gets enveloped at last in a perfect mist and labyrinth of
taboos, a cobweb of conventions. The Flamen Dialis at Rome, you know,
mightn't ride or even touch a horse; he mightn't see an army under arms;
nor wear a ring that wasn't broken; nor have a knot in any part of his
clothing. He mightn't eat wheaten flour or leavened bread; he mightn't
look at or even mention by name such unlucky things as a goat, a dog,
raw meat, haricot beans, or common ivy. He mightn't walk under a vine;
the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could only
be cut by a free man, and with a bronze knife; he was encased and
surrounded, as it were, by endless petty restrictions and regulations
and taboos--just like those that now surround so many men, and
especially so many young women, here in England."

"And you think they arise from the same causes?" Frida said,
half-hesitating: for she hardly knew whether it was not wicked to say
so.

"Why, of course they do," Bertram answered confidently. "That's not
matter of opinion now; it's matter of demonstration. The worst of
them all in their present complicated state are the ones that concern
marriage and the other hideous sex-taboos. They seem to have been
among the earliest human abuses; for marriage arises from the stone-age
practice of felling a woman of another tribe with a blow of one's club,
and dragging her off by the hair of her head to one's own cave as a
slave and drudge; and they are still the most persistent and cruel of
any--so much so, that your own people, as you know, taboo even the fair
and free discussion of this the most important and serious question of
life and morals. They make it, as we would say at home, a refuge for
enforced ignorance. For it's well known that early tribes hold the most
superstitious ideas about the relation of men to women, and dread the
most ridiculous and impossible evils resulting from it; and these absurd
terrors of theirs seem to have been handed on intact to civilised
races, so that for fear of I know not what ridiculous bogey of their own
imaginations, or dread of some unnatural restraining deity, men won't
even discuss a matter of so much importance to them all, but, rather
than let the taboo of silence be broken, will allow such horrible things
to take place in their midst as I have seen with my eyes for these
last six or seven weeks in your cities. O Frida, you can't imagine
what things--for I know they hide them from you: cruelties o