The origin and development of the moral ideas

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

In many cases cleanliness, either temporary or habitual, is also practised and enjoined from religious or superstitious motives. A Lappish noaide, or wizard, had to wash all his body before he offered a sacrifice.53 The Siberian shamans have compulsory water purifications once a year, sometimes every month, as also on special occasions when they feel themselves defiled by contact with unclean things.54 The Shinto priests in Japan bathed and put on clean garments before making the sacred offerings or chanting the liturgies.55 Herodotus speaks of the cleanliness observed by the Egyptian priests when engaged in the service of the gods.56 As a preliminary to an act of worship the ancient Greeks washed their hands or bathed and put on clean clothes.57 One of the legal maxims of the Romans required that men should approach the deity in a state of purity.58 According to Zoroastrianism it is the great business of life to avoid impurity, and, when it is involuntarily contracted, to remove it in the correct manner as quickly as possible; and by impurity is then understood not an inward state of the soul, but mainly a physical state of the body, everything going out of the human body being considered polluting.59 For a Brahmin bathing is the chief part of the minute ceremonial of daily worship, whilst further washings and aspersions enter into more solemn religious acts;60 and not only Brahmins but most Hindus regard it as a religious duty to bathe daily if this is at all convenient.61 Lamaism enjoins personal ablution as a sacerdotal rite preparatory to worship, though the ceremony

seldom extends to more than dipping the tips of the fingers in water.62 Jewish Rabbis are compelled to wash their hands before they begin to pray.63 Tertullian mentions that a similar ablution was practised by the Christians before prayer.64 According to Islam, the clothes and person of the worshipper should be clean, and so also the ground, mat, carpet, or whatever else it be, upon which he prays; and every act of worship must be preceded by an ablution, though, where water cannot be got, sand may be used as a substitute.65 But a polluting influence is not ascribed to everything which we regard as dirt. For instance, Muhammedans consider the excrements of men and dogs defiling, but not the dung of cows and sheep; cow-dung is even used as a means of purification.

These practices and rules spring from the idea that the contact of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by injurious consequences—an idea which will be more fully discussed in connection with sexual abstinences. Such contact is supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its holiness, or otherwise be detrimental to it, and therefore to excite its anger against him who causes the defilement. So also a sacred act is believed to lose its sacredness by being performed by an unclean individual. Moreover, as a polluting substance is itself held to contain mysterious energy of a baneful kind, it is looked upon as a direct danger even to persons who are not engaged in religious worship. We have previously noticed the rites of purification which a manslayer has to undergo in order to get rid of the blood-pollution.66 We have also seen that ablutions and other purificatory ceremonies are performed for the purpose of removing sins and misfortunes.67 And bathing or sprinkling with water is a common method of clearing mourners or persons who have come in contact with a corpse from the contagion of death.68

But whilst religious or superstitious beliefs have thus led to ablutions and cleanliness, they have in other instances had the very opposite effect. Among Arabs young children are often left dirty and ill-dressed purposely, to preserve them from the evil eye.69 The Obbo natives in Central Africa declare that if they do not wash their hands with cow’s urine before milking, the cow will lose her milk; and with the same fluid they wash the milk-bowl, and even mix some of it with the milk.70 The Jakuts “never wash any of their eating or drinking utensils; but, as soon as a dish is emptied, they clean it with the fore and middle finger; for they think it a great sin to wash away any part of their food, and apprehend that the consequence will be a scarcity.”71 A similar custom prevails among the Kirghiz72 and Kalmucks.

The latter “are forbidden by the laws of their faith” to wash their vessels in river-water, and therefore “do no more than wipe them with a piece of an old sheep-skin shube, which they use also for cleaning their hands upon when dirty.”73 They, moreover, abstain from washing their clothes; and so did the Huns and Mongols.74 The ancient Turks never washed themselves, because they believed that their gods punished ablutions with thunder and lightning; and the same belief still prevails among kindred peoples in Central Asia.75 Among the Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, a man may smear his body with butter or clay as often as he wishes, but “to wash with water is bad for him, and is a sure way of bringing sickness into his family and amongst his cattle.”76 The dread of water may be due partly to ill effects experienced after using it, partly to superstition. The Moors dare not wash their bodies with cold water in the afternoon and evening after the ʿâṣar, because all such water is then supposed to be haunted by jnûn, or evil spirits. In various religions the odour of sanctity is associated with filth. Muhammedan dervishes are recognised by their appearance of untidiness and uncleanness. Among the rules laid down for Buddhist monks there is one which prescribes that their dress shall be made of rags taken from a dust or refuse heap.77 In the early days of Christian monasticism “the cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul.” The saints who were most admired were those who had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St.

Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet. A famous virgin, though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. And St. Simeon Stylites, who was generally pronounced to be the highest model of a Christian saint, bound a rope round himself so that it became imbedded in his flesh and caused putrefaction; and it is said that “a horrible stench, intolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed.”78 In mediæval Christianity abstinence from every species of cleanliness was also enjoined as a penance, the penitent being required to go with foul mouth, filthy hands and neck, undressed hair and beard, unpared nails, and clothes as dirty as his person. In these cases uncleanliness is a form of asceticism, a subject which we have already touched upon in dealing with industry and fasting, but the principles of which still call for our consideration.