I insist here on the economic element in our s.e.xual morality, because that is the element which has given it a kind of stability and become established in law. But if we take a wider view of our s.e.xual morality, we cannot ignore the ancient element of asceticism, which has given religious pa.s.sion and sanction to it. Our s.e.xual morality is thus, in reality, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d born of the union of property-morality with primitive ascetic morality, neither in true relationship to the vital facts of the s.e.xual life. It is, indeed, the property element which, with a few inconsistencies, has become finally the main concern of our law, but the ascetic element (with, in the past, a wavering relationship to law) has had an important part in moulding popular sentiment and in creating an att.i.tude of reprobation towards s.e.xual intercourse per se, although such intercourse is regarded as an essential part of the property-based and religiously sanctified inst.i.tution of legal marriage.
The glorification of virginity led by imperceptible stages to the formulation of "fornication" as a deadly sin, and finally as an actual secular "crime." It is sometimes stated that it was not until the Council of Trent that the Church formally anathematized those who held that the state of marriage was higher than that of virginity, but the opinion had been more or less formally held from almost the earliest ages of Christianity, and is clear in the epistles of Paul. All the theologians agree that fornication is a mortal sin. Caramuel, indeed, the distinguished Spanish theologian, who made unusual concessions to the demands of reason and nature, held that fornication is only evil because it is forbidden, but Innocent XI formally condemned that proposition. Fornication as a mortal sin became gradually secularized into fornication as a crime. Fornication was a crime in France even as late as the eighteenth century, as Tarde found in his historical investigations of criminal procedure in Perigord; adultery was also a crime and severely punished quite independently of any complaint from either of the parties (Tarde, "Archeologie Criminelle en Perigord," Archives de l"Anthropologie Criminelle, Nov. 15, 1898).
The Puritans of the Commonwealth days in England (like the Puritans of Geneva) followed the Catholic example and adopted ecclesiastical offences against chast.i.ty into the secular law. By an Act pa.s.sed in 1653 fornication became punishable by three months" imprisonment inflicted on both parties. By the same Act the adultery of a wife (nothing is said of a husband) was made felony, both for her and her partner in guilt, and therefore punishable by death (Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, p. 121).
The action of a pseudo-morality, such as our s.e.xual morality has been, is double-edged. On the one side it induces a secret and shamefaced laxity, on the other it upholds a rigid and uninspiring theoretical code which so few can consistently follow that theoretical morality is thereby degraded into a more or less empty form. "The human race would gain much," said the wise Senancour, "if virtue were made less laborious. The merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be sustained?"[268] At present, as a more recent moralist, Ellen Key, puts it, we only have an immorality which favors vice and makes virtue irrealizable, and, as she exclaims with pardonable extravagance, to preach a sounder morality to the young, without at the same time condemning the society which encourages the prevailing immorality, is "worse than folly, it is crime."
It is on the lines along which Senancour a century ago and Ellen Key to-day are great pioneers that the new forms of anterior or ideal theoretical morality are now moving, in advance, according to the general tendency in morals, of traditional morality and even of practice.
There is one great modern movement of a definite kind which will serve to show how clearly s.e.xual morality is to-day moving towards a new standpoint. This is the changing att.i.tude of the bulk of the community towards both State marriage and religious marriage, and the growing tendency to disallow State interference with s.e.xual relationships, apart from the production of children.
There has no doubt always been a tendency among the ma.s.ses of the population in Europe to dispense with the official sanction of s.e.xual relationships until such relationships have been well established and the hope of offspring has become justifiable. This tendency has been crystallized into recognized customs among numberless rural communities little touched either by the disturbing influences of the outside world or the controlling influences of theological Christian conceptions. But at the present day this tendency is not confined to the more primitive and isolated communities of Europe among whom, on the contrary, it has tended to die out. It is an unquestionable fact, says Professor Bruno Meyer, that far more than the half of s.e.xual intercourse now takes place outside legal marriage.[269] It is among the intelligent cla.s.ses and in prosperous and progressive communities that this movement is chiefly marked. We see throughout the world the practical common sense of the people shaping itself in the direction which has been pioneered by the ideal moralists who invariably precede the new growth of practical morality.
The voluntary childless marriages of to-day have served to show the possibility of such unions outside legal marriage, and such free unions are becoming, as Mrs. Parsons points out, "a progressive subst.i.tute for marriage."[270] The gradual but steady rise in the age for entering on legal marriage also points in the same direction, though it indicates not merely an increase of free unions but an increase of all forms of normal and abnormal s.e.xuality outside marriage. Thus in England and Wales, in 1906, only 43 per 1,000 husbands and 146 per 1,000 wives were under age, while the average age for husbands was 28.6 years and for wives 26.4 years. For men the age has gone up some eight months during the past forty years, for women more than this. In the large cities, like London, where the possibilities of extra-matrimonial relationships are greater, the age for legal marriage is higher than in the country.
If we are to regard the age of legal marriage as, on the whole, the age at which the population enters into s.e.xual unions, it is undoubtedly too late. Beyer, a leading German neurologist, finds that there are evils alike in early and in late marriage, and comes to the conclusion that in temperate zones the best age for women to marry is the twenty-first year, and for men the twenty-fifth year.
Yet, under bad economic conditions and with a rigid marriage law, early marriages are in every respect disastrous. They are among the poor a sign of dest.i.tution. The very poorest marry first, and they do so through the feeling that their condition cannot be worse. (Dr. Michael Ryan brought together much interesting evidence concerning the causes of early marriage in Ireland in his Philosophy of Marriage, 1837, pp. 58-72). Among the poor, therefore, early marriage is always a misfortune. "Many good people," says Mr. Thomas Holmes, Secretary of the Howard a.s.sociation and missionary at police courts (in an interview, Daily Chronicle, Sept. 8, 1906), "advise boys and girls to get married in order to prevent what they call a "disgrace." This I consider to be absolutely wicked, and it leads to far greater evils than it can possibly avert."
Early marriages are one of the commonest causes both of prost.i.tution and divorce. They lead to prost.i.tution in innumerable cases, even when no outward separation takes place. The fact that they lead to divorce is shown by the significant circ.u.mstance that in England, although only 146 per 1,000 women are under twenty-one at marriage, of the wives concerned in divorce cases, 280 per 1,000 were under twenty-one at marriage, and this discrepancy is even greater than it appears, for in the well-to-do cla.s.s, which can alone afford the luxury of divorce, the normal age at marriage is much higher than for the population generally. Inexperience, as was long ago pointed out by Milton (who had learnt this lesson to his cost), leads to shipwreck in marriage. "They who have lived most loosely," he wrote, "prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been so many divorces to teach them experience."
Miss Clapperton, referring to the educated cla.s.ses, advocates very early marriage, even during student life, which might then be to some extent carried on side by side (Scientific Meliorism, Ch. XVII). Ellen Key, also, advocates early marriage. But she wisely adds that it involves the necessity for easy divorce. That, indeed, is the only condition which can render early marriage generally desirable. Young people-unless they possess very simple and inert natures-can neither foretell the course of their own development and their own strongest needs, nor estimate accurately the nature and quality of another personality. A marriage formed at an early age very speedily ceases to be a marriage in anything but name. Sometimes a young girl applies for a separation from her husband even on the very day after marriage.
The more or less permanent free unions formed among us in Europe are usually to be regarded merely as trial-marriages. That is to say they are a precaution rendered desirable both by uncertainty as to either the harmony or the fruitfulness of union until actual experiment has been made, and by the practical impossibility of otherwise rectifying any mistake in consequence of the antiquated rigidity of most European divorce laws. Such trial marriages are therefore demanded by prudence and caution, and as foresight increases with the development of civilization, and constantly grows among us, we may expect that there will be a parallel development in the frequency of trial marriage and in the social att.i.tude towards such unions. The only alternative-that a radical reform in European marriage laws should render the divorce of a legal marriage as economical and as convenient as the divorce of a free marriage-cannot yet be expected, for law always lags behind public opinion and public practice.
If, however, we take a wider historical view, we find that we are in presence of a phenomenon which, though favored by modern conditions, is very ancient and widespread, dating, so far as Europe is concerned, from the time when the Church first sought to impose ecclesiastical marriage, so that it is practically a continuation of the ancient European custom of private marriage.
Trial-marriages pa.s.s by imperceptible gradations into the group of courtship customs which, while allowing the young couple to spend the night together, in a position of more or less intimacy, exclude, as a rule, actual s.e.xual intercourse. Night-courtship flourishes in stable and well-knit European communities not liable to disorganization by contact with strangers. It seems to be specially common in Teutonic and Celtic lands, and is known by various names, as Probenachte, fensterln, Kiltgang, hand-fasting, bundling, sitting-up, courting on the bed, etc. It is well known in Wales; it is found in various English counties as in Cheshire; it existed in eighteenth century Ireland (according to Richard Twiss"s Travels); in New England it was known as tarrying; in Holland it is called questing. In Norway, where it is called night-running, on account of the long distance between the homesteads, I am told that it is generally practiced, though the clergy preach against it; the young girl puts on several extra skirts and goes to bed, and the young man enters by door or window and goes to bed with her; they talk all night, and are not bound to marry unless it should happen that the girl becomes pregnant.
Rhys and Brynmor-Jones (Welsh People, pp. 582-4) have an interesting pa.s.sage on this night-courtship with numerous references. As regards Germany see, e.g., Rudeck, Geschichte der offentlichen Sittlichkeit, pp. 146-154. With reference to trial-marriage generally many facts and references are given by M. A. Potter (Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 129-137).
The custom of free marriage unions, usually rendered legal before or after the birth of children, seems to be fairly common in many, or perhaps all, rural parts of England. The union is made legal, if found satisfactory, even when there is no prospect of children. In some counties it is said to be almost a universal practice for the women to have s.e.xual relationships before legal marriage; sometimes she marries the first man whom she tries; sometimes she tries several before finding the man who suits her. Such marriages necessarily, on the whole, turn out better than marriages in which the woman, knowing nothing of what awaits her and having no other experiences for comparison, is liable to be disillusioned or to feel that she "might have done better." Even when legal recognition is not sought until after the birth of children, it by no means follows that any moral deterioration is involved. Thus in some parts of Staffordshire where it is the custom of the women to have a child before marriage, notwithstanding this "corruption," we are told (Burton, City of the Saints, Appendix IV), the women are "very good neighbors, excellent, hard-working, and affectionate wives and mothers."
"The lower social cla.s.ses, especially peasants," remarks Dr. Ehrhard ("Auch Ein Wort zur Ehereform," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang I, Heft 10), "know better than we that the marriage bed is the foundation of marriage. On that account they have retained the primitive custom of trial-marriage which, in the Middle Ages, was still practiced even in the best circles. It has the further advantage that the marriage is not concluded until it has shown itself to be fruitful. Trial-marriage a.s.sumes, of course, that virginity is not valued beyond its true worth." With regard to this point it may be mentioned that in many parts of the world a woman is more highly esteemed if she has had intercourse before marriage (see, e.g., Potter, op. cit., pp. 163 et seq.). While virginity is one of the s.e.xual attractions a woman may possess, an attraction that is based on a natural instinct (see "The Evolution of Modesty," in vol. i of these Studies), yet an exaggerated attention to virginity can only be regarded as a s.e.xual perversion, allied to paidophilia, the s.e.xual attraction to children.
In very small coordinated communities the primitive custom of trial-marriage tends to decay when there is a great invasion of strangers who have not been brought up to the custom (which seems to them indistinguishable from the license of prost.i.tution), and who fail to undertake the obligations which trial-marriage involves. This is what happened in the case of the so-called "island custom" of Portland, which lasted well on into the nineteenth century; according to this custom a woman before marriage lived with her lover until pregnant and then married him; she was always strictly faithful to him while living with him, but if no pregnancy occurred the couple might decide that they were not meant for each other, and break off relations. The result was that for a long period of years no illegitimate children were born, and few marriages were childless. But when the Portland stone trade was developed, the workmen imported from London took advantage of the "island custom," but refused to fulfil the obligation of marriage when pregnancy occurred. The custom consequently fell into disuse (see, e.g., translator"s note to Bloch"s s.e.xual Life of Our Time, p. 237, and the quotation there given from Hutchins, History and Antiquities of Dorset, vol. ii, p. 820).
It is, however, by no means only in rural districts, but in great cities also that marriages are at the outset free unions. Thus in Paris Despres stated more than thirty years ago (La Prost.i.tution a Paris, p. 137) that in an average arrondiss.e.m.e.nt nine out of ten legal marriages are the consolidation of a free union; though, while that was an average, in a few arrondiss.e.m.e.nts it was only three out of ten. Much the same conditions prevail in Paris to-day; at least half the marriages, it is stated, are of this kind.
In Teutonic lands the custom of free unions is very ancient and well-established. Thus in Sweden, Ellen Key states (Liebe und Ehe, p. 123), the majority of the population begin married life in this way. The arrangement is found to be beneficial, and "marital fidelity is as great as pre-marital freedom is unbounded." In Denmark, also, a large number of children are conceived before the unions of the parents are legalized (Rubin and Westergaard, quoted by Gaedeken, Archives d"Anthropologie Criminelle, Feb. 15, 1909).
In Germany not only is the proportion of illegitimate births very high, since in Berlin it is 17 per cent., and in some towns very much higher, but ante-nuptial conceptions take place in nearly half the marriages, and sometimes in the majority. Thus in Berlin more than 40 per cent, of all legitimate firstborn children are conceived before marriage, while in some rural provinces (where the proportion of illegitimate births is lower) the percentage of marriages following ante-nuptial conceptions is much higher than in Berlin. The conditions in rural Germany have been especially investigated by a committee of Lutheran pastors, and were set forth a few years ago in two volumes, Die Geschlecht-sittlich Verhaltnisse im Deutschen Reiche, which are full of instruction concerning German s.e.xual morality. In Hanover, it is said in this work, the majority of authorities state that intercourse before marriage is the rule. At the very least, a probe, or trial, is regarded as a matter-of-course preliminary to a marriage, since no one wishes "to buy a pig in a poke." In Saxony, likewise, we are told, it is seldom that a girl fails to have intercourse before marriage, or that her first child is not born, or at all events conceived, outside marriage. This is justified as a proper proving of a bride before taking her for good. "One does not buy even a penny pipe without trying it," a German pastor was informed. Around Stettin, in twelve districts (nearly half the whole), s.e.xual intercourse before marriage is a recognized custom, and in the remainder, if not exactly a custom, it is very common, and is not severely or even at all condemned by public opinion. In some districts marriage immediately follows pregnancy. In the Dantzig neighborhood, again, according to the Lutheran Committee, intercourse before marriage occurs in more than half the cases, but marriage by no means always follows pregnancy. Nearly all the girls who go as servants have lovers, and country people in engaging servants sometimes tell them that at evening and night they may do as they like. This state of things is found to be favorable to conjugal fidelity. The German peasant girl, as another authority remarks (E. H. Meyer, Deutsche Volkskunde, 1898, pp. 154, 164), has her own room; she may receive her lover; it is no great shame if she gives herself to him. The number of women who enter legal marriage still virgins is not large (this refers more especially to Baden), but public opinion protects them, and such opinion is unfavorable to the disregard of the responsibilities involved by s.e.xual relationships. The German woman is less chaste before marriage than her French or Italian sister. But, Meyer adds, she is probably more faithful after marriage than they are.
It is a.s.sumed by many that this state of German morality as it exists to-day is a new phenomenon, and the sign of a rapid national degeneration. That is by no means the case. In this connection we may accept the evidence of Catholic priests, who, by the experience of the confessional, are enabled to speak with authority. An old Bavarian priest thus writes (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, 1907, Bd. ii, Heft I): "At Moral Congresses we hear laudation of "the good old times" when, faith and morality prevailed among the people. Whether that is correct is another question. As a young priest I heard of as many and as serious sins as I now hear of as an old man. The morality of the people is not greater nor is it less. The error is the belief that immorality goes out of the towns and poisons the country. People talk as though the country were a pure Paradise of innocence. I will by no means call our country people immoral, but from an experience of many years I can say that in s.e.xual respects there is no difference between town and country. I have learnt to know more than a hundred different parishes, and in the most various localities, in the mountain and in the plain, on poor land and on rich land. But everywhere I find the same morals and lack of morals. There are everywhere the same men, though in the country there are often better Christians than in the towns."
If, however, we go much farther back than the memories of a living man it seems highly probable that the s.e.xual customs of the German people of the present day are not substantially different-though it may well be that at different periods different circ.u.mstances have accentuated them-from what they were in the dawn of Teutonic history. This is the opinion of one of the profoundest students of Indo-Germanic origins. In his Reallexicon (art. "Keuschheit") O. Schrader points out that the oft-quoted Tacitus, strictly considered, can only be taken to prove that women were chaste after marriage, and that no prost.i.tution existed. There can be no doubt, he adds, and the earliest historical evidence shows, that women in ancient Germany were not chaste before marriage. This fact has been disguised by the tendency of the old cla.s.sic writers to idealize the Northern peoples.
Thus we have to realize that the conception of "German virtue," which has been rendered so familiar to the world by a long succession of German writers, by no means involves any special devotion to the virtue of chast.i.ty. Tacitus, indeed, in the pa.s.sage more often quoted in Germany than any other pa.s.sage in cla.s.sic literature, while correctly emphasizing the late p.u.b.erty of the Germans and their brutal punishment of conjugal infidelity on the part of the wife, seemed to imply that they were also chaste. But we have always to remark that Tacitus wrote as a satirizing moralist as well as a historian, and that, as he declaimed concerning the virtues of the German barbarians, he had one eye on the Roman gallery whose vices he desired to lash. Much the same perplexing confusion has been created by Gildas, who, in describing the results of the Saxon Conquest of Britain, wrote as a preacher as well as a historian, and the same moral purpose (as Dill has pointed out) distorts Salvian"s picture of the vices of fifth century Gaul. (I may add that some of the evidence in favor of the s.e.xual freedom involved by early Teutonic faiths and customs is brought together in the study of "s.e.xual Periodicity" in the first volume of these Studies; cf. also, Rudeck, Geschichte der offentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 1897, pp. 146 et seq.).
The freedom and tolerance of Russian s.e.xual customs is fairly well-known. As a Russian correspondent writes to me, "the liberalism of Russian manners enables youths and girls to enjoy complete independence. They visit each other alone, they walk out alone, and they return home at any hour they please. They have a liberty of movement as complete as that of grown-up persons; some avail themselves of it to discuss politics and others to make love. They are able also to procure any books they please; thus on the table of a college girl I knew I saw the Elements of Social Science, then prohibited in Russia; this girl lived with her aunt, but she had her own room, which only her friends were allowed to enter: her aunt or other relations never entered it. Naturally, she went out and came back at what hours she pleased. Many other college girls enjoy the same freedom in their families. It is very different in Italy, where girls have no freedom of movement, and can neither go out alone nor receive gentlemen alone, and where, unlike Russia, a girl who has s.e.xual intercourse outside marriage is really "lost" and "dishonored"" (cf. s.e.xual-Probleme, Aug., 1908, p. 506).
It would appear that freedom of s.e.xual relationships in Russia-apart from the influence of ancient custom-has largely been rendered necessary by the difficulty of divorce. Married couples, who were unable to secure divorce, separated and found new partners without legal marriage. In 1907, however, an attempt was made to remedy this defect in the law; a liberal divorce law has been introduced, mutual consent with separation for a period of over a year being recognized as adequate ground for divorce (Beiblatt to Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, Heft 5, p. 145).
During recent years there has developed among educated young men and women in Russia a movement of s.e.xual license, which, though it is doubtless supported by the old traditions of s.e.xual freedom, must by no means be confused with that freedom, since it is directly due to causes of an entirely different order. The strenuous revolutionary efforts made during the last years of the past century to attain political freedom absorbed the younger and more energetic section of the educated cla.s.ses, involved a high degree of mental tension, and were accompanied by a tendency to asceticism. The prospect of death was constantly before their eyes, and any pre-occupation with s.e.xual matters would have been felt as out of harmony with the spirit of revolution. But during the present century revolutionary activity has largely ceased. It has been, to a considerable extent, replaced by a movement of interest in s.e.xual problems and of indulgence in s.e.xual unrestraint, often taking on a somewhat licentious and sensual character. "Free love" unions have been formed by the students of both s.e.xes for the cultivation of these tendencies. A novel, Artzibascheff"s Ssanin, has had great influence in promoting these tendencies. It is not likely that this movement, in its more extravagant forms, will be of long duration. (For some account of this movement, see, e.g., Werner Daya, "Die s.e.xuelle Bewegung in Russland," Zeitschrift fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Aug., 1908; also, "Les a.s.sociations Erotiques en Russe," Journal du Droit International Prive, Jan., 1909, fully summarized in Revue des Idees, Feb., 1909.)
The movement of s.e.xual freedom in Russia lies much deeper, however, than this fashion of sensual license; it is found in remote and uncontaminated parts of the country, and is connected with very ancient customs.
There is considerable interest in realizing the existence of long-continued s.e.xual freedom-by some incorrectly termed "immorality," for what is in accordance with the customs or mores of a people cannot be immoral-among peoples so virile and robust, so eminently capable of splendid achievements, as the Germans and the Russians. There is, however, a perhaps even greater interest in tracing the development of the same tendency among new prosperous and highly progressive communities who have either not inherited the custom of s.e.xual freedom or are now only reviving it. We may, for instance, take the case of Australia and New Zealand. This development may not, indeed, be altogether recent. The frankness of s.e.xual freedom in Australia and the tolerance in regard to it were conspicuous thirty years ago to those who came from England to live in the Southern continent, and were doubtless equally visible at an earlier date. It seems, however, to have developed with the increase of self-conscious civilization. "After careful inquiry," says the Rev. H. Northcote, who has lived for many years in the Southern hemisphere (Christianity and s.e.x Problems, Ch. VIII), "the writer finds sufficient evidence that of recent years intercourse out of wedlock has tended towards an actual increase in parts of Australia." Coghlan, the chief authority on Australian statistics, states more precisely in his Childbirth in New South Wales, published a few years ago: "The prevalence of births of ante-nuptial conception-a matter hitherto little understood-has now been completely investigated. In New South Wales, during six years, there were 13,366 marriages, in respect of which there was ante-nuptial conception, and, as the total number of marriages was 49,641, at least twenty-seven marriages in a hundred followed conception. During the same period the illegitimate births numbered 14,779; there were, therefore, 28,145 cases of conception amongst unmarried women; in 13,366 instances marriage preceded the birth of the child, so that the children were legitimatized in rather more than forty-seven cases out of one hundred. A study of the figures of births of ante-nuptial conception makes it obvious that in a very large number of instances pre-marital intercourse is not an antic.i.p.ation of marriage already arranged, but that the marriages are forced upon the parties, and would not be entered into were it not for the condition of the woman" (cf. Powys, Biometrika, vol. i, 1901-2, p. 30). That marriage should be, as Coghlan puts it, "forced upon the parties," is not, of course, desirable in the general moral interests, and it is also a sign of imperfect moral responsibility in the parties themselves.
The existence of such a state of things, in a young country belonging to a part of the world where the general level of prosperity, intelligence, morality and social responsibility may perhaps be said to be higher than in any other region inhabited by people of white race, is a fact of the very first significance when we are attempting to forecast the direction in which civilized morality is moving.
It is sometimes said, or at least implied, that in this movement women are taking only a pa.s.sive part, and that the initiative lies with men who are probably animated by a desire to escape the responsibilities of marriage. This is very far from being the case.
The active part taken by German girls in s.e.xual matters is referred to again and again by the Lutheran pastors in their elaborate and detailed report. Of the Dantzig district it is said "the young girls give themselves to the youths, or even seduce them." The military manuvres are frequently a source of unchast.i.ty in rural districts. "The fault is not merely with the soldiers, but chiefly with the girls, who become half mad as soon as they see a soldier," it is reported from the Dresden district. And in summarizing conditions in East Germany the report states: "In s.e.xual wantonness girls are not behind the young men; they allow themselves to be seduced only too willingly; even grown-up girls often go with half-grown youths, and girls frequently give themselves to several men, one after the other. It is by no means always the youth who effects the seduction, it is very frequently the girls who entice the youth to s.e.xual intercourse; they do not always wait till the men come to their rooms, but will go to the men"s rooms and await them in their beds. With this inclination to s.e.xual intercourse, it is not surprising that many believe that after sixteen no girl is a virgin. Unchast.i.ty among the rural laboring cla.s.ses is universal, and equally p.r.o.nounced in both s.e.xes" (op. cit., vol. i, 218).
Among women of the educated cla.s.ses the conditions are somewhat different. Restraints, both internal and external, are very much greater. Virginity, at all events in its physical fact, is retained, for the most part, till long past girlhood, and when it is lost that loss is concealed with a scrupulous care and prudence unknown to the working-cla.s.ses. Yet the fundamental tendencies remain the same. So far as England is concerned, Geoffrey Mortimer quite truly writes (Chapters on Human Love, 1898, p. 117) that the two groups of (1) women who live in constant secret a.s.sociation with a single lover, and (2) women who give themselves to men, without fear, from the force of their pa.s.sions, are "much larger than is generally supposed. In all cla.s.ses of society there are women who are only virgins by repute. Many have borne children without being even suspected of cohabitation; but the majority adopt methods of preventing conception. A doctor in a small provincial town declared to me that such irregular intimacies were the rule, and not by any means the exception in his district." As regards Germany, a lady doctor, Frau Adams-Lehmann, states in a volume of the Transactions of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease (s.e.xualpadagogik, p. 271): "I can say that during consultation hours I see very few virgins over thirty. These women," she adds, "are sensible, courageous and natural, often the best of their s.e.x; and we ought to give them our moral support. They are working towards a new age."
It is frequently stated that the p.r.o.nounced tendency witnessed at the present time to dispense as long as possible with the formal ceremony of binding marriage is unfortunate because it places women in a disadvantageous position. In so far as the social environment in which she lives views with disapproval s.e.xual relationship without formal marriage, the statement is obviously to that extent true, though it must be remarked, on the other hand, that when social opinion strongly favors legal marriage it acts as a compelling force in the direction of legitimating free unions. But if the absence of the formal marriage bond const.i.tuted a real and intrinsic disadvantage to women in s.e.xual relations they would not show themselves so increasingly ready to dispense with it. And, as a matter of fact, those who are intimately acquainted with the facts declare that the absence of formal marriage tends to give increased consideration to women and is even favorable to fidelity and to the prolongation of the union. This seems to be true as regards people of the most different social cla.s.ses and even of different races. It is probably based on fundamental psychological facts, for the sense of compulsion always tends to produce a movement of exasperation and revolt. We are not here concerned with the question as to how far formal marriage also is based on natural facts; that is a question which will come up for discussion at a later stage.
The advantage for women of free s.e.xual unions over compulsory marriage is well recognized in the case of the working cla.s.ses of London, among whom s.e.xual relationships before marriage are not unusual, and are indulgently regarded. It is, for instance, clearly a.s.serted in the monumental work of C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People. "It is even said of rough laborers," we read, for instance, in the final volume of this work (p. 41), "that they behave best if not married to the woman with whom they live." The evidence on this point is often the more impressive because brought forward by people who are very far indeed from being anxious to base any general conclusions on it. Thus in the same volume a clergyman is quoted as saying: "These people manage to live together fairly peaceably so long as they are not married, but if they marry it always seems to lead to blows and rows."
It may be said that in such a case we witness not so much the operation of a natural law as the influences of a great centre of civilization exerting its moralizing effects even on those who stand outside the legally recognized inst.i.tution of marriage. That contention may, however, be thrust aside. We find exactly the same tendency in Jamaica where the population is largely colored, and the stress of a high civilization can scarcely be said to exist. Legal marriage is here discarded to an even greater extent than in London, for little care is taken to legitimate children by marriage. It was found by a committee appointed to inquire into the marriage laws of Jamaica, that three out of every five births are illegitimate, that is to say that legal illegitimacy has ceased to be immoral, having become the recognized custom of the majority of the inhabitants. There is no social feeling against illegitimacy. The men approve of the decay of legal marriage, because they say the women work better in the house when they are not married; the women approve of it, because they say that men are more faithful when not bound by legal marriage. This has been well brought out by W. P. Livingstone in his interesting book, Black Jamaica (1899). The people recognize, he tells us (p. 210), that "faithful living together const.i.tutes marriage;" they say that they are "married but not parsoned." One reason against legal marriage is that they are disinclined to incur the expense of the official sanction. (In Venezuela, it may be added, where also the majority of births take place outside official marriage, the chief reason is stated to be, not moral laxity, but the same disinclination to pay the expenses of legal weddings.) Frequently in later life, sometimes when they have grown up sons and daughters, couples go through the official ceremony. (In Abyssinia, also, it is stated by Hugues Le Roux, where the people are Christian and marriage is indissoluble and the ceremony expensive, it is not usual for married couples to make their unions legal until old age is coming on, s.e.xual-Probleme, April, 1908, p. 217.) It is significant that this condition of things in Jamaica, as elsewhere, is a.s.sociated with the superiority of women. "The women of the peasant cla.s.s," remarks Livingstone (p. 212), "are still practically independent of the men, and are frequently their superiors, both in physical and mental capacity." They refuse to bind themselves to a man who may turn out to be good for nothing, a burden instead of a help and protection. So long as the unions are free they are likely to be permanent. If made legal, the risk is that they will become intolerable, and cease by one of the parties leaving the other. "The necessity for mutual kindness and forbearance establishes a condition that is the best guarantee of permanency" (p. 214). It is said, however, that under the influence of religious and social pressure the people are becoming more anxious to adopt "respectable" ideas of s.e.xual relationships, though it seems evident, in view of Livingstone"s statement, that such respectability is likely to involve a decrease of real morality. Livingstone points out, however, one serious defect in the present conditions which makes it easy for immoral men to escape paternal responsibilities, and this is the absence of legal provision for the registration of the father"s name on birth certificates (p. 256). In every country where the majority of births are illegitimate it is an obvious social necessity that the names of both parents should be duly registered on all birth certificates. It has been an unpardonable failure on the part of the Jamaican Government to neglect the simple measure needed to give "each child born in the country a legal father" (p. 258).
We thus see that we have to-day reached a position in which-partly owing to economic causes and partly to causes which are more deeply rooted in the tendencies involved by civilization-women are more often detached than of old from legal s.e.xual relationship with men and both s.e.xes are less inclined than in earlier stages of civilization to sacrifice their own independence even when they form such relationships. "I never heard of a woman over sixteen years of age who, prior to the breakdown of aboriginal customs after the coming of the whites, had not a husband," wrote Curr of the Australian Blacks.[271] Even as regards some parts of Europe, it is still possible to-day to make almost the same statement. But in all the richer, more energetic, and progressive countries very different conditions prevail. Marriage is late and a certain proportion of men, and a still larger proportion of women (who exceed the men in the general population) never marry at all.[272]
Before we consider the fateful significance of this fact of the growing proportion of adult unmarried women whose s.e.xual relationships are unrecognized by the state and largely unrecognized altogether, it may be well to glance summarily at the two historical streams of tendency, both still in action among us, which affect the status of women, the one favoring the social equality of the s.e.xes, the other favoring the social subjection of women. It is not difficult to trace these two streams both in conduct and opinion, in practical morality and in theoretical morality.
At one time it was widely held that in early states of society, before the establishment of the patriarchal stage which places women under the protection of men, a matriarchal stage prevailed in which women possessed supreme power.[273] Bachofen, half a century ago, was the great champion of this view. He found a typical example of a matriarchal state among the ancient Lycians of Asia Minor with whom, Herodotus stated, the child takes the name of the mother, and follows her status, not that of the father.[274] Such peoples, Bachofen believed, were gynaecocratic; power was in the hands of women. It can no longer be said that this opinion, in the form held by Bachofen, meets with any considerable support. As to the widespread prevalence of descent through the mother, there is no doubt whatever that it has prevailed very widely. But such descent through the mother, it has become recognized, by no means necessarily involves the power of the mother, and mother-descent may even be combined with a patriarchal system.[275] There has even been a tendency to run to the opposite extreme from Bachofen and to deny that mother-descent conferred any special claim for consideration on women. That, however, seems scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. It would seem that we may fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that based on the ambil anak marriage of Sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife"s family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate position. The example of the Lycians is here in point, for although, as reported by Herodotus, there is nothing to show that there was anything of the nature of a gynaecocracy in Lycia, we know that women in all these regions of Asia Minor enjoyed high consideration and influence, traces of which may be detected in the early literature and history of Christianity. A decisive and better known example of the favorable influence of mother-descent on the status of woman is afforded by the beena marriage of early Arabia. Under such a system the wife is not only preserved from the subjection involved by purchase, which always casts upon her some shadow of the inferiority belonging to property, but she herself is the owner of the tent and the household property, and enjoys the dignity always involved by the possession of property and the ability to free herself from her husband.[276]
It is also impossible to avoid connecting the primitive tendency to mother-descent, and the emphasis it involved on maternal rather than paternal generative energy, with the tendency to place the G.o.ddess rather than the G.o.d in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the s.e.x to which the supreme deity belongs, and which may be connected with the large part which primitive women often play in the functions of religion. Thus, according to traditions common to all the central tribes of Australia, the woman formerly took a much greater share in the performance of sacred ceremonies which are now regarded as coming almost exclusively within the masculine province, and in at least one tribe which seems to retain ancient practices the women still actually take part in these ceremonies.[277] It seems to have been much the same in Europe. We observe, too, both in the Celtic pantheon and among Mediterranean peoples, that while all the ancient divinities have receded into the dim background yet the G.o.ddesses loom larger than the G.o.ds.[278] In Ireland, where ancient custom and tradition have always been very tenaciously preserved, women retained a very high position, and much freedom both before and after marriage. "Every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and after marriage she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or the English common law.[279] There is less difficulty in recognizing that mother-descent was peculiarly favorable to the high status of women when we realize that even under very unfavorable conditions women have been able to exert great pressure on the men and to resist successfully the attempts to tyrannize over them.[280]
If we consider the status of woman in the great empires of antiquity we find on the whole that in their early stage, the stage of growth, as well as in their final stage, the stage of fruition, women tend to occupy a favorable position, while in their middle stage, usually the stage of predominating military organization on a patriarchal basis, women occupy a less favorable position. This cyclic movement seems to be almost a natural law of the development of great social groups. It was apparently well marked in the very stable and orderly growth of Babylonia. In the earliest times a Babylonian woman had complete independence and equal rights with her brothers and her husband; later (as shown by the code of Hamurabi) a woman"s rights, though not her duties, were more circ.u.mscribed; in the still later Neo-Babylonian periods, she again acquired equal rights with her husband.[281]
In Egypt the position of women stood highest at the end, but it seems to have been high throughout the whole of the long course of Egyptian history, and continuously improving, while the fact that little regard was paid to prenuptial chast.i.ty and that marriage contracts placed no stress on virginity indicate the absence of the conception of women as property. More than three thousand five hundred years ago men and women were recognized as equal in Egypt. The high position of the Egyptian woman is significantly indicated by the fact that her child was never illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognized even in the case of a slave woman"s child.[282] "It is the glory of Egyptian morality," says Amelineau, "to have been the first to express the Dignity of Woman."[283] The idea of marital authority was altogether unknown in Egypt. There can be no doubt that the high status of woman in two civilizations so stable, so vital, so long-lived, and so influential on human culture as Babylonia and Egypt, is a fact of much significance.
Among the Jews there seems to have been no intermediate stage of subordination of women, but instead a gradual progress throughout from complete subjection of the woman as wife to ever greater freedom. At first the husband could repudiate his wife at will without cause. (This was not an extension of patriarchal authority, but a purely marital authority.) The restrictions on this authority gradually increased, and begin to be observable already in the Book of Deuteronomy. The Mishnah went further and forbade divorce whenever the wife"s condition inspired pity (as in insanity, captivity, etc.). By A.D. 1025, divorce was no longer possible except for legitimate reasons or by the wife"s consent. At the same time, the wife also began to acquire the right of divorce in the form of compelling the husband to repudiate her on penalty of punishment in case of refusal. On divorce the wife became an independent woman in her own right, and was permitted to carry off the dowry which her husband gave her on marriage. Thus, notwithstanding Jewish respect for the letter of the law, the flexible jurisprudence of the Rabbis, in harmony with the growth of culture, accorded an ever-growing measure of s.e.xual justice and equality to women (D. W. Amram, The Jewish Law of Divorce).
Among the Arabs the tendency of progress has also been favorable to women in many respects, especially as regards inheritance. Before Mahommed, in accordance with the system prevailing at Medina, women had little or no right of inheritance. The legislation of the Koran modified this rule, without entirely abolishing it, and placed women in a much better position. This is attributed largely to the fact that Mahommed belonged not to Medina, but to Mecca, where traces of matriarchal custom still survived (W. Marcais, Des Parents et des Allies Successibles en Droit Musulman).
It may be pointed out-for it is not always realized-that even that stage of civilization-when it occurs-which involves the subordination and subjection of woman and her rights really has its origin in the need for the protection of women, and is sometimes even a sign of the acquirement of new privileges by women. They are, as it were, locked up, not in order to deprive them of their rights, but in order to guard those rights. In the later more stable phase of civilization, when women are no longer exposed to the same dangers, this motive is forgotten and the guardianship of woman and her rights seems, and indeed has really become, a hardship rather than an advantage.
Of the status of women at Rome in the earliest periods we know little or nothing; the patriarchal system was already firmly established when Roman history begins to become clear and it involved unusually strict subordination of the woman to her father first and then to her husband. But nothing is more certain than that the status of women in Rome rose with the rise of civilization, exactly in the same way as in Babylonia and in Egypt. In the case of Rome, however, the growing refinement of civilization, and the expansion of the Empire, were a.s.sociated with the magnificent development of the system of Roman law, which in its final forms consecrated the position of women. In the last days of the Republic women already began to attain the same legal level as men, and later the great Antonine jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law, reached the conception of the equality of the s.e.xes as a principle of the code of equity. The patriarchal subordination of women fell into complete discredit, and this continued until, in the days of Justinian, under the influence of Christianity, the position of women began to suffer.[284] In the best days the older forms of Roman marriage gave place to a form (apparently old but not hitherto considered reputable) which amounted in law to a temporary deposit of the woman by her family. She was independent of her husband (more especially as she came to him with her own dowry) and only nominally dependent on her family. Marriage was a private contract, accompanied by a religious ceremony if desired, and being a contract it could be dissolved, for any reason, in the presence of competent witnesses and with due legal forms, after the advice of the family council had been taken. Consent was the essence of this marriage and no shame, therefore, attached to its dissolution. Nor had it any evil effect either on the happiness or the morals of Roman women.[285] Such a system is obviously more in harmony with modern civilized feeling than any system that has ever been set up in Christendom.
In Rome, also, it is clear that this system was not a mere legal invention but the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling in favor of the equality of men and women, often even in the field of s.e.xual morality. Plautus, who makes the old slave Syra ask why there is not the same law in this respect for the husband as for the wife,[286] had preceded the legist Ulpian who wrote: "It seems to be very unjust that a man demands chast.i.ty of his wife while he himself shows no example of it."[287] Such demands lie deeper than social legislation, but the fact that these questions presented themselves to typical Roman men indicates the general att.i.tude towards women. In the final stage of Roman society the bond of the patriarchal system so far as women were concerned dwindled to a mere thread binding them to their fathers and leaving them quite free face to face with their husbands. "The Roman matron of the Empire," says Hobhouse, "was more fully her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier civilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of Egyptian history, and, it must be added, than the wife of any later civilization down to our own generation."[288]
On the strength of the statements of two satirical writers, Juvenal and Tacitus, it has been supposed by many that Roman women of the late period were given up to license. It is, however, idle to seek in satirists any balanced picture of a great civilization. Hobhouse (loc. cit., p. 216) concludes that on the whole, Roman women worthily retained the position of their husbands" companions, counsellors and friends which they had held when an austere system placed them legally in his power. Most authorities seem now to be of this opinion, though at an earlier period Friedlander expressed himself more dubiously. Thus Dill, in his judicious Roman Society (p. 163), states that the Roman woman"s position, both in law and in fact, rose during the Empire; without being less virtuous or respected, she became far more accomplished and attractive; with fewer restraints she had greater charm and influence, even in public affairs, and was more and more the equal of her husband. "In the last age of the Western Empire there is no deterioration in the position and influence of women." Princ.i.p.al Donaldson, also, in his valuable historical sketch, Woman, considers (p. 113) that there was no degradation of morals in the Roman Empire; "the licentiousness of Pagan Rome is nothing to the licentiousness of Christian Africa, Rome, and Gaul, if we can put any reliance on the description of Salvian." Salvian"s description of Christendom is probably exaggerated and one-sided, but exactly the same may be said in an even greater degree of the descriptions of ancient Rome left by clever Pagan satirists and ascetic Christian preachers.
It thus becomes necessary to leap over considerably more than a thousand years before we reach a stage of civilization in any degree approaching in height the final stage of Roman society. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at first in France, then in England, we find once more the moral and legal movement tending towards the equalization of women with men. We find also a long series of pioneers of that movement foreshadowing its developments: Mary Astor, "Sophia, a Lady of Quality," Segur, Mrs. Wheeler, and very notably Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women.[289]