As to the relation between males and females, that regulates itself. All communities, barbarians and savages, have always some general recognized rule to guide them. Female chastity is secure among all nations, high and low, civilized and uncivilized, whether they are decorated in a complete suit of nudity, a gauze covering, or a ball-room dress. There is no necessity of going back four or five thousand years. Cæsar relates (Lib. vi, 21) that the Germans were in complete undress costume when bathing promiscuously; yet they had their customs of marriage and marriage ceremonies. In this country we have had the same customs and may have again. When Columbus arrived at one of the islands of the Caribs, 1494, a cacique and his family paid him a visit. This family consisted of two daughters, five sons, and five brothers. “One of the daughters was eighteen years of age, beautiful in form and countenance; her sister somewhat younger; both were naked, according to the custom of these islands, but were of modest demeanor” (Irving).
As a further illustration I quote from Irving’s description of the people that Peter Martyr met with. He relates: “It is certain that the land among the people is as common as the sun and water; and that ‘mine and thine,’ the seed of all mischief, have no place with them. They are content with so little, that in so large a country they have rather superfluity than scarceness; so they seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens; not intrenched with dykes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, without judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who taketh pleasure in doing hurt to another; and albeit they delight not in superfluities, yet they make provision for the increase of such roots whereof they make their bread, content with such simple diet, whereby health is preserved and disease avoided.”
Possibly somewhere on the African continent there may still exist a people that live a life as simple and as happy as those in the time of Columbus. But everything must yield before northern energy and Christian greed; besides, the new-comers need the land for their surplus population.
May we not ask, Is not our present high state of civilization the natural outcome of our necessities in the struggle to exist? Is not our high state of nervous development largely due to that struggle?
Indolence and inactivity produce nothing. Activity and diligence produce and invent all things.
All wrongful acts committed are either injuries done to ourselves, or injuries inflicted upon others.
Injuries done to ourselves are not necessarily sins. Onanism, for example, is unquestionably injurious, yet is not recognized as a sin. It leads to the insane asylum, and in many instances underlies religious insanity.
There are other disgusting practices that are neither injurious nor recognized as sins.
The stomach commits no sin, but leads nevertheless to many wrongs, to one’s self.
All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. And all injuries done to others are accounted both sins and crimes.