The existing disharmony gives rise to many evils from earliest youth to advanced age, and, consequently, it is not surprising to find that religions have denounced sexuality more or less severely. Dr. Christian expresses his astonishment “that in nearly all religions it has been considered a homage to the Deity to abstain from sexual intercourse.”[120] It is simply because the disharmonies of sexuality lead to sexual aberrations that religions have found cause for denouncing human nature as vile.[121] III _Disharmonies in the family instincts.—Artificial abortion.—Desertion and infanticide.—Disharmonies in the social instincts._ As the functions of reproduction are seated deep in the organic world and none the less present cases of striking disharmony in mankind, it is not surprising to find similar want of adaptation in the family instincts of man, as these instincts have been acquired more recently and are less widespread in the living world. It has been shown that the animal world provides many examples of onanism and of aberrations of sexual congress. On the other hand, there are no cases in the animal world in which pregnancy is destroyed by aberrant instincts. To the human race belongs the distinction of having invented modes of sexual congress which are necessarily barren. No doubt the loss of the _os penis_ has made such occurrences more easy, as the presence of that bone would render interruption of coition more difficult. But there are many ways in which the spermatozoa may be prevented from accomplishing their function, and these are so common and so familiar that it is unnecessary to enumerate them. In civilised countries procreation is limited chiefly by such means. In its early days, the human race must have been distinguished by its unusual procreative capacity, but with the growth of civilisation many devices have been employed to limit that. Savages and races of low civilisation have recourse to artificial abortion rather than to means for preventing fertilisation, and abortion is almost universal among them. The great treatise of Ploss, “Das Weib,” to which I have made repeated reference, contains a whole chapter[122] on this subject. Deliberate abortion with the object of limiting the number of children is customary all over the globe. In most primitive races and among peoples of low civilisation it is practised openly without the smallest restraint. Many of these peoples have adopted the custom of limiting the family to two children by procuring abortion in subsequent pregnancies. The aborigines of Kaisar and of the islands of Watubela observe the rule strictly. Among the natives of the islands of Aaru it is rare to find more than three children in a family, because any others are destroyed by artificial abortion.