The connection between sexual feeling and religious belief is ancient, intimate, and sustained. It has impressed itself on many observers who have approached the subject from widely different points of view. Some have treated the connection as purely accidental, and as having no more than a mere historical interest. Others have used it as illustrating the way in which so sacred a subject as religion may suffer degradation in degenerate hands. Others of a more scientific temper have dealt with the relations between sexualism and religion as illustrations of a mere perversion. A deal may be said in favour of this last point of view. We know, as a matter of fact, that such cases of perversion do exist, in what form and to what extent will be discussed later. We are also aware that strong feeling which cannot find vent in one direction will secure expression in another. The annals of Roman Catholicism contain accounts of numerous persons who have sought refuge in a monastery or a nunnery as the result of disappointment in love, and it would be foolish to conclude that strong amorous feelings are annihilated because there is a change in the object to which they are directed. Paul was not a different man from the Saul of pre-conversion days, but the same person with his energies directed into a new channel. Protestantism is without the obvious outlets for unsatisfied sexual feeling such as is provided by Roman Catholicism, but it provides other outlets. Religious service as a whole remains, and intense religious devotion may very often owe its origin to sources undreamt of by the devotee.
Between religious beliefs and sexual feelings the connection is, however, wider and deeper, than the relation expressed by mere perversion. Neither is the relation one of mere accident. An examination of the facts in the light of adequate scientific knowledge, combined with a due perception of primitive human psychology and sociology, have shown that the two things are united at their source. One eminent medical writer asserts that "in a certain sense, the history of religion can be regarded as a peculiar mode of manifestation of the human sexual instinct."[65] Another writer substantially endorses this by the remark that "in a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct."[66] How easily one glides into the other very little observation of life or study of history will show. The language of devotion and of amatory passion is often identical, and seems to serve equally well for either purpose. The significance of this fact is often obscured by our having etherealised the conception of love, and so losing sight of its physiological basis. And, having hidden it from sight, we, not unnaturally, fail to give it due consideration. This is, in its way, a fatal blunder. The sex life of man and woman is too large a fact and too pervasive a force to be ignored with safety. Ignorance combined with prudery conspires to perpetuate what ignorance alone began; and the sex life, in both its normal and abnormal manifestations, has been perpetually exploited in the interests of supernaturalism.
The evidence that may be adduced in favour of what has been said is vast, and covers a wide range.
Historically it covers such facts as the relations between primitive religious beliefs and the sexual life, and the multiplication of sects of a markedly erotic character during periods of religious enthusiasm. "Even the most casual students of religion," says Professor G. B. Cutten, "must have observed an apparently intimate connection between religious and sexual emotions, and not a few have read with amazement the abnormal cults which have had the sexual element as a foundation for their denominational dissent."[67] A phenomenon so striking as to force itself on the notice of the most 'casual students' raises the presumption that the relation between the two sets of facts is rather more than that of 'apparent' intimacy. When in the course of history two things appear together over and over again, one is surely justified in assuming that there is some underlying principle responsible for the association. The search for this principle leads to the next class of evidence—the psychological. In this we are concerned with the relation between the sexual feelings and the religious idea, an association not always expressed through the comparatively harmless medium of language. And, finally, we have the evidence derived from pathology, where we are able to discern a perverted sexuality masquerading as religious fervour.
In a previous chapter there has been pointed out the kind of mental environment in which primitive man moves. As one of the earliest forms of systematised thinking, religion dominates all other forms of mental activity. In savage culture there is hardly a single event into which religious considerations do
not enter. The savage does not merely believe in a supernatural world, he lives in it; it is as real to him as anything around him, and far more potent in its action. Above all, it is important to bear in mind that although one is compelled to speak of the natural and the supernatural when dealing with early beliefs, no such separation is present to the primitive intelligence. The division between the natural and the supernatural in the external world is the reflection of a corresponding division in the world of thought, and this arises only at a subsequent stage. What is afterwards recognised as the supernatural pervades everything. In a sense it is everything, since most of what occurs is by the agency or connivance of animistic forces.
In such a world, where even the ordinary events of life have a supernatural significance, the strange and sometimes terrifying phenomena of sexual life carry peculiarly strong evidences of supernatural activity. Events which are to the modern mind the most obvious consequences of sex life are to the primitive mind proofs of supernatural or ghostly agency. Nothing, for example, would appear less open to misconception than the connection between sexual relations and the birth of children. Yet, on this head, Mr. Sidney Hartland has produced a mass of evidence, gathered from all parts of the world, and leading to the conclusion that in the most primitive stages of human culture, conception and birth are ascribed to direct supernatural influence. Setting out from a study of the world-wide vogue of the belief in supernatural birth—contained in the author's earlier work, The Legend of Perseus—Mr. Hartland finds in this a survival of a
culture stage in which all birth is believed to be supernatural. Survivals of this belief that birth is a phenomenon independent of the union of the sexes are found in the existence of numerous semi-magical devices to obtain children, still practised in many parts of Europe, and which were practised on a much more extensive scale during the medieval period; in the ignorance of man concerning physiological functions in general, the existence of Motherright which appears to have universally antedated Fatherright—the origin of which he traces to economic causes, and to the animistic nature of primitive beliefs in general.[68]
Such a conclusion is not without verification from the beliefs of existing savages. The Bahau of Central Borneo have no notion of the real duration of pregnancy, and date its commencement only from the time of its becoming visible. The Niol-Niol of Dampier Land in North-Western Australia hold birth to be independent of sexual intercourse. It is engendered by a pre-existing spirit through the agency of a medicine man. The North Queenslanders have a similar belief. They believe a child to be sent in answer to the husband's prayer as a punishment to his wife when he is vexed with her. On the Proserpine River the Blacks believe that a child is the gift of a supernatural being called Kunya. In South Queensland the Euahlayi believe that spirits congregate at certain spots and pounce on passing women, and so are born. On the Slave Coast of West Africa the Awunas say that a child derives the lower jaw from the mother; all the rest comes from the spirits. Among these people and others that might be named paternity exists in
name, but it implies something entirely different to what it afterwards connotes. Mr. Hartland gives numerous instances of this curious fact, and points out that "the attention of mankind would not be early or easily fastened upon the procreative process. It is lengthy, extending over months during which the observer's attention would be inevitably diverted by a variety of objects, most of them of far more pressing import.... The sexual passion would be gratified instinctively without any thought of the consequences, and in an overwhelming proportion of cases without the consequence of pregnancy at all. When that consequence occurred it would not be visible for weeks or months after the act which produced it. A hundred other events might have taken place in the interval which would be likely to be credited with the result by one wholly ignorant of natural laws."