The origin and development of the moral ideas

We are told that Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans, which were supposed to have a mystic affinity with the seat of impure desires.78 Plato, again, is in favour of a law to the effect that “no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts.” Our citizens, he says, ought not to be worse than birds and beasts, which live without intercourse, pure and chaste, until the age for procreation, and afterwards, when they have arrived at that period and the male has paired with the female and the female with the male, “live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact.”79

Much stronger was the censure which Christianity passed on pre-nuptial connections. While looking with suspicion even on the life-long union of one man with one woman, the Church pronounced all other forms of sexual intercourse to be mortal sins. In its Penitentials sins of unchastity were the favourite topic; and its horror of them finds an echo in the secular legislation of the first Christian emperors. Panders were condemned to have molten lead poured down their throats.80 In the case of forcible seduction both the man and woman, if she consented to the act, were put to death.81 Even the innocent offspring of illicit intercourse were punished for their parents’ sins with ignominy and loss of certain rights which belonged to other, more respectable, members of the Church and the State.82 Persons of different sex who were not united in wedlock were forbidden by the Church to kiss each other; nay, the sexual desire itself, though unaccompanied by any external act, was regarded as sinful in the unmarried.83 In this standard of purity no difference of sex was recognised, the same obligations being imposed upon man and woman.84

In this, as in so many other points of morals, however, there is a considerable discrepancy between Christian doctrine and public opinion in Christian countries. The gross and open immorality of the Middle Ages indicates how little the idea of sexual purity entered into the manners and opinions of the people. The influence of the ascetic doctrine of the Church was in fact quite contrary to its aspirations. The institution of clerical celibacy lowered the estimation of virtue by promoting vice. During the Middle Ages unchastity was regarded as an object of ridicule rather than censure, and in the comic literature of that period the clergy are universally represented as the great corrupters of domestic virtue.85 Whether the tenet of chastity laid down by the code of Chivalry was taken more seriously may be fairly doubted. A knight, it was said, should be abstinent and chaste;86 he should love only the virtues, talents, and graces of his lady;87 and love was defined as the “chaste union of two hearts by virtue wrought.”88 But whilst the knight had certain claims as regards the virtue of his lady, whilst he probably was inclined to draw his sword only for a woman of fair reputation, and whilst he himself professed to aspire only to her lip or hand, we have reason to believe that the amours in which he indulged with her were of a far less delicate kind. Sainte-Palaye observes, “Jamais on ne vit les mœurs plus corrompues que du temps de nos Chevaliers, et jamais le règne de la débauche ne fut plus universel.”89 For a mediæval knight the chief object of life was love.

He who did not understand how to win a lady was but half a man; and the difference between a lover and a seducer was apparently slight. The character of the seducer, as Mr. Lecky remarks, and especially of the passionless seducer who pursues his career simply as a kind of sport, and under the influence of no stronger motive than vanity or a spirit of adventure, has for many centuries been glorified and idealised in the popular literature of Christendom in a manner to which there is no parallel in antiquity.90

The Reformation brought about some change for the better, if in no other respect at least by making marriage lawful for a large class of people to whom illicit love had previously been the only means of gratifying a natural desire, and by abolishing the monasteries. In fits of religious enthusiasm even the secular legislators busied themselves with acts of incontinence in which two unmarried adults of different sex were consenting parties. In the days of the Commonwealth, according to an act of 1650, in cases of less serious breach of chastity than adultery and incest, each man or woman was for each offence to be committed to the common gaol for three months, and to find sureties for good behaviour during a whole year afterwards.91 In Scotland, after the Reformation, fornication was punished with a severity nearly equal to that which attended the infraction of the marriage vow.92 But the fate of these and similar laws has been either to be repealed or to become inactive.93 For ordinary acts of incontinence public opinion is, practically at least, the only judge. In the case of female unchastity its sentence is severe enough among the upper ranks of society, whilst, so far as the lower classes are concerned, it varies considerably even in different parts of the same country, and is in many cases regarded as venial. As to similar acts committed by unmarried men, the words which Cicero uttered on behalf of Cœlius might be repeated by any modern advocate who, in defending his client, ventured frankly to express the popular opinion on the subject.

It seems to me that with regard to sexual relations between unmarried men and women Christianity has done little more than establish a standard which, though accepted perhaps in theory, is hardly recognised by the feelings of the large majority of people—or at least of men—in Christian communities, and has introduced the vice of hypocrisy, which apparently was little known in sexual matters by pagan antiquity.