The Rev. J. Sibree tells us that, among most of the tribes of Madagascar, the unchastity of girls does not give umbrage. But “there are some other tribes,” he says, “more isolated, as certain of the eastern peoples, where a higher standard of morality prevails, girls being kept scrupulously from any intercourse with the other sex until they are married.”[355]
Nowhere has chastity been more rigorously insisted upon than among the South Slavonians. A fallen girl among them has lost almost all chance of getting married. She is commonly despised and often punished in a very barbarous way; whilst, on the other hand, purity gives a girl a higher value than the greatest wealth. In some places, a father or a brother may even kill a man whom he finds with his daughter or sister. But Dr. Krauss assures us that this rigidity in their morals has gradually decreased, the more foreign civilization has got a footing among them.[356]
Again, Professor Ahlqvist believes that illicit intercourse between the sexes was almost unknown among the ancient Finns, as the terms used by them with reference to such connections are borrowed from other languages.[357] And Professor Vámbéry makes the same observation as regards the primitive Turko-Tartars. “The difference in morality,” he says, “which exists between the Turks affected by a foreign civilization and kindred tribes inhabiting the steppes, becomes very conspicuous to any one living among the Turkomans and Kara-Kalpaks; for whether in Africa or Asia, certain vices are introduced only by the so-called bearers of culture.”[358]
Apart from such cases of foreign influence, we may perhaps say that irregular connections between the sexes have on the whole exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization. Dr. Fritsch remarks that the Bushmans are much stricter in that matter than their far more advanced neighbours.[359] Robert Drury assures us that, in Madagascar, “there are more modest women, in proportion to the number of people, than in England.”[360] Tacitus praised the chastity of the Germanic youth, in contrast to the licentiousness of the highly civilized Romans. These statements may to a certain extent be considered typical. In Europe, there are born among towns-people, on an average, twice as many bastard children, in proportion to the number of births, as among the inhabitants of the country, who generally lead a more natural life. In France, according to Wappäus, the ratio was found even so great as 15·13 to 4·24; though in Saxony, with its manufacturing country people, it was only as 15·39 to 14·64.[361] Nay, in Gratz and Munich the illegitimate births are even more numerous than the legitimate.[362] The prostitution of the towns makes the difference in morality still greater; and unfortunately the evil is growing. Almost everywhere prostitution increases in a higher ratio than population.[363] In consideration of these facts, it is almost ridiculous to speak of the immorality of unmarried people among savages as a relic of an alleged primitive stage of promiscuity.