102 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



Among such virtues sexual continence does not rank 

 highly unless in cases where marriage brings a sense of 

 ownership, especially to the husband, which is liable to 

 be wounded by infidelity on the part of the other 

 spouse. Even then, however, so little importance is 

 attached to the wife's purity that, by way of hospitality 

 and for other causes, relations with other men are 

 often permitted to her, and the definition of adultery is 

 Hmitedl to unlicensed acts. On the highest planes of 

 culture this sense of ownership has been refined into 

 the conception of the virtue of chastity ; and both 

 there and among not a few nations still in barbarism 

 it has been extended backward so as to forbid to 

 women sexual intercourse outside the more or less 

 permanent unions which may legitimately be called 

 marriage. Hence the value attached to virginity in a 

 bride married for the first time, a value that in spite of 

 its generally elevating tendency has undoubtedly 

 resulted in the infliction of bodily suffering on women 

 and has probably been one of the factors in producing 

 the ail-too early marriages usual in many parts of the 

 world. 



The wide prevalence of the opposite practice, 

 namely, the sexual liberty recognised as the right of 

 the unmarried both male and female, may be regarded 

 as evidence of the small social importance attached to 

 the gratification of the sexual instincts apart from the 

 limitations imposed by the sense of ownership and the 

 consequent growth of the ideal of chastity. The sense 

 of ownership has been the seed-plot of jealousy. To 

 it we are indebted for the first germ of sexual regula- 

 tions. To it in the last resort, reinforced by growing 

 physiological knowledge and sanctioned by religion, is 



