, considerate to the needs of others,
chivalrous to women, even appreciative of the advantages of
sexual restraint, to an extent which has rarely, if ever, been
known among those Christian nations which have looked down upon
them as abandoned to unspeakable vices.

As we turn from savages towards peoples in the barbarous and civilized
stages we find a general tendency for chastity, in so far as it is a
common possession of the common people, to be less regarded, or to be
retained only as a traditional convention no longer strictly observed. The
old grounds for chastity in primitive religions and _tabu_ have decayed
and no new grounds have been generally established. "Although the progress
of civilization," wrote Gibbon long ago, "has undoubtedly contributed to
assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less
favorable to the virtue of chastity," and Westermarck concludes that
"irregular connections between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a
tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization."

The main difference in the social function of chastity as we pass from
savagery to higher stages of culture seems to be that it ceases to exist
as a general hygienic measure or a general ceremonial observance, and, for
the most part, becomes confined to special philosophic or religious sects
which cultivate it to an extreme degree in a more or less professional
way. This state of things is well illustrated by the Roman Empire during
the early centuries of the Christian era.[73] Christianity itself was at
first one of these sects enamored of the ideal of chastity; but by its
superior vitality it replaced all the others and finally imposed its
ideals, though by no means its primitive practices, on European society
generally.

Chastity manifested itself in primitive Christianity in two different
though not necessarily opposed ways. On the one hand it took a stern and
practical form in vigorous men and women who, after being brought up in a
society permitting a high degree of sexual indulgence, suddenly found
themselves convinced of the sin of such indulgence. The battle with the
society they had been born into, and with their own old impulses and
habits, became so severe that they often found themselves compelled to
retire from the world altogether. Thus it was that the parched solitudes
of Egypt were peopled with hermits largely occupied with the problem of
subduing their ow