WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
physical expression of love, is of the same quality as the cold lasciviousness and obscenity that so often distinguishes Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon ideas of sexual passion.
Phallicism reverenced sex as a symbol of the whole of life, of increase, and of good. To-day men mock ignorantly at the images and signs of this ancient cult. There is a deplorable tendency to confuse beautiful symbols with the vulgar pornography of corrupt modern cities. Such vulgarity is foreign to the Eastern mind. Freedom of conversation does not necessarily spell indecency, though imperfectly educated people in the West seem to think so. Christianity, as expounded by the Fathers and the ascetic saints, besmirched love and sex so completely and ruthlessly that we have never succeeded in cleansing our thoughts upon the great and solemn motor-force of the world.
The Oriental may be in some cases too much preoccupied with the physical phases of sex-love. At all events, his preoccupation is open and avowed, and not concealed, and hypocritically denied. Behind all this interest in love, there is a deep esteem for the procreative power, whence springs most, if not indeed all, of the nobler human aspirations and virtues.
What may be called justly a sanction for a culti-
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