soaked with dirt than risk staining the radiant purity of your immortal
soul. If Christianity had not drawn that moral with clear insight and
relentless logic Christianity would never have been a great force in the
world.

If any doubt is felt as to the really essential character of the
connection between cleanliness and the sexual impulse it may be
dispelled by the consideration that the association is by no
means confined to Christian Europe. If we go outside Europe and
even Christendom altogether, to the other side of the world, we
find it still well marked. The wantonness of the luxurious people
of Tahiti when first discovered by European voyagers is
notorious. The Areoi of Tahiti, a society largely constituted on
a basis of debauchery, is a unique institution so far as
primitive peoples are concerned. Cook, after giving one of the
earliest descriptions of this society and its objects at Tahiti
(Hawkesworth, _An Account of Voyages_, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p.
55), immediately goes on to describe the extreme and scrupulous
cleanliness of the people of Tahiti in every respect; they not
only bathed their bodies and clothes every day, but in all
respects they carried cleanliness to a higher point than even
"the politest assembly in Europe." Another traveler bears similar
testimony: "The inhabitants of the Society Isles are, among all
the nations of the South Seas, the most cleanly; and the better
sort of them carry cleanliness to a very great length"; they
bathe morning and evening in the sea, he remarks, and afterward
in fresh water to remove the particles of salt, wash their hands
before and after meals, etc. (J.R. Forster, "_Observations made
during a Voyage round the World_," 1798, p. 398.) And William
Ellis, in his detailed description of the people of Tahiti