t a subject of ethical misgiving. It
was a part of the religious and social system. When, later,
prostitution became an independent social fact and was adjudged bad,
sacral harlotry long continued under the conventionalization and
persistence of religious usage (sec. 74), but then the disapproval of
prostitution in the mores produced an ethical war which resulted in the
abolition of harlotry. Sacral harlotry, while it lasted, was practiced
for one of two purposes,--to collect a dowry for the women or to collect
money for the temple.

+592. The Babylonian custom; its relation to religion.+ Herodotus[1899]
states that the women of the Lydians and of some peoples on the island
of Cyprus collected a dowry by freedom before marriage; that a woman
chosen by the god from the whole nation remained in the little cell on
top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests
to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar
story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the
oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was
compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of
Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was
not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which
religion and sex license are so strongly antagonized that religion seems
to us an independent force, of "divine origin," which is sent into the
world with an inherent character of antisensuality, or as a revelation
of the harm and wickedness of certain sex acts. That notion, however, is
a part of our Jewish inheritance. The fact stated by Herodotus is no
longer doubted. It is only one in a series of parallel cases, all of
which must have originated in similar ideas and have been regarded as
contributing in the same way to human welfare. Preuss[1900] attempts to
explain it. "It is only to be understood if men earlier, in order to
make natural objects prosper, had practiced sex usages of a kind which
later, according to the mores of daily life, seemed to them to be
prostitution. From this development came the fact that the Germans
called the Corn-mother the 'Great Harlot.'" We know that men have
sacrificed their children and other human beings, the selected being
the bravest or most beautiful; that they have mutilated themselves in
all ways from the slightest to the most serious; that they have
celebrated the most extravagant orgie