When Williams adds to the last sentence that "fear prevents
unfaithfulness more than affection, though I believe that instances of
the latter are numerous," we must not allow ourselves to be deceived
by a word. Fijian "affection" is a thing quite different from the
altruistic feeling we mean by the word. It may in a wife assume the
form of a blind attachment, like that of a dog to a cruel master, but
is not likely to go beyond that, since even the most primitive love
between parents and children is confessedly shallow, transient, or
entirely absent. Williams (154, 142) "noticed cases beyond number
where natural affection was wanting on both sides;" two-thirds of the
offspring are killed, "such children as are allowed to live are
treated with a foolish fondness"--and fondness is, as we have seen,
not an altruistic but an egoistic feeling. In writing about Fijian
friendships our author says (117):
"The high attainments which constitute friendship are known
to very few.... Full-grown men, it is true, will walk about
together, hand in hand, with boyish kindliness, or meet with
hugs and embraces; but their love, though specious, is
hardly real."
Obviously the keen-eyed missionary here had in mind the distinction
between sentimentality and sentiment. Sentimentality of a most
extraordinary kind is also found in the attitude of sons toward
parents. A Fijian considered it a mark of affection to club an aged
parent (157), and Williams has seen the breast of a ferocious savage
heave and swell with strong emotion on bidding a temporary farewell to
his aged father, whom he afterward strangled (117). Such are the
emotions of barbarians--shallow, fickle, capricious--as different from
our affection as a brook which dries up after every shower is from the
deep and steady current of a river which dispenses its beneficent
waters even in a drought.