Sexual selection, no doubt, has worked in
its favor, but that influence has been very limited and comparatively very
recent. Virginity is not usually of any value among peoples who are
entirely primitive. Indeed, even in the classic civilization which we
inherit, it is easy to show that the virgin and the admiration for
virginity are of late growth; the virgin goddesses were not originally
virgins in our modern sense. Diana was the many-breasted patroness of
childbirth before she became the chaste and solitary huntress, for the
earliest distinction would appear to have been simply between the woman
who was attached to a man and the woman who followed an earlier rule of
freedom and independence; it was a later notion to suppose that the latter
woman was debarred from sexual intercourse. We certainly must not seek the
origin of the hymen in sexual selection; we must find it in natural
selection. And here it might seem at first sight that we come upon a
contradiction in Nature, for Nature is always devising contrivances to
secure the maximum amount of fertilization. "Increase and multiply" is so
obviously the command of Nature that the Hebrews, with their usual
insight, unhesitatingly dared to place it in the mouth of Jehovah.
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