476. Phallus as amulet. At Rome the phallus was an amulet and was worn by all children. The figure, therefore, cannot have been an obscene one. In the Roman gardens also were ithyphallic figures which appear to bear witness to a survival of the growth-demon idea, or to usages which originated in the growth-demon idea, and were perpetuated traditionally without knowledge of the original meaning. On mediæval churches figures were often carved, as an expression of naïve ideas and faiths, and in pure realism, which were frankly obscene. Paintings and stained glass often represented similar objects. In the second half of the sixteenth century such objects were removed, or covered, or modified. It may be that the notion of obscenity developed sooner in respect to literature than in respect to art. Susemihl[1552] suggests that the lost tales of Miletus may have been obscene, and also the tales of Paxamos, and that their disappearance may be due to a war on them on this account. Literature would furnish food to the mind. It would not deal with fact. The popular judgment seems long to have refused to admit that facts of structure and function which were universally human could be put under a taboo and made improper to be known and seen. What is familiar tends to remain in our overconsciousness only. The same is true of what offends one's taste and from which one averts attention, although it cannot be caused to cease, like profane language. The cases of toleration of what would now be considered obscene are to be explained in this way.
477. Symbols in Asia. "In ancient times obscene symbols were used without offense to denote sex."[1553] Such symbols were very common in western Asia. They are very common now in India. A Chinese woman's foot, an Arab woman's face, a Tuareg man's mouth, is obscene to persons educated in any one of those taboos, because it always is, and ought to be, concealed. It is not obscene to us. On the other hand, the lingam in India is obscene to us, but not to Hindoos who have never learned any taboo in regard to it. An egg or a seed might have been made obscene in some group on account of its connection with reproduction, if that connection had been developed in dogma and usage. An Englishman would never think of the garter as unseemly, but non-English men and women have thought it such. The crucifix shows us how conventionalization and familiarization set aside all the suggestion which an artifact really carries. The figure of a naked man dying in torture is purely horrible and repulsive. No one could get edification from an artistic representation of a man hanging on the gallows. Many people overlook so much of the crucifix and add so much in imagination that they get great edification from it. The language used in the communion about eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ refers to nothing in our mores, and appeals to nothing in our experience. It comes down from very remote ages, very possibly from cannibalism.[1554] If we heard that the Chinese or Mohammedans had a religious custom in which they used currently the figure of eating the body and drinking the blood of a man (or god), and if we had no such figure of speech in our own use, we should consider it shocking and abominable.
478. The notion of obscenity is modern. It is evident that the notion of obscenity is very modern. It is due to the modern development of the arts of life and the mode of life under steam and machinery. The cheapening and popularization of luxury have made houses larger, plumbing cheaper, and all the apparatus of careful living more accessible to all classes. The consequence is that all the operations and necessities of life can be carried on with greater privacy and more observation of conventional order and decorum. Then the usages and notions grow more strict and refined. It is only in poverty that exposures and collisions occur which violate decency and involve obscenity. Therefore the standards and codes of all classes have risen, and the care about dressing, bathing, and private functions, for the sexes and for children, has been intensified. Out of this has come the notion of what is obscene, as the extreme of indecency and impropriety. What we call obscene was, in ancient times, either a matter of superstition or a free field for jest. The conventionalization in favor of what is amusing must always be recognized. It has always entered into comedy in the theater. A jest will not cover as much now as it once would, but it still goes far. The ancient mythology long covered obscenity in drama. When Hephæstus caught Ares and Aphrodite in his net the gods all enjoyed the joke. The goddesses did not come to see the sight.[1555] The difference between the masculine and feminine judgment as to whether a thing is funny or shameful is well drawn. Hera insisted to Zeus that their conjugal familiarity should not be seen.[1556] The young women served the men in the bath, but Odysseus feared to anger Nausikaa if he exposed himself to her (although it is not certain that this was on account of his nakedness), and when she walked through the town with him she knew well what would shame her.[1557] Odysseus also asked the women to withdraw while he bathed.[1558] The mores were in flux and were contradictory. The interpretation of the text is not beyond question. It may not have been nakedness which caused shame, but the dirt and disorder of person produced by shipwreck. Various philosophies claim to have brought in the greater care and refinement of more recent times, but not one of them can show the documentary proof that the men of a time, at that time, showed revolt against the mores of that time in regard to this matter. What has happened is that, in modern times, steam and machinery, with the increase of capital and of power over nature which they have produced, have given social power to the lower middle class, as the representatives of the masses. This has brought into control the mores of those classes, which were simple, unluxurious, philistine, and comparatively pure, because those classes were forced to be frugal, domestic, careful of their children, self-denying, and relatively virtuous, on account of their limited means. The arts of life never can be the same for the poor and the rich. Wealth is often charged with introducing luxury and vice, but that tendency is offset by its giving command over the conditions of life, which makes refined usages possible.
479. Propriety. The rules of propriety apply to all the acts of life, but especially to those which take place in the presence or neighborhood of others; still more especially to those which affect others. A large section of such rules deals with the ordinary intercourse of persons of the two sexes, and regulates details of the sex taboo which are less important. Crawley gives a list of cases[1559] in which brother and sister, father and daughter, are separated by the sex taboo. A woman of the Omaha tribe, whether married or not, if she walked or rode alone would ruin her reputation as a virtuous woman. She may ride or walk only with her husband or near kinsman. In other cases she gets another woman to go with her. Young men are forbidden to speak to girls, if they meet two or more on the road, unless they are akin.[1560] A chief never ate with his guests amongst the tribes on the upper Missouri. He sat by and served them, meanwhile preparing the pipe to be smoked afterwards.[1561] Junker[1562] was warned that, in passing a princess in Buganda, he must not touch her robe of oxhide, for that would be an insult to her. If a woman of the Mongbottu gives coloring matter to a man, that is undue familiarity and will occasion the wrath of an offended husband.[1563] An Andaman Islander, if he has occasion to speak to a married woman older than himself, must do it through a third person. He must not touch his younger brother's or cousin's wife, or his wife's sister. Women are restricted in the same way as to the husband's elder brother, or male cousin, or his brother-in-law.[1564] The relations of relatives in law are a chapter in propriety.
480. Seclusion of women. In modern Korea women are secluded. It is not proper to ask for them. Women have been put to death by fathers or husbands, or are reported to have committed suicide, when strange men, by accident or design, have touched their hands. A servant woman gave as a reason for not saving her mistress from a fire in the house that she had been touched by a man, in the confusion, and was not worth saving.[1565] In China, if a foreigner asks about the ladies, he is taken to refer to the mother, not the wife, of the Chinaman.[1566] A young wife is not allowed, amongst the southern Slavs, to address comrades in the great-family house by their names, "out of modesty." She gives them special names, adopted for her intercourse with them. She is guilty of great impropriety if she chats with her husband in the presence of her parents-in-law.[1567]
481. Customs of propriety. A native of the Naga Hills told an Englishman that it was not the correct thing to use a poisoned arrow except to shoot it at a woman.[1568] On the Palau Islands, and amongst all Moslems,[1569] it is an insult to a man to ask him about the health of his wife, and any man may strike with a stick or a stone, not with a cutting weapon, any one who utters the former's wife's name. Women are treated with extreme formality. A man who surprises one bathing is fined. This occurs very rarely, since the men utter cries of warning when approaching the place.[1570] In German Melanesia a visitor is at once presented with betel and food, but he immediately gives some of it back to the inmates of the house as security against poison.[1571] The Indians of Central America are shocked at the quick actions and loud talking habitual to Europeans, and think them signs of a lack of breeding and of the low level of European culture. Some tribes allow no singing, which they consider a sign of drunkenness.[1572] An Ossetin (Caucasus) will never take his child on his arm or caress it in the presence of another, especially of an older person, or his own father or mother. If he did do so, no one would shake hands with him, and any one might with impunity spit in his face. Propriety forbids the Tushins (of the same region) to manifest tenderness, even when old, towards husband or wife, parent or child, in the presence of others; especially is it improper to show tenderness towards sons.[1573] An Ossetin man may see his betrothed only in secret and incidentally, or in the house of one of his own relatives. It is a gross insult to ask him about her health, or when the wedding will be. A married woman may not address her husband or male relatives by their names. If she does so, the other women will ridicule her. Other people in the same region have similar excessive rules. An Armenian woman, after marriage, is veiled. She must not talk with any one but her husband, sisters, or little children. She answers her parents-in-law by signs. Her husband ought not to call her by her name before others. A Cherkess wife may talk with her husband only at night. His presence in her room by day is thought improper, and it is improper for man and wife to be seen together outside the house, or to be seen talking together. A newly married woman, among the Grusians, must not speak to her husband's father, mother, or brothers until she has borne a child. A childless wife is not treated with respect by her husband, or his family, or even by outsiders.[1574] Darinsky explains that the community used to buy the wives, who were costly, and not equal in number to the men. Now, if a man gets a wife and children of his own, he commits a crime against the old order. He must be well off, and he leaves his poorer brethren in the lurch. They envy and annoy him. To escape this he conceals or ignores his relation to his wife and children.
482. Moslem rules of propriety. To a great extent the legislation of Mohammed consisted in accomplishing reforms and innovations for which the Arabs were almost ready. When he tried to introduce ideas of his own, changing the mores, he failed. He tried many times to put a stop to the usages of mourning which were violent and excessive,—loud outcries, destruction of clothes and furniture, blackening the walls of the house and one's face, and shearing the beard. He did not succeed. These were ancient and popular customs and they were maintained.[1575] It is improper for any Moslem, male or female, to uncover the head.[1576] They uncover the feet to show respect. This was Semitic and is Oriental.[1577] Robertson Smith[1578] thinks that the reason was that the shoes could not be washed, unless they were mere linen socks, such as were used in the Phœnician sacred dress. By Moslem rules strangers should never see or hear a man's wives. Physicians may see only the affected parts of a woman. A traveler returning home may not enter his own house at night. Two persons of the same sex must never bare the body between the waist and the knee in presence of each other. The Koran[1579] contains elaborate rules for women as to the concealment of parts of the body, and as to movements of the body and gestures as limited by propriety. Neatness, care, and order are religious duties; also devices to preserve and enhance beauty.[1580] To an Arab, a blow on the back of the neck is more insulting than one on the face.[1581] It is not proper for a man to look any Moslem woman in the face. When Vambery, talking to a lady, raised his eyes to her face she sternly told him to behave with propriety.[1582]
483. Hatless women. In contrast with the Moslem rule not to uncover the head is the Christian rule that men should uncover the head in church but that women should cover it. In 1905 Cranstock church in Newquay, Cornwall, England, was closed on account of the "irreverence of numbers of women, who, walking uncovered, presume to enter God's house with no sign of reverence or modesty upon their heads." A rule was adopted at Canterbury, in the same year, that no hatless women should be allowed in the cathedral. A reason or authority for this rule is said to be found in 1 Cor. xi. 4-7. An American church paper said that such a rule would half empty some American churches in the warmer latitudes.[1583] A rector at Asbury Park, August 17, 1905, rebuked women for coming to church without hats, and said that the bishop of the diocese had asked the clergy to enforce the rule that "women should not enter the consecrated building with uncovered heads." Russian Jewish women at Jerusalem, being forbidden to wear veils, wear wigs, lest they may "dishonor" their heads by uncovering them.[1584]
484. Rules of propriety. The Kabyles of northern Africa are warlike, but have little political organization. Although they are Moslems, they have, by an ingenious use of Moslem law about pious gifts for charitable uses, preserved their own ancient mores about women's property, against the Moslem law. A bride, on leaving her home, is lifted on her mule by a negro, if there is one in the village. There is great rejoicing at the birth of a boy, and the mother is congratulated and decorated. When a girl is born there is silence. A man is fined if he slaughters an animal and eats meat except on a market day, because it would pain his neighbors to see him eat meat when they could not get it.[1585] The Kabyles have very strict rules as to sex propriety and decency of language. Any violation of propriety in the presence of a woman, or of a man accompanied by one of his female relatives, calls for especial punishment. The presence of a woman protects her husband from violence by a creditor, and in general imposes peace and decorum.[1586] As a mark of respect for a man with whom she is talking, a Tuareg woman will turn her back to him, or draw a fold of her garment over her mouth.[1587] The Kalmucks consider that a man without his girdle is in extreme undress. He never shows himself before old people without his girdle.[1588]
485. Hindoo ritual of the toilet, etc. According to ancient Hindoo custom, younger brothers should in all matters yield to elder brothers.[1589] Brahmins use only the left hand for all acts of the bodily toilet. They have a very elaborate ritual for all such acts, and consider their houses defiled by the presence of Europeans who do not observe any such ritual. They remove shoes on entering a house on account of the impurity of leather.[1590] It is not good manners amongst them to address the women of the house, or to ask for them. If a woman takes a man's arm in public she is supposed to be his mistress. Gallantry is never displayed. A wife would resent it as disrespectful, fit only for a woman of another grade. Only courtesans, dancers, and harlots are taught to read, sing, or dance. An honest woman would be ashamed to know how to read. Brahmins regard the use of the pocket handkerchief with the same disgust which a European feels for the Hindoo use of the fingers which European laborers practice. Hindoos clean the teeth with a fresh twig every day, and are horrified that Europeans do it with a brush made of the hair of an animal, and do it frequently with the same brush. There are days on which one must not brush the teeth on pain of hell. "Saliva is of all things the most utterly polluting."[1591] For a woman to have to part with her hair is one of the greatest of degradations and the most terrible of all trials. Hindoo women never use false hair if they lose their own.[1592] Women are safe and are treated with respect in public. The honor of a Hindoo requires that he look no higher than the ankles of a passing woman.[1593] He must not touch a woman. If many men and women meet, for instance in traveling, they may lie down side by side to sleep without impropriety.[1594] Not one man in a hundred in India ever tasted liquor, "but a Hindoo beggar may not eat bread made with yeast or baked by any but Hindoos of his own or a better caste."[1595] The Angharmi of northeastern India consider it a reproach for a woman to bear a child before her hair is long enough to be tied behind. Until marriage the women shave the head. Spouses are therefore separated for a year after marriage.[1596]