ms with her husband. That would be _mugul_, and when once that word
lost its force the whole island would perish. A woman argued to Semper
that the custom was a good one because it gave the women a chance to see
the other islands, and because they learned to serve and obey the men.
It was, she said, their sacred duty. Any girl who did not go abroad as
an _armengol_ would get the reputation of being stupid and uncultivated,
and would get no husband.[1395] Cases in which husbands are indifferent
to the fidelity of wives to the marriage taboo occur, but they are
rare.[1396] In some Arabic tribes of Sahara, even those in which the
struggle for existence is not severe, fathers expect daughters to ransom
themselves from the expense of their rearing by prostitution. The notion
of sex honor has not yet overcome the sense of pecuniary loss or gain.
The more a woman gains, the more she is sought in marriage afterwards.
Tuareg married women enter into relations with men not their husbands
like those of women with their lovers in the woman cult of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries in central Europe. These women have decent and
becoming manners, with much care for etiquette.[1397] A
thirteenth-century writer says of the Mongol women that they are
"chaste, and nothing is heard amongst them of lewdness, but some of the
expressions they use in joking are very shameful and coarse." The same
is true now.[1398] An Arab author is cited as stating that at Mirbat
women went outside the city at night to sport with strange men. Their
own husbands and male relatives passed them by to seek other
women.[1399] Amongst the Gowane people in Kordofan (who seem now to be
Moslems)[1400] a girl cannot marry without her brother's consent. To get
this she must give to her brother an infant. She finds the father where
she can.[1401]

+444. Pagan life policy.+ Very naturally the pagan inference or
generalization from the above customs was that a husband must be under
continual anxiety about his wife, or he must divorce her, or he must
cultivate a high spirit of resignation and indifference. The last was
the highest flight of Stoic philosophy about marriage. Plutarch says:
"How can you call anything a misfortune which does not damage either
your soul or your body, as for example, the low origin of your father,
the adultery of your wife, the loss of a crown or seat of honor, none of
which affect a man's chances of the highest condition of body and
mind."[1