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2. THE CANONS OF THE SEXUAL LIFE UNDER MONOSEXUAL DOMINANCE

THE working of the principle of reversal, of the exchange of sexual rôles, under masculine and feminine dominance respectively, is extremely conspicuous in connection with love and marriage. Courtship is, for example, to-day regarded as a specifically masculine function, as one for which man is especially adapted by the peculiarities of his nature. But from the love poems of the ancient Egyptians we learn that among them woman was the wooer.[1] In fifteen of the nineteen songs in the so-called London Manuscript the woman courts the man; in four only is man the wooer. We may infer that most of the poems were written by women, although that possibility is not even considered by modern Egyptologists. Owing to the nature of the intellectual life in the contemporary Men's State, their masculine authorship is assumed without question by investigators. This Men's-State viewpoint leads Müller so far astray that he minimises the significance of the feminine wooing, although the internal evidence of the poems is too strong for him to be able to deny the reality of the phenomenon. He writes, characteristically enough, that to a modern poet it must seem "as if Egyptian women had been over-

[1] Wilhelm Max Müller, Die Liebespoesie der alten Aegypter.— The practice of courtship by women continued as late as 1400 B.C., if we accept Müller's estimate of the date when the poems were written. Some Egyptologists, however, regard them as of much earlier date.

ready to play the man's part." We see that the reversal of sexual rôles is so obvious that even the Men's-State investigator cannot overlook it. But Müller hastens to water down the import of the reversal. He goes on: "At least it seemed perfectly natural to the ancient Egyptian poets that an invitation to an assignation, in a poem packed with allusions, should proceed from a woman. To crown all, the Egyptian man took a delight in representing his inamorata as playing the seducer's part, as not content simply to run after her lover, but as plying him with wine and other intoxicants." The use of the expression "to run after" suffices to show that Müller has failed to understand the way in which the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians were completely transformed by feminine dominance, and that he is judging matters exclusively by the standards of his own time. This is why it never occurs to him that courtship by the women in ancient Egypt was as self-evident an outcome of the dominance of women, as courtship by the men is in our own Men's States. Whereas to the Egyptians, in their Women's State, courtship appeared to be a natural womanly function, and whereas they extolled courtship by women in their poems, to Müller, living in a Men's State, and knowing no other canons than those of the Men's State, courtship by women seemed "immorality and the extremity of feminine license." His Men's-State standards supply him with his explanation of the love initiative of women, as depicted in Egyptian poetry. For him this trend is not the glorification of a predominant custom and a sign of its recognition, but the outcome of an "over-stimulated masculine imagination" and of "enervated sensuality."

Not all investigators, of course, take so biased and subjective a view. Reitzenstein[2] for instance, recognises that in Egypt the women were the wooers. W. von Bissing,[3] too, says: "The peculiarity of these poems is that they always exhibit the girls as taking the initiative; it is they who come to their lovers, or endeavour to catch them." Yet neither Reitzenstein nor Bissing recognises that the practice of courtship by the women is the outcome of the Women's State. Meyer[4] seems to have been on the track of this recognition, though he does not express himself very clearly on the point. He writes: "Among the Egyptians the women were remarkably free. . . . As late as the fourth century B.C., there existed, side by side with patriarchal marriage, a form of marriage in which the wife chose the husband, and could divorce him on payment of compensation." We note that Meyer does not plainly declare that this reversal of patriarchal marriage is matriarchal marriage. But the idea is implicit in the phrases he employs.

The following facts likewise contribute to sustain the conviction that the custom of women acting as wooers is the outcome of feminine dominance. The farther back we go in the literature of a people, the more frequent are the indications of women as wooers. But the older a literature, the greater the probability that it arises from phases of an earlier dominance of women, or from times which in manners and customs were at least closely akin to such phases. Among the Lydians, where the reversal of rôles in the division of labour is an additional indication that the dominance of women prevailed, the women sought out their

[2] Liebe und Ehe im alten Orient.

[3] Die Kultur des alten Aegypten, p. 39.

[4] Geschichte des Alterthums, vol, i, p. 51.

mates.[5] In the ancient sagas of Hindustan, wooing by the women plays a notable part. By the Laws of Manu, a girl is allowed the free choice of her husband.[6] We are told in the Bible that in the case of the first human couple the woman was the wooer. Jaeckel shows that among primitive folk it is frequently the custom for the women to choose their husbands. In ancient Teutonic poesy, descriptions of wooing by women are not infrequent. Experts in Teutonic lore speak in this connection of the "initiative of woman."[7] By these authorities' own admission, they are here faced by an insoluble enigma. In this instance as in others the ideology of their own time has restricted the investigators' vision, so that they have been unable to see beyond the customs of the Men's State. Unquestionably we are here concerned with Women's-State courtship customs. We have all the better warrant for the assumption, inasmuch as Lamprecht[8] has positively proved that matriarchy existed among the early Teutonic stocks. Scherer and Müllenhoff agree in ascribing these so-called "women's strophes" to feminine poets, and herein they are certainly right. (Weinhold postulates male authors.) From the ninth century onwards, these women's songs were censured by the clergy as immoral. We plainly discern how, as the power of the male sex grew, the practice of courtship by women (surviving from the days of women's dominance) came by degrees to arouse the impression of shamelessness.

Among the Garos, women were dominant, and

[5] Herodotus, i, 93.

[6] Cf. V. Jaeckel, Studien zur vergleichenden Völkerkunde, p. 65.

[7] Cf., among others, Schmeing, Flucht and Werbungssagen in der Legende.

[8] Deutsche Geschichte.

family groups were of the matriarchal type, tracing descent through the mother. According to Westermarck,[9] the duty of courtship was imposed on the girls as a legal obligation. Should a man play the wooer, he was subject to punishment for his shameless behaviour. Waitz relates that among the Chippewas the women took part in the wars, the councils, and the "Grand Medicine Festivals"; it is evident, therefore, that the sexes had absolutely equal rights. It is interesting to note that among this people the members of both sexes could play their part as wooers. The same is reported of the Battas of the highlands of Sumatra; Friedenthal tells us that among them courtship is practised by either sex. We may also mention that according to Oscar Riecke courtship by the women has still a vogue in the Vierlande (Bergedorf, near Hamburg).[10]

A yet plainer indication that dominance is the origin of the practice of courtship by women is found in the fact that sovereign princesses always woo and choose husbands for themselves. Examples are frequent in history. A like tendency is observable in priestesses whenever they have considerable power.[11]

An interesting psychological point is that when, in a Women's State, women are the wooers, we encounter once again the individual customs that are characteristic of male wooers in a Men's State—these ranging from the making of assignations to the use of such artificial stimuli as wine and narcotics.[12] Typical and psychologically significant is the fact that, when

[9] The History of Human Marriage.

[10] Die Vierlande und deren Bewohner.

[11] Cf., among others, Meiners, Geschichte des weiblichen Geschlechts, vol. i; also Müller-Lyer, Die Familie.

[12] Cf., for instance, Müller, op. cit., p. 40.

women are the wooers, men are reported to behave in the way that is regarded as proper for women to-day when men are the wooers. Think of the wooing of Joseph by Potiphar's wife. Joseph indignantly repudiates the attempt to seduce him. As a last resort, he runs away in order to preserve his virtue. The story is told, moreover, as an awe-struck commendation of masculine chastity, while the narrator is filled with contempt for the female seducer. These trends are those of countless contemporary tales, with the only difference that in the latter the rôles are reversed, as becomes a community where the males are dominant.

Jaeckel[13] speaks of an Indian tribe in Assam (probably the Garos are referred to) among whom the girls are the wooers. The courted male "has to make a vigorous resistance, culminating in flight; he is captured and led back to the nuptial residence amid the lamentations of the parents." Among the Kamchadales, where the dominance of women prevailed and women were the wooers, the women positively fought for the possession of the men (Klemm). In ancient saga, too, the motif of courtship by women is encountered. S. Hänsch[14] relates the myth of Solmacis. The nymph fell in love with Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, having espied the beautiful youth bathing. We see, then, that the character traits with which we are familiar in women who are wooed by men, have their counterpart in the character traits of men where women rule, and consequently woo the males. The reversal extends, as we have seen, even to what appear to be mere superficialities, and this

[13] Op. cit., p. 62.

[14] Mythologisches Taschenwörterbuch.

demonstrates that monosexual dominance exercises an identical influence upon the psychology of men and of women. In the love poems of the Women's State there is likewise manifest the contemporary trend in accordance with which the wooer expatiates upon the beauties of the wooed. Our male wooers sing the beauties of women; when a woman is the wooer, she makes much of the beauties of the man she is courting. She addresses him as graceful, as supremely beautiful, and says that she cannot tear herself away from his charms. An outcome of courtship by women is that the woman seeks out the man. Thus in Unexpected Awakening[15] we read: "I found my brother in his bed! My heart is overjoyed beyond all measure."

The psychological correspondence between the contemporary masculine peculiarities in the Men's State and the feminine peculiarities in the Women's State, is as conspicuous, or even more conspicuous, in the case of marriage. The very qualities we regard to-day as specifically masculine, are regarded in the Women's State as specifically feminine; conversely, qualities that we look upon as womanly are in the Women's State looked upon as manly. Consider, for example, the fundamental law of Men's-State marriage, that the wife shall obey her husband. Down to the present day, attempts have always been made to base this law upon psychological arguments concerning the differences between men and women. The tendency to accept subordination has been described as specifically feminine; the subordination of the wife to the husband has been supposed to be in the best accord with woman's nature. Man, on the other hand, we are

[15] Müller, op. cit., p. 24.

assured, has a natural inclination to command, so that it is congruent with the male disposition that the husband should exercise dominance over the wife. But if we turn to contemplate marriage in the Women's State, we find the same fundamental law of obedience in action, the only difference being that here the rôles of the sexes are reversed. In the Women's State the duty of obedience is incumbent on the husband; the wife holds sway. We see, then, that dominance in married life runs strictly parallel with dominance in the State. This parallelism is of great psychological importance to the study of the peculiarities of man and woman, for it teaches us that we are mistaken in our contemporary assumption that the tendency to command is specifically masculine and the tendency to obey specifically feminine. It shows that we are not here concerned with biological peculiarities of the sexes, but with a simple product of dominance.

The conformity to type displayed by the sexes goes so far that the dominant partner, when entering upon marriage, demands an express pledge of obedience from the chosen mate. To-day men receive from their wives a promise that they will "love, honour, and obey." In ancient Egypt the wife exacted a promise of obedience from the husband. Diodorus[16] says in plain terms: "Among the people,[17] too, the wife has authority over the husband, and in the marriage contract the husband has expressly to pledge himself to obey his wife." We see that the ruling sex, whether male or female, is never so firmly convinced of the other sex's natural disposition towards

[16] I. 27. The accuracy of the passage has been confirmed by recently discovered papyri. To this matter we shall return.

[17] That is to say, not only in the royal family, whose customs in this respect he has already described.

obedience, as to be willing to trust to the voice of nature in such a matter. Invariably the law is invoked, to make up by its aid for the deficiencies of nature.

If additional evidence be demanded in support of, the contention that in ancient Egypt women held sway over men, it may be found in the fact that the Egyptian texts frequently denote women by the epithets "lady" or "mistress."[18] In the songs, the man addresses his inamorata as "lady" [in the sense explained in the note]. In business letters the husband speaks of his wife as "the mistress" [in the sense explained in the note]. Characteristic is the fact that such Egyptologists as Müller and Erman, whose minds are permeated with the ideology of the Men's State, cannot allow these words to pass without attempting to interpret them in the terms of that ideology. Müller[19] writes that the appellations seem quite incomprehensible when applied to women. Erman and Krebs[20] attach to the word "mistress" a footnote to the effect that it is "an affected designation for wife."

In Sparta, likewise, the men were subject to the women. Plutarch states in several passages[21] that the Spartan women were the only wives who held sway over their husbands. Aristotle,[22] too, says in a phrase quite free from ambiguity: "Contentious and warlike peoples such as the Lacedæmonians always pass under the dominion of women." Plutarch[23] tells us that

[18] The feminine equivalents of "lord" and "master," definitely connoting the idea of command. In the German original, "Herrin" and "Herrscherin."

[19] Liebespoesie der alten Aegypter.

[20] Aus den Papyrus der königlichen Museen.

[21] Lycurgus. Spartan Apophthegms.

[22] Politics, II. 6, 6.

[23] Lycurgus, 4

the Spartan women (like the Egyptian women) were spoken of by their husbands as "mistresses" (δεσποινας). We thus see that obedience and subordination are invariable in form, indifferently whether we have to do with a husband obeying a wife in a Women's State or with a wife obeying a husband in a Men's State.

To the men of a community where the males are dominant, the accounts of the earlier extensive prevalence of a social system in which the men were subject to the women are as annoying as a red rag to a bull. Witness Meiners,[24] when confronted with the fact of the dominance of women among the Lacedæmonians. He writes that the Spartan women had absolute authority over their "degenerate" husbands. The husbands treated the wives as mistresses, and termed them such. The women of other parts of Greece esteemed the Spartan wives fortunate, and did not hide their envy of the latter's "spurious happiness." The "regiment of women" in Sparta, as in all "noble" but "corrupt" peoples, was an unmistakable indication that the men who submitted to female authority were no longer fitted to rule other men.

The author's summarisation is obviously full of Men's-State prejudices. The men who belonged to the opposite phase of the distribution of the power of the sexes, and who were subject to the canons of that phase, seem "degenerate" to a man who is a member of a community where masculine dominion prevails; he considers the sway exercised by women over men a "spurious happiness"; and he describes the whole race as "corrupt." And yet the husband

[24] Op. cit, vol. i, pp. 355 et seq.; English transl., Vol. i, pp. 291 et seq.

who, in the phase of feminine predominance, is subordinate to his wife, is no whit more "degenerate" than the wife who obeys her husband in a community where the males dominate. For the members of neither sex are free to act; both sexes are equally subject to the law of monosexual dominance. Subordination of the husband, the imposing of the duty of unconditional obedience upon the husband, are found in all those primitive peoples among whom the dominance of women prevails. Meiners[25] tells us that the sway of the women was unrestricted among the Kamchadales. The men were entirely subordinate to their wives. A husband never secured anything from his wife by force, but "achieved his ends only by the humblest and most persistent petitions and caresses." Among the Chamorros, too, the dominance of women was in force. Waitz[26] declares that the legal status of the women was higher than that of the men, and that the men had practically no legal rights. In the most trifling matters, the wife's consent must be secured. The husband was forbidden to alienate any property without his wife's permission. If the husband failed in due obedience to his wife, the latter would knock him about. Or in some cases the parents would punish the erring husband severely.

Meiners[27] gives a similar description of the complete subordination of the husband in a Chamorro marriage. The Chamorro men, who were famous for their bodily strength, were kept by their wives in a state of abject subjection. The wives ruled, and the husbands could do nothing without their consent. If

[25] Op. cit., vol. i, pp. 19 et seq.; Eng. transl., vol. i, pp. 17 et seq.

[26] Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vol. v, p. 107.

[27] Vermischte philosophische Schriften, p. 267.

a man failed to pay due respect to his wife, or if he gave her any other cause for dissatisfaction, she would make him rue it by physical methods.

The same duty of subordination was imposed upon married men among the Iroquois, where the dominance of women likewise prevailed. Lewis Morgan tells us that the wife was the head of the family, and that at any time she could order her husband out of the house. According to Livingstone, among the Balonda the husband was so completely subject to the wife that he could do nothing whatever without her approval—neither enter into an agreement, nor do any one some trifling service. So was it, too, among the Cantabri and the Zambesis, where the men had absolutely no independence, and were entirely subject to their wives. Müller-Lyer writes of the Pani-Kooch of Hindustan that the husband had to obey the orders of his wife and his mother-in-law. Among the Khonds and the Sakai, also, the wife lorded it over the husband.

We see, then, that one-sided obedience on the part of one sex in marriage is the outcome of monosexual dominance, and that it is manifested quite independently of the question which of the two sexes holds sway. Volney[28] writes: "Domestic despotism lay at the foundation of political despotism." Maybe Volney was right. But the reverse may be true. It is possible that political despotism brought domestic despotism in its train. Whatever the causal sequence, one thing is certain, that the two varieties of despotism are invariably associated, be their primal origin what it may.

An additional proof that the subordination of one

[28] Les Ruines.

partner to the other in marriage arises out of monosexual dominance, is supplied by the fact that at all times there have been sovereign princesses no less than sovereign princes who have carried over into conjugal life the despotism exercised by them in the political field. As regards male rulers, instances in which dominance in marriage and subordination of the wife extended to the exercise of the power of life and death over the spouse, are familiar to all. These cases are strictly paralleled in the behaviour of female despots, and the only reason why the phenomenon has not hitherto been generally noted is that the reports concerning the conjugal despotism exercised by female monarchs have never become widely known. A few examples will therefore be given.

Westermarck tells us that among the people of Loango the queens kill their paramours when these allow their affections to stray. From Meiners we quote the following passage concerning the privileges of the women of the reigning house among the Natchez—a people among whom, according to Waitz, the women were greatly honoured, and could discharge the functions of royalty. "They exercised the power of life and death, and could order their guards to put to death summarily any one who was unlucky enough to incur their displeasure. If a queen should do a subject the honour of choosing him as a husband, the latter had to obey his exalted partner in all things, and to preserve inviolable fidelity towards her. The queen could punish a disobedient or unfaithful husband, just like any other commoner, by ordering his instant execution. But the queens regarded it as their traditional privilege to live precisely as they pleased. Their husbands had no say in the matter, no ground

for complaint if the wife were unfaithful, nor any right of punishment."

Meiners reports the exercise of similar unrestricted authority over husbands by the sovereign princesses of many other tribes. In almost all the instances it is expressly stated that this authority included the power of life and death. Jaeckel tells us that in the case of a general social predominance of women, no less than where a woman occupied the throne, conjugal despotism by women went so far that the husbands had to kneel in the presence of their wives, or to adopt some like posture of humility when serving their wives' needs. Who that reads of such humiliations inflicted upon men by women, can fail to recall the precisely similar humiliations inflicted upon the female sex by the male? Monosexual dominance degenerates in the same fashion whichever sex rules; it blossoms in the same poison-flowers, indifferently whether men or women hold sway.

This conformity recurs in respect of other exaggerated manifestations of conjugal authority on the part of the dominant sex. At the height of its power, a dominant sex is not satisfied with insisting that in married life the members of the subordinate sex shall obey their partners; in addition it reserves to itself the right of divorce. In absolutist Men's States, the right of the husband to put away his wife is often regarded as self-evident—was so regarded, for instance, among the Old Testament Jews. Historians willingly record such facts, but they are less inclined to allude to the right of wives in a Women's State to put away their husbands. Nevertheless such a right has been just as freely conceded to and exercised by wives as the corresponding right of husbands in the Men's State. In

ancient Egypt the right is directly specified in marriage contracts belonging to the phase of feminine dominance. Two such contracts dating from the pre-Greek era give assurance of this. Both are reported by Spiegelberg.[29] Although their dates are separated by nearly three hundred years, the clauses of the two agreements cover much the same ground. In the older papyrus, the wife who is entering into the contract says to her husband: "Should I divorce you because I have come to hate you and because I love another more than you, then I will give you, etc., etc." The divorce formula is exactly the same in the later contract. Not a word has been modified, so that we are entitled to infer that we have to do with a legally established form of marriage contract. Among the Balonda, the Iroquois, the Cantabri, the Khonds, etc., during the era of feminine dominance, whilst the wife had the right to divorce her husband, the husband was not entitled to divorce his wife.

Even certain notorious customs connected with the termination of a marriage by the death of the dominant partner are the same whether the deceased was a man or a woman. Every one knows that, in the case of certain ruling princes, when the sovereign died his widow or widows had either to join the husband in the tomb, or else were condemned to practise some extraordinarily harsh form of mourning; every one, too, has heard of the practice of suttee in Hindustan, where the widow was burned alive on the husband's funeral pyre. But, in accordance with the peculiarities of the Men's-State ideology, few of our contemporaries are aware that these customs have their obverse

[29] Der Papyrus Libbey, etc., Schriften der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Strassburg, 1907.

where women are endowed with despotic powers. Jaeckel (op. cit., p. 62), for example, tells us that among the Ashantis the husbands of the priestesses had to follow their wives in death. According to Bossu,[30] among the Natchez the princesses of the ruling race could choose as many lovers as they pleased; upon the death of one of these princesses, all her lovers must die. Among certain South American tribes, after a wife's death a prolonged period of severe ceremonial mourning was imposed on the bereaved husband.

However, we need not turn to such morbid outgrowths and degenerations of marriage customs in order to show that the sexes have similar characteristics, whether the husband or the wife plays the despot in conjugal life. The little tokens of affection that are displayed in marriage suffice to prove that these characteristics are not fundamentally different in the two sexes, but are determined by the form of sexual dominance. It is noteworthy, for example, that in ancient Egyptian representations of a married pair, the wife's arm always rests upon that of the husband.[31] This position corresponds to feminine dominance in marriage, whereas the reverse position represents masculine dominance. We may further note that in ancient Egypt when a man became betrothed he was said "to hide himself behind a girl"; when he had married, the phrase ran "a wife sits by him."[32]

Duplex sexual morality, with which we are all familiar as an accompaniment of male predominance,

[30] Nouveaux voyages aux Indes, vol. ii, p. 44.

[31] Müller, op. cit., p. 23; Revillout, L'ancienne Egypte, vol. ii, La femme.

[32] Müller, op. cit., pp. 3 et seq.

is met with in the reverse form where women rule. The dominant sex, whether male or female, has sexual freedoms which are sternly forbidden to the subordinate sex by custom, the moral code, and in many instances by law. In the Men's State, the males arrogate to themselves sexual freedoms and privileges; in the Women's State, sexual license is a feminine privilege. Where monosexual dominance prevails, even the monogamic principle proves impotent to hinder the development of a duplex sexual morality, to prevent the favouring of the dominant sex in the matter of sexual freedoms.

It is a familiar fact that in modern civilised countries under masculine domination a duplex sexual morality prevails, despite the recognition of the monogamic principle. There, in the life of sex, the men have preferential rights. But hitherto it has not been generally recognised that where women rule, sexual morality develops in the inverse sense, so that the women have more sexual freedom than the men. Here likewise there is an infringement of the monogamic principle, but this time in favour of the wife. The phenomenon is met with wherever the dominance of women obtains, whether among civilised nations or among primitive folk. During the most flourishing period of Sparta, monogamy became the recognised form of marriage in that country. Herodotus[33] tells us that among the Spartans a man had only one wife. According to Plutarch[34] there were no male adulterers in Lacedæmon. But as regards the fidelity of Spartan wives, history tells a very different tale. Meyer[35] declares that polyandry was common in Sparta. The

[33] V. 39.

[34] I. 196.

[35] Op. cit., vol. i, p. 28.

Spartan women were never faithful to the marriage bond. Plutarch[36] relates that adultery on the part of women was even considered commendable. By the laws of Lycurgus the position of women in regard to adultery was much more favoured than that of men. Euripides[37] goes so far as to say that despite her best endeavours no Spartan woman could possibly lead a chaste and virtuous life. Plato animadverts upon the loose morals of the Lacedæmonian women. According to Nicolaus Damascenus a Spartan wife was entitled to have herself impregnated by the handsomest man she could find, whether native or foreigner. Meiners[38] expressly declares that the Spartan women grew more licentious in proportion as their dominance became more marked. Wives and young unmarried women led the men astray. This author pours forth the vials of his wrath upon Lycurgus for introducing unnatural institutions whereby the marriage ties had been in a sense dissolved, and whereby "girls and women had been transformed into youths and men." Thus we see that Meiners had recognised the principle of reversal in the sexual canons of Spartan conjugal life. But he completely overlooked the fact that the particular reversal he was studying was the outcome of the dominance of women, and therefore failed to gain an understanding of its significance as a function of monosexual dominance. Speaking generally, historians have utterly failed to understand the dominance of women in Sparta and its consequences.[39]

We still possess but little information concerning the

[36] Life of Pyrrhus.

[37] Andromache, 596.

[38] Op. cit., vol. i, pp. 352 et seq.

[39] In this connexion, cf. Schulte-Vaerting, Die Friedenspolitik des Perikles, ein Vorbild für den Pazifismus, p. 195.

sexual life of the ancient Egyptians in the period when the dominance of women was complete.

The only erotic document at our disposal is in the so-called Turin papyrus. Here are pictures of sexual scenes. They do not warrant any inferences as to the polyandry of Egyptian women, but (as we shall see presently) they show obvious characteristics of feminine dominance. Monogamy developed early in Egypt. In the days of Herodotus, the features of this institution were still well marked. But although monogamy prevailed, women had more sexual freedom than men. Many investigators are of opinion that "upon women in ancient Egypt the obligation of conjugal fidelity was not imposed." This view is confirmed by the fact that in Egypt no stigma attached to the mother of an illegitimate child, and that the position of illegitimate children was just as good as that of children born in wedlock.[40]

According to quite a number of authorities, polygamy must also have been practised in ancient Egypt, at least in isolated instances. In proof, such writers point first of all to the royal harems. These harems, however, are among the contentious points of Egyptian history. Wilkinson expressly denies that the Egyptian monarchs practised polygamy. In his view the harem did not contain the king's wives, but prisoners of war or purchased slaves who had been adopted into the family and were employed as domestic servants by the queen or her friends. Rameses' wives at Medeenet Haboo were probably maid-servants, and not the monarch's wives at all.[41] The children of these women were children of the royal house-

[40] Diodorus. I, 80. See also, Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii, p. 64.

[41] Wilkinson, Op. cit., vol. i, p. 319, vOl. ii, p. 60.

hold, but not for that reason children of the king. To the Egyptian court may have applied what Luther proved to be true of "the three hundred wives of Solomon" when he showed that they were not the king's wives but only ladies of the court. Jaeckel reports a similar state of affairs in Africa. The king of the Makwa (on the Mozambique coast) lived with from one hundred to two hundred wives. But Wilkinson shows that these women were not really to be regarded as the king's wives, for he says that all a man's unmarried female relatives, and even the women slaves of his household (though they might have husbands of their own), together with all stranger women that might happen to be under his protection, were spoken of indifferently as his "wives."

It is probable that ignorance of the conditions of ancient Egyptian life accounts for the apparently authentic instances of polygamy practised by the Egyptian kings. For instance, it was formerly believed that Rameses II married his own daughters, since these bore the title of "royal spouses." Later researches have shown that all the daughters of the royal house received this title at birth. The contrast between Egypt with its monogamic and moral laws, and surrounding peoples whose customs were more or less polygamous, has been overlooked. In outward appearance Egypt conformed to the practices of these other nations, but did not do so in reality. For example, the king of Babylon sent one of his daughters to wed Amenhotep III. The lady's brother subsequently lodged a complaint, on the ground that no Babylonian envoy had ever seen her again. It is evident that Amenhotep, not wishing to refuse the proffered alliance, had ostensibly wedded the Babylonian

princess, but that in actual fact she had never become his wife. The strict observance of monogamy in Egypt is testified by the fact that none of the princesses of the Egyptian royal house ever married a foreign sovereign, although the honour of such an alliance was often solicited. No princess of Egypt must be exposed to the risk of becoming a member of a polygamous household. Doubtless the dominance of women in Egypt was a contributory cause of the custom to refuse foreign conjugal alliances. It is remarkable to find Reitzenstein writing, "in the Middle Kingdom polygamy was fairly common among the middle class," and quoting Erman as witness for the truth of the assertion. But Erman expressly declares that instances of genuine polygamy were rare. Moreover, the few instances that Erman adduces are far from convincing. For example, Erman writes: "When, on a stone preserved in the Berlin Museum, we read that a certain Amenemheb prayed in the temple of Osiris, accompanied by his mother and seven sisters, we may doubtless assume that the seven `sisters' by whom the happy man was attended were in truth the ladies of his harem." The example shows clearly that the few cases of polygamy recorded among the ancient Egyptians must have been recorded through a misunderstanding on the part of Men's-State investigators. As early as the days of Diodorus, such misunderstandings may have occurred, for by that time Egypt had already been long exposed to the Men's-State influence of the Greeks. Nevertheless Diodorus plainly declares that only men of the lower classes might have a plurality of wives. We may infer from these words that in ancient Egypt polygamy was strictly forbidden. For the upper class is always the most conservative; is always the class which, vis-à-vis the conquerors, likes to parade the tenacity with which it clings to traditional customs. Very likely, too, Diodorus was merely referring to a duplex moral code giving greater freedom to men, seeing that (according to Herodotus) in Greece, likewise, monogamy was the only form of marriage.

Among primitive folk where the dominance of women prevailed, there was the same tendency towards the maintenance of a duplex code of sexual morality, according to which the duty of conjugal fidelity was enforced on men only. Women could follow their own bent in sexual matters. In the case of the Chamorros conjugal infidelity was severely punished in men, even when the offence was merely suspected, not proved. The accused husband was dealt with by the women of the neighbourhood. But if the wife proved unfaithful, her husband had no right to lay a finger on her. Meiners declares that among the Chamorros it was only the women who were privileged libertines. This phrase gives us a clear insight into the characteristics of family life among this people.[42]

Conditions were precisely similar among the Kamchadales. Meiners[43] tells us that the married men of this race had to conceal their amours with extreme care. But wives bestowed their favours quite openly, not considering it worth while to hide their infidelities from their husbands. We cannot fail to be struck by the way in which this duplex morality of the Women's State finds its counterpart in the Men's State. Among the Mingrelians and the Circassians, where women

[42] Meiners, Geschichte, etc., vol. i, pp. 105 et seq.; History, vol. i, pp. 89 et seq.

[43] Ibid., vol. i, pp. 19 et seq, and vol. i, pp. 17 et seq.

were likewise predominant, a woman was more honoured in proportion to the number of her lovers. In many cases, duplex sexual morality takes the form of a one-sided development of polyandry or polygamy. Polyandry invariably presupposes the dominance of women; polygamy presupposes the dominance of men. The connexion between these institutions has not hitherto been recognised. But in many Women's States the existence of polyandry has been expressly recorded: among the Garos, the Nayars, the Tlingits, the Eskimos, the Sakai; in Tibet and in Burma. In the case of the Iroquois, polyandry was permissible to women, but polygamy was forbidden to men (Westermarck). A characteristic fact is that we are often told how well the numerous husbands of one woman got on together.

Among the Arabs, too, in the days when women were dominant, polyandry prevailed.[44] Even in Mohammed's time, the Arab woman was essentially polyandrous. According to Reitzenstein, Mohammed once exhorted a married woman to be faithful to her husband, and admonished her not to indulge in whoredom. She made answer: "A free woman does not practise whoredom." The implication was that a free woman might have carnal relations with as many men as she liked. Children born out of wedlock secured full recognition, and were not regarded as bastards. On the Malabar coast, where also women were dominant, polyandry was practised, not only by the queens, but throughout the population. Among the Cascovins, where the women were dominant, a wife usually had, in addition to her husband-in-chief, a supplementary husband to whom various duties were assigned.

[44] Strabo, xii, 31.

In like manner, the value placed upon pre-conjugal chastity in men and women respectively is sharply contrasted in the Men's State and the Women's State. Only in the Men's State is feminine continence before marriage highly esteemed; in the Women's State the unmarried girls enjoy (openly or secretly) sexual freedom, just as unmarried men do in the Men's State. Meiners[45] writes of the Kamchadales that they do not prize virginity at all. "The greatest recommendation an unmarried girl can have, is that she has bestowed her favours upon an exceptionally large number of lovers. Such a girl is supposed to have exceptionally good grounds for expecting that she will be able to count upon the love of her future husband, since she has given plain proof of her experience in love." Even to-day we can see quite clearly that the value placed upon pre-conjugal chastity is an outcome of monosexual dominance. H. Wega[46] recently wrote: "Virginity is no longer highly esteemed; it has ceased to play a part in the amatory life of the male. . . . Purity and chastity are obsolete notions. Women demand in sexual matters the same standard of values as men, and men concede this standard." The decline and disappearance of the old one-sided estimate of the value of pre-conjugal chastity in women, however, are not (as is commonly supposed) manifestations of the decay of morality; they are the outcome of a waning of masculine predominance. Since the valuation is merely a product of male supremacy, it must perforce be reduced in proportion as male supremacy becomes less marked.

In the Women's State, conversely, masculine chastity

[45] Vermisihte philosophische Schriften, p. 174.

[46] "Nord und Süd," 1920, Unsere gesunkene Moral und ihre Ursachen.

is highly esteemed. Among the Iroquois, where the women were dominant, the sexual life of the young unmarried men was kept under very strict control. Intercourse with the girls was absolutely forbidden; the youths were not even allowed to converse with them in public. Marriages were arranged for young men by their mothers. Similar conditions obtained in other Women's States. In Sparta the boys were brought up to be far chaster and more bashful than the girls. Xenophon tells us that it is easier to make a pillar of stone speak or a marble statue move its eyes, than a Spartan boy. The boys, he says, are more bashful than the girls. Among the Garos the contrast was even greater. The young males were strictly segregated in a domicile for youths; the young women led free lives, and the obligation of chastity was not imposed on them (Friedenthal).

We see, then, that pre-conjugal chastity and also a "maidenly" reserve and bashfulness are, when monosexual dominance prevails, displayed only by members of the subject sex. In another respect, sexual customs prove to be wholly dependent upon the wielding of power. Dominant males and dominant females have harems whenever this accords with the established code of sexual morals. The resemblance between the respective practices of the male and the female owners of harems is so close as to seem almost incredible. In the male harems of negro queens, for instance, we find the precise counterparts of the female harems of the rulers of Persia.[47] The same aberrations of jealousy and the same abuses of power are encountered in both cases. The negro queens could choose for their

[47] Meiners, Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 74 et seq. and pp. 160 et seq.; History, pp. 62 et seq., and pp. 134 et seq. It need hardly be said that Meiners himself fails to note the resemblance.

harems any men that took their fancy. No man could refuse the queen's favour, except at the risk of liberty or life. The men were the slaves and the prisoners, rather than the spouses, of their distinguished wives. The men in the harem were rigidly secluded from the other sex. They were not allowed even a glimpse of any woman except their queen-wife. They could only go out under a strong escort, whose duty it was to keep the streets clear of girls and women. If any strange woman, disregarding the regulations, ventured near the strictly guarded husbands, or if a woman should even catch sight of one of them, her life was infallibly forfeit, and she was executed in ignominious fashion. The same punishment awaited any husband who should be unfaithful to his queen-wife.

Exactly similar precautions, exaggerated in like manner to the pitch of cruelty, were observed in Persia when the ladies of the harem were on a journey. The only difference was that the sex rôles were reversed. When the royal harem was on its way through a town, all the male inhabitants of the houses along the line of route had to leave their homes, and the side streets were cut off by curtains. If the harem was to pass through a country district, all the men were hunted out of the roadside villages several hours before. Two hours before the coming of the harem, muskets were fired as an additional warning. Then, an hour before the harem came, the eunuchs rode along the highway and killed every male that they encountered. Chardin reports a number of tragical incidents; he tells how old men, who imagined that their years would give them a eunuch's immunity and who tried to present petitions to the monarch, were butchered by the latter or his eunuchs. Unsuspecting travellers,

and servingmen who had fallen asleep by the way, met a similar fate.

Seeing that the vagaries of love in the two sexes, when these respectively hold sway, are so closely akin psychologically, are indeed identical, all over the world, we can no longer doubt that sex differentiation is merely the outcome of the position of dominance or subjection, and is not a product of inborn biological characteristics.

Above all it is plain to us that the views previously held as to the causation of polygamy are utterly erroneous.

Again, the customary relationship between husband and wife in the matter of age, far from being dependent upon biological and psychical sexual differentiation, is simply a consequence of monosexual dominance. The supremacy of either sex tends to establish a particular age relationship between husband and wife, the rule being that in marriage the member of the dominant sex is in almost all cases considerably older than the member of the subordinate sex. Where men dominate, therefore, husbands are older than their wives; and where women dominate, wives are older than their husbands. The chief determinant here is the duty of providing for the spouse, inasmuch as we shall see that this duty devolves upon the dominant sex.

In Egypt, for instance, it was the young man, not the maiden, who was exhorted to marry early. Müller translates from the Bulak papyrus: "Get thyself a wife while thou art young, so that thou mayst procreate a son in thine own likeness. If she bear thee a child while thou art still young, that is as it should be."

Among the Iroquois, where the women were dominant, the wife was usually older than her husband. Waitz[48] reports that a young man was often assigned by his mother to a wife older than himself—for the mothers were supreme in matrimonial arrangements. There have been many other peoples among which, during the phase of feminine dominance, the marriage of a young man to an older woman was customary. Jaeckel[49] gives numerous instances of this. In some cases, 15 was regarded as the best age for a young man to marry, and 19 for a young woman. "Youths who have not married before they are 16 are derided, whereas it is no shame to a girl to remain unmarried until she is 20 or more." The age contrast that obtains between husband and wife in the contemporary Men's State is here faithfully reflected, of course with the usual reversal of rôles; the same remark applies to the one-sided social valuation of early marriage, for we see that it is always the members of the subordinate sex that must be married off while still quite young.

Among the Otomacos of South America the young men were first wedded to elderly women; and subsequently, after these had died, to young girls. Among the Fuegians, "the young men would rather marry an experienced woman of a certain age, than a young and even beautiful girl." Among the Khonds, the father usually chooses for his son a wife about six years older than the lad. In Burma, the difference is even greater, for here the wife is apt to be from ten to fifteen years older than her husband.

There is but a scanty tradition concerning social

[48] Op. cit., p. 102.

[49] Op. cit., p. 60.

conditions in ancient India, but it would seem that in the earliest days women were dominant. According to Winternitz,[50] the vestiges of the oldest Indian civilisation indicate that in those days women married comparatively late. But we have little trustworthy information. Among the Reddi of Southern India, immature boys are wedded to fully grown girls. The converse of this mischievous custom is not unknown to us in certain varieties of the Men's State.

In bringing to a close our account of the differential psychology of love and marriage in the Men's State and the Women's State, a reference maybe made to the valuation of celibacy. In this matter, also, opinion receives its stamp from monosexual dominance. It is always the members of the subordinate sex who are derided for being unmarried. A one-sided contempt for the "old maid" is purely a product of the Men's State. Where women rule, it is the "old bachelor" who is an object of derision, the target of popular wit—though attention has not hitherto been directed to the fact. Among the Koreans a lad is already subjected to ridicule if he reaches the age of 16 without being married. Such an "old bachelor" is refused the title of man, and receives the contumelious name of "jatau." Who can fail to be reminded of our Men's-State usage of the term "old maid"?

Among the Santals, unmarried men are similarly scorned. They are regarded with contempt by both sexes, and are compared with thieves and witches. They are "not men." In Sparta, during the days of the dominance of women, unmarried men were utterly despised. A Spartan bachelor was actually deprived

[50] "Archiv für Frauenkunde," 1918.

of civil rights. At certain times in winter he had to walk through the market place totally nude, singing a song descriptive of his own shame, and admitting that it was a just punishment for having despised marriage. Herein we see the precise counterpart of the institutions of the Men's State, where the old maid is the subject of contumely, and completely loses caste.

But the unmarried are only contemned when they belong to the subordinate sex. This one-sided restriction of scorn to members of the subject sex is doubtless connected with the division of labour that obtains under monosexual dominance, and also perhaps with the consequent differentiation in social position. The fuller consideration of this topic must be deferred.