in regard to sex-life: the kind of primitive and unreasoning feeling which once drove women to the temples of Ishtar in parts of the East, and still survives, baldly and ludicrously, in the “purification” process to which a recent mother must submit in the Roman and Anglican Churches. This old idea that there was something “unclean” or mysterious about sex-life, was more or less discarded when men passed out of the barbaric stage, but it quite evidently survived in part in the virtue of purity. A man or woman, it was thought, had a certain mystic superiority if he or she did not use the organs of sex. Hence the widespread veneration of Vestal Virgins, Pythagorean and Serapean recluses, priestesses of Isis, Aztec and Christian nuns. I call attention particularly to the notion that these celibates were in some sense superior to their fellows, because it shows clearly the connection with the older idea of a mystic uncleanness about sex. There is, of course, no rational ground for this superstition, though even philosophers have entertained it. There is a large and elegant literature about it, from the Enneads of Plotinus to Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni or the works of Miss Corelli.
Most of us see quite clearly the barbaric strain lingering in this admiration of virginity, but we do not perceive how far our virtue of purity is a compromise with this ancient superstition. I mean that, together with sound elements which I will discuss presently, the sentiment of purity or chastity
