CHAPTER XLI. Celibacy

CELIBACY

AMONG savage and barbarous races of men nearly every individual endeavours to marry as soon as he, or she, reaches the age of puberty. Marriage seems to them indispensable, and a person who abstains from it is looked upon as an unnatural being and is disdained. Among the Santals a man who remains single "is at once despised by both sexes, and is classed next to a thief, or a witch: they term the unhappy wretch 'No man.'" Among the Kafirs a bachelor has no voice in the kraal. In the Tupi tribes of Brazil no man was suffered to partake in the drinking-feast while he remained single. The natives of Futuna in the Western Pacific maintained that it was necessary to be married in order to hold a part in the happy future life, and that the celibates, both men and women, had to submit to a chastisement of their own before entering the fale-mate, or "home of the dead." According to Fijian beliefs, he who died wifeless was stopped by the god Nangganangga on the road to Paradise, and smashed to atoms.

Among peoples of archaic culture celibacy is likewise a great exception and marriage regarded as a duty. In {400} ancient Peru marriage was compulsory at a certain age. Among the Aztecs no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, we are told, the unmarried state was so despised that a grown-up man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.

"Almost all Chinese," says Dr. Gray, "robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry as soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable." Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be compelled by his parents or guardians to marry at once. So indispensable is marriage considered by the Chinese, that even the dead are married, the spirits of all males who die in infancy or in boyhood being in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age. There is a maxim by Mencius, re-echoed by the whole nation, that it is a heavy sin to have no sons, as this would doom father, mother, and the whole ancestry in the Nether-world to a pitiable existence without descendants enough to serve them properly, to worship at the ancestral tombs, to take care of the ancestral tablets, and duly to perform all rites and ceremonies connected with the departed dead. For a man whose wife has reached her fortieth year without bringing him a son, it is an imperative duty to take a concubine. In Corea "the male human being who is unmarried is never called a man, whatever his age, but goes by the name of 'yatow,' a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls; and the man of thirteen or fourteen has a {401} perfect right to strike, abuse, order about the 'yatow' of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain."

Among the Semites, also, we meet with the idea that a dead man who has no children will miss something in Sh[)e]ol through not receiving that kind of worship which ancestors in early times appear to have received. The Hebrews looked upon marriage as a religious duty. According to the Shulchan Aruch, he who abstains from marrying is guilty of bloodshed, diminishes the image of God, and causes the divine presence to withdraw from Israel; hence a single man past twenty may be compelled by the court to take a wife. Muhammedanism likewise regards marriage as a duty for men and women; to neglect it without a sufficient excuse subjects a man to severe reproach. "When a servant [of God] marries," said the Prophet, "verily he perfects half his religion."

The so-called Aryan nations in ancient times, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: "an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death." A man's happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul. According to the 'Laws of Manu,' marriage is the twelfth Sansk[=a]ra, and as such a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among the Hindus of the present day a {402} man who is not married is generally considered to be almost a useless member of the community, and is indeed looked upon as beyond the pale of nature; and the spirits of young men who have died without becoming fathers are believed to wander about in a restless miserable manner, like people burdened with an enormous debt which they are quite unable to discharge. Similar views are expressed in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda said to Zoroaster:--"The man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man." The greatest misfortune which could befall an ancient Persian was to be childless. To him who has no child the bridge of Paradise shall be barred; the first question the angels there will ask him is, whether he has left in this world a substitute for himself, and if the answer be "No" they will pass by and he will stay at the head of the bridge, full of grief. The primitive meaning of this is plain: the man without a son cannot enter Paradise because there is nobody to pay him the family worship. Ashi Vanguhi, a feminine impersonification of piety, and the source of all the good and riches that are connected with piety, rejects the offerings of barren people--old men, courtesans, and children. It is said in the Yasts, "This is the worst deed that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing forth children." And in the eyes of all good Parsis of the present day, as in the time of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotus, the two greatest merits of a citizen are the begetting and rearing of a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.

{403} 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; 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 {404} 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 {405} habits of 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.

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.

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Side by side with the opinion that marriage is a duty for all ordinary men and women we find among many peoples {406} the notion that persons whose function it is to perform religious or magical rites must be celibates. The Thlinkets believe that if a shaman does not observe continuous chastity his own guardian spirits will kill him. In Patagonia the male wizards were not allowed to marry. 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, {407} those who broke their vows being shot to death with arrows. In Peru 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. 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."

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 E[(w]e-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 {408} unmarried during thirty years, which time they employed in offering sacrifices and performing other rites ordained by the law; and if they suffered themselves to be debauched they were delivered up to the most miserable death, being placed in a subterraneous cell, in their funeral attire, without any sepulchral column, funeral rites, or other customary solemnities. After the expiration of the term of thirty years they might marry on quitting the ensigns of their priesthood; but we are told that very few did this, as those who did suffered calamities which were regarded as ominous by the rest, and induced them to remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death. In Greece priestesses were not infrequently required to be virgins, if not for their whole life, at any rate for the duration of their priesthood. Tertullian writes:--"To the Achaean Juno, at the town Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the priestesses who rave at Delphi know not marriage. We know that widows minister to the African Ceres; they not only withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room, all contact with males, even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them. . . . We have heard, too, of continent men, and among others the priests of the famous Egyptian bull." There were eunuch priests connected with the cults of the Ephesian Artemis, the Phrygian Cybele, and the Syrian Astarte.

Among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills the "dairy man" or priest is bound to a celibate existence; and {409} among the Hindus, in spite of the great honour in which marriage is held, celibacy has always commanded respect in instances of extraordinary sanctity. Those of the Sanny[=a]sis who are known to lead their lives in perfect celibacy receive on that account marks of distinguished honour and respect. Already the time-honoured Indian institution of the four [=A]['s]ramas contained the germ of monastic celibacy, the Brahmac[=a]rin, or student, being obliged to observe absolute chastity during the whole course of his study. The idea was further developed in Jainism and Buddhism. The Jain monk was to renounce all sexual pleasures, "either with gods, or men, or animals"; not to give way to sensuality; not to discuss topics relating to women; not to contemplate the forms of women. Buddhism regards sensuality as altogether incompatible with wisdom and holiness; it is said that "a wise man should avoid married life as if it were a burning pit of live coals." According to the legend, Buddha's mother, who was the best and purest of the daughters of men, had no other sons, and her conception was due to supernatural causes. One of the fundamental duties of monastic life, by an infringement of which the guilty person brings about his inevitable expulsion from Buddha's order, is that "an ordained monk may not have sexual intercourse, not even with an animal." In Tibet some sects of the Lamas are allowed to marry, but those who do not are considered more holy; and in every sect the nuns must take a vow of absolute continence. The Buddhist priests of Ceylon are totally debarred from women. Chinese law enjoins celibacy on all priests, Buddhist or Taouist. And among the immortals of {410} Taouism there are some women also, who have led an extraordinarily ascetic life.

A small class of Hebrews held the idea that marriage is impure. The Essenes, says Josephus, "reject pleasure as an evil, but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock." This doctrine exercised no influence on Judaism, but probably much upon Christianity. St. Paul considered celibacy to be preferable to marriage. "He that giveth her (his virgin) in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better." "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband." If the unmarried and widows cannot contain let them marry, "for it is better to marry than to burn." These and other passages in the New Testament inspired a general enthusiasm for virginity. Commenting on the words of the Apostle, Tertullian points out that what is better is not necessarily good. It is better to lose one eye than two, but neither is good; so also, though it is better to marry than to burn, it is far better neither to marry nor to burn. Marriage "consists of that which is the essence of fornication"; whereas continence "is a means whereby a man will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity." The body which our Lord wore and in which He carried on the conflict of life in this world He put on from a holy virgin; and John the Baptist, Paul, and all the others "whose names are in the book of life" cherished and loved virginity. Virginity works miracles: Mary, the sister of Moses, leading the female band, passed on {411} foot over the straits of the sea, and by the same grace Thecla was reverenced even by lions, so that the unfed beasts, lying at the feet of their prey, underwent a holy fast, neither with wanton look nor sharp claw venturing to harm the virgin. Virginity is like a spring flower, always softly exhaling immortality from its white petals. The Lord himself opens the kingdoms of the heavens to eunuchs. If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and some harmless mode of vegetation would have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. It is true that, though virginity is the shortest way to the camp of the faithful, the way of matrimony also arrives there, by a longer circuit. Tertullian himself opposed the Marcionites, who prohibited marriage among themselves and compelled those who were married to separate before they were received by baptism into the community. And in the earlier part of the fourth century the Council of Gangra expressly condemned anyone who maintained that marriage prevented a Christian from entering the kingdom of God. But, at the end of the same century, a council also excommunicated the monk Jovinian because he denied that virginity was more meritorious than marriage. The use of marriage was permitted to man only as a necessary expedient for the continuance of the human species, and as a restraint, {412} however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire. The procreation of children is the measure of a Christian's indulgence in appetite, just as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it.

These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church; and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence of the higher ecclesiastics. The celibacy of the clergy in general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who "looked with abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection." But in many countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.

The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the husband of the virgins dedicated to him. They were obliged to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say, daughters of the Incas. "For though they imagined that the Sun had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards, with mixed divine and human blood. So the {413} virgins were of necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same as being of the family of the Sun." And the crime of violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the women of the Inca. Concerning the priestesses of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that the reason for their celibacy appears to be that "a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one." So also the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the women dedicated to a god as his wives. In the great temple of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land; and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with her. "This," Herodotus says, "is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of the Theban Jupiter. In each case the woman is said to be debarred all intercourse with men." In the Egyptian texts there are frequent references to "the divine consort," neter [h.]emt, a position which was generally occupied by the ruling queen, and the king was believed to be the offspring of such a union. As Plutarch states, the Egyptians thought it quite possible for a woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit, though they denied that a man could have corporeal intercourse with a goddess. Nor was the idea of a nuptial relation between a woman and the deity foreign to the early Christians. St. Cyprian speaks of women who had no husband and lord but Christ, with whom they lived in a spiritual matrimony--who had "dedicated themselves to Christ, and, retiring from carnal {414} lust, vowed themselves to God in flesh and spirit." In the following words he condemns the cohabitation of such virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely spiritual connection:--"If a husband come and see his wife lying with another man, is he not indignant and maddened, and does he not in the violence of his jealousy perhaps even seize the sword? What? How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be, when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to His holiness, lying with a man! and what punishments does He threaten against such impure connections. . . . She who has been guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but Christ." According to the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Virgin Mary had in a similar manner dedicated herself as a virgin to God. The idea that the deity is jealous of the chastity of his or her servants may also perhaps be at the bottom of the Greek custom according to which the hierophant and the other priests of Demeter were restrained from conjugal intercourse and washed their bodies with hemlock-juice in order to kill their passions, as also of the rule which required the priests of certain goddesses to be eunuchs.

Religious celibacy is further connected with the idea that sexual intercourse is defiling. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it is regarded as something unclean. The Tahitians believed that if a man refrained from all connections with women some months before death, he passed {415} immediately into his eternal mansion without any purification. Herodotus writes:--"As often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down before a censer of burning incense, and the woman sits opposite to him. At dawn of day they wash; for till they are washed they will not touch any of their common vessels. This practice is also observed by the Arabs." Among the Hebrews both the man and woman had to bathe themselves in water, and were "unclean until the even." The idea that sexual intercourse is unclean implies that some degree of supernatural danger is connected with it; and, as Mr. Crawley has pointed out, the notion of danger may develop into that of sinfulness. Where woman is regarded as an unclean being it is obvious that intercourse with her should be considered polluting, but this is not a sufficient explanation of the idea of sexual uncleanness. A polluting effect is ascribed to any discharge of sexual matter--originally no doubt on account of its mysterious propensities and the veil of mystery which surrounds the whole sexual nature of man.

The idea of sexual defilement is particularly conspicuous in connection with religious observances. It is a common rule that he who performs a sacred act or enters a holy place must be ceremonially clean, and no kind of uncleanness is to be avoided more carefully than sexual pollution. Among the Chippewyans, "if a chief is anxious to know the disposition of his people towards him, or if he wishes to settle any difference between them, he announces his intention of opening his medicine-bag and smoking in his {416} sacred stem. . . . No one can avoid attending on these occasions; but a person may attend and be excused from assisting at the ceremonies, by acknowledging that he has not undergone the necessary purification. The having cohabited with his wife, or any other woman, within twenty-four hours preceding the ceremony, renders him unclean, and, consequently, disqualifies him from performing any part of it." Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians, like the Greeks, "made it a point of religion to have no converse with women in the sacred places, and not to enter them without washing, after such converse." This statement is corroborated by a passage in the 'Book of the Dead.' In Greece and India those who took part in certain religious festivals were obliged to be continent for some time previously. Before entering the sanctuary of Mên Tyrannos, whose worship was extended over the whole of Asia Minor, the worshipper had to abstain from garlic, pork, and women, and had to wash his head. Among the Hebrews it was a duty incumbent upon all to be ritually clean before entering the temple--to be free from sexual defilement, leprosy, and the pollution produced by the association with corpses of human beings, of all animals not permitted for food, and of those permitted animals which had died a natural death or been killed by wild beasts; and eating of the consecrated bread was interdicted to persons who had not been continent for some time previously. A Muhammedan would remove any defiled garment before he commences his prayer, or otherwise abstain from praying altogether; he would not dare to approach the sanctuary of a saint in a state of sexual uncleanness; and sexual intercourse is forbidden for those who make the pilgrimage to Mecca. {417} The Christians prescribed strict continence as a preparation for baptism and the partaking of the Eucharist. They further enjoined that no married persons should participate in any of the great festivals of the Church if the night before they had lain together; and in the 'Vision' of Alberic, dating from the twelfth century, a special place of torture, consisting of a lake of mingled lead, pitch, and resin, is represented as existing in hell for the punishment of married people who have had intercourse on Sundays, church festivals, or fast-days. They abstained from the marriage-bed at other times also, when they were disposed more freely to give themselves to prayer. Newly married couples were admonished to practise continence during the wedding day and the night following, out of reverence for the sacrament; and in some instances their abstinence lasted even for two or three days.

Holiness is a delicate quality which is easily destroyed if anything polluting is brought into contact with the holy object or person. The Moors believe that if anybody who is sexually unclean enters a granary the grain will lose its baraka, or holiness. A similar idea probably underlies the belief prevalent among various peoples that incontinence, and especially illicit love, injures the harvest. In Efate, namim, or uncleanness, supposed to be contracted in various emergencies, was especially avoided {418} by the sacred men, because it was believed to destroy their sacredness. The priestly taboos, of which Sir J. G. Frazer has given such an exhaustive account in 'The Golden Bough,' have undoubtedly in a large measure a similar origin. Nay, it seems that pollution not only deprives the holy person of his holiness, but is also supposed to injure him in a more positive way. When the supreme pontiff in the kingdom of Congo left his residence to visit other places within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence the whole time he was out, as it was believed that any act of incontinence would prove fatal to him. In self-defence, therefore, gods and holy persons try to prevent polluted individuals from approaching them, and their worshippers are naturally anxious to do the same. But apart from the resentment which the sacred being would feel against the defiler, it appears that holiness is supposed to react quite mechanically against pollution, to the destruction or discomfort of the polluted individual. All Moors are convinced that anyone who in a state of sexual uncleanness dared to visit a saint's tomb would be struck by the saint; but the Arabs of Dukkâla, in Southern Morocco, also believe that if an unclean person rides a horse some accident will happen to him on account of the baraka with which the horse is endowed. It should further be noticed that, owing to the injurious effect of pollution upon holiness, an act generally regarded as sacred would, if performed by an unclean individual, lack that magic efficacy which otherwise would be ascribed to it. Muhammed represented ceremonial cleanliness as "one-half of the faith and the key of prayer." The Moors say that a scribe is afraid of evil spirits only when he is sexually unclean, because then his reciting of passages of the Koran--the most powerful weapon against such spirits--would be of no avail. The Syrian philosopher Jamblichus {419} speaks of the belief that "the gods do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal connections." A similar notion prevailed among the early Christians; with reference to a passage in the First Epistle of the Corinthians, Tertullian remarks that the Apostle added the recommendation of a temporary abstinence for the sake of adding an efficacy to prayers. To the same class of beliefs belongs the notion that a sacrificial victim should be clean and without blemish. The Chibchas of Bogota considered that the most valuable sacrifice they could offer was that of a youth who had never had intercourse with a woman.

If ceremonial cleanliness is required even of the ordinary worshipper it is all the more indispensable in the case of a priest; and of all kinds of uncleanness none is to be more carefully avoided than sexual pollution. Sometimes admission into the priesthood is to be preceded by a period of continence. In the Marquesas Islands no one could become a priest without having lived chastely for several years previously. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast men and women, in order to become members of the priesthood, have to pass through a long novitiate, generally from two to three years, during which they live in retirement and are instructed by the priests in the secrets of the craft; and "the people believe that, during this period of retirement and study, the novices must keep their bodies pure, and refrain from all commerce with the other sex." The Huichols of Mexico, again, are of opinion that a man who wishes to become a shaman must be faithful to his wife for five years, and that, if he violates this rule, he is sure to be taken ill and will lose the power of healing. In ancient Mexico the priests, all {420} the time that they were employed in the service of the temple, abstained from all other women but their wives, and "even affected so much modesty and reserve, that when they met a woman they fixed their eyes on the ground that they might not see her. Any incontinence amongst the priests was severely punished. The priest who, at Teohuacan, was convicted of having violated his chastity, was delivered up by the priests to the people, who at night killed him by the bastinado." Among the Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills the priests--who, unlike the "dairymen" of their Toda neighbours are not celibates--are at the great festival in honour of K[=a]matar[=a]ya forbidden to live or hold intercourse with their wives for fear of pollution, and are then even obliged to cook their meals themselves. It seems that, according to the Anatolian religion, married hieroi had to separate from their wives during the period they were serving at the temple. The Hebrew priest should avoid all unchastity; he was not allowed to marry a harlot, or a profane, or a divorced wife, and the high-priest was also forbidden to marry a widow. Nay, even in a priest's daughter unchastity was punished with excessive severity, because she had profaned her father; she was to be burned.

Carried further, the idea underlying all these rules and practices led to the notions that celibacy is more pleasing to God than marriage, and that it is a religious duty for those members of the community whose special office is to attend to the sacred cult. For a nation like the Jews, whose ambition was to live and to multiply, celibacy could never become an ideal; whereas the Christians, who professed the most perfect indifference to all earthly matters, found no difficulty in glorifying a state which, however opposed it was to the interests of the race and the nation, made men pre-eminently fit to approach their god. Indeed, {421} far from being a benefit to the kingdom of God by propagating the species, sexual intercourse was on the contrary detrimental to it by being the great transmitter of the sin of our first parents. This argument, however, was of a comparatively late origin. Pelagius himself almost rivalled St. Augustine in his praise of virginity, which he considered the great test of that strength of free-will which he asserted to be at most only weakened by the fall of Adam.

Religious celibacy is, moreover, enjoined or commended as a means of self-mortification supposed to appease an angry god, or with a view to raising the spiritual nature of man by suppressing one of the strongest of all sensual appetites. Thus we find in various religions celibacy side by side with other ascetic observances practised for similar purposes. Among the early Christians those young women who took a vow of chastity "did not look upon virginity as any thing if it were not attended with great mortification, with silence, retirement, poverty, labour, fastings, watchings, and continual praying. They were not esteemed as virgins who would not deny themselves the common diversions of the world, even the most innocent." Tertullian enumerates virginity, widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed among those fragrant offerings acceptable to God which the flesh performs to its own especial suffering. Finally, it was argued that marriage prevents a person from serving God perfectly, because it induces him to occupy himself too much with worldly things. Though not contrary to the act of charity or the love of God, says Thomas Aquinas, it is nevertheless an obstacle to it. This was one, but certainly not the only, cause of the obligatory celibacy which the Christian Church imposed upon her clergy.