Were we desirous to obtain an evident and undoubted sign of virginity, we should search for it among those barbarous nations who, incapable of instilling, by education, the sentiments of virtue and honour into their children, secure the chastity of their daughters by expedient which nothing could have suggested but the rudeness of their manners. The people of Ethiopia, and other parts of Africa, of Pegu, Arabia Petræa and other nations of Asia, draw together by a kind of needle-work, the part which Nature has separated, leaving only a space sufficient for the necessary evacuations. As the child grows, the parts gradually adhere; insomuch that, when the time of marriage arrives, they must unavoidably be disunited by incision. For this infibulation of girls, as it is a substance not subject to corruption, they use the fibres of the asbestos. Some tribes only use a kind of ring; to this practice, wives as well as girls are subjected, with this single difference, that the ring alloted to the latter cannot be removed, and in that alloted to the former there is a lock of which the husband alone possesses the key. But why quote barbarous nations, when we have similar examples so much nearer home? What is the delicacy on which some of our neighbours pique themselves, with respect to the chastity of their wives, but a jealousy, equally barbarous and criminal?
How various are the dispositions, manners, and opinions of different nations? After what has been here related of the high estimation in which virginity is held by the bulk of mankind, and of the precautions and ignomious methods they employ, in order to secure it, could it be imagined there were other nations who despise it, and who consider the trouble of removing it as a servile office?
Prompted by superstition, the inhabitants of certain countries resign the first fruits of virginity to their priests, and sometimes to their very idols. This privilege is enjoyed by the priests of Cochin and Calicut; and in Goa, virgins are prostituted, either voluntarily or forcibly, by their nearest relations to an idol of iron. Of these vile excesses, gross superstition and a blind sense of the duties of religion, have been the sources, while motives more earthly have induced people of other countries eagerly to devote their daughters to their chiefs. In this manner, without any dishonour, do they prostitute their daughters in the kingdom of Congo. Nearly the same is the custom in Turkey, in Persia, and in several other countries, both of Asia and Africa, where the most eminent nobles deem themselves, in the highest degree, honoured by receiving from their sovereign, women with whom he is himself already disgusted.
In the kingdom of Arracan, and in the Philippine islands, a man would think himself much disgraced were he to espouse a female who had not been defloured; and it is only by dint of money that a person can be prevailed with to precede the husband. In the province of Thibet, a mother will search for a stranger, and earnestly beg of him to put her daughter in a situation for obtaining a husband. The Laplanders also prefer such women as have already had a commerce with strangers, from an idea that they must be possessed of more merit than others, otherwise they could not have pleased men whom they consider as better judges of beauty than themselves. In Madagascar, and in several other countries, women the most dissolute and debauched are those who are married the soonest. Many more instances might be produced of this peculiar fancy, which could never have subsisted but from a gross and utter depravation of manners.
Marriage is the natural state of man after puberty. A man ought to have but one wife, and a woman but one husband; This is the law of Nature, the number of females being nearly equal with that of males, and ignorance and tyranny must have been the leading features where men have established laws in opposition to it. Reason, humanity, and justice, complain aloud of those odious seraglios, in which the liberty and the affections of many women are sacrificed to the brutal passion of one individual. Are these tyrants of mankind the more happy by this pre-eminence?—No; surrounded with eunuchs, and with women, useless to themselves and to other men, the misery they have created is a constant source of torment and perplexity.
Marriage, therefore, as it is established among us, and among every other people who are guided by the light of reason and revelation, is a state which is suited to man, and in which he ought to employ the additional faculties he has acquired by puberty: by obstinately persisting in celibacy they will become troublesome, and even fatal. From a too long continence in either sex diseases may arise, or at least create irritations so violent, that reason and religion would not be sufficient to counteract the impetuosity of the passions which they excite, and thus man may be reduced to a level with the brutes, which, under the impression of such sensations, become furious and ungovernable.
The most violent effect of this irritation in women is the furor uterinus, a kind of mania, which disorders their reason and bereaves them of all sense of shame. With words the most lascivious, and with actions the most indecent, is this melancholy distemper accompanied and its origin revealed. I have seen a girl at the age of twelve years, of a brown but lively and florid complexion, small in size, yet strong and plump, commit the most indecent actions at the very sight of a man, from which nothing could divert her, neither the presence of her mother, expostulation, nor punishment. Her reason, however, forsook her not, and the paroxysms, which were so violent as to excite horror, ceased the minute she was left with her own sex. Aristotle says, it is at this age the irritation is greatest, and girls ought then to be most attentively watched. The remark may be applicable to the climate in which he lived, but in countries more cold, the female constitution does not become warm so early.
When the furor uterinus increases to a certain degree marriage is no remedy for it and instances there are of its being fatal. Happily the force of Nature is rarely of itself the cause of such dreadful passions, even when the temperament inclines to them; and before they arrive at this extremity many causes must concur, of which the principal is, an imagination inflamed by licentious conversation and obscene representations. The contrary temperament is infinitely more common among women, the generality of whom are, with respect to this passion, exceedingly cool or indifferent. Of men too, there are many in whose chastity there is little merit; and some I have known, who, at the age of twenty-five and thirty, enjoyed a good state of health without having ever experienced this passion so urgent as to render a gratification necessary.
From continence there is less to be feared than from excess, as is strikingly evinced in a number of men, some of whom, by the effects of the latter, lose their memory; some are deprived of sight; some become bald, and many have dwindled into a consumption and died.