" (Westermarck, 77, 80.)
"In Cumana the priests, who were regarded as holy,
slept only with unmarried women, 'porque tenian por
honorosa costumbre que ellos las quitassen la
virginidad.'" (Bastian, _K.A.A._, II., 228.)
From this lowest depth of depravity it would be interesting, if space
and the architectural plan of this volume permitted, to trace the
growth of the sentiment which demands chastity; noting, in the first
place, how married women were compelled, by the jealous fury of their
masters, to practise continence; how, very much later, virginity began
to be valued, not, indeed, at first, as a virtue having a value and
charm of its own, but as a means of enhancing the market value of
brides. Indifference to masculine chastity continued much longer
still. The ancient civilized nations had advanced far enough to value
purity in wives and maidens, but it hardly occurred to them that it
was man's duty to cultivate the same virtue. Even so austere and
eminent a moral philosopher as Cicero declared that one would have to
be very severe indeed to ask young men to refrain from illicit
relations. The mediaeval church fathers endeavored for centuries to
enforce the doctrine that men should be as pure as women, with what
success, every one knows. A more powerful agency in effecting a reform
was the loathsome disease which in the fifteenth century began to
sweep away millions of licentious men, and led to the survival of the
fittest from the moral point of view.
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