on his assenting, she reveals her identity and accuses him of being just as bad as she was. Another version reads that after their reconciliation she suspected his fidelity on hearing that he used to ascend a hill and cry out “Come, Nephela, come” ([Greek: Nephelae] means cloud). So she went and concealed herself on the hill in a thicket, where her husband accidentally killed her with his javelin.
Is this the kind of Greek “love-stories” that English school girls learn by the dozen? Coarse as it is, the majority of these stories are no better, being absolutely unfit for literal translation, which is doubtless the reason why no publisher has ever brought out a collection of Greek “love-stories.” Of those referred to above none is so objectionable as the tale of Cephalus and Procris, nor, on the other hand, is any one of them in any way related to what we call romantic love. Atalanta was a sweet masculine maiden who could run faster than any athlete. Her father was anxious to have her marry, and she finally agreed to wed any man who could reach a certain goal before her, the condition being, however, that she should be allowed to transfix with her spear every suitor who failed. She had already ornamented the place of contest with the heads of many courageous young men, this tender-hearted, romantic maiden had, when her fun was rudely spoiled by Meleager, who threw before her three golden apples which she stopped to pick up, thus losing the race to that hero, who, no doubt, was extremely happy with such a wife ever after. Even to this story an improper sequel was added.
Alcyone and Ceyx is the story of a wife who committed suicide on discovering the body of her husband on the sea-beach; and the story of Orpheus, who grieved so over the death of his wife Eurydice that he went to the lower world to bring her up again, but lost her again because, contrary to his agreement with Pluto and Proserpina, he looked back to see if she was following, is known to everybody. The conjugal attachment and grief at the loss of a spouse which these two legends tell of, are things the existence of which in Greece no one has ever denied. They are simple phenomena quite apart from the complex state of mind we call romantic love, and are shared by man with many of the lower animals. In such attachment and grief there is no evidence of altruistic affection. Orpheus tried to bring back Eurydice to please himself, not her, and Alcyone’s suicide was of no possible use to Ceyx.[326]
The story of Panthea and Abradates, to which Professor Ebers refers so triumphantly, is equally inconclusive as to the existence of altruistic affection. Abradates, having been urged by his wife Panthea to show himself worthy of the friendship of Cyrus by doing valorous deeds, falls in a battle, whereat Panthea is so grieved at the result of her advice that she commits suicide. From the modern Christian point of view this was not a rational proof of affection, but a foolish and criminal act. But it harmonized finely with the Greek ideal–the notion that patriotism is even a woman’s first duty, and her life not worth living except in subservience to her husband. There is good reason to believe[327] that this story was a pure invention of Xenophon and deliberately intended to be an object lesson to women regarding the ideal they ought to live up to. The whole of the book in which it appears–[Greek: Kyrou paideia]–is what the Germans call a _Tendenzroman_–a historic romance with a moral, illustrating the importance of a correct education and glorifying a certain form of government.
To a student of Greek love one of the most instructive documents is the [Greek: erotika pathaemata] of Parthenius, who was a contemporary of the most famous Roman poets (first century before Christ), and the teacher of Virgil. It is a collection of thirty-six short love-stories in prose, made for him by his friend Cornelius Gallus, who was in quest of subjects which he might turn into elegies. It has been remarked that these poems are peculiarly sad, but a better word for them is coarse. Unbridled lust, incest, [Greek: _paiderastia_], and adultery are the favorite motives in them, and few rise above the mephitic atmosphere which breathes from Cephalus and Procris or other stories of crime, like that of Philomela and Procne, which were so popular among Greek and Roman poets, and presumably suited their readers. With amusing naivete Eckstein pleads for these “specimens of antique romance” on the ground that there is more lubricity in Bandello and Boccaccio!–which is like declaring that a man who assassinates another by simply hitting him on the head is virtuous because there are others who make murder a fine art. I commend the stories of Parthenius to the special attention of any one who may have any lingering doubts as to the difference between Greek ideas of love and modern ideals.[328]
GREEK ROMANCES
Parthenius is regarded as a connecting link of the Alexandrian school with the Roman poets on one side, and on the other with the romances which constitute the last phase of Greek erotic literature.[329] In these romances too, a number of my critics professed to discover romantic love. The reviewer of my book in _Nature_ (London) asked me to see whether Heliodorus’s account of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea does not come up to my standard. I am sorry to say it does not. Jowett perhaps dismisses this story somewhat too curtly as “silly and obscene”; but it certainly is far from being a love-story in the modern sense of the word, though its moral tone is doubtless superior to that of the other Greek romances. The notion that it indicates an advance in erotic literature may no doubt be traced to the legend that Heliodorus was a bishop, and that he introduced Christian ideas into his romance–a theory which Professor Rohde has scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea.[330] The preservation of the heroine’s virginity amid incredible perils and temptations is one of the tricks of the Greek novelists, the real object of which is made most apparent in _Daphnis and Chloe_. The extraordinary emphasis placed on it on every possible occasion is not only very indelicate, but it shows how novel and remarkable such an idea was considered at the time. It was one of the tricks of the Sophists (with whom Heliodorus must be classed), who were in the habit of treating a moral question like a mathematical problem. “Given a maiden’s innocence, how can it be preserved to the end of the story?” is the artificial, silly, and vulgar leading motive of this Greek romance, as of others. Huet, Villemain, and many other critics have been duped by this sophistico-mathematical aspect of the story into descanting on the peculiar purity and delicacy of its moral tone; but one need only read a few of the heroine’s speeches to see how absurd this judgment is. When she says to her lover,
“I resigned myself to you, not as to a paramour, but as to a legitimate husband, and I have preserved my chastity with you, resisting your urgent solicitations because I always had in mind the lawful marriage to which we pledged ourselves,”
she uses the language of a shrewd hetaira, not of an innocent girl; nor could the author have made her say the following had his subject been romantic love: [Greek: _Hormaen gar, hos oistha, kratousaes epithumias machae men antitupos epipeinei, logos d’ eikon kai pros to boulaema syntrechon taen protaen kai zeousan phoran esteile kai to katoxu taes orezeos to haedei taes epaggelias kateunase.]
The story of Heliodorus is full of such coarse remarks, and his idea of love is plainly enough revealed when he moralizes that “a lover inclines to drink and one who is drunk is inclined to love.”
It is not only on account of this coarseness that the story of Theagenes and Chariclea fails to come up to the standard of romantic love. When Arsace (VIII., 9) imprisons the lovers together, with the idea that the sight of their chains will increase the sufferings of each, we have an intimation of crude sympathy; but apart from that the symptoms of love referred to in the course of the romance are the same that I have previously enumerated, as peculiar to Alexandrian literature. The maxims, “dread the revenge that follows neglected love;” “love soon finds its end in satiety;” and “the greatest happiness is to be free from love,” take us back to the oldest Greek times. Peculiarly Greek, too, is the scene in which the women, unable to restrain their feelings, fling fruits and flowers at a young man because he is so beautiful; although on the same page we are surprised by the admission that woman’s beauty is even more alluring than man’s, which is not a Greek sentiment.
In this last respect, as in some others, the romance of Heliodorus differs favorably from that of Achilles Tatius, which relates the adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon; but I need not dwell on this amazingly obscene and licentious narrative, as its author’s whole philosophy of love, like that of Heliodorus, is summed up in this passage:
“As the wine produced its effect I cast lawless glances at Leucippe: for Love and Bacchus are violent gods, they invade the soul and so inflame it that they forget modesty, and while one kindles the flame the other supplies the fuel; for wine is the food of love.”
Nor need I dwell on the stories of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, or the epic _Dionysiaca_ of Nonnus, as they yield us no new points of view. The romance of Longus, however, calls for some remarks, as it is the best known of the Greek novels and has often been pronounced a story of refined love worthy of a modern writer.
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
Goethe found in _Daphnis and Chloe_ “a delicacy of feeling which cannot be excelled.” Professor Murray backs up the morals of Longus: “It needs an unintelligent reader or a morbid translator,” he writes (403), “to find harm in the _History of Daphnis and Chloe_;” and an editorial writer in the New York _Mail and Express_ accused me, as before intimated, of unexampled ignorance for not knowing that _Daphnis and Chloe_ is “as sweet and beautiful a love-story as ever skipped in prose.” This, indeed, is the prevalent opinion. How it ever arose is a mystery to me. Fiction has always been the sphere of the most unrestrained license, yet Dunlop wrote in his _History of Fiction_ that there are in this story “particular passages so extremely reprehensible that I know nothing like them in almost any work whatever.” In collecting the material for the present volume I have been obliged to examine thousands of books referring to the relations of men and women, but I declare that of all the books I have seen only the Hindoo _K[=a]masutr[=a]m_, the literal version of the _Arabian Nights_, and the American Indian stories collected by Dr. Boas, can compare with this “sweet and beautiful” romance of Longus in downright obscenity or deliberate laciviousness. I have been able, without going beyond the latitude permissible to anthropologists, to give a fairly accurate idea of the love-affairs of savages and barbarians; but I find it impossible, after several trials, to sum up the story of Daphnis and Chloe without going beyond the limits of propriety. Among all the deliberate pictures of _moral depravity_ painted by Greek and Roman authors not one is so objectionable as this “idyllic” picture of the _innocent_ shepherd boy and girl. Pastoral love is coarse enough, in all truth: but this story is infinitely more immoral than, for instance, the frank and natural sensualism of the twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus. Professor Anthon (755) described the story of _Daphnis and Chloe_ as
“the romance, _par excellence_, of physical love. It is a history of the senses rather than of the mind, a picture of the development of the instincts rather than of the sentiments…. _Paul and Virginia_ is nothing more than _Daphnis and Chloe_ delineated by a refined and cultivated mind, and spiritualized and purified by the influence of Christianity.”
This is true; but Anthon erred decidedly in saying that in the Greek story “vice is advocated by no sophistry.” On the contrary, what makes this romance so peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from his sly sophistry:
“The way in which Longus excites the sensual desires of the lovers by means of licentious experiments going always only to the verge of gratification, betrays an abominably hypocritical _raffinement_[331] which reveals in the most disagreeable manner that the naivete of this idyllist is a premeditated artifice and he himself nothing but a sophist. It is difficult to understand how anyone could have ever been deceived so far as to overlook the sophistical character of this pastoral romance of Longus, or could have discovered genuine naivete in this most artificial of all rhetorical productions. No attentive reader who has some acquaintance with the ways of the Sophistic writers will have any difficulty in apprehending the true inwardness of the story… As this sophist, in those offensively licentious love-scenes, suddenly shows the cloven foot under the cloak of innocence, so, on the other hand, his eager desire to appear as simple and childlike as possible often enough makes him cold, finical, trifling, or utterly silly in his affectation.”[332]
HERO AND LEANDER
Our survey of Greek erotic literature may be brought to a close with two famous stories which are closely allied to the Greek romances, although one of them–_Hero and Leander_–was written in verse, and the other–_Cupid and Psyche_–in Latin prose. While Apuleius was an African and wrote his story in Latin, he evidently derived it from a Greek source.[333] He lived in the second century of our era, and Musaeus, the author of _Hero and Leander_, in the fifth. It is more than probable that Musaeus did not invent the story, but found it as a local legend and simply adorned it with his pen.
On the shores of the Hellespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic story. To the present day the Turks point out what they claim to be her tower, and it is well-known that in 1810, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, in order to test the possibility of Leander’s feat, swam from Europe to Asia at this place; it took them an hour and five and an hour and ten minutes respectively, and on account of the strong current the distance actually traversed was estimated at more than four miles, while in a straight line it was only a mile from shore to shore.
I have already pointed out (202, 204) that the action of Leander in swimming across this strait for the sake of enjoying the favor of Hero, and her suicide when she finds him dead on the rocks, have nothing so do with the altruistic self-sacrifice that indicates _soul_-love. Here I merely wish to remark that apart from that there is not a line or word in the whole poem to prove that this story “completely upsets” my theory, as one critic wrote. The story is not merely frivolous and cold, as W. von Humboldt called it; it is as unmitigatedly sensual as _Daphnis and Chloe_, though less offensively so because it does not add the vice of hypocrisy to its immodesty. From beginning to end there is but one thought in Leanders mind, as there is in Hero’s, whose words and actions are even more indelicate than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess of Venus true to her function–a girl to whom the higher feminine virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the impulse of the moment, in response to coarse flattery, she makes an assignation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid’s version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic love–soul-love–there is no trace in either version. There are touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).
CUPID AND PSYCHE
To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of which _Lohengrin_ is a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that _Cupid and Psyche_ is a story of “modern” romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love–or conjugal affection either–it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated. Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (_amore flagrantissimo_) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother’s orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (_jamque aderat ignobilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat_).
Now follow some months in which Psyche is neither maiden nor wife. Even if they had been properly married there would have been no opportunity for the development or manifestation of supersensual conjugal attachment, for all this time Psyche is never allowed even to see her lover; and when an opportunity arises for her to show her devotion to him she fails utterly to rise to the occasion. One night he informs her that her two sisters, who are unhappily married, are trying to find her, and he warns her seriously not to heed them in any way, should they succeed in their efforts. She promises, but spends the whole of the next day weeping and wailing because she is locked up in a beautiful prison, unable to see her sisters–very unlike a loving modern girl on her honeymoon, whose one desire is to be alone with her beloved, giving him a monopoly of her affection and enjoying a monopoly of his, with no distractions or jealousies to mar their happiness. Cupid chides her for being sad and dissatisfied even amid his caresses and he again warns her against her scheming sisters; whereat she goes so far as to threaten to kill herself unless he allows her to receive her sisters. He consents at last, after making her promise not to let them persuade her to try to find out anything about his personal appearance, lest such forbidden curiosity make her lose him forever. Nevertheless, when, on their second visit, the sisters, filled with envy, try to persuade her that her unseen lover is a monster who intends to eat her after she has grown fat, and that to save herself she must cut off his head while he is asleep, she resolves to follow their advice. But when she enters the room at night, with a knife in one hand and a lamp in the other, and sees the beautiful god Cupid in her bed, she is so agitated that a drop of hot oil falls from her lamp on his face and wakes him; whereupon, after reproaching her, he rises on his wings and forsakes her.
Overcome with grief, Psyche tries to end her life by jumping into a river, but Zephir saves her. Then she takes revenge on her sisters by calling on them separately and telling each one that Cupid had deserted her because he had seen her with lamp and knife, and that he was now going to marry one of them. The sisters hasten one after the other to the rock, but Zephir fails to catch them, and they are dashed to pieces. Venus meanwhile had discovered the escapade of her boy and locked him up till his wound from the hot oil was healed. Her anger now vents itself on Psyche. She sets her several impossible tasks, but Psyche, with supernatural aid, accomplishes all of them safely. At last Cupid manages to escape through a window. He finds Psyche lying on the road like a corpse, wakes her and Mercury brings her to heaven, where at last she is properly married to Cupid–_sic rite Psyche convenit in manum Cupidinis et nascitur illis maturo partu filia, quam Voluptatem nominamus_.
Such is the much-vaunted “love-story” of Cupid and Psyche! Commentators have found all sorts of fanciful and absurd allegories in this legend. Its real significance I have already pointed out. But it may be looked at from still another point of view. Psyche means soul, and in the story of Apuleius Cupid does not fall in love with a soul, but with a beautiful body. This sums up Hellenic love in general. _The Greek Cupid_ NEVER _fell in love with a Psyche_.
UTILITY AND FUTURE OF LOVE
The Greek view that love is a disease and a calamity still prevails extensively among persons who, like the Greeks, have never experienced real love and do not know what it is. In a book dated 1868 and entitled _Modern Women_ I find the following passage (325):
“Already the great philosopher of the age has pronounced that the passion of love plays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress. The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mill.”
It is significant that this opinion should have emanated from a man whose idea of femininity was as masculine as that of the Greeks–an ideal which, by eliminating or suppressing the secondary and tertiary (mental) sexual qualities, necessarily makes love synonymous with lust.
There is another large class of persons who likewise consider love a disease, but a harmless one, like the measles, or mumps, which it is well to have as early as possible, so as to be done with it, and which seldom does any harm. Others, still, regard it as a sort of juvenile holiday, like a trip to Italy or California, which is delightful while it lasts and leaves pleasant memories thoughout life, but is otherwise of no particular use.
It shows a most extraordinary ignorance of the ways of nature to suppose that it should have developed so powerful an instinct and sentiment for no useful purpose, or even as a detriment to the race. That is not the way nature operates. In reality love is the most useful thing in the world. The two most important objects of the human race are its own preservation and improvement, and in both of these directions love is the mightiest of all agencies. It makes the world go round. Take it away, and in a few years animal life will be as extinct on this planet as it is on the moon. And by preferring youth to age, health to disease, beauty to deformity, it improves the human type, slowly but steadily.
The first thinker who clearly recognized and emphatically asserted the superlative importance of love was Schopenhauer. Whereas Hegel (II., 184) parroted the popular opinion that love is peculiarly and exclusively the affair of the two individuals whom it directly involves, having no concern with the eternal interests of family and race, no universality (Allgemeinheit). Schopenhauer’s keen mind on the contrary saw that love, though the most individualized of all passions, concerns the race even more than the individual. “Die Zusammensetzung der naechsten Generation, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes”–the very composition and essence of the next generation and of countless generations following it, depends, as he says, on the particular choice of a mate. If an ugly, vicious, diseased mate be chosen, his or her bad qualities are transmitted to the following generations, for “the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children,” as even the old sages knew, long before science had revealed the laws of heredity. Not only the husband’s and the wife’s personal qualities are thus transmitted to the children and children’s children, but those also of four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on; and when we bear in mind the tremendous differences in the inheritable ancestral traits of families–virtues or infirmities–we see of what incalculable importance to the future of families is that individual preference which is so vital an ingredient of romantic love.
It is true that love is not infallible. It is still, as Browning puts it, “blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened.” It may be said that marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species; but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence natural selection has favored it–especially the monogamous form–_in the interest of coming generations._ Love is simply an extension of this process—making it efficacious before marriage and thus quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as wisely as the higher. Where animal passion alone is involved, parents cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But, with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason, because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled lust) always is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous offspring.
If it be asked, “Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and physical?” the answer is a most emphatic “No.” Parental fondness, sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian father’s object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters and giving them in marriage was to secure cows or ponies in return for them. In India the object of marriage was the rearing of sons or daughters’ sons for the purpose of saving the souls of their parents from perdition; so they flung them into the arms of anyone who would take them. The Greeks and the Hebrews married to perpetuate their family name or to supply the state with soldiers. In Japan and China ancestral and family considerations have always been of infinitely more importance than the individual inclinations or happiness of the bridal couple. Wherever we look we find this topsy-turvy state of affairs–marriages made to suit the parents instead of the bride and groom; while the welfare of the grandchildren is of course never dreamt of.
This outrageous parental selfishness and tyranny, so detrimental to the interests of the human race, was gradually mitigated as civilization progressed in Europe. Marriages were no longer made for the benefit of the parents alone, but with a view to the comfort and worldly advantages of the couple to be wedded. But rank, money, dowry, continued–and continue in Europe to this day–to be the chief matchmakers, few parents rising to the consideration of the welfare of the grandchildren. The grandest task of the morality of the future will be to _make parental altruism extend to these grandchildren_; that is, to make parents and everyone else abhor and discountenance all marriages that do not insure the health and happiness of future generations. Love will show the way. Far from being useless or detrimental to the human race, it is an instinct evolved by nature as a defence of the race against parental selfishness and criminal myopia regarding future generations.
Plato observed in his _Statesman_ (310) that
“most persons form marriage connections without due regard to what is best for procreation of children.” “They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of serious censure.”
But his remedy for this evil was, as we have seen (775), quite as bad as the evil itself, since it involved promiscuity and the elimination of chastity and family life. Love accomplishes the results that Plato and Lycurgus aimed at, so far as healthy offspring is concerned, without making the same sacrifices and reducing human marriage to the level of the cattle-breeder. It accomplishes, moreover, the same result that natural selection secures, and without its cruelty, by simply excluding from marriage the criminal, vicious, crippled, imbecile, incurably diseased and all who do not come up to its standard of health, vigor, and beauty.
While claiming that love is an instinct developed by nature as a defence against the short-sighted selfishness of parents who would sacrifice the future of the race to their own advantage or that of their children, I do not forget that in the past it has often secured its results in an illegitimate way. That, however, was no fault of its own, being due to the artificial and foolish obstacles placed in its way. Laws of nature cannot be altered by man, and if the safety valve is tied down the boiler is bound to explode. In countries where marriages are habitually arranged by the parents with reference to rank or money alone, in defiance of love, the only “love-children” are necessarily illegitimate. This has given rise to the notion that illegitimate children are apt to be more beautiful, healthy, and vigorous than the issue of regular marriages: and, under the circumstances, it was true. But for this topsy-turvyness, this folly, this immorality, we must not blame love, but those who persistently thwarted love–or tried to thwart it. As soon as love was allowed a voice in the arrangement of marriages illegitimacy decreased rapidly. Had the rights of love been recognized sooner, it would have proved a useful ally of morality instead its craftiest enemy.[335]
The utility of love from a moral point of view can be shown in other ways. Many tendencies–such as club life, the greater ease of securing divorces, the growing independence of women and their disinclination to domesticity–are undermining that family life which civilization has so slowly and laboriously built up, and fostering celibacy. Now celibacy is not only unnatural and detrimental to health and longevity, but it is the main root of immorality. Its antidote is love, the most persuasive champion and promoter of marriage. No reader of the present volume can fail to see that man has generally managed to have a good time at the expense of woman and it is she who benefits particularly by the modern phases of love and marriage. Yet in recent years the notion that family life is not good enough for women, and that they should be brought up in a spirit of manly independence, has come over society like a noxious epidemic. It is quite proper that there should be avenues of employment for women who have no one to support them; but it is a grievous error to extend this to women in general, to give them the education, tastes, habits, sports, and politics of the men. It antagonizes that sexual differentiation of the more refined sort on which romantic love depends and tempts men to seek amusement in ephemeral, shallow amours. In plain English, while there are many charming exceptions, the growing masculinity of girls is the main reason why so many of them remain unmarried; thus fulfilling the prediction: “Could we make her as the man, sweet love were slain.” Let girls return to their domestic sphere, make themselves as delightfully feminine as possible, not trying to be gnarled oaks but lovely vines clinging around them, and the sturdy oaks will joyously extend their love and protection to them amid all the storms of life. In love lies the remedy for many of the economic problems of the day.
There is not one of the fourteen ingredients of romantic love which cannot be shown to be useful in some way. Of individual preference and its importance in securing a happy blend of qualities for the next generation I have just spoken, and I have devoted nearly a page (131) to the utility of coyness. Jealousy has helped to develop chastity, woman’s cardinal virtue and the condition of all refinement in love and society. Monopolism has been the most powerful enemy of those two colossal evils of savagery and barbarism–promiscuity and polygamy; and it will in future prove as fatal an enemy to all attempts to bring back promiscuity under the absurd name of “free love,” which would reduce all women to the level of prostitutes and make men desert them after their charms have faded. Two other ingredients of love–purity and the admiration of personal beauty–are of great value to the cause of morality as conquerors of lust, which they antagonize and suppress by favoring the higher (mental) sexual qualities; while the sense of beauty also co-operates with the instinct which makes for the health of future generations; beauty being simply the flower of health, and inheritable.
At first sight it may seem difficult to assign any use to the pride, the hyperbole, and the mixed moods which are component elements of love; but they are of value inasmuch as they exalt the mind, and give to the beloved such prominence and importance that the way is paved for the altruistic ingredients of romantic love, the utility of which is so obvious that it hardly needs to be hinted at. If love were nothing more than a lesson in altruism–with many the first and only lesson in their lives–it would be second in importance to no other factor of civilization. Sympathy lifts the lover out of the deep groove of selfishness, teaching him the miracle of feeling another’s pains and pleasures more keenly than his own. Man’s adoration of woman as a superior being–which she really is, as the distinctively feminine virtues are more truly Christian and have a higher ethical value than the masculine virtues–creates an ideal which has improved women by making them ambitious to live up to it. No one, again, who has read the preceding pages relating to the treatment of women before romantic love existed, and compares it with their treatment at present, can fail to recognize the wonderful transformation brought about by gallantry and self-sacrifice–altruistic habits which have changed men from ruffians to gentlemen. I do not say that love alone is responsible for this improvement, but it has been one of the most potent factors. Finally, there is affection, which, in conjunction with the other altruistic ingredients of love, has changed it from an appetite like that of a fly for sugar to a self-oblivious devotion like a mother’s for her child, thus raising it to the highest ethical rank as an agency of culture.
We are still very far from the final stage in the evolution of love. There is no reason to doubt that it will continue to develop, as in the past, in the direction of the esthetic, supersensual, and altruistic. As a physician’s eye becomes trained for the subtle diagnosis of disease, a clergyman’s for the diagnosis of moral evil, so will the love-instinct become more and more expert, critical, and refined, rejecting those who are vicious or diseased. Compare the lustrous eyes of a consumptive girl with the sparkling eyes of a healthy maiden in buoyant spirits. Both are beautiful, but to a doctor, or to anyone else who knows the deadliness and horrors of tuberculosis, the beauty of the consumptive girl’s eyes will seem uncanny, like the charm of a snake, and it will inspire pity, which in this case is not akin to love, but fatal to it. Thus may superior knowledge influence our sense of beauty and liability to fall in love. I know a man who was in love with a girl and had made up his mind to propose. He went to call on her, and as he approached the door he heard her abusing her mother in the most heartless manner. He did not ring the bell, and never called again. His love was of the highest type, but he suppressed his feelings.
More important than the further improvement of romantic love is the task of increasing the proportion of men and women who will be capable of experiencing it as now known to us. The vast majority are still strangers to anything beyond primitive love. The analysis made in the present volume will enable all persons who fancy themselves in love to see whether their passion is merely self-love in a roundabout way or true romantic affection for another. They can see whether it is mere selfish liking, attachment, or fondness, or else unselfish affection. If adoration, purity, sympathy, and the altruistic impulses of gallantry and self-sacrifice are lacking, they can be cultivated by deliberate exercise:
Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
The affections can be trained as well as the muscles; and thus the lesson taught in this book may help to bring about a new era of unselfish devotion and true love. No man, surely, can read the foregoing disclosures regarding man’s primitive coarseness and heartlessness without feeling ashamed for his sex and resolving to be an unselfish lover and husband to the end of his life.
A great mistake was made by the Greeks when they distinguished celestial from earthly love. The distinction itself was all right, but their application of it was all wrong. Had they known romantic love as we know it, they could not have made the grievous blunder of calling the love between men and women worldly, reserving the word celestial for the friendship between men. Equally mistaken were those mediaeval sages who taught that the celestial sexual virtues are celibacy and virginity–a doctrine which, if adopted, would involve the suicide of the human race, and thus stands self-condemned. No, _celestial love is not asceticism; it is altruism_. Romantic love is celestial, for it is altruistic, yet it does not preach contempt of the body, and its goal is marriage, the chief pillar of civilization. The admiration of a beautiful, well-rounded, healthy body is as legitimate and laudable an ingredient of romantic love as the admiration of that mental beauty which distinguishes it from sensual love. It is not only that the lovers themselves are entitled to partners with healthy, attractive bodies; it is a duty they owe to the next generation not to marry anyone who is likely to transmit bodily or mental infirmities to the next generation. It is quite as reprehensible to marry for spiritual reasons alone as to be guided only by physical charms.
Love is nature’s radical remedy for disease, whereas marriage, as practised in the past, and too often in the present, is little more than a legalized crime. “One of the last things that occur to a marrying couple is whether they are fit to be represented in posterity,” writes Dr. Harry Campbell (_Lancet_, 1898).
“Theft and murder are considered the blackest of crimes, but neither the law nor the church has raised its voice against the marriage of the unfit, for neither has realized that worse than theft and well-nigh as bad as murder is the bringing into the world, through disregard of parental fitness, of individuals full of disease-tendencies.”
On this point the public conscience needs a thorough rousing. If a mother deliberately gave her daughter a draught which made her a cripple, or an invalid, or an imbecile, or tuberculous, everybody would cry out with horror, and she would become a social outcast. But if she inflicts these injuries on her granddaughter, by marrying her daughter to a drunkard, in the hope of reforming him, or to a wealthy degenerate, or an imbecile baron, no one says a word, provided the marriage law has been complied with.
It is owing to these persistent crimes against grandchildren that the human race as a whole is still such a miserable rabble, and that recruiting offices and insurances companies tell such startling tales of degeneracy. Love would cure this, if there were more of the right kind. Until there is, much good may be done by accepting it as a guide, and building up a sentiment in favor of its instinctive object and ideal. I have described in one chapter the obstacles which retarded the growth of love, and in another I have shown how sentiments change and grow. Most of those obstacles are being gradually removed, and public opinion is slowly but surely changing in favor of love. Building up a new sentiment is a slow process. At first it may be a mere hut for a hermit thinker, but gradually it becomes larger and larger as thousands add their mite to the building fund, until at last it stands as a sublime cathedral admonishing all to do their duty. When the Cathedral of Love is finished the horror of disease and vice will have become as absolute a bar to marriage as the horror of incest is now; and it will be acknowledged that the only true marriage of reason is a marriage of love.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Albrecht Weber and other German scholars, while practically agreeing with Hegel regarding the Greeks and Romans, claim, that the amorous poetry of the ancient Hindoo has the sentimental qualities of modern European verse.
[2] In the New York _Nation_ of September 22, and the _Evening Post_ of September 24, 1887. My reasons for not agreeing with these two distinguished professors will be dwelt on repeatedly in the following pages. If they are right, then literature is not, as it is universally held to be, a mirror of life.
[3] No important truth is ever born full fledged. The Darwinian theory was conceived simultaneously by Wallace and Darwin, and both were anticipated by other writers. Nay, a German professor has written a treatise on the “Greek Predecessors of Darwin.”
[4] _Studien ueber die Libido Sexualis_, I., Pt. I., 28.
[5] In the last chapter of _Lotos-Time in Japan_.
[6] An amusing instance of this trait may be found in Johnston’s account of his ascent of the Kilima-Njaro (271-276).
[7] Roth’s sumptuous volume, _British North Borneo_, gives a life-like picture of the Dyaks from every point of view, with numerous illustrations.
[8] See the chapter on Nudity and Bathing in my _Lotos-Time in Japan_.
[9] Bancroft, II., 75; Wallace, 357; Westermarck, 195; Humboldt, III., 230.
[10] See especially the ninth chapter of Westermarck’s _History of Human Marriage_, 186-201.
[11] Westermarck (74) devotes half a page in fine type to an enumeration of the peoples among whom many such customs prevailed, and his list is far from being complete.
[12] See Westermarck, Chap. XX., for a list of monogamous peoples.
[13] The vexed question of promiscuity hinges on this distinction. As a matter of _form_ promiscuity may not have been the earliest phase of human marriage, but as a matter of _fact_ it was. Westermarck’s ingeniously and elaborately built up argument against the theory of promiscuity is a leaning tower which crashes to the ground when weighted by this one consideration. See the chapter on Australia.
[14] For a partial list of peoples who practised trial marriage and frequent divorce see Westermarck, 518-521, and C. Fischer, Ueber die Probennaechte der deutschen Bauernmaedchen_. Leipzig, 1780.
[15] For the distinction between sentiment and sentimentality see the chapter on Sensuality, Sentimentality, and Sentiment.
[16] Johnston states (in Schoolcraft, IV., 224) that the wild Indians of California had their rutting season as regularly as have the deer and other animals. See also Powers (206) and Westermarck (28). In the Andaman Islands a man and woman remained together only till their child was weaned, when they separated to seek new mates (_Trans. Ethnol. Soc_., V., 45).
[17] The other cases of “jealousy” cited by Westermarck (117-122) are all negatived by the same property argument; to which he indeed alludes, but the full significance of which he failed to grasp. It is a pity that language should be so crude as to use the same word jealousy to denote three such entirely different things as rage at a rival, revenge for stolen property, and anguish at the knowledge or suspicion of violated chastity and outraged conjugal affection. Anthropologists have studied only the lower phases of jealousy, just as they have failed to distinguish clearly between lust and love.
[18] All these facts, it is hardly necessary to add, serve as further illustrations to the chapter How Sentiments Change and Grow.
[19] For “love” read covet. We shall see in the chapter on Australia that love is a feeling altogether beyond the mental horizon of the natives.
[20] Rohde, 35, 28, 147. See his list of corroborative cases in the long footnote, pp. 147-148.
[21] Compare this with what Rohde says (42) about the Homeric heroes and their complete absorption in warlike doings.
[22] _Grundlage der Moral_, Sec. 14.
[23] _Wagner and his Works_, II., 163.
[24] In Burton the translator has changed the sex of the beloved. This proceeding, a very common one, has done much to confuse the public regarding the modernity of Greek love. It is not Greek love of women, but romantic friendship for boys, that resembles modern love for women.
[25] A multitude of others may be found in an interesting article on “Sexual Taboo” by Crawley in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxvi.
[26] New York _Evening Post_, January 21, 1899.
[27] Fitzroy, II., 183; _Trans. Ethn. Soc_., New Series, III., 248-88.
[28] That moral infirmities, too, were capable of winning the respect of savages, may be seen in Carver’s _Travels in North America_ (245).
[29] Garcia _Origin de los Indios de el Nuevo Mondo_; McLennan; Ingham (Westermarck, 113) concerning the Bakongo; Giraud-Teulon, 208, 209, concerning Nubians and other Ethiopians.
[30] See Letourneau, 332-400; Westermarck, 39-41, 96-113; Grosse, 11-12,50-63, 75-78, 101-163, 107, 180.
[31] Charlevoix, V. 397-424; Letourneau, 351. See also Mackenzie, _V. fr. M._, 84, 87; Smith, _Arauc._, 238; _Bur. Ethnol._, 1887, 468-70.
[32] How capable of honoring women the Babylonians were may be inferred from the testimony of Herodotus (I., ch. 199) that every woman had to sacrifice her chastity to strangers in the temple of Mylitta.
[33] It gives me great pleasure to correct my error in this place. Not a few critics of my first book censured me for underrating Roman advances in the refinements of love. As a matter of fact I overrated them.
[34] _Life Among the Modocs_ (228). It must be borne in mind that Joaquin Miller here describes his own ideas of chivalry. He did not, as a matter of course, find anything resembling them among the Modocs. If he had, he would have said so, for he was their friend, and married the girl referred to. But while the Indians themselves never entertain any chivalrous regard for women, they are acute enough to see that the whites do, and to profit thereby. One morning when I was writing some pages of this book under a tree at Lake Tahoe, California, an Indian came to me and told me a pitiful tale about his “sick squaw” in one of the neighboring camps. I gave him fifty cents “for the squaw,” but ascertained later that after leaving me he had gone straight to the bar-room at the end of the pier and filled himself up with whiskey, though he had specially and repeatedly assured me he was “damned good Indian,” and never drank.
[35] _Magazin von Reisebeschreibungen_, I., 283.
[36] The Rev. Isaac Malek Yonan tells us, in his book on _Persian Women_ (138), that most Armenian women “are very low in the moral scale.” It is obvious that only one of the wanton class could be in question in Trumbull’s story, for the respectable women are, as Yonan says, not even permitted to talk loudly or freely in the presence of men. This clergyman is a native Persian, and the account he gives of his countrywomen, unbiassed and sorrowful, shows that the chances for romantic love are no better in modern Persia than they were in the olden times. The women get no education, hence they grow up “really stupid and childlike.” He refers to “the low estimation in which women are held,” and says that the likes and dislikes of girls about to be married are not consulted. Girls are seldom betrothed later than the seventh to the tenth year, often, indeed, immediately after birth or even before. The wife cannot sit at the same table with her husband, but must wait on him “like an accomplished slave.” After he has eaten she washes his hands, lights his pipe, then retires to a respectful distance, her face turned toward the mud wall, and finishes what is left. If she is ill or in trouble, she does not mention it to him, “for she could only be sure of harsh, rough words instead of loving sympathy.” Their degraded Oriental customs have led the Persians to the conclusion that “love has nothing to do with the matrimonial connection,” the main purpose of marriage being “the convenience and pleasure of a degenerate people” (34-114). So far this Persian clergyman. His conclusions are borne out by the observations of the keen-eyed Isabella Bird Bishop, who relates in her book on Persia how she was constantly besieged by the women for potions to bring back the “love” of their husbands, or to “make the favorite hateful to him.” She was asked if European husbands “divorce their wives when they are forty?” A Persian who spoke French assured her that marriage in his country was like buying “a pig in a poke,” and that “a woman’s life in Persia is a very sad thing.”
[37] _Magazin fuer d. Lit. des In-und Auslandes_, June 30, 1888.
[38] The philosophy of widow-burning will be explained under the head of Conjugal Love.
[39] Willoughby, in his article on Washington Indians, recognizes the predominance of the “animal instinct” in the parental fondness of savages, and so does Hutchinson (I., 119); but both erroneously use the word “affection,” though Hutchinson reveals his own misuse of it when he writes that “the savage knows little of the higher affection subsequently developed, which has a worthier purpose than merely to disport itself in the mirth of childhood and at all hazards to avoid the annoyance of seeing its tears.” He comprehends that the savage “gratifies _himself_” by humoring the whims “of his children.” Dr. Abel, on the other hand, who has written an interesting pamphlet on the words used in Latin, Hebrew, English, and Russian to designate the different kinds and degrees of what is vaguely called love, while otherwise making clear the differences between liking, attachment, fondness, and affection, does not sufficiently emphasize the most important distinction between them–the selfishness of the first three and the unselfish nature of affection.
[40] Stanford-Wallace, _Australasia_, 89.
[41] See also the reference to the “peculiar delicacy” of his relations to Lili, in Eckermann, III., March 5, 1830.
[42] Renan, in one of his short stories, describes a girl, Emma Kosilis, whose love, at sixteen, is as innocent as it is unconscious, and who is unable to distinguish it from piety. Regarding the unconscious purity of woman’s love see Moll, 3, and Paget, _Clinical Lectures_, which discuss the loss in women of instinctive sexual knowledge. _Cf_. Ribot, 251, and Moreau, _Psychologie Morbide_, 264-278. Ribot is sceptical, because the ultimate goal is the possession of the beloved. But that has nothing to do with the question, for what he refers to is unconscious and instinctive. Here we are considering love as a conscious feeling and ideal, and as such it is as spotless and sinless as the most confirmed ascetic could wish it.
[43] The case is described in the _Medical Times_, April 18, 1885.
[44] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan_, 1885, p. 181.
[45] In the _Journal des Goncourts_ (V., 214-215) a young Japanese, with characteristic topsy-turviness, comments on the “coarseness” of European ideas of love, which he could understand only in his own coarse way. “Vous dites a une femme, je vous aime! Eh bien! Chez nous, c’est comme si on disait Madame, je vais coucher avec vous. Tont ce que nous osons dire a la dame que nous aimons, c’est que nous envions pres d’elle la place des canards mandarins. C’est messieurs, notre oiseau d’amour.”
[46] In his _Tropical Nature, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_, and _Darwinism_. In _R.L.P.B._, 42-50, where I gave a summary of this question, I suggested that the “typical colors” (the numerous cases where both sexes are brilliantly colored) for which Wallace could “assign no function or use,” owe their existence to the need of a means of recognition by the sexes; thus indicating how the love-affairs of animals may modify their appearance in a way quite different from that suggested by Darwin, and dispensing with his postulates of unproved female choice and problematic variations in esthetic taste.
[47] Angas, II., 65.
[48] Tylor, _Anthr._, 237.
[49] Musters, 171; cf. Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, 89, where we read that woman’s coating of lampblack and castor-oil–her only dress–serves to prevent excessive perspiration in the day-time and ward off chills at night.
[50] C. Bock, 273.
[51] O. Baumann, _Mitth. Anthr. Ges._, Wien, 1887, 161.
[52] Nicaragua, II., 345.
[53] Sturt, II., 103.
[54] Tylor, 237.
[55] _Jesuit Relations_, I., 279.
[56] Prince Wied, 149.
[57] Belden, 145.
[58] Mallery, 1888-89, 631-33.
[59] Mallery, 1882-83, 183.
[60] Bourke, 497.
[61] Dobrizhoffer, II., 390.
[62] Mariner, Chapter X.
[63] Ellis, P.R., I., 243.
[64] J. Campbell, _Wild Tribes of Khondistan_.
[65] Mackenzie, _Day Dawn_, 67.
[66] Bastian, _Af.R_., 76.
[67] Burton, _Abcok_. I., 106.
[68] Spencer, _D. Soc._, 27.
[69] J. Franklin, _P.S._, 132.
[70] Dobrizhoffer, II., 17.
[71] Murdoch, 140.
[72] Crantz, I., 216.
[73] Mallery, 1888-89, 621.
[74] Lynd, II., 68.
[75] Bonwick, 27.
[76] Wilkes, III., 355.
[77] Westermarck opines (170) that “such tales are not of much importance, as any usage practised from time immemorial may easily he ascribed to the command of a god.” On the contrary, such legends are of very great importance, since they show how utterly foreign to the thought of these races was the purpose of “decorating” themselves in these various ways “in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex.”
[78] Dorsey, 486.
[79] Fison and Howitt, 253; Frazer, 28.
[80] Mallery, 1888-89, 395, 412, 417.
[81] Wilhelmi, in Woods.
[82] Angas, I., 86.
[83] Mitchell, I., 171.
[84] Spencer, _D.S._, 21, 22; 18, 19.
[85] Schweinfurth, _H.A_., I., 154.
[86] Ellis, _Haw_., 146.
[87] Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XII.
[88] Powers, 166.
[89] Dall, 95.
[90] Boas, cited by Mallery, 534.
[91] Mallery, 1888-89, 197, 623-629.
[92] See also the remarks in Prazer’s _Totemism_, 26.
[93] _Explor. and Surv. Mississippi River to Pacific Ocean_. Senate Reports, Washington, 1856, III., 33.
[94] See the pages (386-91) on the “Fashion Fetish” in my _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_.
[95] _Jour. Roy. As. Soc_., 1860, 13.
[96] Feathers also serve various other useful purposes to Australians. An apron of emu feathers distinguishes females who are not yet matrons. (Smyth, I., xl.) Howitt says that in Central Australia messengers sent to avenge a death are painted yellow and wear feathers on their head and in the girdle at the spine. (Mallery, 1888-89, 483.)
[97] Related by Dieffenbach. Heriot even declares of the northern Indians (352) that “they assert that they find no odor agreeable but that of food.”
[98] For other references to ancient nations, see Joest in _Zeitschr. fuer Ethnologie._ 1888, 415.
[99] See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.
[100] See _e.g_. Eyre, II. 333-335; Brough Smith, L, XLI, 68, 295, II., 313; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, 140; _Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W_., 1882, 201; and the old authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 740; cf Frazer, 29. If Westermarck had been more anxious to ascertain the truth than to prove a theory, would he have found it necessary to ignore all this evidence, neglecting to refer even to Chatfield in speaking of Curr?
[101] H. Ward, 136.
[102] Roth, II, 83.
[103] Martius, I., 321.
[104] Boas, _Bur. Ethnol._, 1884-88, 561.
[105] Mann, _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, XII, 333.
[106] Galton, 148.
[107] Dalton, 251.
[108] Waitz-Gerland, VI., 30.
[109] Mallery, 1888-89, 414.
[110] To take three cases in place of many Carl Bock relates (67) that among some Borneans tattooing is one of the privileges of matrimony and is _not allowed to unmarried girls_. D’Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the “_new honor_ his wife was securing by these decorations.” (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that they _are married_. (Mallery, 411.)
[111] It is significant that Westermarck (179) though he refers to page 90 of Turner, ignores the passage I have just cited, though it occurs on the same page.
[112] Australia is by no means the only country where the women are less decorated than the men. Various explanations have been offered, but none of them covers all the facts. The real reason becomes obvious if my view is accepted that the alleged ornaments of savages are not esthetic, but practical or utilitarian. The women are usually allowed to share such things as badges of mourning, amulets, and various devices that attract attention to wealth or rank; but the religious rites, and the manifold decorations associated with military life–the chief occupation of these peoples–they are not allowed to share, and these, with the tribal marks, furnish, as we have seen, the occasion for the most diverse and persistent “decorative” practices.
[113] The advocates of the sexual selection theory might have avoided many grotesque blunders had they possessed a sense of humor to counterbalance and control their erudition. The violent opposition of Madagascar women to King Radama’s order that the men should have their hair cut, to which Westermarck refers (174-75), surely finds in the proverbial stupid conservatism of barbarous customs a simpler and more rational explanation than in his assumption that this riot illustrated “the important part played by the hair of the head as a stimulant of sexual passion” (to these coarse, masculine women, who had to be speared before they could be quieted). An argument which attributes to unwashed, vermin-covered savages a fanatic zeal for what they consider as beautiful, such as no civilized devotee of beauty would ever dream of, involves its own _reductio ad absurdum_ by proving too much. Westermarck also cites (177) from a book on Brazil the story that if a young maiden of the Tapoyers “be marriageable, and yet not courted by any, the mother paints her with some red color about the eyes,” and in accordance with his theory we are soberly expected to accept this red paint about the eyes as an effective “stimulant of sexual passion,” in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her! The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market. In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery’s admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington). Belden relates (145) of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red. He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeballs, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courtship, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful. Belden himself further points out that “a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment,” and on p. 144 he explains that “when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love.” I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.
[114] _Trans. Eth. Soc.,_ London, N.S., VII., 238; _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal,_ XXXV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, _D.S._
[115] In Fiji fatness is also “a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat.” (W.J. Smythe, 166.)
[116] Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark (259), that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are “regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance”!
[117] It is not strange that the human race should have had to wait so long for a complete analysis of love. It is not so very long ago since Newton showed that what was supposed to be a simple white light was really compounded of all the colors of the rainbow; or that Helmholtz analyzed sounds into their partial tones of different pitch, which are combined in what seems to be a simple tone of this or that pitch. Similarly, I have shown that the pleasures of the table, which everybody supposes to be simple, gustatory sensations (matters of taste), are in reality compound odors. See my article on “The Gastronomic Value of Odors,” in the _Contemporary Review_, 1881.
[118] II., 271-74. See also _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1887, 31; Hellwald, 144.
[119] Which even in tropical countries seldom comes before the eleventh or twelfth year. See the statistics in Ploss-Bartels, I., 269-70.
[120] _Alone among the Hairy Ainu_, 140-41.
[121] _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, II, 109.
[122] _Journal des Goncourt_, Tome V. 328-29.
[123] _Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S._, II, 292.
[124] Ross Cox, cited by Yarrow in his valuable article on Mortuary Customs of North American Indians, I, _Report Bur. Ethnol.,_ 1879-80. See also Ploss-Bartels, II., 507-13; Westermarck, 126-28; Letourneau, Chap. XV., where many other cases are cited.
[125] _Trans. Ninth Internal. Congr. of Orientalists_, London, 1893, p. 781.
[126] Details and authorities in Ploss-Bartels, II., 514-17; Westermarck, 125-26; Letourneau, Chap. XV.
[127] For many other cases see references in footnotes 3 and 4, Westermarck, 378.
[128] The poets and a certain class of novelists also like to dwell on the love-matches among peasants as compared with commercial city marriages. As a matter of fact, in no class do sordid pecuniary matters play so great a role as among peasants. (_Cf._ Grosse. _F.d.F._, 16.)
[129] _Princ. of Soc._, American Edition, pp. 756, 772, 784, 787.
[130] The proofs of man’s universal contempt for woman are to be found in the chapter on “Adoration,” and everywhere in this book. Many additional illustrations are contained in several articles by Crawley in the _Jour. Anthrop. Inst_., Vol. XXIV.
[131] _Cf_. Ploss-Bartels, I., 471-87, where this topic of infant marriage is treated with truly German thoroughness and erudition.
[132] To demonstrate the recklessness (to use a mild word) of Darwin and Westermarck in this matter I will quote the exact words of Burchell in the passage referred to (II., 58-59): “These men generally take a second wife as soon as the first becomes somewhat advanced in years.” “Most commonly” the girls are betrothed when about seven years old, and in two or three years the girl is given to the man. “These bargains are made with her parents only, and _without ever consulting the wishes (even if she had any) of the daughter_. When it happens, which is not often the case, that a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, her lover must gain her approbation _as well as that of her parents_.”
[133] Darwin was evidently puzzled by the queer nature of Reade’s evidence in other matters (_D.M._, Chap. XIX.); yet he naively relies on him as an authority. Reade told him that the ideas of negroes on beauty are “on the whole, the same as ours.” Yet in several other pages of Darwin we see it noted that according to Reade, the negroes have a horror of a white skin and admire a skin in proportion to its blackness; that “they look on blue eyes with aversion, and they think our noses too long and our lips too thin.” “He does not think it probable,” Darwin adds, “that negroes would ever prefer the most beautiful European woman, on the mere ground of physical admiration, to a good-looking negress.” How extraordinarily like our taste! If a man had talked to Darwin about corals or angleworms as foolishly and inconsistently as Reade did about negroes, he would have ignored him. But in matters relating to beauty or love all rubbish is accepted, and every globe-trotter and amateur explorer who wields a pen is treated as an authority.
[134] See McLennan’s _Studies in Ancient History_, first and second series; Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_, I., Part 3, Chap. 4; Westermarck, Chap. XIV., etc.
[135] Westermarck, 364-66, where many other striking cases of racial prejudice are given.
[136] For instance omal-win-yuk-un-der, illpoogee, loityo, kernoo, ipamoo, badjeerie, mungaroo, yowerda, yowada, yoorda, yooada, yongar, yunkera, wore, yowardoo, marloo, yowdar, koolbirra, madooroo, oggra, arinva, oogara, augara, uggerra, bulka, yshuckuru, koongaroo, chookeroo, thaldara, kulla, etc.
[137] See also Merensky’s _Sued Afrika_, 68.
[138] As Fritsch says (306) “Kolben found them most excellent specimens of mankind and invested them with the most manifold virtues” (see also 312 and 328). A person thus biased is under suspicion when he praises, but not when he exposes shady sides. My page references are to the French edition of Kolben. The italics are mine.
[139] Gathered from Hahn’s _Tsuni_ and Kroenlein’s _Wortschatz der Namaqua Hottentotten._
[140] The details given by the Rev. J. MacDonald (_Journal Anthrop. Soc._, XX., 1890, 116-18) cannot possibly be cited here. Our argument is quite strong enough without them. Westermarck devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove that immorality is not characteristic of uncivilized races in general. He leads off with that preposterous statement of Barrow that “a Kaffir woman is chaste and extremely modest;” and most of his other instances are based on equally flimsy evidence. I shall recur to the subject repeatedly. It is hardly necessary to call the reader’s attention to the unconscious humor of the assertion of Westermarck’s friend Cousins that “between their various feasts the Kaffirs have to live in strict continence”–which is a good deal like saying of a toper that “between drinks he is strictly sober.”
[141] It may seem inconsistent to condemn Barrow on one page as unreliable and then quote him approvingly on another. But in the first case his assertion was utterly opposed to the unanimous testimony of those who knew the Kaffirs best, while in this instance his remarks are in perfect accordance with what we would expect under the circumstances and with the testimony of the standard authorities.
[142] Vid. Mantegazza, _Geschlechtsverhaeltnisse des Menschen_, 213.
[143] From an article in the _Humanitarian_, March, 1897, it appears that this “leap-year” custom still prevails among Zulus; but the dawn of civilization has introduced a modification to the effect that when the girl is refused, a present is usually given her “to ease her feelings.” At least that is the way Miss Colenso puts it. Wood (80) relates a story of a Kaffir girl who persistently wooed a young chief who did not want her; she had to be removed by force and even beaten, but kept returning until, to save further bother, the chief bought her.
[144] Ignorant sentimentalists who have often argued that the absence of illegitimate offspring argues moral purity will do well to ponder what Thomson says on page 580, and compare with it the remarks of the Rev. J. Macdonald, who lived twelve years among the tribes between Cape Colony and Natal, regarding their use of herbs. (_Journal Anthrop. Soc._, XIX., 264.) See also Johnston (413).
[145] To what almost incredible lengths sentimental defenders of savages will go, may be seen in an editorial article with which the London _Daily News_ of August 4, 1887, honored my first book. I was informed therein that “savages are not strangers to love in the most delicate and noble form of the passion…. The wrong conclusion must not be drawn from Monteiro’s remark, ‘I have never seen a negro put his arm around a negro’s waist.’ It is the uneducated classes who may be seen to exhibit in the parks those harmless endearments which negroes have too much good taste to practise before the public.” To one who knows the African savage as he is, such an assertion is worth a whole volume of _Punch_.
[146] Westermarck (358), as usual, accepts Johnston’s statement about poetic love on the Congo as gospel truth, without examining it critically.
[147] Bleek credits these tales to Schoen’s _Grammar of the Hausa Language_, Schlenker’s _Collection of Temne Traditions_, and Koelle’s _African Native Literature_, where the original Bornu text may be found.
[148] _Folk Lore Journal_, London, 1888, 119-22.
[149] Compare this with what I said on page 340 about the behavior of girls in the New Britain Group.
[150] _Revue d’Anthropologie,_ 1883.
[151] See an elaborate discussion of this question by the Rev. John Mathew in the _Journal of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales,_ Vol. XXIII., 335-449.
[152] See, _e.g._, the hideous pictures of Australian women enclosed in G.W. Earl’s _The Papuans_. Spencer and Gillen’s admirable volume also contains pictures of “young women” who look twice their age. After the age of twenty, the authors write, the face becomes wrinkled, the breasts pendulous, the whole body shrivelled. At fifty they reach “a stage of ugliness which baffled description” (40,40).
[153] _Royal Geogr. Soc of Australasia_, 1887, Vol. V., 29.
[154] _Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Ser_., III., 248, 288; cited by Spencer, _D.S._, 26.
[155] He adds in a foot-note (320) “Foeminae sese per totam paene vitam prostituunt. Apud plurimas tribus juventutem utriusque sexus sine discrimine concumbere in usu est. Si juvenis forte indigenorum coetum quendam in castris manentem adveniat ubi quaevis sit puella innupta, mos est nocte veniente et cubantibus omnibus, illam ex loco exsurgere et juvenem accedentem cum illo per noctem manere unde in sedem propriam ante diem redit. Cui femina est, eam amicis libenter praebet.”
[156] F. Mueller (212-13) gives the details of West Australian corrobborees which are too obscene to be cited here. See also the testimony in Hellwald (134-35) based on the observations of Oldfield, Koler, M’Combie, etc., and a number of other authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 754-55. Curr says (I., 128) that at the corrobborees men of different tribes lend their wives to each other.
[157] _Journal Anthrop. Inst_., XXIV., 169. See also Waitz, VI., 774; Macgillivray, II., 8; Hasskarl, 82. They have a peculiar rattle with mystic sculpturing, and Eyre says that its sound libertatem coeundi juventuti esse tum concessam omnibus indicat. Maclennan (287) cites G.S. Lang, who cites the fact that the old men get most of the young women. Connubium profecto valde est liberum. Conjuges, puellae, _puellulae_ cum adolescentibus venantur. Pretium corporis poene nullius est. Vendunt se vel columbae vel canis vel piscis pretio. Inter Anglos et aborigines nihil distat.
[158] _Journal Anthrop. Inst._, XX., 53.
[159] _Revue d’Anthropologie_. 1882, p. 376.
[160] A.W. Howitt, _Jour. Anthr. Hist._ XX., 60-61. Fison and Howitt, 289; _Smithsonian Reports_, 1883, p. 67. Details are given which cannot be reproduced here. Boys participate in these orgies.
[161] The details given by Roth are too disgusting for reproduction here. They vie with the loathsome practices of the Kaffirs and the most debauched Roman emperors, while some of them are so vile that it seems as if they could have been suggested only by the diseased brain of an erotomaniac. The most degraded white criminal that ever took up his abode among savages would turn away from them with horror and nausea, yet we are asked to believe that the savages learned all their vices from the whites!
[162] _Mittheil des Ver. fuer Erdkunde zu Halle_, 1883, 54.
[163] Westermarck overlooks these vital facts when he calmly assumes (64, 65) that the guarding of girls, or punishment of intruders, argues a regard for chastity. His entire ignoring of the superabundant and unimpeachable testimony proving the contrary is extraordinary, to put it mildly. Dawson’s assertion (33) that “illegitimacy is rare” and the mother severely punished, which Westermarck cites (65), is as foolish as most of the gossip printed by that utterly untrustworthy writer. As the details given in these pages regarding licentiousness before marriage and wife-lending after it show, there is no possible way of proving illegitimacy unless the child has a white father. In that case it is killed; but that is nothing remarkable, as the Australians kill most of their children anyway. That a regard for chastity or fidelity has nothing to do with these actions is proved by the fact cited from Curr (I., 110) by Westermarck himself (on another page–131–of course!) that “husbands display much less jealousy of white men than of those of their own color,” and that they will more commonly prostitute their wives to strangers visiting the tribe than to their own people. I have no doubt that the simple reason of this is that the whites are better able to pay, in rum and trinkets.
[164] _South Australia_, Adelaide, 1804, p. 403. The part author, part editor of this valuable book is not to be confounded with J.S. Wood, the compiler of the _Natural History of Man_.
[165] See also the account he gives (I., 180) of the report as to aboriginal morals made in the early days of Victoria by a commission of fourteen settlers, missionaries, and protectors of the aborigines. The explorer Sturt (I., 316) even found that the natives became indignant if the whites rejected their addresses.
[166] See also a very important paper on this subject by Howitt in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XX., 1890, demonstrating that “in Australia at the present day group marriage does exist in a well-marked form, which is evidently only the modified survival of a still more complete social communism” (104). Regarding the manner in which group marriage gradually passed into individual proprietorship, a suggestive hint may be found in this sentence from Brough Smyth (II., 316): When women are carried off from another tribe, “they are common property till they are gradually annexed by the best warriors of the tribe.”
[167] In my mind the strongest argument against Westermarck’s views as regards promiscuity is that all his tributary theories, so to speak, which I have had occasion to examine in this volume have proved so utterly inconsistent with facts. The question of promiscuity itself I cannot examine in detail here, as it hardly comes within the scope of this book. In view of the confusion Westermarck has already created in recent scientific literature by his specious pleading, I need not apologize for the frequency of my polemics against him. His imposing erudition and his cleverness in juggling with facts by ignoring those that do not please him (as _e.g._, in case of the morality of the Kaffirs and Australians, and the “liberty of choice” of their women) make him a serious obstacle to the investigation of the truth regarding man’s sexual history, wherefore it is necessary to expose his errors promptly and thoroughly.
[168] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst_., 1890, 53.
[169] Would our friend Stephens be fearless enough to claim that this custom also was taught the natives by the degraded whites? Apart from the diabolical cruelty to a woman of which no white man except a maniac would ever be individually guilty–whereas this is a tribal custom–note the unutterable masculine selfishness of this “jealousy,” which, while indifferent to chastity and fidelity, _per se_, punishes by proxy, leaving the real culprit untouched and happy at having not only had his intrigue but a chance to get rid of an undesired wife!
[170] _Jour. Anthr. Inst._, XII., 282.
[171] Grey might have made a valuable contribution to the comparative psychology of passion by noting down the chant of the rivals in their own words. Instead of that, for literary effect, he cast them into European metre and rhyme, with various expressions, like “bless” and “caress,” which of course are utterly beyond an Australian’s mental horizon. This absurd procedure, which has made so many documents of travellers valueless for scientific purposes, is like filling an ethnological museum with pictures of Australians, Africans, etc., all clothed in swallow-tail coats and silk hats. _Cf_. Grosse (_B.A_., 236), and Semon (224). Real Australian “poems” are like the following:
“The peas the white man eats–
I wish I had some,
I wish I had some.”
Or this:
“The kangaroo ran very fast
But I ran faster;
The kangaroo was fat;
I ate him.”
[172] _Roy. Geogr. Soc. of Australasia_, Vol. V., 29.
[173] The reason why Westermarck is so eager to prove liberty of choice on the part of Australian women is because he has set himself the hopeless task of proving that the lower we go the more liberty woman has, and that “under more primitive conditions she was even more free in that respect than she is now amongst most of the lower races.” “As man in the earliest times,” he asserts (222), “had no reason … to retain his full-grown daughter, she might go away and marry at her pleasure.” Quite the contrary; an Australian, than whom we know no more “primitive” man, had every reason for not allowing her to go away and marry whom she pleased. He looked on his daughter, as we have seen, chiefly as a desirable piece of property to exchange for some other man’s daughter or sister.
[174] As distinguished from the more common sham elopement, at which the parents are consulted as usual. In the Kunandaburi tribe, for instance, as Howitt himself tells us (_Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XX., 60-61) the suitor asks permission of the girl’s parents to take her away. “She resists all she can, biting and screaming, while the other women look on laughing.” The whole thing is obviously a custom ordered by the parents, and tells us nothing regarding the presence or absence of choice. See the remarks on sham capture in my chapter on Coyness (125).
[175] The reader will note that here are some additional objects usually supposed to be “ornamental,” but which, as in all the cases examined in the chapter on Personal Beauty, are seen on close examination to serve other than esthetic purposes. These _are_ intended to _charm_ the women, not, however, as things of beauty, but by their magic qualities and by attracting their attention.
[176] With his usual conscientious regard for facts Westermarck declares (70) that in a savage condition of life “every full-grown man marries as soon as possible.”
[177] We are occasionally warned not to underrate the intelligence of the aboriginal Australian. As a matter of fact, there is more danger of its being overrated. Thus it was long believed that what was known as the “terrible rite” (_finditur usque ad urethram membrum virile_)–see Curr I., 52, 72–was practised as a check to population; but surgeon-general Roth (179) has exploded this idea, and made it seem probable that this rite is merely a senseless counterpart of certain useless mutilations inflicted on females.
[178] _Trans. Eth. Soc_., New Ser., III, 248.
[179] Gerland (VI., 756) makes the same mistake here as Westermarck. He also refers to Petermann’s _Mittheilungen_ for another case of “romantic love.” On consulting that periodical (1856, 451) I find that the proof of such love lay in the circumstance that in the quarrels so common in Australian camps, wives would not hesitate to join in and help their husbands!
[180] Surgeon-General Roth of Queensland does not indulge in any illusions regarding love in Australia. He uses quotation marks when he speaks of a man being in “love” (180), and in another place he speaks of the native woman “whose love, such as it is.” etc. He evidently realizes that Australian lovers are only “lewd fellows of the baser sort.”
[181] _Journal of the Anthrop. Inst_., 1889.
[182] Macgillivray says (II., 8) that the females of the Torres Islands are in most cases betrothed in infancy. “When the man thinks proper he takes his wife to live with him without any further ceremony, but before this she has probably had promiscuous intercourse with the young men, such, if conducted with a moderate degree of secrecy, not being considered as an offence…. Occasionally there are instances of strong mutual attachment and courtship, when, if the damsel is not betrothed, a small present made to the father is sufficient to procure his consent; at the Prince of Wales Islands a knife or a glass is considered as a sufficient price for the hand of a ‘fair lady,’ and are the articles mostly used for that purpose.” I cite this passage chiefly because it is another one of those to which Gerland refers as evidence of genuine romantic love!
[183] I am indebted for many of the following facts to H. Ling Roth’s splendid compilation and monograph entitled _The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo_. London, 1896.
[184] The Ida’an are the aboriginal population; in dress, habitations, manners, and customs they are essentially the same as the Dyaks in general.
[185] The above details are culled from Williams, pp. 145, 144, 38, 345, 148, 152, 43, 114, 179, 180, 344. The editor declares, in a foot-note (182), that he has repressed or softened some of the more horrible details in Williams’s account.
[186] See Westermarck, 67, and footnotes on that page.
[187] If sentimentalists were gifted with a sense of humor it would have occurred to them how ludicrous and illogical it is to suppose that savages and barbarians, the world over, should in each instance have been converted by a few whites from angels to monsters of depravity with such amazing suddenness. We know, on the contrary, that in no respect are these races so stubbornly tenacious of old customs as in their sexual relations.
[188] See Mariner (Martin) Introduction and Chap. XVI.
[189] _Jour. Anthr. Inst_., 1889, p. 104.
[190] Supposed to mean a beautiful flower that grows on the tops of the mountains, where sea and land breezes meet.
[191] According to Erskine (50) when a Samoan felt a violent passion for another he would brand his arm, to symbolize his ardor. (Waitz-Gerland, VI., 125.)
[192] See _Schopenhauer’s Gespraeche_ (Grisebach), 1898, p. 40, and the essay on love, in Lichtenberg’s _Ausgewaehlte Schriften_ (Reclam). Lichtenberg seems, indeed, to have doubted whether anything else than sensual love actually exists.
[193] It is said that, under favorable circumstances, a distance of 3,000 miles might thus be covered in a month.
[194] There is much reason to suspect, too, that Grey expurgated and whitewashed these tales. See, on this subject, the remarks to be made in the next chapter regarding the Indian love-stories of Schoolcraft, bearing in mind that Polynesians are, if possible, even more licentious and foul-mouthed than Indians.
[195] Considerations of space compel me here, as in other cases, to condense the stories; but I conscientiously and purposely retain all the sentimental passages and expressions.
[196] _Algic Researches_, 1839, I., 43. From this work the first five of the above stories are taken, the others being from the same author’s _Oneota_ (54-57; 15-16). The stories in _Algic Researches_ were reprinted in 1856 under the title _The Myth of Hiawatha and Other Oral Legends_.
[197] I have taken the liberty of giving to most of the stories cited more attractive titles than Schoolcraft gave them. He himself changed some of the titles in his later edition.
[198] In another of these tales (_A.R._, II., 165-80) Schoolcraft refers to a girl who went astray in the woods “while admiring the scenery.”
[199] Schoolcraft’s volumes include, however, a number of reliable and valuable articles on various Indian tribes by other writers. These are often referred to in anthropological treatises, including the present volume.
[200] In the _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1891, especially pages 546, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, 567-69, 640, 643; in the vol. for 1892, pages 36, 42, 44, 324, 330, 340, 386, 392, 434, 447; and in the vol. for 1894, 283, 303, 304. It is impossible even to hint here at the details of these stories. Some are licentious, others merely filthy. Powers, in his great work on the California Indians (348), refers to “the unspeakable obscenity of their legends.”
[201] Ehrenreich says (_Zeitschr. fuer Ethnol._, 1887, 31) that among the Botocudos cohabitatio coram familia et vicinibus exagitur; and of the Machacares Indians Feldner tells us (II., 143, 148) that even the children behave lewdly in presence of everybody. Parentes rident, appellunt eos canes, et usque ad silvam agunt. Some extremely important and instructive revelations are made in von den Steinen’s classic work on Brazil (195-99), but they cannot be cited here. The author concludes that “a feeling of modesty is decidedly absent among the unclothed Indians.”
[202] Published in the _Papers of the American Archaeological Institute_, III.
[203] _Works_, in Hakluyt Soc. Publ., London, 1847, II., 192.
[204] What Parkman says regarding the cruelty of the Indians perhaps applies also to their sexual morality, though to a less extent. In speaking of the early missionary intercourse with the Indians he remarks (_Jes in Can._, 319):
“In the wars of the next century we do not often find these examples of diabolic atrocity with which the earlier annals were crowded. The savage burned his enemies alive still, it is true, but he rarely ate them; neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a savage still, but not so often a devil. The improvement was not great, but it was distinct; and it seems to have taken place wherever Indian tribes were in close relations with any respectable community of white men.”
[205] Herrera relates (III., 340) that Nicaraguan fathers used to send out their daughters to roam the country and earn a marriage portion in a shameful way.
[206] See also the remarks of Dr. W.J. Hoffmann regarding the dances of the Coyotero Apaches. _U.S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey_, Colorado, 1876, 464.
[207] Pizarro says (_Relacion_, 266) that “the virgins of the sun feigned to preserve virginity and to be chaste. In this they lied, as they cohabited with the servants and guards of the Sun, who were numerous.” Regarding Peruvians in general Pizarro (1570) and Cieza (_Travels_, 1532-40) agree that parents did not care about the conduct of their daughters, and Cieza speaks of the promiscuity at festivals. Brinton (_M.N.W._, 149) is obliged to admit that “there is a decided indecency in the remains of ancient American art, especially in Peru, and great lubricity in many ceremonies.”
[208] _Indian Rights Assoc._, Philadelphia, 1885.
[209] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 1892, 427.
[210] _Indian Com. Rep_., 1854, p. 179.
[211] Bristol in _Ind. Aff. Rep. Spec. Com_., 1867, p. 357.
[212] _Rep. Com. Ind. Aff_., 1892, p. 607.
[213] Even the wives of chiefs were treated no better than slaves. Catlin himself tells us of the six wives of a Mandan chief who were “not allowed to speak, though they were in readiness to obey his orders.” (_Smithson. Rep._. 1885, Pt. II., 458.)
[214] Such cruel treatment of women argues a total lack of sympathy in Indians, and without sympathy there can be no love. The systematic manner in which sympathy is crushed among Indians I have described in a previous chapter. Here let me add a few remarks by Theodore Roosevelt (I., 86) which coincide with what John Hance, the famous Arizona guide, told me:
“Anyone who has ever been in an encampment of wild Indians and has had the misfortune to witness the delight the children take in torturing little animals will admit that the Indian’s love of cruelty for cruelty’s sake cannot possibly be exaggerated. The young are so trained that when old they shall find their keenest pleasure in inflicting pain in its most appalling form. Among the most brutal white borderers a man would be instantly lynched if he practiced on any creature the fiendish torture which in the Indian camp either attracts no notice at all, or else excites merely laughter.”
(See also Roosevelt’s remarks–87, 831, 335 on Helen Hunt Jackson’s _Century of Dishonor_.) The Indian was much wronged by unprincipled agents and others, but the border ruffians served him only as he served others of his race, the weaker being always driven out. Nor was there any real sympathy within the tribes themselves. “These people,” wrote the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune (VI., 245), “are very little moved by compassion. They give a sick person food and drink, but show otherwise no concern for him; to coax him with love and tenderness is a language which they do not understand. When he refuses food they kill him, partly to relieve him from suffering, partly to relieve themselves of the trouble of taking him with them when they go to some other place.”
[215] _Smithsonian Rep._, 1885, Pt. II., 108.
[216] The humor of Catlin’s assertions becomes more obvious still when we read how readily Indians dissolve their marriages, through love of change, caprice, etc. See cases in Westermarck, 518.
[217] Cited by Schoolcraft, _Oneota_, 57.
[218] _Transactions of the American Philosophical Society._ Philadelphia, 1819.
[219] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 1884, p. 251.
[220] Brinton’s _Library of Aborig. Amer. Lit._, II, 65.
[221] The only way the women could secure any consideration was by overawing the men. Thus Southey says (III., 411) regarding the Abipones that the old women “were obdurate in retaining superstitions that rendered them objects of fear, and therefore of respect.” Smith in his book on the Araucanians of Chili, notes (238), that besides the usual medicine men there was an occasional woman “who had acquired the most unbounded influence by shrewdness, joined to a hideous personal appearance and a certain mystery with which she was invested.”
[222] As when he says, “The Atkha Aleuts occasionally betrothed their children to each other, but the marriage was held to be binding only after the birth of a child.” What evidence of choice is there here?
[223] _U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Survey of Colorado,_ etc., 1876, p. 465.
[224] Miss Alice Fletcher gives in the _Journal of the American Folk Lore Society_ (1889, 219-26) an amusing instance of how far a present-day Omaha girl may go in resenting a man’s unwelcome advances. A faint-hearted lover had sent a friend as go-between to ask for the girl’s favor. As he finished his speech the girl looked at him with flashing eyes and said: “I’ll have nothing to do with your friend or you either.” The young man hesitated a moment, as if about to repeat his request, when a dangerous wave of her water-bucket made him leap to one side to escape a deluge.
[225] _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie,_ 1891, p. 545.
[226] How California marriages were made in the good old times we may see from the account in Hakluyt’s _Collection of Early Voyages_, 1810, III., 513:
“If any man had a daughter to marry he went where the people kept, and said, I have a daughter to marry, is there any man here that would have her? And if there were any that would have her, he answered that he would have her, and so the marriage was made.”
[227] _Smithsonian Rep._, 1885, Pt. II., p. 71.
[228] Schoolcraft, IV., 224; Powers, 221; Waitz, IV., 132; Azara (_Voyages_), II., 94; von Martius, I.,412, 509.
[229] A table relating to sixty-five North American Indian girls given in Ploss, I., 476, shows that all but eight of them had their first child before the end of the fifteenth year; the largest number (eighteen), having it in the fourteenth.
[230] See John Fiske’s _Discovery of America_, I., 21, and E.J. Payne’s _History of the New World_.
[231] Giacomo Bove, _Patagonia. Cf._ Ploss, I., 476; _Globus_, 1883, 158. Hyades’s _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, VII., 377.
[232] Equally inconclusive is Westermarck’s reference (216) to what Azara says regarding the Guanas. Azara expressly informs us that, as summed up by Darwin (_D.M._, Chap. XIX.) among the Guanas “the men rarely marry till twenty years old or more, as before that age they cannot conquer their rivals.” Where girls are literally wrestled for, they have, of course, no choice.
[233] Keating says (II., 153) that among the Chippewas “where the antipathy is great, one or the other elopes from the lodge.”
[234] _Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropologists_, 1894, 153-57.
[235] Laurence Oliphant realized the absurdity of attributing such tales to Indians, assigning to them feelings and motives like our own. He kindly supplies some further details, insisting that the girl was told to “return and all would be forgiven;” that the “fast young Sioux hunter” whom Winona wanted to marry (“her heart could never be another’s”), had “no means of his own.” He is believed to have been “utterly disconsolate at the time,” and “subsequently to have married an heiress.” See the amusing satire in his _Minnesota_, 287-89.
[236] S.R. Riggs in _U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Soc._, IX., 206.
[237] _Trans. Amer. Ethnol. Soc._, Vol. III, Pt. I.
[238] _Denkschriften der Kaiserl. Akad. d. Wissensch. in Wien_, Bd. XXXIX., S. 214.
[239] _Report of Bureau of Ethnol., Wash._, 1892.
[240] Ibid., 1896, Pt. 1, p. 154.
[241] _American Anthropologist_, IV., 276.
[242] The Chippewas have bridal canoes which they fill with stores to last a betrothed pair for a month’s excursion, this being the only marriage ceremony. (Kane, 20.)
[243] Army bugle calls, telling the soldiers what to do, are “leading motives.” See my article on “The Utility of Music,” _Forum_, May, 1898; or Wallaschek’s _Primitive Music_.
[244] _A Study of Omaha Indian Music_ (14, 15, 44, 52). Cambridge, 1893; _Journal Amer. Folklore_, 1889 (219-26); _Memoirs Intern. Congr. Anthrop.,_ 1894 (153-57).
[245] Dr. Brinton published in 1886 an interesting pamphlet entitled _The Conception of Love in Some American Languages_, which was afterward reprinted in his _Essays of an Americanist_. It forms the philological basis for his assertion, already quoted, that the languages of the Algonquins of North America, the Nahuas of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, the Quichas of Peru, and the Tupis and Guaranis of Brazil “supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them.” I have read this learned paper half a dozen times, and have come to the conclusion that it proves exactly the contrary.
I. In the Algonkin, as I gather from the professor’s explanations, there is one form of the word “love” from which are derived the expressions “to tie,” “to fasten,” “and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual relation.” For the feebler “sentiment” of merely liking a person there is a word meaning “he or it _seems good to me_.” Expressions relating to the highest form of love, “that which embraces all men and all beings” are derived from a root indicative of “_what gives joy_.” The italics are mine. I can find here no indication of altruistic sentiment, but quite the reverse.
II. It was among the Mexicans that Dr. Brinton found the “delicate” poems. Yet he informs us that they had “only one word…to express every variety of love, human and divine, carnal and chaste, between men and between the sexes.” This being the case, how are we ever to know which kind of love a Mexican poem refers to? Dr. Brinton himself feels that one must not credit the Aztecs “with finer feelings than they deserve;” and with reference to a certain mythic conception he adds, “I gravely doubt that they felt the shafts of the tender passion, with any such susceptibility as to employ this metaphor.” Moreover, as he informs us, the Mexican root of the word is not derived from the primary meaning of the root, but from a secondary and later signification. “This hints ominously,” he says,
“at the probability that the ancient tongue had for a long time no word at all to express this, the highest and noblest emotion of the human heart, and that consequently this emotion itself had not risen to consciousness in the national mind.”
In its later development the capacity of the language for emotional expression was greatly enlarged. Was this before the European missionaries appeared on the scene? Missionaries, it is important to remember, had a good deal to do with the development of the language, as well as the birth of the nobler conceptions and emotions among the lower races. Many fatal blunders in comparative psychology and sociology can be traced to the ignoring of this fact.
III. Dr. Otto Stoll, in his work _Zur Ethnographie der Rep. Guatemala,_ declares that the Cakchiquel Indians of that country “are strangers to the mere conception of that kind of love which is expressed by the Latin verb _amare_.” _Logoh_, the Guatemalan word for love, also means “to buy,” and according to Stoll the only other word in the pure original tongue for the passion of love is _ah_, to want, to desire. Dr. Brinton finds it used also in the sense of “to like,” “to love” [in what way?]. But the best he can do is to “think that ‘to buy’ and ‘to love’ may be construed as developments of the same idea of _prizing highly_” which tells us nothing regarding altruism. All that we know about the customs of Guatemalans points to the conclusion that Dr. Stoll was right in declaring that they had no notion of true love.
IV. Of the Peruvian expressions relating to love in the comprehensive sense of the word, Dr. Brinton specifies five. Of one of them, _munay_, there were, according to Dr. Anchorena, nearly six hundred combinations. It meant originally “merely a sense of want, an appetite, and the accompanying desire to satisfy it.” In songs composed in the nineteenth century _cenyay_, which originally meant pity, is preferred to _munay_ as the most appropriate term for the love between the sexes. The blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is expressed by _huaylluni_, which is nearly always confined to sexual love, and “conveys the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action by those sweet signs and marks of devotion which are so highly prized by the loving heart.” The verb _lluyllny_ (literally to be soft or tender, as fruit) means to
“love with tenderness, to have as a darling, to caress lovingly. It has less of sexuality in it than the word last mentioned, and is applied by girls to each other and as a term of family fondness.”
There was also a term, _mayhuay_, referring to words of tenderness or acts of endearment which may be merely simulated signs of emotion. I cannot find in any of these definitions evidence of altruistic affection, unless it be in the “marks of devotion,” which expression, however, I suspect, is Philadelphian rather than Peruvian.
V. The Tupi-Guarani have one word only to express all the varieties of love known to them–_aihu_. Dr. Brinton thinks he “cannot be far wrong” in deriving this from _ai_, self, or the same, and _hu_ to find or be present; and from this he infers that “to love,” in Guarani, means “to find oneself in another,” or “to discover in another a likeness to oneself.” I submit that this is altogether too airy a fabric of fanciful conjecture to allow the inference that the sentiment of love was known to these Brazilian Indians, whose morals and customs were, moreover, as we have seen, fatal obstacles to the growth of refined sexual feeling. Both the Tupis and Guaranis were cannibals, and they had no regard for chastity. One of their