tionalization.--Criticism of the mores of Hindostan.--
Mexican mores; drunkenness.--Japanese mores.--Chinese religion
and mores.--Philosophy of the interest in reproduction;
incest.--The archaic is sacred.--Child sacrifice.--Beast
sacrifice substituted for child sacrifice.--Mexican doctrine of
greater power through death.--Motives of child sacrifice.--
Dedication by vows.--Degeneration of the custom of consecrating
women.--Our traditions come from Israel.--How the Jewish view
of sensuality prevailed.

The topics treated in this chapter are further illustrations of the
power of the mores to make anything right, and to protect anything from
condemnation. See also Chapter XVII.

+585. Men's clubhouses.+ It is a very common custom in barbaric society
that the men have a clubhouse in which they spend much of their time
together and in which the unmarried men sleep. Such houses are centers
of intrigue, enterprise, amusement, and vice. The men work there, carry
on shamanistic rites, hold dances, entertain guests, and listen to
narratives by the elders. Women are excluded altogether or at times. In
the Caroline Islands such houses are institutions of social and
religious importance. While the women of the place may not enter them,
those from a neighboring place live in them for a time in license, but
return home with payment which is used partly for religious purposes and
partly for themselves.[1885]

+586. Consecrated women.+ It may even be said to be the current view of
uncivilized peoples, up to the full development of the father family,
that women have free control of their own persons until they are
married, when they pass under a taboo which they are bound to observe.
Therefore before marriage they may accumulate a dowry. Very many cases
also occur of men-women and women-men, persons of either sex who assume
the functions and mode of life of the other. Cases also occur in
barbarism of women consecrated to the gods. Among the Ewe-speaking
peoples of West Africa[1886] girls of ten or twelve are received and
educated for three years in the chants and dances of worship, serving
the priests. At the end of the time they become public women, but are
under no reproach, because they are regarded as married to the god and
acting under his direction. Properly they should be restricted to the
worshipers at the temple, but they are not. Probably such was the
original taboo which is now relaxed and decayed. C