The South American Chiquitos, as Dobrizhoffer informs us (II., 264),
used to kill the wife of a sick man, believing her to be the cause of
his illness, and fancying that his recovery would follow her
disappearance. Fijians have been known to kill and eat their wives,
when they had no other use for them. Carl Bock (275) says of the
Malays of Sumatra, that the men are extremely indolent and make the
women their beasts of burden (as the lower races do in general).
"I have," he says,
"continually met a file of women carrying loads of rice or
coffee on their heads, while the men would follow, lazily
lounging along, with a long stick in their hands, like
shepherds driving a flock of sheep.... I have seen a man go
into his house, where his wife was lying asleep on the bed,
rudely awake her, and order her to lie on the floor, while
he made himself comfortable on the cushions."
But I need not add in this place any further instances to the hundreds
given in other parts of this volume, revealing uncivilized man's
disposition to regard woman as made for his convenience, both in this
world and the next. Nor is it necessary to add that such an attitude
is an insuperable obstacle to love, which in its essence is
altruistic.