Primitive Love and Love-Stories
by
Henry Theophilus Finck
Part 17 out of 19
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
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