[182] See “The Evolution of Modesty” in the first volume of these Studies.

[183] The sacredness of sexual relations often applies also to individual marriage.  Thus, Skeat, in his Malay Magic, shows that the bride and bridegroom are definitely recognized as sacred, in the same sense that the king is, and in Malay States the king is a very sacred person.  See also, concerning the sacred character of coitus, whether individual or collective, A. Van Gennep, Rites de Passage, passim.

[184] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 136.

[185] Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1894, p. 454 et seq.

[186] History of Marriage, pp. 66-70, 150-156, etc.

[187] Golden Bough, third edition, part ii, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul.  Frazer has discussed taboo generally.  For a shorter account of taboo, see art.  “Taboo” by Northcote Thomas in Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition, 1911.  Freud has lately (Imago, 1912) made an attempt to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic obsessions.  Taboo, Freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established.  In this way Freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and things are both sacred and unclean.

[188] “Essai sur le Sacrifice,” L’Annee Sociologique, 1899, pp. 50-51.

[189] The Mystic Rose, 1902, p. 187 et seq., 215 et seq., 342 et seq.

[190] Das Weib, vol. i, section 6.

[191] This statement has been questioned.  It should, however, be fairly evident that the sexual organs in either sex, when closely examined, can scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the opposite sex who is in a condition of sexual excitement, and they are not always attractive even then.  Moreover, it must be remembered that the snake-like aptitude of the penis to enter into a state of erection apart from the control of the will puts it in a different category from any other organ of the body, and could not fail to attract the attention of primitive peoples so easily alarmed by unusual manifestations.  We find even in the early ages of Christianity that St. Augustine attached immense importance to this alarming aptitude of the penis as a sign of man’s sinful and degenerate state.

[192] Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, fifth edition, pp. 69, 73; Westermarck, History of Marriage, p. 357; Grosse, Anfaenge der Kunst, p. 236; Herbert Spencer, “Origin of Music,” Mind, Oct., 1890.

[193] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 99; cf.  Finck, Primitive Love and Love-stories, p. 89 et seq.

[194] “The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity.”  The subject has also been more recently discussed by Walter Heape, “The ‘Sexual Season’ of Mammals,” Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xliv, 1900.  See also F.H.A.  Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910.