash their hands with cow's urine before milking, the cow will lose her milk; and with the same fluid they wash the milk-bowl, and even mix some of it with the milk. The Jakuts "never wash any of their eating or drinking utensils; but, as soon as a dish is emptied, they clean it with the fore and middle finger; for they think it a great sin to wash away any part of their food, and apprehend that the consequence will be a scarcity." A similar custom prevails among the Kirghiz and Kalmucks. The latter "are forbidden by the laws of their faith" to wash their vessels in river-water, and therefore "do no more than wipe them with a piece of an old sheep-skin shube, which they use also for cleaning their hands upon when dirty." They, moreover, abstain from washing their {355} clothes; and so did the Huns and Mongols. The ancient Turks never washed themselves, because they believed that their gods punished ablutions with thunder and lightning; and the same belief still prevails among kindred peoples in Central Asia. Among the Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, a man may smear his body with butter or clay as often as he wishes, but "to wash with water is bad for him, and is a sure way of bringing sickness into his family and amongst his cattle." The dread of water may be due partly to ill effects experienced after using it, partly to superstition. The Moors dare not wash their bodies with cold water in the afternoon and evening after the [(]â[s.]ar, because all such water is then supposed to be haunted by jnûn, or evil spirits. In various religions the odour of sanctity is associated with filth. Muhammedan dervishes are recognised by their appearance of untidiness and uncleanness. Among the rules laid down for Buddhist monks there is one which prescribes that their dress shall be made of rags taken from a dust or refuse heap. In the early days of Christian monasticism "the cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul." The saints who were most admired were those who had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet. A famous virgin, though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. And St. Simeon Stylites, who was generally pronounced to be the highest model of a Christian saint, bound a rope round himself so that it became imbedded in his flesh and caused putrefaction; and it is said that "a horrible stench, intolerable {356} to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed." In mediæval Christianity abstinence from every species of cleanliness was also enjoined as a penance, the penitent being required to go with foul mouth, filthy hands and neck, undressed hair and beard, unpared nails, and clothes as dirty as his person. In these cases uncleanliness is a form of asceticism, a subject which we have already touched upon in dealing with industry and fasting, but the principles of which still call for our consideration.

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In various religions we meet with the idea that a person appeases or gives pleasure to the deity by subjecting himself to suffering or deprivation. This belief finds expression in all sorts of ascetic practices. We read of Christian ascetics who lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, or in dried-up wells, or in tombs; who disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like animals covered only by their matted hair; who ate nothing but corn which had become rotten by remaining for a month in water; who spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down. Hindu ascetics remain in immovable attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to heaven, until the sinews shrink and the posture assumed stiffens into rigidity; or they expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather in a state of absolute nudity, or tear their bodies with knives, or feed on carrion and excrement. Among the Muhammedans of India there are fakirs who have been seen dragging heavy chains or cannon balls, or crawling upon their hands and knees for years; others have been found lying upon iron spikes for a bed; and others, again, have been swinging for months before a slow fire with a {357} tropical sun blazing overhead. Among modern Jews some of the more sanctimonious members of the synagogue have been known to undergo the penance of voluntary flagellation before the commencement of the fast of atonement, two persons successively inflicting upon each other thirty-nine stripes or thirteen lashes with a triple scourge. According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, thirty strokes with the Sraoshô-karana is an expiation which purges people from their sins, and makes them fit for offering a sacrifice. Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians beat themselves while the things offered by them as sacrifices were being burned, and that the Carian dwellers in Egypt on such occasions cut their faces with knives. Among the ancient Mexicans blood-drawing was a favourite and most common mode of expiating sin and showing devotion. "It makes one shudder," says Clavigero, "to read the austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in atonement of their transgressions or in preparation for their festivals. They mangled their flesh as if it had been insensible, and let their blood run in such profusion, that it appeared to be a superfluous fluid of the body." Self-mortification also formed part of the religious cult in many uncivilised tribes in North America. "The Indian," Colonel Dodge observes, "believes, with many Christians, that self-torture is an act most acceptable to God, and the extent of pleasure that he can give his god is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he can bear without flinching."

The idea underlying religious asceticism has no doubt {358} been derived from several different sources. It should first be noticed that certain ascetic practices have originally been performed for another purpose, and only afterwards come to be regarded as means of propitiating or pleasing the deity through the suffering involved in them. This, as we have seen, is the case with certain fasts, and also with sexual asceticism. When an act is supposed to be connected with supernatural danger, the evil (real or imaginary) resulting from it is readily interpreted as a sign of divine anger and the act itself is regarded as being forbidden by a god. If then the abstinence from it implies suffering, as is in some degree the case with fasting and sexual continence, the conclusion is drawn that the god delights in such suffering. The same inference is, moreover, made from the fact that such abstinences are enjoined in connection with religious worship, though the primary motive for this injunction was fear of pollution. Beating or scourging, again, was in certain cases originally a mode of purification, intended to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion either personified as demoniacal or otherwise of a magical character. And although the pain inflicted on the person beaten was at first not the object of the act but only incidental to it, it became subsequently the chief purpose of the ceremony, which was now regarded as a mortification well pleasing to the god. This change of ideas seems likewise to be due both to the tendency of the supernatural contagion to develop into a divine punishment in case it is not removed by the painful rite, and also to the circumstance that purification is held to be a necessary accompaniment of acts of religious worship. The Egyptian sacrifice described by Herodotus was combined with purificatory fasting as well as beating. Among the Jews, before the commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, "some purify themselves by {359} ablutions." And that the original object of the scourging mentioned in the Yasts was to purify the worshipper is suggested by the fact that he on the same occasion had to wash his body three days and three nights. But it should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration; and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

An ascetic practice may also be the survival of an earlier sacrifice. We have seen that this is frequently the case with fasting and almsgiving, and the same may hold true of other forms of asceticism. The essence of the act then no longer lies in the benefit which the god derives from it, but in the self-denial or self-mortification which it costs the worshipper. In the sacred books of India "austerity" is mentioned as a means of expiation side by side with sacrifice, fasting, and giving gifts.

When an ascetic practice develops out of a previous custom of a different origin, it may be combined with an idea which by itself has been a frequent source of self-inflicted pain, to wit, the belief that such pain is an expiation for sin, that it may serve as a substitute for a punishment which would otherwise be inflicted by the offended god; and almost inseparably connected with this belief there may be that desire to suffer which is so often, vaguely or distinctly, involved in genuine repentance. The idea of expiation very largely underlies the penitential discipline of the Christian Church and the asceticism of its saints. From the days of Tertullian and Cyprian the Latins were familiar with the notion that the Christian has to propitiate God, that cries of pain, sufferings, and deprivations are means of appeasing his anger, that God takes strict account of the quantity of {360} the atonement, and that, where there is no guilt to have blotted out, those very means are regarded as merits. According to the doctrine of the Church, penance should in all grave cases be preceded by sorrow for the sin and also by confession, either public or private; repentance, as we have noticed above, is the only ground on which pardon can be given by a scrupulous judge. But the notion was only too often adopted that the penitential practice itself was a compensation for sin, that a man was at liberty to do whatever he pleased provided he was prepared to do penance afterwards, and that a person who, conscious of his frailty, had laid in a large stock of vicarious penance in anticipation of future necessity, had a right "to work it out," and spend it in sins. The idea that sins may be expiated by certain acts of self-mortification is familiar both to Muhammedans and Jews. According to Zoroastrian beliefs, it is possible to wipe out by peculiarly severe atonements not only the special sin on account of which the atonement is performed, but also other offences committed in former times or unconsciously. In the sacred books of the Hindus we meet with a strong conviction that pain suffered in this life will redeem the sufferer from punishment in a future existence. It is said that "men who have committed crimes and have been punished by the king go to heaven, being pure like those who performed meritorious deeds"; and the same idea is at the bottom of their penitential system. But in Brahmanism, as in Catholicism, the effect of ascetic practices is supposed to go beyond mere expiation. They are regarded as means of accumulating religious merit or attaining superhuman powers. Brahmanical poems tell of marvellous self-mortifications {361} 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. 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, 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.

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. 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."

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, {362} 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. 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." We read in the Hitopadesa, "Subjection to the senses has been called the road to ruin, and {363} their subjugation the path to fortune." 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." 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." 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." 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.