[111] _Ibid._, _Cato_. CHAPTER IV. SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION. I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._--Origin of modesty--Absence of modesty in the savage--Loan of wives in Melanesia and among the Bochimans--Absence of modesty in the Esquimaux, the Redskins, and Polynesians--Right of the husband in Polynesia--Loan or barter of wives--Erotic training of little girls in Polynesia--Society of the Areoïs--Man in a state of nature--Unnatural love in New Caledonia, in the two Americas, among Asiatic peoples, and in Greco-Roman antiquity--The _erastes_ of Crete. II. _Some Strange Forms of Marriage._--Coarseness of primitive marriage--Horror of incest artificially created--Incest among various peoples--Artificial defloration--Experimental marriages among the Redskins, the Otomies, the Sonthals, the Tartars, and in Ceylon--Temporary marriages among the Jews of Morocco and the Tapyres--Free unions--Partial marriages and marriages for a term among the Arabs--Marriage and the right of the strongest in savage countries--Savage coarseness and civilised depravity. I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._ In a former work[112] I have attempted to trace the genesis of a sentiment peculiar to humanity--the sentiment of modesty. It would be inexpedient here to treat the subject afresh in detail, but I will recall the conclusions arrived at by that investigation. Modesty is _par excellence_ a human sentiment, and is totally unknown to the animals, although the procreative need inspires them with desires and passions essentially identical with what in man we call love; it is therefore certainly an artificial sentiment, and comparative ethnology proves that it must have resulted from the enforced chastity imposed on women under the most terrible penalties. In reality, primitive marriage hardly merits the name; it is simply the taking possession of one or several women by one man, who holds them by the same title as all other property, and who treats adultery, when unauthorised by himself, strictly as robbery. This ferocious restraint has resulted, especially in the woman, in the formation of particular mental impressions, corresponding psychically to the sentiment of modesty, and inducing a certain sexual reserve which has become instinctive. But this moral inhibition is still very weak in races of low development, and, taking the whole human species, it exists chiefly in the woman; it is a sexual peculiarity of character, and is of relatively recent origin. If we keep well in mind these preliminary considerations, we shall not be much surprised at the forms of sexual association which we are about to consider, although they are singularly repulsive to our ideas of morality. We shall be still less surprised at them when we are acquainted with the extreme licence permitted in many savage and barbarous societies.