estival, the pantomime being used for occult magic, in order to get
good crops in the next season. Obscene figures and rites were used.
There is a maize goddess who is the "Mother of the Gods." The union of
the sun god with the earth gives fertility, so that the food supply is
at stake in these rites and notions.[1991] This most absorbing interest
of mankind drove men's minds along the same lines of world philosophy.
The "Mother of the Gods," by her sex activity, brought about growth on
earth and became goddess of lewdness and filth, just as the German
Corn-mother became a harlot. So the goddess by whose activity the earth
bears flowers was honored at a festival at which boys and girls nine or
ten years old became senselessly drunk and perpetrated sex vice. This
was at a _religious_ festival.[1992] Here then we find reversion to more
primitive sex mores, and dramatic representation of a myth, conjoined in
religion, on the very threshold of the higher civilization. The
reversion to primitive sex mores to satisfy notions of duty to religion
and ancestors comes to us as an incomprehensible violation of "primary
instincts," which we have inferred from ideas that we can trace back
beyond any known origin, which we suppose to be universally accepted,
and which seem to us axiomatic as to social welfare. The only way to
understand the case is to take the standpoint of the mores of that time.
The mores contained the answer to the questions: How far back shall we
go? What shall be the degree of license at the festival? At the limit
fixed by custom the mores extend their sanction over the function and
make it "right." Another source of barbaric festivals may be noticed.
Men won victories over the elements and over beasts before they won
victories over each other. This is true of remote antiquity and of
primitive society. It is also true of the Middle Ages. The destruction
of great beasts, demons, and other monsters led to dramatic and
religious festivals. Magnin[1993] thinks that he could make a cycle of
beasts, of which Reineke Fuchs would be the last link, anterior to the
cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne.

+617. Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.+ Therefore: What
shall be the limit of toleration in theatrical and other exhibitions
with respect to dress, language, gesture, etc., in order to define
propriety, is altogether a matter of the mores. It is not conceivable
that the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes could be pre