happen that the girl becomes pregnant.
Rhys and Brynmor-Jones (_Welsh People_, pp. 582-4) have an
interesting passage on this night-courtship with numerous
references. As regards Germany see, e.g., Rudeck, _Geschichte der
öffentlichen 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 sexual 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 classes, 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 assumes,
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 sexual 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 sexual perversion, allied to _paidophilia_, the
sexual attraction to children.

In very small coördinated 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 prostitution), 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 _Sexual 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 Després stated more than thirty years ago (_La Prostitution
à Paris_, p. 137) that in an average arrondissement nine out of
ten legal marriages are the consolidation of a free union;
though, while that was an average, in a few arrondissements 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
Verhältnisse im Deutschen Reiche_, which are full of instruction
concerning German sexual 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), sexual 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 sexual
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 assumed 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 sexual 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 sexual customs of
the German people of the present day are not substantially
different--though it may well be that at different periods
different circumstances 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
prostitution 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 classic 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 chastity. Tacitus, indeed, in the
passage more often quoted in Germany than any other passage in
classic literature, while correctly emphasizing the late puberty
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 sexual freedom involved by early Teutonic faiths and
customs is brought together in the study of "Sexual Periodicity"
in the first volume of these _Studies_; cf. also, Rudeck,
_Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland_, 1897,
pp. 146 et seq.).

The freedom and tolerance of Russian sexual 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 sexual
intercourse outside marriage is really 'lost' and 'dishonored'"
(cf. _Sexual-Probleme_, Aug., 1908, p. 506).

It would appear that freedom of sexual 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 sexual license, which, though
it is doubtless supported by the old traditions of sexual
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 classes, 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 sexual 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 sexual problems and of indulgence in sexual
unrestraint, often taking on a somewhat licentious and sensual
character. "Free love" unions have been formed by the students of
both sexes 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 Sexuelle
Bewegung in Russland," _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_,
Aug., 1908; also, "Les Associations Erotiques en Russe," _Journal
du Droit International Privé_, Jan., 1909, fully summarized in
_Revue des Idées_, Feb., 1909.)

The movement of sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 Sex 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 anticipation 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 passive 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 sexual 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 manoeuvres are frequently a source of
unchastity 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual intercourse, it is not surprising that many believe
that after sixteen no girl is a virgin. Unchastity among the
rural laboring classes is universal, and equally pronounced in
both sexes" (op. cit., vol. i, 218).

Among women of the educated classes 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-classes. 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 association with a single lover, and (2) women
who give themselves to men, without fear, from the force of their
passions, are "much larger than is generally supposed. In all
classes 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
(_Sexualpädagogik_, 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
sex; and we ought to give them our moral support. They are
working towards a new age."

It is frequently stated that the pronounced 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 sexual 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
constituted a real and intrinsic disadvantage to women in sexual 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 classes 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 sexual unions over compulsory
marriage is well recognized in the case of the working classes of
London, among whom sexual relationships before marriage are not
unusual, and are indulgently regarded. It is, for instance,
clearly asserted 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 institution 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 constitutes 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, _Sexual-Probleme_, April, 1908, p. 217.) It is
significant that this condition of things in Jamaica, as
elsewhere, is associated with the superiority of women. "The
women of the peasant class," 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
sexual 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 sexual relationship with men and both sexes 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 sexual 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 sexes, 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 gynæcocratic; 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
gynæcocracy 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 goddess rather
than the god in the forefront of primitive pantheons, a tendency which
cannot possibly fail to reflect honor on the sex 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 goddesses
loom larger than the gods.[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 circumscribed; 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 chastity 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 Amélineau, "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 sexual 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. Marçais, _Des Parents et des Alliés 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 associated 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 sexes 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 sexual 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 chastity
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 attitude
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 Friedländer 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." Principal 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," Ségur, 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]

The main European stream of influences in this matter within historical
times has involved, we can scarcely doubt when we take into consideration
its complex phenomena as a whole, the maintenance of an inequality to the
disadvantage of women. The fine legacy of Roman law to Europe was indeed
favorable to women, but that legacy was dispersed and for the most part
lost in the more predominating influence of tenacious Teutonic custom
associated with the vigorously organized Christian Church. Notwithstanding
that the facts do not all point in the same direction, and that there is
consequently some difference of opinion, it seems evident that on the
whole both Teutonic custom and Christian religion were unfavorable to the
equality of women with men. Teutonic custom in this matter was determined
by two decisive factors: (1) the existence of marriage by purchase which
although, as Crawley has pointed out, it by no means necessarily involves
the degradation of women, certainly tends to place them in an inferior
position, and (2) pre-occupation with war which is always accompanied by a
depreciation of peaceful and feminine occupations and an indifference to
love. Christianity was at its origin favorable to women because it
liberated and glorified the most essentially feminine emotions, but when
it became an established and organized religion with definitely ascetic
ideals, its whole emotional tone grew unfavorable to women. It had from
the first excluded them from any priestly function. It now regarded them
as the special representatives of the despised element of sex in
life.[290] The eccentric Tertullian had once declared that woman was
_janua Diaboli_; nearly seven hundred years later, even the gentle and
philosophic Anselm wrote: _Femina fax est Satanæ_.[291]

Thus among the Franks, with whom the practice of monogamy
prevailed, a woman was never free; she could not buy or sell or
inherit without the permission of those to whom she belonged. She
passed into the possession of her husband by acquisition, and
when he fixed the wedding day he gave her parents coins of small
money as _arrha_, and the day after the wedding she received from
him a present, the _morgengabe_. A widow belonged to her parents
again (Bedollière, _Histoire de Moeurs des Français_,
vol. i, p. 180). It is true that the Salic law ordained a
pecuniary fine for touching a woman, even for squeezing her
finger, but it is clear that the offence thus committed was an
offence against property, and by no means against the sanctity of
a woman's personality. The primitive German husband could sell
his children, and sometimes his wife, even into slavery. In the
eleventh century cases of wife-selling are still heard of, though
no longer recognized by law.

The traditions of Christianity were more favorable to sexual
equality than were Teutonic customs, but in becoming amalgamated
with those customs they added their own special contribution as
to woman's impurity. This spiritual inferiority of woman was
significantly shown by the restrictions sometimes placed on women
in church, and even in the right to enter a church; in some
places they were compelled to remain in the narthex, even in
non-monastic churches (see for these rules, Smith and Cheetham,