Such is the Australian's treatment of woman--a treatment so selfish,
so inconsistent with the altruistic traits and impulses of romantic
love--sympathy, gallantry, and self-sacrificing affection, not to
speak of adoration--that it alone proves him incapable of so refined a
sentiment. If any doubt remained, it would be removed by his utter
inability to rise above the sensual sphere. The Australian is
absolutely immoral and incredibly licentious. Here, however, we are
confronted by a spectre with which the sentimentalists try to frighten
the searchers for truth, and which must therefore be exorcised first.
They grant the wantonness of savages, but declare that it is "due
chiefly to the influence of civilization." This is one of the favorite
subterfuges of Westermarck, who resorts to it again and again. In
reference to the Australians he cites what Edward Stephens wrote
regarding the former inhabitants of the Adelaide Plains:
"Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded
race, either do not speak from experience, or they
judge them by what they have become when the abuse of
intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the
white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule to
which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is
found away from the white settlement, the more vicious
of the white men are most anxious to make the
acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for
purposes of immorality. ... I saw the natives and was
much with them before those dreadful immoralities were
well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all
their evils they owed to the white man's immorality and
to the white man's drink."
Now the first question a conscientious truth-seeker feels inclined to
ask regarding this "fearless" Stephens who thus boldly accuses of
ignorance all those who hold that the Australian race was degraded
before it came in contact with whites, is, "Who is he and what are his
qualifications for serving as a witness in this matter?" He is, or
was, a simple-minded settler, kindly no doubt, who for some
inscrutable reason was allowed to contribute a paper to the _Journal
of the Royal Society of New South Wales_ (Vol. XXXIII.). His
qualifications for appearing as an expert in Australian anthropology
may be inferred from various remarks in his paper. He naïvely tells a
story about a native who killed an opossum, and after eating the meat,
threw the intestines to his wife. "Ten years before that," he adds,
"that same man would have treated his wife as himself." Yet we have
just seen that all the explorers, in all parts of the country, found
that the natives who had never seen a white man treated their women
like slaves and dogs.