RELIGION AND SEXUAL LIFE

=Transformation of Profane Customs into Religious
Dogmas.=--Ethnography has taught us that in the course of time human
tribes often unconsciously transform profane customs into integral
parts of their religion, either by attributing them to a divine
origin, or by elevating them to the rank of commandments of the gods,
or by connecting them with other dogmas, combining them with worship,
etc.

Sexual connection plays an important part in this matter. A great
number of religious rites and customs are nothing else than the
customs of sexual life (taken in its widest sense) which have been
symbolized; inversely, a number of dogmas have for their only motive
the application of a religious basis to sexual customs, which gives
them more authority.

The religious rites react powerfully on the sexual life and on the way
in which the members of the tribe or people understand it. We will
give a few striking examples.

We have seen in Chapter VI that polygamy depends first on the idea of
ownership, and secondly on marriage by purchase, to which it owes its
historic origin. But the fact that Islamism and Mormonism, for
example, have made polygamy an integral part of their religious
dogmas, has given to the whole organization of the Mahometans and
Mormons, as well as to their point of view of existence, a particular
direction which cannot be ignored. In reality, we are just as
polygamous as they are, but our theoretical and religious sexual
morality is monogamous while theirs is polygamous, each based on
contradictory "divine commandments."

Among certain Buddhists, the wife is compelled to follow her husband
to the grave, which naturally influences sexual life profoundly.

Among many savage races there exists matriarchism, which gives the
woman a high social position. This has even been made a religious
dogma, while it simply originates from the natural and just idea that
the mother is much more intimately connected with the children than
the father.

The duty imposed on men to marry the widow of their brother originated
from a profane command intended to regulate unions; eventually this
was made a religious dogma. In the same way circumcision among the
Jews had its origin in a hygienic custom having no relation to
religious faith. This did not prevent it becoming later on as
important a custom as baptism in Christianity. For the Jewish people
it has the advantage of protecting them to a great e