at the moment of the catastrophe, when a sudden 'Oh!' announces to the unsuspecting husband that the temple has been violated for the first time, and that the veil of the sanctum sanctorum has really been rent by him. Add also to these methods injections so astringent that, at the required time, they will give to a prostitute, whose gap has been widened by a thousand customers, a tightness greater than that of a real virgin."
The more one examines the question, the more one is convinced that virginity or chastity has come to be regarded as a spiritual and moral asset only in civilised, or comparatively civilised, society. "In considering the moral quality of chastitiy among savages," writes Havelock Ellis (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 6, p. 147), "we must carefully separate that chastity which among semiprimitive peoples is exclusively imposed upon women. This has no moral quality whatever, for it is not exercised as a useful discipline, but merely enforced in order to heigthen the economic and erotic value of women.
"Many authorities believe that the regard for women as property furnishes the true reason for the widespread insistence on virginity in brides. Thus A. B. Ellis, speaking of the West Coast of Africa (Yoruha Speaking Peoples, pp. 183 et seq.), says that girls of good class are bethroded as mere children, and are carefully guarded from men, while girls of lower class are seldom bethroded, and may lead any life they choose."
Virginity in woman, it seems, has been set on a pedestal unsupported by history, science, or investigation. It is obviously the outcome of man's
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