The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

13. Chastity

Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 31 1/16/12 9:32 AM CHAPTER 13 Chastity 181. Before we can understand fully the ethical aspects of chastity, we must study its biological and sociological sanctions. Conduciveness to welfare, individual or social or both, being the ultimate criterion ofevolutionary ethics, the demand for chastity has to be sought in its effects under given conditions. Among men, as among inferior creatures, the needs of the species determine the rightness or wrongness of these or those sexual relations; for sexual relations unfavorable to the rearing of offspring, in respect either of number or quality, must tend towards degradation and extinction. The fact that some animals are polygamous while others are monogamous is thus to be explained. In Part III of The Principles of Sociology, treating of "Domestic Institutions," it was shown that the relation between the sexes is liable to be determined into this or that form by environing conditions; and that certain inferior forms of the relation appear, under some conditions, to become necessary: nonadoption of them being fatal to the society . A natural connection was found to exist between polygamy and a life of perpetual hostilities, entailing great destruction of men: since of tribes which mutually slaughter their men, the one which, being monogamous, leaves many 481 Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 32 1/16/12 9:32 AM 482 The Inductions of Ethics women unmarried and childless, must fail to maintain its population in face of the one which, being polygamous, utilizes all its women as mothers (sec. 307). We saw, too, that in some cases, especially in Tibet, polyandry appears more conducive to social welfare than any other relation of the sexes. It receives approval from travelers, and even a Moravian missionary defends it: the missionary holding that "superabundant population, in an unfertile country, must be a great calamity, and produce 'eternal warfare or eternal want' " (sec. 301). These inferior forms of marriage are not consistent with that conception of chastity which accompanies the settled monogamy of advanced societies. As we understand it, the word connotes either the absence of any sexual relation, or the permanent sexual relation of one man with one woman. But we must not extend this higher conception of chastity to these lower societies. We must not assume that there exists in them any such ethical reprobation of these less-restricted relations as they excite in us. To see this clearly we must glance at the facts. 182. Already in section120 I have given sundry illustrations of the truth, startling to those whose education has left them ignorant of multiform humanity, that the institution of polygamy is in various places morally approved, while the opposite institution is condemned. This truth, however, should not cause surprise, considering that from childhood all have been familiar with the tacit approval of the usage in the book they regard as divine. The polygamy of the patriarchs is spoken of as a matter of course, and there is implied approval of it by a wife who prompts her husband to take a concubine. But beyond this we see, in the case of David, both the religious and the social sanction for a harem: the one being implied by the statement that David, to whom God had given his "master 's wives," was a man "after his own heart," and the other by the fact that when Nathan reproached him, the reproach was that he had taken the solitary wife of Uriah, not that he Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 33 1/16/12 9:32 AM Chastity 483 had already many wives (1 Samuel xiii. 14; 2 Samuel xii). His many wives we may reasonably suppose constituted a mark of dignity, as do those of kings among savage and semicivilized peoples now. Clearly, then, under certain social conditions there is a proethical sentiment supporting polygamy , and that species of unchastity implied by it. So, too, is it with polyandry. Various passages in the Mahabharata imply that it was a recognized institution among the early Indians, regarded by them as perfectly proper: practiced , indeed, by those who are upheld as models of virtue. The heroine of the poem, Draupadi, is the wife of five husbands . Each of them had a house and garden of his own, and Draupadi dwelt with them "in turn for two days at a time." Meanwhile, as we have already seen (sec. 117), one of the husbands, Yudhishthira, unfortunate notwithstanding his goodness...