Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/638

 622 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

As the chattel character of women begins to disappear, the original cause and safeguard of female chastity and conjugal fidelity i. e., male ownership likewise begins to disappear. At this point, the religious sanction which had already been developed under the system of male ownership is an important factor in developing an appreciation of chastity and conjugal fidelity per se. This is only one of the many cases in which reli- gion seems to safeguard the products of a social means that is outgrown.

In following out the evolutional relations between the blood- sacrifice of virgins, the lifelong dedication of women to the sexual service of gods, the dedication of perpetual virginity to deity, the practice of occasional sexual abstinence as a sacrificial rite, the attribution of a religious sanction to both male and female chastity, we discover one of the many impressive series of social factors which have contributed so richly to the development of human personality.

original character of phallicism as a fertility worship must, to be sure, become considerably effaced to allow of the attachment of a sanction to chastity in its connection. Enhanced reproduction was always the object of pure phallicism. were all married women: Dulaure, op. cit., p. 121.) Hence the dedication of women to non-phallic deities would be more apt to lead, or, at any rate, would lead more quickly, to religious celibacy, than the dedication of women to primarily phallic deities.
 * (Note, for example, in this connection, that the priestesses of Priapus in Colophon