l occasions shared in
functions which seem totally repugnant to their character. The
explanation lies in conventionalization within the mores for an
occasion or under a conjuncture of circumstances. It is unquestionably
possible that in that way lewdness can be set aside and thus corrupting
effect on character can be prevented.

+605. The archaic is sacred.+ In the minds of primitive people all which
is archaic is sacred and all which is novel is questionable. Therefore
religion holds and consecrates whatever is archaic and traditional. The
appetites of men were anterior to any mores regulative of them, and the
goddess Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, or Venus is a goddess of erotic
passion and reproduction. The folkways devised to prevent experienced
ills are an invasion of her domain and a rebellion against her sway. The
regulations cannot be made absolute for a long time. There must be a
compromise. Some females must be given to the goddess as devotees, at
least under conditions, or there must be set times and places within
which her sway shall be unhampered by human rules. The conditions
establish conventionalization around an institution. It is by this
process and by changing the conditions that marriage has been made what
it now is. Concubinage, slave women, harlotry, and all other forms but
the prescribed one have been put under taboo. It is very possible that
some future generation will look back in wonder at our self-complacency,
which feels no care or responsibility for the women who are forced, in
our system, to renounce sex. It is safe to say that the Chaldeans of
2500 B.C. would have been as much shocked at the inhumanity of our
arrangement as we can be at the lewdness of theirs.

+606. Child sacrifice.+ The temple consecration of women must be
connected with child sacrifice. The latter is logically anterior. Their
historical relation we do not know. To dedicate a girl to the goddess
would be an alternative to the sacrifice of her. All forms of child
sacrifice and sacral suicide go back to the pangs and terrors of men
under loss and calamity. Something must be found which would wring pity
and concession from the awful superior powers who afflict mankind.
Every one born under this human lot must perish if he is not redeemed.
His first vicarious sacrifice is his firstborn, but if he can get a war
captive from a foreign group this substitute may be accepted. The
Mexican human sacrifices were of this kind. The peop