neglect of local treatment, when this is indicated
after careful examination.

CHAPTER XV

SEXUAL MORALITY

=Law and Morality.=--The limits of morality and law are difficult to
fix. With the old conception of law and the expiation of crime it was
otherwise. Yet it is precisely the old law, based on dogma and
religious metaphysics, which has most usurped the domain of morality,
by considering as crimes all kinds of acts which, without hurting men
in the least degree, were opposed to the ruling ideas and prejudices
concerning religion and morality.

=Human and Religious Morality.=--What then constitutes ethics or true
human morality? A dogmatic system, of ethics has been built on a
collection of commandments supposed to be inspired by God. Religions
have established different duties toward God, and these duties or
commandments are in part very inhuman. This has often resulted in
direct contradictions between ethics attributed to divine revelation,
and pure human ethics. Moreover, the divine commandments vary in
different religions.

The god of certain Malays commands them to eat the heart of their
enemies; Jehovah was vindictive and jealous, ordering Abraham to
sacrifice his own son to prove his faith, causing whole tribes to be
annihilated, even drowning the whole of humanity by the flood, while
the God of the Christians is milder and more conciliating; Allah rules
as a fatalist and orders the massacre of the Christians and abstinence
from alcohol, while Jesus Christ tells men to love their enemies and
allows wine; the god of the Hindus orders the widow to follow her
husband to the grave; a number of other gods exact human sacrifice;
Buddha taught oblivion in the future, others a more or less eternal
paradise, hell and purgatory, according to the conduct of men.

It will be agreed that it is difficult to obtain anything logical or
coherent from the total of different religious moralities. As regards
the sexual question, so-called divine commandments, such as those of
monogamy and polygamy, directly contradict each other.

For this reason, we will leave the so-called revealed morality to the
priests of diverse religions who pretend to have received them
directly from God, and will confine ourselves to the study of purely
human morality. This should never be based on any dogmatic formula,
like the above on their religious dogmas; it must be evolved from the
natural conditions of human life.

=Morality an