part of this initiation various feats are imposed, to test the
girl's skill and self-control. For instance, she must dance up to
a fire and remove from the midst of the fire a vessel full of
water to the brim, without spilling it. At the end of three
months the training is over, and the girl goes home in festival
attire. She is now eligible for marriage. Similar customs are
said to prevail in the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere.

The Hebrews had erotic dances, which were doubtless related to
the art of love in marriage, and among the Greeks, and their
disciples the Romans, the conception of love as an art which
needs training, skill, and cultivation, was still extant. That
conception was crushed by Christianity which, although it
sanctified the institution of matrimony, degraded that sexual
love which is normally the content of marriage.

In 1176 the question was brought before a Court of Love by a
baron and lady of Champagne, whether love is compatible with
marriage. "No," said the baron, "I admire and respect the sweet
intimacy of married couples, but I cannot call it love. Love
desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. Now husbands and wives
boldly avow their relationship; they possess each other without
contradiction and without reserve. It cannot then be love that
they experience." And after mature deliberation the ladies of the
Court of Love adopted the baron's conclusions (E. de la
Bedolliere, _Histoire des Moeurs des Francais_, vol. iii, p.
334). There was undoubtedly an element of truth in the baron's
arguments. Yet it may well be doubted whether in any
non-Christian country it would ever have been possible to obtain
acceptance for the doctrine that love and marriage are
incompatible. This doctrine was, however, as Ribot points out in
his _Logique des Sentiments_, inevitable, when, as among the
medieval nobility, marriage was merely a political or domestic
treaty and could not, therefore, be a method of moral elevation.

"Why is it," asked Retif de la Bretonne, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more
seductive and more loveable than honest women? It is because,
like the Greek courtesans to whom grace and voluptuousness were
taught, they have studied the art of pleasing. Among the foolish
detractors of my _Contempo