Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/87

LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. 73 were not women at all whether psychologically or physiologically. Sappho, Catherine II of Russia, Queen Christina of Sweden, George Sand, Madame de Staal, Clara Schumann, George Eliot, Madame Blavatsky and others were " partly bi-sexual and partly homo-sexual." The dignity of sex would not be impaired even if these and other facts of female physiology, psychology, logic and ethics so mercilessly revealed by the author in his epochmaking Sex and Character were substantiated by subsequent students.

The dignity of sex does not depend on the final solution of the question of the rival claims of monoga- my and polygamy as social institutions. Nor is it bound up with the more recent controversy raised through women's demanding an " equal standard of morality " from men in retaliation of the age-long male demand for female chastity- The modern woman has raised the cry "Give us white (pure) men! " To this legitimate demand for purer morals, the rigid scientist has presented the conclusion of his investigations in most ghastly terms. It is said that a woman is by nature bound to be monogamous but that a man is by nature bound to be polygamous ! Problems like these do not, however, affect the rights of sex as sex.

Hindu scientists, poets, and philosophers from Charaka, Manu and Bhasha downards have had their own answers to these questions and their own solutions. But their conception of the sanctity of sex-impulse is not neces- sarily a deduction from these. The dignity of sex is a natural corollary to the dignity of the animal in man, the sacredness of the beast in humanity. Man is at bottom a cognate and colleague of the ape and tiger ;