Religion and Lust Part 5

This use of the phallus is mentioned in the Bible, where it is bitterly condemned by one of the prophets: "Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit wh.o.r.edom with them."[86]

Finally, it was the custom of the young girls of France during the Middle Ages (like the maidens of certain savage races), who were on the eve of marriage, to offer up to St. Foutin their last maiden robes. From the evidence here adduced, we see that phallic wors.h.i.+p existed in some parts of Europe as late as the latter half of the eighteenth century, and that it was almost universal during the Middle Ages. According to Becan,[87] Golnitz,[88] and other historians, there were several other phallic saints besides St. Foutin who were wors.h.i.+ped in Belgium, Spain, Germany and other European countries; but, since their adoration was similar to that of St. Foutin, I do not think it necessary to give a description of it here. It has been shown conclusively that wors.h.i.+p of the generative principle was in vogue among the Latins, the Greeks, the ancient Germans, the Saxons, the Danes, the Gauls, the Iberians, the Picts, the Celts and the Britons. It has been demonstrated, also, that vestiges of phallic wors.h.i.+p existed in England, France, Italy, Spain and Germany during the Middle Ages. As late as the latter part of the eighteenth century wax images of the phallus were used as votive offerings in the town of Isernia, not many miles from Naples; the beribboned Maypole of our Mayday festival is but the flower decked phallus of the Roman matrons; charms against _jett.i.tura_, "the evil eye," little coral hands with the middle finger extended (in ancient days one of the most common symbols of Priapus) can still be purchased in the streets of Rome.[AD] "This wors.h.i.+p" (that of Priapus) "which was but part of that of the generative powers, appears to have been the most ancient of the superst.i.tions of the human race, and has prevailed more or less among all known peoples before the introduction of Christianity; and, singularly enough, _so deeply it seems to have been implanted in human nature_ that even the promulgation of the gospel did not abolish it, for it continued to exist, accepted and often encouraged by the medieval clergy."[89]

[86] _Ezekiel_: chap, xiv[i], v. 17.

[i] Transcriber's Note - This has been corrected in handwriting to 'xvi'.

[87] Becan: _Origines Antwerpianae, lib_. i, pp. 26, 101.

[88] Golnitz: _Itinerarium Belgico-Gallic.u.m_, p. 52.

[AD] The phallic hand in some form or other is frequently found in the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The so-called _maison d'

joie_ found in one of the streets of Pompeii is considered by some authorities to have been a minor temple to Venus where priapic rites were celebrated. The stone phallus at the entrance as well as the erotic frescoes on the wall, point to this as being true.

[89] Knight: _op. cit. ante._, p. 117.

So very ancient was the inception of the wors.h.i.+p of the generative principle that we have some reason for believing that even the cave-dwellers practiced this cult. It was stated in the _Moniteur_, January, 1865, that "in the province of Venice, in Italy, excavations in a bone-cave have brought to light, beneath ten feet of stalagmite, bones of animals, mostly post-tertiary, of the usual description found in such places, flint implements, with a needle of bone having an eye and point, and a plate of argillaceous compound, on which was scratched a rude drawing of the phallus."[90] Thus we see that, possibly, from the time of the cave-dwellers to almost the beginning of the nineteenth century, phallic wors.h.i.+p existed in Southern Europe! From the Sagas, folklore tales, and myths of the Norse we have every reason for believing that it existed for almost as great a length of time in Northern Europe. That in Western Europe, before and during the Middle Ages, it flourished in a variety of forms, we have unimpeachable testimony.

[90] _The Wors.h.i.+p of the Generative Powers_, footnote p. 117.

In this brief outline of phallic wors.h.i.+p I have endeavored to show that the wors.h.i.+p of the generative principle has been universal; that it is still practiced by primitive peoples, and that vestiges of it lingered among certain civilized peoples until, comparatively speaking, a recent time. In order to show what a height of idealization and abstraction it had reached at a time when Greece stood at the head of the civilized world, I will close this part of my essay with the following quotation from Knight's strong, erudite, and exhaustive treatise: "The ancient theologists ... finding that they could conceive no idea of infinity, were content to revere the Infinite Being in the most general and efficient exertion of his power--attraction; whose agency is perceptible through all matter, and to which all motion may, perhaps, be ultimately traced. His agency being supposed to extend through the whole material world, and to produce all the various revolutions by which its system is sustained, his attributes were, of course, extremely numerous and varied. These were expressed by various t.i.tles and epithets in the mystic hymns and litanies, which the artists endeavored to represent by various forms and characters of men and animals. The great characteristic attribute was represented by the organ of generation in that state of tension and rigidity which is necessary to the due performance of its functions. Many small images of this kind have been found among the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, attached to bracelets, which the chaste and pious matrons of antiquity wore round their necks and arms. In these the organ of generation appears alone, or accompanied by the wings of incubation, in order to show that the wearer devoted herself wholly and solely to procreation, the great end for which she was ordained. So expressive a symbol, being constantly in view, must keep her attention fixed on its natural object, and continually remind her of the grat.i.tude she owed the Creator for having taken her into his service, made her partaker of his most valuable blessings, and employed her as the pa.s.sive instrument in the exertion of his most beneficial power. The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative power of nature or matter, as the male's were of the generative powers of G.o.d."[91]

[91] Knight: _The Wors.h.i.+p of Priapus_, p. 27, _et seq._

CHAPTER III.

THE PSYCHICAL CORRELATION OF RELIGIOUS EMOTION AND s.e.xUAL DESIRE.

That there exists a relations.h.i.+p between the cultivated ethical emotion, religious feeling, and the essentially natural physio-psychical function, s.e.xual desire or _libido_, is a fact noticed and commented on by many thinkers and writers. The literature of the subject is, however, exceedingly fragmentary and disconnected, no author (as far as I have been able to determine) having devoted as much as one thousand words to the consideration of this very interesting psychical phenomenon. Hence, my data have been gathered from many sources, which are as diversified as they are numerous.

Beyond a question of doubt, man becomes religiously enthused most frequently either early in life, when p.u.b.escence is, or is about to be, established, or late in life, when s.e.xual desire has become either entirely extinct or very much abated. Young boys and girls are exceedingly impressionable at, or just before, p.u.b.erty, and are apt to embrace religion with the utmost enthusiasm. A distinguished evangelist declares that "men and women seldom or never enter into the kingdom of G.o.d after they have arrived at maturity. Out of a thousand converts, seven hundred are converted before they are twenty years old."[92]

[92] B. Fay Mills, _Sermon to Young Men and Young Women_, at Owensboro, Ky., May 20, 1894.

The Roman Catholic church is keenly alive to these facts, therefore requires the rite of confirmation to be administered, if possible, to its would-be communicants at, or before, the age of p.u.b.erty.[AE]

[AE] This knowledge is not confined to the Catholic church alone; in all denominations the p.u.b.escent human being is considered most susceptible to religious influences. The cause or _raison d 'etre_ of this susceptibility is, by no means, generally recognized.

Of all the insanities of the p.u.b.escent state, erotomania and religious mania are the most frequent and the most p.r.o.nounced. Sometimes they go hand in hand, the most inordinate sensuality being coupled with abnormal religious zeal. A young woman of my acquaintance, whose conduct has given rise to much scandal, is, at times, a reincarnate Messalina, while at other times she is the very embodiment of ethical and religious purity. Another young girl, in whom _vita s.e.xualis_ was about to be established, became religiously insane and had delusions in which she declared that she was in heaven and sitting at the right hand of G.o.d.

She declared this over and over again, while shamelessly committing ma.n.u.strupation! Krafft-Ebing calls attention to this relation between religious and s.e.xual feeling in psycho-pathological states. "It suffices," says he, "to recall how intense sensuality makes itself manifest in the clinical history of many religious maniacs; the motley mixture of religious and s.e.xual delusions that is so frequently observed in psychoses (_e. g._, in maniacal women who think they are or will be the mother of G.o.d), but particularly in masturbatic insanity; and finally, the s.e.xual, cruel self-punishment, injuries, self-castrations, and even self-crucifixions, resulting from abnormal religio-s.e.xual feeling."[93]

[93] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia s.e.xualis_, p. 8.

An example of the last mentioned self-immolation (self-crucifixion) is given by Berghierri, and is a remarkable instance of the interchangeableness of religious emotion and s.e.xual desire in psychopathic individuals. The man in question, who had been intensely sensual, manufactured a cross, nailed himself to it, and ingeniously managed to suspend himself and cross from the window of his sleeping apartment.

"All through the history of insanity the student has occasion to observe this close alliance of s.e.xual and religious ideas; an alliance which may be partly accounted for because of the prominence which s.e.xual themes have in most creeds, as ill.u.s.trated in ancient times by the phallus wors.h.i.+p of the Egyptians, the ceremonies of the Friga cultus of the Saxons, the frequent and detailed reference to s.e.xual topics in the Koran and several other books of the kind, and which is further ill.u.s.trated in the performances which, to come down to a modern period, characterize the religious revival and camp-meeting as they tinctured their medieval model, the Munster Anabaptist movement."[94]

[94] Spitzka: _Insanity_, p. 39.

Men, owing to their greater freedom, soon learn the difference of the s.e.xes and the delights of s.e.xual congress; women, hedged in by conventionalities and deterred by their innate pa.s.sivity, remain, for the most part, in ignorance of s.e.xual knowledge until their marriage.

For this reason it happens that very many more women than men experience religious emotion. _Young married men and women, who are in perfect s.e.xual health, and who have not experienced religion before marriage, seldom give this emotion a single thought until late in life, when both libido and vita s.e.xualis are on the wane or are extinct._ Voltaire cynically, though truthfully, observes that when woman is no longer pleasing to man she then turns to G.o.d. A woman who has been disappointed in love almost invariably seeks consolation in religion. The virtuous unmarried woman, who has been unsuccessful in the pursuit of a husband, invariably turns to G.o.d and religion with impa.s.sioned zeal and energy.

Ungratified, or, rather, _unsatisfied_, sensuality very frequently gives rise to great religio-s.e.xual enthusiasm. The circ.u.mcised foreskin of Christ, where it was and what had become of it, was a source of continual worriment to the nun Blanbekin; in an ecstacy of ungratified _libido_, St. Catherine of Genoa would frequently cast herself on the hard floor of her cell, crying: "Love! love! I can endure it no longer;"

St. Armelle and St. Elizabeth were troubled with _libido_ for the child Jesus;[95] an old prayer is quite significant: "Oh, that I had found thee, Holy Emanuel; _Oh, that I had thee in my bed to bring delight to body and soul!_ Come and be mine, and my heart shall be thy resting-place."[96] Francis Parkman calls attention to the fact that the nuns sent over to America in colonization days were frequently seized with religio-s.e.xual frenzy. "She heard," writes he of Marie de l'Incarnation, "in a trance, a miraculous voice. It was that of Christ, promising to become her spouse. Months and years pa.s.sed, full of troubled hopes and fears, when again the voice sounded in her ear, with a.s.surance that the promise was fulfilled, and that she was, indeed, his bride. Now ensued phenomena which are not infrequent among Roman Catholic female devotees, when unmarried, or married unhappily, and _which have their source in the necessities of a woman's nature_." (The italics are my own.) "To her excited thought, her divine spouse became a living presence; and her language to him, as recorded by herself, is of intense pa.s.sion. She went to prayer, agitated and tremulous, as if to a meeting with an earthly lover: 'Oh, my Love,' she exclaimed, 'when shall I embrace you? Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas!

alas! my Love, my Beauty, my Life! Instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms!'"[97] The historian remarks that the "holy widow," as her biographers call her, is an example, and a lamentable one, of the tendency of the erotic principle to ally itself with high religious excitement and enthusiasm. Further along he says that "some of the pupils of Marie de l'Incarnation, also, had mystical marriages with Christ; and the impa.s.sioned rhapsodies of one of them being overheard, she nearly lost her character, as it was thought that she was apostrophizing an earthly lover."[98]

[95] Krafft-Ebing: _op. cit. ante._, p. 8, footnote.

[96] _Ibid._

[97] Francis Parkman: _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 175. "_O amour, quand vous embra.s.serai-je? N'avez vous point pitie de moi dans le tourment que je souffre? Helas! mon amour, ma beaute, ma vie! au lieu de me guerir, vous vous plaisez a mes maux. Venez donc que je vous embra.s.se et je meure entre vos bras sacres._" Journal de Marie de l'Incarnation.

[98] Francis Parkman: _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 176.

The instances of religio-s.e.xual outbursts in nuns and Roman Catholic female devotees who lead celibate lives are very numerous; I will, however, call attention to but one other: St. Veronica was so much in love with the divine lion that she took a young lion to bed with her, fondled and kissed it, and allowed it to suck her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.[99]

Throughout sacred literature, beginning with the Bible itself, religio-s.e.xual feeling is very much _en evidence_. Hosea married a prost.i.tute because--so he declared--G.o.d commanded him so to do. If Solomon's beautiful song is typical of the Church and the Christ (as some theologians teach), then it is an unmistakable instance of religio-s.e.xual feeling; religious emotion and s.e.xual desire walk hand in hand through the measures of this impa.s.sioned verse. Circ.u.mcision, now eminently a religious ceremony, was, unquestionably, a s.e.xual fetich and a phallic rite, which has been handed down from antiquity, when all the world were phallic wors.h.i.+pers! The very pillars set up by the patriarchs in commemoration of certain events were but rude images of the phallus, while not a few of the mysteries of the Holy of Holies itself were but vestiges of Chaldean and Egyptian genital wors.h.i.+p![AF]

[99] Friedreich: _Psychologie_, p. 389.

[AF] A recent writer, Dr. Lydston, expresses surprise that the brothel should occupy such a prominent place in the ancient chronicles. When the universality and high honor of phallic wors.h.i.+p is taken into consideration, the entertainment of the "Captain of the Host" in a brothel ceases to be a matter or cause for surprise; the prominence given such entertainment by the ancient historians is perfectly natural and to be expected. _Compare_ Lydston: _The Diseases of Society_, p. 305.

That a relations.h.i.+p between, and an interchangeableness of, these two widely dissimilar psychical operations, _i.e._, religious emotion and s.e.xual desire, does exist, there can be no doubt.[AG] Now, what is the cause of, the reason for, this relations.h.i.+p? Mantegazza, Maudsley, Schleiermacher, Krafft-Ebing, and many others have endeavored, incidentally, to a.s.sign reasons for this relations.h.i.+p, but have, in my opinion, signally failed. Spitzka has tentatively, and without elaborating his idea in the least, suggested a theory which, I believe, solves the problem in every essential point. Says he in "Insanity,"

page 39: This "alliance" (between religious emotion and _libido_) "may be partly accounted for because of the prominence which s.e.xual themes have in most creeds, as ill.u.s.trated in ancient times by the phallus wors.h.i.+p of the Egyptians, the ceremonies of the Friga cultus of the Saxons, the frequent and detailed reference to s.e.xual topics in the Koran and several other books of the kind, etc." Dr. Spitzka does not enter into any discussion of the matter; he simply a.s.serts his belief in the cause of the relations.h.i.+p, and then dismisses the subject without further comment.

[AG] The author believes that upon the correlation of religious emotion and s.e.xual desire depends, in a great measure, the stability of s.e.xual morality. Were it not for this correlation, s.e.xual promiscuity would be the rule throughout the world.

Now, permit me, as briefly as possible, to designate the cause of the relations.h.i.+p between, and the interchangeableness of, religious feeling and s.e.xual desire, which, as I believe, is to be found in the once widespread existence of phallic wors.h.i.+p.

Some ten or twelve years ago, in an article on Suicide, which was published in the _American Pract.i.tioner and News_, I suggested (as a possible explanation for certain psychical phenomena) the existence in man of two consciousnesses, an active, vigilant consciousness and a pseudo-dormant consciousness. Again, in the _American Naturalist_, in an essay ent.i.tled "The Psychology of Hypnotism,"[100] I rea.s.serted this theory and, to a certain extent, elaborated it. I placed man's active consciousness in the cortical portion of the brain, and his pseudo-dormant, _unconscious_ consciousness (arbitrarily, be it confessed) in the basilar ganglia, and called this latter consciousness, "ganglionic consciousness."

[100] _Loc. cit._, November, 1894.

Recently, much has been written on the doctrine of duplex personality, notably by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, in a series of papers read before the Society of Psychical Research. Professor Newbold has also written very entertainingly and instructively on this subject. While not fully accepting the theory of "duplex personality," _i. e._, active consciousness and _subliminal consciousness_ (Myers' name for the pseudo-dormant consciousness), as having been proven, Newbold says: "Of all the theories developed from the point of independence, Mr. Myers' is the most comprehensive in its scope, is kept in most constant touch with what the author regards as facts, and displays the greatest philosophic insight."[101] According to the theory of duplex personality, many instincts, desires, and emotions have been crowded out of the active consciousness and have been relegated to the pseudo-dormant consciousness. This has been brought about by a "process of selection out of an infinity of possible elements solely on the grounds of utility." Thus the _cause_ for our horror of incest is hidden away in our subliminal consciousness; yet we cannot but think, with Westermarck, that this instinct is but the result of natural selection,[102] the utility of the factor or factors occasioning it being no longer in evidence or required. Again, at certain seasons, man is seized with _waldliebe_ (forest-love) and longs to flee from the haunts of men, and, with gun and rod, to revert, as far as possible, to the state of his savage ancestors. The desire is safely hidden away in his subliminal consciousness until favoring circ.u.mstances tempt it forth. It is not alone in "sleep, dreams, hypnosis, trance, and ecstacy that we see a temporary subsidence of the upper consciousness and the upheaval of a subliminal stratum"; there are many other states and many other causes for this strange psychical phenomenon.

[101] Newbold: _Appleton's Popular Science Monthly_, February, 1897, p. 516.

[102] Westermarck: _History of Human Marriage_, p. 352.

I have demonstrated in the preceding pages that the wors.h.i.+p of the generative principle was almost, if not wholly, universal; I have also shown that the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies of this cult made a lasting impression upon the minds of every people among whom it gained a foothold. Take the case of the ancient Hebrews. Notwithstanding the fact that they were tried in the furnace of Javeh's awful wrath time and again; notwithstanding the fact that famine, pestilence, war, and imprisonment destroyed them by thousands; and, notwithstanding the fact that they were threatened with utter and absolute annihilation--all on account of this cult--they would not wholly abandon it. The words of the prophets become almost pathetic as we read, over and over again, that, although the kings did that which was pleasing in the sight of the Lord, "the high places and the groves were not destroyed." Take the case of the Aztecs. Crushed beneath the iron heels of Spain's hardy buccaneers, an utterly broken and conquered race, Cortez turned them over to the ministering care of his zealous priests. The prison, agonizing torture, and the awful stake succeeded, at last, in Christianizing them; they became children of Holy Mother Church! And yet, hundreds of years after this "glorious victory of the cross," Biart finds the humble offerings of their descendants at the feet of Mictlanteuctli! The modern Christian Indian, in the deep shadows of the night, steals forth to offer up in secrecy a prayer at the feet of one of the phallic trinity! What matters it to the modern Aztec that his pet.i.tion is offered to the ruler of Mictlan, the h.e.l.l of his forefathers, instead of to the mighty Ipalnemoani, the Life-Giver?[103] In his opinion, Mictlanteuctli represents the entire Aztec theogony, for has not his white priest kept the name of _this_ G.o.d green in his memory? All the other G.o.ds have been forgotten; their personalities have been absorbed into that of the G.o.d of h.e.l.l, for he has had advertisers in the shape of Catholic priests ever since the fall of the Aztec Empire! Take the case of the Peruvians.

Although the Place of Gold and the beautiful Virgins of the Sun are not even memories to the descendants of the Incas, the religion which gave rise to them is not wholly forgotten; "phallic rites and ceremonies are to be observed interwoven with their Christian ritual and belief!" Take the case of the Roman Catholic devotees of Isernia, of Varailles, of Lyons, of hundreds of other places during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Priapus died when the first Christian emperor took his seat on the throne of Imperial Rome, and yet, hundreds and hundreds of years thereafter, we behold some of the mysteries of Eleusis almost within the shadow of St. Peter's!

[103] Biart: _The Aztecs_, p. 110.

Now, why is this? There can be but one answer, and that is that these people simply inherited a portion of the _psychos_ of their forefathers, which made the tenets of this religion natural and easy of belief. I have demonstrated, I believe, that religious feeling was not a psychical trait in the beginning; like a number of other mental attributes, it was the result of evolution.[104] Mental abstraction, especially as a.s.sociated with religious feeling, was the result of psychical growth, of psychically inherited experiences.[AH] As _psychos_ grew beneath the fostering influence of ages of experience, the mind became able to formulate abstract thought. In the beginning, the process of ratiocination was, necessarily, very simple; but, simple as it was, it was able to recognize the source of life--first, in the sun, then, in the second place, in man himself; and, finally and _abstractly_, in a source outside of, but connected with, man. This abstract source, which sprung from s.e.xuality, _ab initio_, they deified and wors.h.i.+ped. Thus we see that, in the very beginning, the wors.h.i.+p of the generative principle sprung from, and was a part of, man himself. Throughout thousands and thousands of years, religious feeling and s.e.xual desire, the component parts of phallic adoration, were intimately a.s.sociated; finally, religio-s.e.xuality became an instinct, just as a belief in the existence of a double or soul became an instinct.

[104] Huxley: _Essays_; Haeckel: _The History of Creation_; Haeckel: _The Evolution of Man_; Peschel: _The Races of Man_; De Quatref.a.ges: _The Human Species_; Draper: _The Conflict Between Religion and Science_; White: _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_; Romanes: _Mental Evolution in Man_; Wallace: _The Malay Archipelago_ (_The Races of Man in the Malay Archipelago_, c.