CHAPTER XII[ToC]
RELIGION AND SEXUAL LIFE
Transformation of Profane Customs into Religious Dogmas.—Ethnography has taught us that in the course of time human tribes often unconsciously transform profane customs into integral parts of their religion, either by attributing them to a divine origin, or by elevating them to the rank of commandments of the gods, or by connecting them with other dogmas, combining them with worship, etc.
Sexual connection plays an important part in this matter. A great number of religious rites and customs are nothing else than the customs of sexual life (taken in its widest sense) which have been symbolized; inversely, a number of dogmas have for their only motive the application of a religious basis to sexual customs, which gives them more authority.
The religious rites react powerfully on the sexual life and on the way in which the members of the tribe or people understand it. We will give a few striking examples.
We have seen in Chapter VI that polygamy depends first on the idea of ownership, and secondly on marriage by purchase, to which it owes its historic origin. But the fact that Islamism and Mormonism, for example, have made polygamy an integral part of their religious dogmas, has given to the whole organization of the Mahometans and Mormons, as well as to their point of view of existence, a particular direction which cannot be ignored. In reality, we are just as polygamous as they are, but our theoretical and religious sexual morality is monogamous while theirs is polygamous, each based on contradictory "divine commandments."
Among certain Buddhists, the wife is compelled to follow her husband to the grave, which naturally influences sexual life profoundly.
Among many savage races there exists matriarchism, which gives the woman a high social position. This has even been made a religious dogma, while it simply originates from the natural and just idea that the mother is much more intimately connected with the children than the father.