WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
passion is often dismissed as "mere animality." Ages ago, the Oriental peoples recognised that the highest sexual morality is only compatible with grave and frank acceptance of the methods ordained by the gods for the propagation of the human species. The Christian has rarely indeed accepted the Almighty's plan in the same reverential spirit. How revolting are the conceptions of St. Bernard and most of the Fathers: "You have never seen a viler dunghill!" (i.e., than the human body) cries St. Bernard. How contemptuous and coarse is St. Odo's estimate of woman. Among the few early Christian teachers who showed sanity in this respect was Clement of Alexandria, who declared: "We should not be ashamed to name what God has not been ashamed to create."[1]
Such contempt for the body, and for the supreme function of procreation, would be deemed the gravest blasphemy by all devout Hindus and Mohammedans. "It seems never to have entered the heads of the Hindu legislators," said Sir William Jones ("Works," Vol. II., p. 311), "that anything natural could be offensively obscene, a singularity which pervades all their writings, but is no proof of the depravity of their morals."
R. Schmidt, writing on "Indian Erotics," in Ger-
- ↑ See "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," Vol. VI., Havelock Ellis.
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