The paths of civilization, from the complete promiscuity of sexual intercourse to the lofty ideal of life-long monogamic union, has not been a straightforward one, but has been marked by various aberrations of sexual relationship; hetairism, prostitution, polyandry, incest, rape, the jus primae noctis, etc. The anthropologist is able to trace the successive stages of the development of the institution of monogamic marriage; the community of wives within the clan; free sale of wives and daughters; bestowal of a man’s wife or concubine for the honour of a guest; ritual prostitution for the honour of the gods and at numerous religious festivals; æsthetic and literary hetairism, with bestowal of favours according to free inclination; community of wives among all males of the same family; the claim of the wife to as many as five or six husbands; the right of brothers to their sisters; the defloration of virgins by the priests in heathen temples; the temporary possession of the wife by the chief of the community, prior to her possession by her permanent husband; defloration of the bride by the bonze before her marriage; the feudal right of the mediæval seigneur to the prima nox of the bride of his retainer.
In the lower stages of civilization, copulation appears so natural an action that it is performed in public entirely without shame. Thus, Cook, in his first voyage, describes having seen an indigen engage in sexual intercourse with a girl of eleven years, under the very eyes of the queen, with whom Cook was then having audience; the sexual act was, according to Cook, the favourite topic of conversation between the sexes. Herodotus reports that many peoples of antiquity had no regard for privacy in sexual intercourse, but that, like the lower animals, they had connexion in any company. In the Bible, also, it is recorded that sexual intercourse was practised in public: “So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.” (II. Samuel, XVI. 22.) According to Athenaeus, the Etruscans, at their public banquets, were equally unrestrained. Plutarch reports that among the Spartans the maidens and the young men went about naked together. Even, indeed, after the sense of modesty had begun to develop, it was long before any secret was made about the act of intercourse. In classical antiquity, it was very frequently the subject of pictorial and plastic representation. Even in more recent days, there have been artists who have not hesitated to depict the sexual act: thus we have the Venus with a Faun by Caracci; the Jupiter and Io of Correggio; the Leda and the Swan of Tintoretto; and similar pictures by Luca Giordano, Rubens, Titian, and Franceschini.
Even in the early centuries of the Christian era, the sect of the Adamites practised intercourse openly in the light of day, on the ground that that which was right in the dark, could not be wrong in the light. The same is reported of the sect of Turlupins, in France in the fourteenth century. We cannot refrain from quoting at length from Lombroso and Ferrero a passage relating to the evolution of sexual manners in the female sex (Woman as Criminal and Prostitute): “In the lowest stages of development, the feeling of modesty is entirely wanting; limitless freedom in sexual intercourse is the general rule; and even where no system of promiscuity prevails, marriage rather fosters than discourages prostitution, especially in countries in which husbands are accustomed to expose their wives for sale. This fact may be brought into relation with the well known lasciviousness of apes and other animals high in the scale, showing that sexual excitability increases pari passu with intelligence, so that to man it is as impossible as to an ape to satisfy his sexual needs with a single female. Whilst among the apes, a single male possesses a number of wives, we find in the gregarious life of primitive man that community of wives has taken the place of polygamy, which institution, however, reappears in a higher stage of culture for the benefit of the more powerful masculine natures.
“To the dominion of prostitution as a normal institution succeeds the period in which it persists as a variously metamorphosed survival: it may be as the duty of the wife to surrender her person to any other male of the same family; or the woman may have to bestow her favors on a religious or political chief, as in the institution of temple-prostitution, where the wife must give herself, it may be to any one and at any time, or it may be to defined persons only and at stated festivals. Frequently we meet with another development of prostitution, finding that while the wife must remain chaste, the unmarried woman is allowed unrestricted intercourse; or, again, the wife at certain definite periods may dispense with fidelity to her husband, and return to the primitive condition of promiscuity. In certain instances prostitution is combined with the duties of hospitality, and marriage, though approximating to the monogamic ideal, must tolerate the intrusion of the guest into the marriage bed.”
“In a third period, prostitution no longer fills the place of a traditional survival, but is a morbid manifestation confined to a certain class of the community. But bridging this transition of prostitution from a normal to a morbid manifestation, we have the remarkable phenomenon of æsthetic prostitution. Thus, in India and in Japan, an agreeable class of prostitutes practices the arts of singing and dancing, and forms a privileged caste; similarly, in the most flourishing period of Grecian culture, the leading men of the time formed a social circle around the hetairæ, from whom they derived a fruitful stimulus to intellectual and political activity. In this respect, history repeated itself in Italy in the sixteenth century. Alike in classical Greece and in mediæval Italy, this æsthetic prostitution fanned the flames of a period of intense spiritual activity—for in individuals as in races, intellectual quickening is ever accompanied by erotic excitability.”
The unbridled passion of the primitive races of mankind, the coercive love of beauty felt by the ancient Greeks, the swelling flood of erotism of the great mass of people of all times, is gradually guided into the quiet channel of the marriage bed; and even though monogamic marriage is incapable of fully providing for all manifestations of sexual passion, still, from the medical point of view, we must maintain that marriage is for women the most hygienic and the most proper means of gratification of the sexual impulse.
Conception.
The union between ovum and spermatozoön, whereby fertilization is effected, appears to occur in the human species as a rule in the outer third of the Fallopian tube, the ampulla of this structure (receptaculum seminis in Henle’s terminology) serving to store the semen for a considerable period; in the lower animals, the usual occurrence of fertilization in this region has been established by direct observation. The open mouth of the tube receives the mature ovum, guided thither from the ovary by appropriate movements of the ovarian fimbriae; these movements have been seen in active occurrence in the guinea pig by Hensen. Once within the tube, the onward movement of the ovum is effected by the cilia of the epithelium lining of the canal.
His has formulated the theory that in the human species fertilization is possible only in the uppermost segment of the tube; an assumption that is probable enough, but cannot be regarded as definitely established. An analogy certainly exists among the lower divisions of the animal kingdom, for Coste, His, and Ohlschläger have proved that an ovum which passes through the Fallopian tube without being fertilized, undergoes notable alterations. Further, Coste has shown, in the case of the ovum of the domestic fowl, that this is no longer capable of being fertilized after it has passed through the upper segment of the oviduct. Other authorities, however, namely Löwenthal, Mayrhofer, and Wyder, oppose the extension of this rule to the human species. Löwenthal assumes that in the human female, fertilization ordinarily occurs in the cavity of the uterus, in the wall of which the unfertilized ovum has already embedded itself; and he supports his contention by the statement that spermatozoa are not to be found in the Fallopian tubes or on the surface of the ovaries. Mayrhofer and Wyder point out that the movement of the cilia of the ciliated epithelium is in the interior of the uterus in an upward direction, but in the Fallopian tubes is downwards in the direction of the uterus.
The contention of Löwenthal was disproved by Birch and Hirschfeld, who, in a prostitute dying during the act of intercourse, found, fifteen hours after death, living spermatozoa in the Fallopian tubes. On the other hand, more recent investigations, those, for instance, of Hofmeier, Mandl, and Bonn, have confirmed the data given above with regard to the direction of the ciliary movement in the interior of the genital passages. Moreover, O. Becker has shown that the ciliated epithelium of the tubes extends over the fimbriae and even on to the adjoining pavement epithelium of the peritoneum; and he believes that the ciliary movement of this region keeps up a constant current, the purpose of which is to sweep the ovum into the ostium of the tube, and thence down towards the uterus. Lode has adduced positive experimental evidence of the occurrence of such a movement of translation.