Adultery on the part of the husband does not necessarily alter the relations of the children to the parents and each other; unchastity of the wife, however, either altogether breaks the family bond or weakens it through doubt. The purity of the woman and her faithfulness are, therefore, of the greatest racial importance, and it is eminently proper that she should be in the van of moral progress. The highest moral character, says Kant, is that which does the good not out of inclination but from a sense of duty guided by reason, and there is good reason for female chastity.[DY]
In the lowest savage life the woman was free and even the ruler. At that time not the remotest vestige of the idea of chastity was to be found. The gratification of the instinct was simply a natural process that contained in it neither good nor evil. The jewel of chastity had no more value than a grain of sand. For ages the sentiment of chastity had no existence. Fornication, adultery and incest were the common order of things, accepted by public opinion and even consecrated by religion. Later on, chastity was known, not as a virtue but as a necessity. But the severe punishment to which the wife was subjected for her transgressions from the straight path of chastity has led to the constant inculcations at home and in the community that impurity in the woman is unholy, hated by God and most infamous. These constant inculcations have created such a strong sentiment of female purity that the old philosophers maintained that it was an innate instinct, always present under normal conditions.
When the spotless purity of the wife was once accepted as the moral law of the race, it was of vital importance for her that the man should also be limited to one permanent mate. She had to place obstacles in his way of finding gratification of his sensual desires elsewhere except with a permanent mate. To accomplish her purpose, general female chastity was of the greatest help to her. Strict female chastity is the best means to preserve the man’s fidelity. This fact is at the bottom of woman’s hatred for her lax sister. She never forgives the woman who lowers the value of feminine favors. If men can find gratification of their desires for a little money on the streets or for a small gift among his female acquaintances, all the obstacles that chaste women have devised for many centuries become futile and are of no avail. Hence woman hates her fallen sister relentlessly. The law of obstacles is at the bottom of the restrictions women have themselves imposed upon their sex. After chastity in the wife has been dictated to her by economic reasons, woman has been forced to develop her moral standard. Her sexual passivity comes to woman’s aid in maintaining her purity. It makes it easier for her to refuse a man’s advances than it is for him to curb his passions.[DZ]
The law of obstacles has also created modesty and coyness, the twin sisters of chastity. To increase the obstacles to men’s advances, the woman imposed upon herself great restraint when in men’s company. All the exterior modesty which women require in expression, dress and behavior of their sex is to be explained by the desire to increase the obstacles. Feminine coyness prolongs the period of courtship. By keeping the suitor in suspense and doubt the imagination and the sentimental side of love are developed.[EA]
Modesty and coyness, though appearing to be natural and inherited sentiments, are nothing more than natural obstacles that tend to increase the value of the favor granted. Woman, for this reason, watches not only over her own modesty, but is anxious also to protect the modesty of her sister. She watches with jealous eyes that feminine modesty should not be offended in any way. She is ever ready to succor her sister with all her means, in confinements, at accidents or in cases of sickness where the presence of men might offend feminine modesty.[EB]
Honor and virtue in woman did not originally take their rise from any innate moral sense,—for a religious rite or a legal form even to-day mark for her the whole difference between irredeemable sin and absolute duty,—but from the mode of her position and in accordance with the conditions of her relation to men.[EC] Her morality is founded rather upon the rule of reason which is the best judge of duty. Woman’s modesty and coyness are nothing else but reason applied to human actions and regulating man’s appetites, desires and affections for the good of the family, community, nation and of the human race.
Thus the fascinating details of the evolution of the marriage relations among men teach the lesson that the strong sentiment of chastity, this powerful moral law that controls human actions as the law of gravitation rules the world, has grown slowly from microscopic beginnings until it has assumed a racial consciousness which underlies that of the individual. Throughout the three periods of the history of mankind—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—the human heart felt a law within, written by the strong hand of the Creator, that man has to sacrifice personal comfort and freedom of action in the interest of posterity, and that it is preferable to suffer the pain of repressed passion and to bear its trial in the interest of that general morality which our conscience tells us to be of such fundamental value.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
MALE CHASTITY
The history of the evolution of marriage furnishes the reason for woman’s chastity. The purity of the wife and her faithfulness are of the greatest racial importance. Chastity has been forced upon her in a just and laudable cause, not by men[ED] but by economic conditions. When the moral law once had been established restricting the wife to a permanent mate, she had to place obstacles, in the form of general chastity, modesty and coyness, in the way of man’s finding gratification of his sensual desires elsewhere except with a permanent mate.