[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 über 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, Über die
Probennächte der deutschen Bauernmädchen_. 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_, § 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 für 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 à 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 à la dame que nous aimons, c'est que nous envions
près 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.
für 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 für 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 rôle 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 naïvely 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 _Süd 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 Krönlein'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, _Geschlechtsverhältnisse 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 Schön's _Grammar of the Hausa
Language_, Schlenker's _Collection of Temne Traditions_, and Kölle'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. Müller (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. für 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 Gespräche_ (Grisebach), 1898, p. 40, and the
essay on love, in Lichtenberg's _Ausgewählte 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 für 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. für 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 für 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
"sentimental" customs was for a captor to make his prisoner, before he
was eaten, cohabit with his (the captor's) sister or daughter, the
offspring of this union being allowed to grow up and then was devoured
too, the first mouthful being given to the mother. (Southey, I., 218.)
I mention this because Dr. Brinton says that the evidence that the
sentiment of love was awake among these tribes "is corroborated by the
incidents we learn of their domestic life."
[246] _U.S. Geogr. and Geol Survey Rocky Mt. Region_, Pt. I., 181-89.
[247] It is of the Modocs of this region that Joaquin Miller wrote
that "Indians have their loves, and as they have but little else,
these fill up most of their lives." The above poems indicate the
quality of this Indian love. In Joaquin Miller's narrative of his
experience with the Modocs, the account of his own marriage is of
special interest. At a Modoc marriage a feast is given by the girl's
father, "to which all are invited, but the bride and bridegroom do not
partake of food. ... Late in the fall, the old chief made the marriage
feast, and at that feast neither I nor his daughter took meat, or any
part." It is a pity that the rest of this writer's story is, by his
own confession, part romance, part reality. A lifelike description of
his Modoc experience would have done more to ensure immortality for
his book than any amount of romancing.
[248] _Journal of Amer. Folklore_, 1888, 220-26.
[249] _Internat. Archiv. fur Ethnogr., Supplement zu Bd._ IX. 1896,
pp. 1-6.
[250] These lines by their fervid eroticism quite suggest the
existence of a masculine Indian Sappho. See the comments on Sappho in
the chapter on Greek love.
[251] Such a procedure does well enough if the object is to amuse idle
readers; and when a writer confesses, as Cornelius Mathews did in the
_Indian Fairy Book_, that he bestowed on the stories "such changes as
similar legends most in vogue in other countries have received to
adapt them to the comprehension and sympathy of general readers," no
harm is done. But for scientific purposes it is necessary to sift down
all alleged Indian stories and poems to the solid bed-rock of facts.
It is significant that in the stories collected by men of science and
recorded literally in anthropological journals all romantic and
sentimental features are conspicuously absent, being often replaced by
the Indian's abounding obscenity. Rand's _Legends of the Micmacs_ and
Grinnell's _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_ are on the whole free from the
errors of Schoolcraft and his followers. It ought to be obvious to
every collector of aboriginal folk-lore that Indian tales, like the
Indians themselves, are infinitely more interesting in war paint and
buffalo robes than in "boiled shirts" and "store-clothes."
[252] _U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Survey of Rocky Mt. Region_, IX., 90.
[253] Related in G. White's _Historical Collection of Georgia_, 571.
[254] See Brinton's _The American Race_, 59-67, for an excellent
summary of our present knowledge of the Eskimos (on the favorable
side).
[255] _Journal Ethnol. Soc_., I., 299.
[256] Cranz, I., 155, 134; Hall, II., 87, I., 187; Hearne, 161.
[257] Hall, _Narrat. of Second Arctic Exp._, 102; Cranz, I, 207-12
(German ed.); Letourneau, _E.d.M._, 72.
[258] Among the Nagas, we read in Dalton (43), "maidens are prized for
their physical strength more than for their beauty and family;" and
the reason is not far to seek. "The women have to work incessantly,
while the men bask in the sun."
[259] Shortt in _Trans. Ethnol. Soc_., _N.S._, VII., 464.
[260] For our purposes it is needless to continue this list; but I may
add that of the very few tribes Westermarck ventured to claim
specifically for his side, three at any rate--the Miris, Todas, and
Kols (Mundas) do not belong there. The state of mind prevalent among
the Miris is indicated by Dalton's observation (33) that "two brothers
will unite and from the proceeds of their joint labor buy a wife
between them." In regard to the Todas, Westermarck apparently forgot
what he himself had written about them on a previous page (53), after
Shortt:
"When a man marries a girl, she becomes the wife of his
brothers as they successively reach manhood, and they
become the husbands of all her sisters, when they are
old enough to marry."
To speak of "liberty of choice" in such cases, or of the marriage
being only "ostensibly" arranged by the parents, is nonsense. As for
the Kols, what Dalton says about the Mundas (194) not only indicates
that parental interference is more than "ostensible," but makes clear
that what these girls enjoy is not free choice but what is
euphemistically called "free love," before marriage:
"Among Mundas having any pretensions to respectability
the young people are not allowed to arrange these
affairs [matrimonial] for themselves. Their parents
settle it all for them, French fashion, and after the
liberty they have enjoyed, and the liaisons they are
sure to have made, this interference on the part of the
old folk must be very aggravating to the young ones."
If the dissolute or imbecile advocates of "free love" had their way,
we should sink to the level of these wild tribes of India; but there
is no danger of our losing again the large "tracts of mind, and
thought, and feeling" we have acquired since our ancestors, who came
from India, were in such a degraded state as these neighbors of
theirs.
[261] Statistics have shown that twenty-eight per cent of the females
were married before their fourth year. The ancient _Sutras_ ordained
the age of six to seven the best for girls to marry, and declared that
a father who waits till his daughter is twelve years old must go to
hell. The evils are aggravated by the fact noted by Dr. Ryder (who
gives many pathetic details) that a Hindoo girl of ten often appears
like an European child of six, owing to the weak physique inherited
from these girl mothers. Yet Mrs. Mansell relates:
"Many pitiable child-wives have said to me, 'Oh, Doctor
mem Sahib, I implore you, do give me medicine that I
may become a mother.' I have looked at their innocent
faces and tender bodies, and asked, 'Why?' The reply
has invariably been, 'My husband will discard me if I
do not bear a child.'"
[262] _Journal of Nat. Indian Assoc._, 1881, 543-49.
[263] The roots of this superstition, which has created such
unspeakable misery in India, go back to the oldest times of which
there are records. The Vedas say, "Endless are the worlds for those
men who have sons; but there is no place for those who have no male
offspring."
[264] Dr. S. Armstrong-Hopkins writes in her recent volume _Within the
Purdah_ (51-52): "A few years ago the English Government passed a law
to the effect that no bride should go to the house of her
mother-in-law before she arrived at the age of twelve years. I am
witness, however, as is every practising physician in India, that this
law is utterly ignored.... Often and often have I treated little women
patients of five, six, seven, eight, nine years, who were at that time
living with their husbands."
[265] If Darwin had dwelt on such facts in his _Descent of Man_, and
contrasted man's vileness with the devotion, sympathy, and
self-sacrifice shown by birds and other animals, he would have aroused
less indignation among his ignorant contemporaries. In these respects
it was the animals who had cause to resent his theory.
[266] Dr. Ryder says in her pathetic book, _Little Wives of India_: "A
man may be a vile and loathsome creature; he may be blind, a lunatic,
an idiot, a leper, or diseased in any form; he may be fifty, sixty, or
seventy years old, and may be married to a child of five or ten, who
positively loathes his presence; but if he claims her she must go.
There is no other form of slavery equal to it on the face of the
earth."
[267] The London _Times_ of November 11, 1889, had the following in
its column about India:
"Two shocking cases of wife killing lately came before
the courts, in both cases the result of child marriage.
In one a child aged ten was strangled by her husband.
In the second case a child of tender years was ripped
open with a wooden peg. Brutal sexual exasperation was
the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared
with the terrible evils of child marriage, widow
cremation is of infinitely inferior magnitude."
[268] Manu's remark that "where women are honored there the gods are
pleased" is one of those expressions of unconscious humor which
naturally escaped him, but should not have escaped European
sociologists. What he understands by "honoring women" may be gathered
from many maxims in his volume like the following (the references
being to the pages of Burnell and Hopkins's version):
"This is the nature of women, to seduce men here" (40);
"One should not be seated in a secluded place with a
mother, sister, or daughter; the powerful host of the
senses compels even a wise man" (41).
"No act is to be done according to (her) own will by a
young girl, a young woman, or even by an old woman,
though in (their own) houses."
"In her childhood (a girl) should be under the will of
her father; in (her) youth, of (her) husband; her
husband being dead, of her sons; a woman should never
enjoy her own will" (130).
"Though of bad conduct or debauched, or even devoid of
good qualities, a husband must always be worshipped
like a god by a good wife."
"For women there is no separate sacrifice, nor vow, nor
even fast; if a woman obeys her husband, by that she is
exalted in heaven" (131).
"Day and night should women be kept by the male members
of the family in a state of dependence" (245)....
"Women being weak creatures, and having no share in the
_mantras_, are falsehood itself" (247).
Quite in the spirit of these ordinances of the great Manu are the
directions for wives given in the _Padma Purana_, one of the books of
highest authority, whose rules are, as Dubois informs us (316), kept
up in full vigor to this day. A wife, we read therein, must regard her
husband as a god, though he be a very devil. She must laugh if he
laughs, eat after him, abstain from food which _he_ dislikes, burn
herself after his death. If he has another wife she must not
interfere, must always keep her eyes on her master, ready to receive
his commands; she must never be gloomy or discontented in his
presence; and though he abuse or even beat her she must return only
meek and soothing words.
[269] In Calcutta nearly one-half the females--42,824 out of
98,627--were widows. In India in general one-fifth of the women (or,
excluding the Mohammedans, one-third) are widows.
[270] _Journal of the National Indian Assoc._, 1881, 624-30.
[271] Ploss-Bartels, I., 385-87; Lamairesse, 18, 95, XX., etc.
[272] Here again we must guard against the naïve error of benevolent
observers of confounding chastity with an assumption of modest
behavior. In describing the streets of Delhi Ida Pfeiffer says
(_L.V.R.W._, 148):
"The prettiest girlish faces peep modestly out of these
curtained bailis, and did one not know that in India an
unveiled face is never an innocent one, the fact
certainly could not be divined from their looks or
behavior." It happens to be the fashion even for
bayadères to preserve an appearance of great propriety
in public.
[273] Pp. 143 and 160 of Kellner's edition of this drama (Reclam). The
extent to which indifference to chastity is sometimes carried in India
may be inferred from the facts that in the famous city of Vasali
"marriage was forbidden, and high rank attached to the lady who held
office as the chief of courtesans;" and that the same condition
prevails in British India to this day in a town in North Canara
(Balfour, _Cyclop. of India_, II., 873).
[274] Hâla's date is somewhat uncertain, but he flourished between the
third and fourth centuries A.D. Professor Weber's translation of his
seven hundred poems, with the professor's comments, takes up no fewer
than 1,023 pages of the _Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes_,
Vols. V. and VII. I have selected all those which throw light on the
Hindoo conception of love, and translated them carefully from Weber's
version. Hâla's anthology served as prototype, about the twelfth
century, to a similar collection of âryâ verses, the erotic Saptacati
of Govardhana, also seven hundred in number, but written in Sanskrit.
Of these I have not been able to find a version in a language that I
can read, but the other collection is copious and varied enough to
cover all the phases of Hindoo love. The verses were intended, as
already indicated, to be sung, for the Hindoos, too, knew the power of
music as a pastime and a feeder of the emotions. "If music be the food
of love, play on," says the English Shakespere, and the "Hindoo
Shakespere" wrote more than a thousand years before him:
"Oh, how beautifully our master Rebhila has sung! Yes,
indeed, the zither is a pearl, only it does not come
from the depths of the sea. How its tones accord with
the heart that longs for love, how it helps to while
away time at a rendezvous, how it assuages the grief of
separation, and augments the delights of the lovers!"
(_Vasantasena_, Act III., 2.)
[275] The disadvantage of arguing against the believers in primitive,
Oriental, and ancient amorous sentiment is that some of the strongest
evidence against them cannot be cited in a book intended for general
reading. Professor Weber declares in his introduction to Hâla's
anthology that these poems take us through all phases of sentimental
love (_innigen Liebeslebens_) to the most licentious situations. He is
mistaken, as I have shown, in regard to the sentiment, but there can
be no doubt about the licentiousness. Numbers 5, 23, 62, 63, 65, 71,
72, 107, 115, 139, 161, 200, 223, 237, 241, 242, 300, 305, 336, 338,
356, 364, 369, 455, 483, 491, 628, 637, depict or suggest improper
scenes, while 61, 213, 215, 242, 278, 327, 476, 690 are frankly
obscene. Lower and higher things are mixed in these poems with a
naïveté that shows the absence of any idea of refinement.
[276] I have here followed Kellner, though Boehtlingk's version is
more literal and Oriental: "Mir aber brennt Liebe, O Grausamer, Tag
und Nacht gewaltig die Glieder, deren Wünsche auf dich gerichtet
sind."
[277] _Anas Casarea_, a species of duck which, in Hindoo poetry, is
allowed to be with his mate only in the daytime and must leave her at
night, in consequence of a curse; thereupon begin mutual lamentations.
[278] For a Hindoo, unless he has a son to make offerings after his
death, is doomed to live over again his earthly life with all its
sorrows. A daughter will do, provided she has a son to attend to the
rites.
[279] The sequel of the story, relating to the misfortunes of Nala and
Damayanti after marriage, will be referred to presently. The famous
tale herewith briefly summarized occurs in the _Mahâbhârata_, the
great epic or mythological cyclopaedia of India, which embraces
220,000 metric lines, and antedates in the main the Christian era. The
story of Savitri also occurs in the _Mahâbhârata_; and these two
episodes have been pronounced by specialists the gems not only of that
great epic, but of all Hindoo literature. I have translated from the
edition of H.C. Kellner, which is based on the latest and most careful
revisions of the Sanscrit text. I have also followed Kellner's edition
of Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_ and Otto Fritze's equally critical versions
of the same poet's _Urvasi_ and _Malavika and Agnimitra_. Some of the
earlier translators, notably Rückert, permitted themselves unwarranted
poetic licenses, modernizing and sentimentalizing the text, somewhat
as Professor Ebers did the thoughts and feelings of the ancient
Egyptians. I will add that while I have been obliged to greatly
condense the stories of the above dramas, I have taken great care to
retain all the speeches and details that throw light on the Hindoo
conception of love, reserving a few, however, for comment in the
following paragraphs.
[280] Our poets speak of fright making the hair stand on end--but only
on the head. Can the alleged Hindoo phenomenon be identical with what
we call goose flesh--French frisson? That would make it none the less
artificial as a symptom of love. Hertel says, in his edition of the
_Hitopadesa_ (26):
"With the Hindoos it is a consequence of great
excitement, joy as well as fear, that the little hairs
on the body stand erect. The expression has become
conventional."
[281] _Hitopadesa_ (25). This gratification the Hindoos regard as one
of the four great objects of life, the other three being liberty
(emancipation of the soul), wealth, and the performance of religious
duties.
[282] Robert Brown has remarked that "moral and intellectual qualities
seem to be entirely omitted from the seven points which, according to
Manu, make a good wife." And Ward says (10) that no attention is paid
to a bride's mind or temper, the only points being the bride's person,
her family, and the prospect of male offspring.
[283] This is the list, as given by the eminent Sanscrit scholar,
Professor Albrecht Weber in the _Abhandlungen für die Kunde des
Abendlandes_, Vol. V., 135. Burton, in his original edition of the
_Arabian Nights_ (III., 36), gives the stages thus: love of the eyes;
attraction of the manos or mind; birth of desire; loss of sleep; loss
of flesh; indifference to objects of sense; loss of shame; distraction
of thought; loss of consciousness; death. _Cf_. Lamairesse, p. 179.
[284] Preferably in Boehtlingk's literal version, which I have
followed whenever Kellner idealizes. In this case Kellner speaks of
covering "den Umfang des Brüstepaars," while Boethlingk has "das
starke Brüstepaar," which especially arouse the king's "love."
[285] It would hardly be surprising if Kalidasa had had some
conception of true love sentiment, for not only did he possess a
delicate poetic fancy, but he lived at a time when tidings of the
chivalrous treatment and adoration of women might have come to him
from Arabia or from Europe. The tradition that he flourished as early
as the first century of our era was demolished by Professor Weber
(_Ind. Lit. Ges._, 217). Professor Max Müller (91) found no reason to
place him earlier than our sixth century; and more recent evidence
indicates that he lived as late as the eleventh. Yet he had no
conception of supersensual love; marriage was to him, as to all
Hindoos, a union of bodies, not of souls. He had not learned from the
Arabs (like the Persian poet Saadi, of the thirteenth century, whom I
referred to on p. 199) that the only test of true love is
self-sacrifice. It is true that Bhavabhuti, the Hindoo poet, who is
believed to have lived at the end of our seventh century, makes one of
the lovers in _Malati and Madhava_ slay a tiger and save his beloved's
life; but that is also a case of self-defence. The other lover--the
"hero" of the drama--faints when he sees his friend in danger!
Generally speaking, there is a peculiar effeminacy, a lack of true
manliness, about Hindoo lovers They are always moping, whining,
fainting; the kings--the typical lovers--habitually neglect the
affairs of state to lead a life of voluptuous indulgence. Hindoo
sculpture emphasizes the same trait: "Even in the conception of male
figures," says Lübke (109), "there is a touch of this womanly
softness;" there is "a lack of an energetic life, of a firm contexture
of bone and muscle." It is not of such enervated stuff that true
lovers are made.
[286] An explanation of this discrepancy may be found in A.K. Fiske's
suggestion (191) that there is a double source for this story. The
reader will please bear in mind that all my quotations are from the
revised version of the Bible. I do not believe in retaining inaccurate
translations simply because they were made long ago.
[287] McClintock and Strong's _Encyclop. of Biblical Literature_ says:
"It must be borne in mind that Jacob himself had now reached the
mature age of seventy-seven years, as appears from a comparison of
Joseph's age... with Jacob's." That Rachel was not much over fifteen
may be assumed because among Oriental nomadic races shepherd girls are
very seldom unmarried after that age, or even an earlier age, for
obvious reasons.
[288] Gen. 19: 1-9; 19: 30-38; 34: 1-31; 38: 8-25; 39: 6-20; Judges
19: 22-30; II. Sam. 3: 6-9; 11: 2-27; 13: 1-22; 16: 22; etc.
[289] For whom the Hebrew poet has a special word _(dodi)_ different
from that used when Solomon is referred to.
[290] See Renan, Preface, p. iv. It is of all Biblical books, the one
"pour lequel les scribes qui ont décidé du sort des écrits hébreux ont
le plus élargi leurs règles d'admission."
[291] McClintock and Strong.
[292] In the seventh chapter there are lines where, as Renan points
out (50), the speaker, in describing the girl, "vante ses charmes les
plus intimes," and where the translator was "obligé à des
attenuations."
[293] Renan says justly that it is the most obscure of all Hebrew
poems. According to the old Hebrew exegesis, every passage in the
Bible has seventy different meanings, all of them equally true; but of
this Song a great many more than seventy interpretations have been
given: the titles of treatises on the Canticles fill four columns of
fine print in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia. Griffis declares
that it is, "probably, the most perfect poem in any language," but in
my opinion it is far inferior to other books in the Bible. The
adjective perfect is not applicable to a poem so obscure that more
than half its meaning has to be read between the lines, while its
plan, if plan it has, is so mixed up and hindmost foremost that I
sometimes feel tempted to accept the view of Herder and others that
the _Song of Songs_ is not one drama, but a collection of unconnected
poems.
[294] Mr. Griffis' lucid, ingenious, and admirably written monograph
entitled, _The Lily among Thorns_, is unfortunately marred in many
parts by the author's attitude, which is not that of a critic or a
judge, but of a lawyer who has a case to prove, that black and gray
are really snow white. His sense of humor ought to have prevented him
from picturing an Eastern shepherd complimenting a girl of his class
on her "instinctive refinement". He carries this idealizing process so
far that he arbitrarily divides the line "I am black but comely,"
attributing the first three words to the Shulamite, the other two to a
chorus of her rivals in Solomon's harem! The latter supposition is
inconceivable; and why should not the Shulamite call herself comely? I
once looked admiringly at a Gypsy girl in Spain, who promptly opened
her lips, and said, with an arch smile, "soy muy bonita"--"I am very
pretty!"--which seemed the natural, naïve attitude of an Oriental
girl. To argue away such a trifling spot on maiden modesty as the
Shulamite's calling herself comely, while seeing no breach of delicacy
in her inviting her lover to come into the garden and eat his precious
fruits, though admitting (214) that "the maiden yields thus her heart
and her all to her lover," is surely straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel.
[295] Which, however, evidently was not saying much, as he immediately
added that he was ready to give her up provided they gave him another
girl, lest he be the only one of the Greeks without a "prize of
honor." Strong individual preference, as we shall see also in the case
of Achilles, was not a trait of "heroic" Greek love.
[296] I have already commented (115) on Nausicäa's lack of feminine
delicacy and coyness; yet Gladstone says (132) "it may almost be
questioned whether anywhere in literature there is to be found a
conception of the maiden so perfect as Nausicäa in grace, tenderness,
and delicacy"!
[297] How Gladstone reconciled his conscience with these lines when he
wrote (112) that "on one important and characteristic subject, the
exposure of the person to view, the men of that time had a peculiar
and fastidious delicacy," I cannot conceive.
[298] It will always remain one of the strangest riddles of the
nineteenth century why the statesman who so often expressed his
righteous indignation over the "Bulgarian atrocities" of his time
should not only have pardoned, but with insidious and glaring
sophistry apologized for the similar atrocities of the heroes whom
Homer fancies he is complimenting when he calls them professional
"spoilers of towns." I wish every reader of this volume who has any
doubts regarding the correctness of my views would first read
Gladstone's shorter work on Homer (a charmingly written book, with all
its faults), and then the epics themselves, which are now accessible
to all in the admirable prose versions of the _Iliad_ by Andrew Lang,
Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, and of the _Odyssey_ by Professor George
H. Palmer of Harvard--versions which are far more poetic than any
translations in verse ever made and which make of these epics two of
the most entertaining novels ever written. It is from these versions
that I have cited, except in a few cases where I preferred a more
literal rendering of certain words.
[299] In all the extracts here made I follow the close literal prose
version made by H.T. Wharton, in his admirable book on Sappho, by far
the best in the English language.
[300] P.B. Jevons refers to some of these as "mephitic exhalations
from the bogs of perverted imaginings!" Welcker's defence of Sappho is
a masterpiece of naïveté written in ignorance of mental pathology.
[301] The most elaborate discussion of this subject is to be found in
Moll's _Untersuchungen_, 314-440, where also copious bibliographic
references are given. The most striking impression left by the reading
of this book is that the differentiation of the sexes is by no means
as complete yet as it ought to be. All the more need is there of
romantic love, whose function it is to assist and accelerate this
differentiation.
[302] As long ago as 1836-38 a Swiss author, Heinrich Hössli, wrote a
remarkable book with the title _The Unreliability of External Signs as
Indications of Sex in Body and Mind_. I may add here that if it were
known how many of the "shrieking sisterhood" who are clamoring for
masculine "rights" for women, are among the unfortunates who were born
with male brains in female bodies, the movement would collapse as if
struck by a ton of dynamite. These amazons often wonder why the great
mass of women are so hard to stir up in this matter. The reason is
that the great mass of women--heaven be thanked!--have feminine minds
as well as feminine bodies.
[303] Probably no passage in any drama has ever been more widely
discussed than the nine lines I have just summarized. As long ago as
the sixteenth century the astronomer Petrus Codicillus pronounced them
spurious. Goethe once remarked to Eckermann; (III., March 28, 1827)
that he considered them a blemish in the tragedy and would give a good
deal if some philologist would prove that Sophocles had not written
them. A number of eminent philologists--Jacob, Lehrs, Hauck, Dindorf,
Wecklein, Jebb, Christ, and others--have actually bracketed them as
not genuine; but if they are interpolations, they must have been added
within a century after the play was written, for Aristotle refers to
them (_Rhet. III_., 16,9) in these words: "And should any circumstance
be incredible, you must subjoin the reason; as Sophocles does. He
furnishes an example in the _Antigone_, that she mourned more for her
brother than for a husband and children; for these, if lost, might
again be hers.
"'But father now and mother both being lost,
A brother's name can ne'er be hailed again.'"
It is noticeable that Aristotle should pronounce Antigone's preference
strange or incredible from a Greek point of view; that point of view
being, as we have seen, that a woman's first duties are toward her
husband, for whom she should ever sacrifice herself. It has been
plausibly suggested that Sophocles borrowed the idea of those nine
lines from his friend Herodotus, who (III., 118) relates the story of
Darius permitting the wife of Intophernes to save one of her relatives
from death and who chooses her brother, for reasons like those
advanced by Antigone. It has been shown (_Zeitschrift f. d.
Oesterreich Gymn_., 1898; see also _Frankfurter Zeitung_, July 22, 24,
27, 1899; _Hermes_, XXVIII.) that this idea occurs in old tales and
poems of India, Persia, China, as well as among the Slavs,
Scandinavians, etc. If Sophocles did introduce this notion into his
tragedy (and there is no reason for doubting it except the unwarranted
assumption that he was too great a genius to make such a blunder), he
did it in a bungling way, for inasmuch as Antigone's brother is dead
she cannot benefit her family by favoring him at the expense of her
betrothed; and moreover, her act of sacrificing herself in order to
secure the rest of a dear one's soul--which alone might have partly
excused her heartless and unromantic ignoring and desertion of her
lover--is bereft of all its nobility by her equally heartless
declaration that she would not have thus given her life for a husband
or a child. These Greek poets knew so little of true femininity that
they could not draw a female character without spoiling it.
[304] The unduly extolled [Greek: Epos] chorus in the _Antigone_
expresses nothing more than the universal power of love in the Greek
conception of the term.
[305] In Müller's book on the Doric race we read (310) that the love
of the Corinthian Philolaus and Diocles "lasted until death," and even
their graves were turned toward one another, in token of their
affection. Lovers in Athens carved the beloved's names on walls, and
innumerable poems were addressed by the leading bards to their
favorites.
[306] Compare Ramdohr, III., 191 and 124.
[307] I have before me a dictonary which defines Platonic love as it
is now universally, and incorrectly, understood, as "a pure spiritual
affection subsisting between the sexes, unmixed with carnal desires, a
species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate." In reality
Platonic (i.e. Socratic) love has nothing whatever to do with women,
but is a fantastic and probably hypocritical idealization of a species
of infatuation which in our day is treated neither in poems nor in
dialogues, nor discussed in text-books of psychology or physiology,
but relegated to treatises on mental diseases and abnormalities. In
fact, the whole philosophy of Greek love may be summed up in the
assertion that "Platonic love," as understood by us, was by Plato and
the Greeks in general considered an impossibility.
[308] In the _Deipnosophists_ of Athenaeus (III., Bk. XII.) we find
some other information of anthropological significance: "Hermippus
stated in his book about lawgivers that at Lacedaemon all the damsels
used to be shut up in a dark room, while a number of unmarried young
men were shut up with them; and whichever girl each of the young men
caught hold of he led away as his wife, without a dowry." "But
Clearches the Solensian, in his treatise on Proverbs, says: 'In
Lacedaemon the women, on a certain festival, drag the unmarried men to
an altar and then buffet them; in order that, for the purpose of
avoiding the insults of such treatment, they may become more
affectionate and in due season may turn their thoughts to marriage.
But at Athens Cecrops was the first person who married a man to one
woman only, when before his time connections had taken place at random
and men had their wives in common.'"
[309] My critics might have convicted me of a genuine blunder inasmuch
as in my first book (78) I assumed that Plato "foresaw the importance
of pre-matrimonial acquaintance as the basis of a rational and happy
marriage choice." This was an unwarranted concession, because all that
Plato recommended was that "the youths and maidens shall dance
together, seeing and being seen naked," after the Spartan manner. This
might lead to a rational choice of sound bodies, but romantic love
implies an acquaintance of minds, and is altogether a more complicated
process than the dog and cattle breeder's procedure commended by Plato
and Lycurgus. I may add that in view of Lycurgus's systematic
encouragement of promiscuity, the boast of the Spartan Geradas
(recorded by Plutarch) that there were no cases of adultery in Sparta,
must be accepted either as broad sarcasm, or in the manner of
Limburg-Brouwer, who declares (IV., 165) that the boast is "like
saying that in a band of brigands there is not a single thief." Even
from the cattle-breeding point of view Lycurgus proved a failure, for
according to Aristotle (_Pol._ II., 9) the Spartans grew too lazy to
bring up children, and rewards had to be offered for large families.
[310] See the evidence cited in Becker (III., 315) regarding
Aristotle's views as to the inferiority of women. After comparing it
with the remarks of other writers Becker sums up the matter by saying
that "the virtue of which a woman was in those days considered capable
did not differ very much from that of a faithful slave."
[311] In the _Odyssey_ (XV., 418) Homer speaks of "a Phoenician woman,
handsome and tall." He makes Odysseus compare Nausicäa to Diana "in
beauty, height, and bearing," and in another place he declares that,
like Diana among her nymphs, she o'ertops her companions by head and
brow (VI., 152, 102). However, this manner of measuring beauty with a
yard-stick; indicates _some_ progress over the savage and Oriental
custom of making rotundity the criterion of beauty.
[312] Compare Menander, _Frag. Incert._, 154: [Greek: gunaich ho
didaskon gpammat ou kalos poiei].
[313] A homely but striking illustration may here be added. In Africa
the negroes are proud of their complexion and look with aversion on a
white skin. In the United States, knowing that a black skin is looked
down on as a symbol of slavery or inferiority, they are ashamed of it.
The wife of an eminent Southern judge informed me that Georgia negroes
believe that in heaven they will be white; and I have heard of one
negro woman who declared that if she could become white by being
flayed she would gladly submit to the torture. Thus have _ideas_
regarding the complexion changed the _emotion_ of pride to the emotion
of shame.
[314] Professor Rohde appears to follow the old metaphysical maxim "If
facts do not agree with my theory, so much the worse for the facts."
He piles up pages of evidence which show conclusively that these
Greeks knew nothing of the higher traits and symptoms of love, and
then he adds: "but they _must_ have known them all the same." To give
one instance of his contradictory procedure. On page 70 he admits
that, as women were situated, the tender and passionate courtship of
the youths as described in poems and romances of the period "could
hardly have been copied from life," because the Greek custom of
allowing the fathers to dispose of their daughters without consulting
their wishes was incompatible with the poetry of such courting. "It is
very significant," he adds, "that among the numerous references to the
ways of obtaining brides made by poets and moral philosophers,
including those of the Hellenistic [Alexandrian] period, and collected
by Stobaeus in chapters 70, 71, and 72 of his _Florilegium_, love is
never mentioned among the motives of marriage choice." In the next
sentence he declares nevertheless that "no one would be so foolish as
to deny the existence of pure, strong love in the Greek life of this
period;" and ten lines farther on he backs down again, admitting that
though there may be indications of supersensual, sentimental love in
the literature of this period these traits _had not yet taken hold of
the life of these men_, though there were _longings_ for them. And at
the end of the paragraph he emphasizes his back-down by declaring that
"the very essence of sentimental poetry is the _longing for what does
not exist_." (_Ist doch das rechte Element gerade der sentimentalen
Poesie die Sehnsucht nach dem nicht Vorhandenen_.) What makes this
admission the more significant is that Professor Rohde, in speaking of
"sentimental" elements, does not even use that word as the adjective
of sentiment but of sentimentality. He defines this _Sentimentalität_
to which he refers as a "_ Sehnen, Sinnen und Hoffen_," a
"_Selbstgenuss der Leidenschaft_"--a "longing, dreaming, and hoping,"
a "revelling in (literally, self-enjoying of) passion." In other
words, an enjoyment of emotion for emotion's sake, a gloating over
one's selfish joys and sorrows. Now in this respect I actually go
beyond Rohde as a champion of Greek love! Such _Sentimentalität_
existed, I am convinced, in Alexandrian life as well as in Alexandrian
literature; but of the existence of true supersensual altruistic
_sentiment_ I can find no evidence. The trouble with Rohde, as with so
many who have written on this subject, is that he has no clear idea of
the distinction between sensual love, which is selfish
(_Selbstgenuss_) and romantic love, which is altruistic; hence he
flounders in hopeless contradictions.
[315] See Anthon, 258, and the authors there referred to.
[316] See Theocritus, Idyll XVII. Regarding the silly and degrading
adulation which the Alexandrian court-poets were called upon to bestow
on the kings and queens, and its demoralizing effect on literature,
see also Christ's _Griechische Litteraturgeschichte_, 493-494 and 507.
[317] I have given Professor Rohde's testimony on this point not only
because he is a famous specialist in the literature of this period,
but because his peculiar bias makes his negative attitude in regard to
the question of Alexandrian gallantry the more convincing. A reader of
his book would naturally expect him to take the opposite view, since
he himself fancied he had discovered traces of gallantry in an author
who preceded the Alexandrians. The _Andromeda_ of Euripides, he
declares (23), "became in his hands one of the most brilliant examples
of chivalrous love." This, however, is a pure assumption on his part,
not warranted by the few fragments of this play that have been
preserved. Benecke has devoted a special "Excursus" to this play
(203-205), in which he justly remarks that readers of Greek literature
"need hardly be reminded of how utterly foreign to the Greek of
Euripides's day is the conception of the '_galante Ritter_' setting
out in search of ladies that want rescuing." He might have brought out
the humor of the matter by quoting the characteristically Greek
version of the Perseus story given by Apollodorus, who relates dryly
(II., chap. 4) that Cepheus, in obedience to an oracle, bound his
daughter to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster. "Perseus saw her,
fell in love with her, and promised Cepheus to slaughter the monster
_if he would promise to give him the rescued daughter to marry_. The
contract was made and Perseus undertook the adventure, killed the
monster and rescued Andromeda." Nothing could more strikingly reveal
the difference between Hellenic and modern ideas regarding lovers than
the fact that to the Greek mind there was nothing disgraceful in this
selfish, ungallant bargain made by Perseus as a condition of his
rescuing the poor girl from a horrible death. A mediaeval knight, or a
modern gentleman, not to speak of a modern lover, would have saved her
at the risk of his own life, reward or no reward. The difference is
further emphasized by the attitude of the girl, who exclaims to her
deliverer, "Take me, O stranger, for thine handmaiden, or wife, or
slave." Professor Murray, who cites this line in his _History of Greek
Literature_, remarks with comic naïveté: "The love-note in this pure
and happy sense Euripides had never struck before." But what is there
so remarkably "pure and happy" in a girl's offering herself as a slave
to a man who has saved her life? Were not Greek women always expected
to assume that attitude of inferiority, submission, and
self-sacrifice? Was not _Alcestis_ written to enforce that principle
of conduct? And does not that very exclamation of Andromeda show how
utterly antipodal the situation and the whole drama of Euripides were
to modern ideas of chivalrous love?
Having just mentioned Benecke, I may as well add here that his own
theory regarding the first appearance of the romantic elements in
Greek love-poetry rests on an equally flimsy basis. He held that
Antimachus, who flourished before Euripides and Plato had passed away,
was the first poet who applied to women the idea of a pure, chivalrous
love, which up to his time had been attributed only to the romantic
friendships with boys. The "romantic idea," according to Benecke, is
"the idea that a woman is a worthy object for a man's love and that
such love may well be the chief, if not the only, aim of a man's
life." But that Antimachus knew anything of such love is a pure
figment of Benecke's imagination. The works of Antimachus are lost,
and all that we know about them or him is that he lamented the loss of
his wife--a feeling very much older than the poet of Colophon--and
consoled himself by writing an elegy named [Greek: Ludae], in which he
brought together from mythical and traditional sources a number of sad
tales. Conjugal grief does not take us very far toward so complicated
an altruistic state of mind as I have shown romantic love to be.
[318] Theocritus makes this point clear in line 5 of Idyl 12:
[Greek: hosson parthenikae propherei trigamoio gunaikos].
[319] See Helbig, 246, and Rohde, 36, for details. Helbig remarks that
the Alexandrians, following the procedure of Euripides, chose by
preference incestuous passions, "and it appears that such passions
were not rare in actual life too in those times."
[320] He refers as instances to Plaut., _Asin._, III., 3, particularly
v. 608 ff. and 615; adding that "a very sentimental character is
Charinus in the _Mercator_;" and he also points to Ter., _Eun._, 193
ff.
[321] What makes this evidence the more conclusive is that Rohde's use
of the word "sentimental" refers, according to his own definition, to
egoistic sentimentality, not to altruistic sentiment. Of
sentimentality--altiloquent, fabricated feeling and cajolery--there is
enough in Greek and Latin literature, doubtless as a reflection of
life. But when, in the third act of the _Asinaria_, the lover says to
his girl, "If I were to hear that you were in want of life, at once
would I present you my own life and from my own would add to yours,"
we promptly ask, "_Would he have done it_?" And the answer, from all
we know of these men and their attitude toward women, would have been
the same as that of the maiden to the enamoured Daphnis, in the
twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus: "_Now_ you promise me everything,
but afterward you will not give me a pinch of salt." As for the purity
of the characters in the play, its quality may be inferred from the
fact that the girl is not only a hetaira, but the daughter of a
procuress. From the point of view of purity the _Captivi_ is
particularly instructive. Riley calls it "the most pure and innocent
of all the plays of Plautus;" and when we examine why this is so we
find that it is because there is no woman in it! In the epilogue
Plautus himself--who made his living by translating Athenian comedies
into Latin--makes the significant confession that there were but few
Greek plays from which he might have copied so chaste a plot, in which
"there is no wenching, no intriguing, no exposure of a child" to be
found by a procuress and brought up as a hetaira--which are the staple
features of these later Greek plays.
[322] Those who cannot read Greek will derive much pleasure from the
admirable prose version of Andrew Lang, which in charm of style
sometimes excels the original, while it veils those features that too
much offend modern taste.
[323] Couat, 142. There are reasons to believe that the epistles
referred to are not by Ovid. Aristaenetus lived about the fifth
century. It is odd that the poem of Callimachus should have been lost
after surviving eight centuries.
[324] See also Helbig's Chap. XXII. on the increasing lubricity of
Greek art.
[325] Space permitting, it would be interesting to examine these poets
in detail, as well as the other Romans--Virgil, Horace, Lucretius,
etc., who came less under Greek influence. But in truth such
examination would be superfluous. Any one may pursue the investigation
by himself, and if he will bear in mind and apply as tests, the last
seven of my ingredients of love--the altruistic-supersensual group--he
cannot fail to become convinced that there are no instances of what I
have described as romantic love in Latin literature any more than in
Greek. And since it is the province of poets to idealize, we may feel
doubly sure that the emotions which they did not even imagine cannot
have existed in the actual life of their more prosaic contemporaries.
It would, indeed, be strange if a people so much more coarse-fibred
and practical, and so much less emotional and esthetic, than the
Greeks, should have excelled them in the capacity for what is one of
the most esthetic and the most imaginative of all sentiments.
Before leaving the poets, I may add that the Greek _Anthology_, the
basis of which was laid by Meleager, a contemporary of the Roman poets
just referred to, contains a collection of short poems by many Greek
writers, in which, of course, some of my critics have discovered
romantic love. One of them wrote that "the poems of Meleager alone in
the Greek _Anthology_ would suffice to refute the notion that Greece
ignored romantic passion." If this critic will take the trouble to
read these poems of Meleager in the original he will find that a
disgustingly large number relate to [Greek: paiderastia], which in
No. III. is expressly declared to be superior to the love for women;
that most of the others relate to hetairai; and that not one of
them--or one in the whole _Anthology_--comes up to my standard of
romantic love.
[326] The best-known ancient story of "love-suicide" is that of
Pyramus and Thisbe. Pyramus, having reason to think that Thisbe, with
whom he had arranged a secret interview at the tomb of Ninus, has been
devoured by a lion, stabs himself in despair, and Thisbe, on finding
his body, plunges on to the same sword, still warm with his blood.
This tale, which is probably of Babylonian origin, is related by Ovid
(_Metamorph._, IV., 55-166), and was much admired and imitated in the
Middle Ages. Comment on it would be superfluous after what I have
written on pages 605-610.
[327] See Rohde, 130; Christ, 349.
[328] No more like stories of romantic love than these are the five
"love-stories" written in the second century after Christ by Plutarch.
This is the more remarkable as Plutarch was one of the few ancient
writers to whom at any rate the _idea_ occurred that women _might be_
able to feel and inspire a love rising above the senses. This
suggestion is what distinguishes his _Dialogue on Love_ most favorably
from Plato's _Symposium_, which it otherwise, however, resembles
strikingly in the peculiar notions regarding the relation of the
sexes; showing how tenacious the unnatural Greek ideas were in Greek
life. Plutarch's various writings show that though he had advanced
notions compared with other Greeks, he was nearly as far from
appreciating true femininity, chivalry, and romantic love as Lucian,
who also wrote a dialogue on love in the old-fashioned manner.
[329] Hirschig's _Scriptores Erotici_ begins with Parthenius and
includes Achilles Tatius, Longus, Xenophon, Heliodorus, Chariton, etc.
The right-hand column gives a literal translation into Latin.
[330] _Der Griechische Roman_, 432-67. An excrescence of this theory
is the foolish story that "Bishop" Heliodorus, being called upon by a
provincial synod either to destroy his erotic books or to abdicate his
position, preferred the latter alternative. The date of the real
Heliodorus is perhaps the end of the third or the first half of the
fourth century after Christ.
[331] He refers in a footnote to such scenes as are painted in I., 32,
4; II., 9, 11; III., 14, 24, 3; IV., 6, 3--scones and hypocritically
naïve experiments which he justly considers much more offensive than
the notorious scene between Daphnis and Lykainion (III., 18).
[332] Rohde (516) tries to excuse Goethe for his ridiculous praise of
this romance (Eckermann, II., 305, 318-321, 322) because he knew the
story only in the French version of Amyot-Courier. But I find that
this version retains most of the coarseness of the original, and I see
no reason for seeking any other explanation of Goethe's attitude than
his own indelicacy and obtuseness which, as I noted on page 208, made
him go into ecstacies of admiration over a servant whom lust prompted
to attempt rape and commit murder. As for Professor Murray, his
remarks are explicable only on the assumption that he has never read
this story in the original. This is not a violent assumption. Some
years ago a prominent professor of literature, ancient and modern, in
a leading American university, hearing me say one day that _Daphnis
and Chloe_ was one of the most immoral stories ever written, asked in
a tone of surprise: "Have you read it in the original?" Evidently _he_
never had! It is needless to add that translations never exceed the
originals in impropriety and usually improve on them. The Rev. Rowland
Smith, who prepared the English version for Bohn's Library, found
himself obliged repeatedly to resort to Latin.
Apart from his coarseness, there is nothing in Longus's conception of
love that goes beyond the ideas of the Alexandrians. Of the symptoms
of true love--mental or sentimental, esthetic and sympathetic,
altruistic and supersensual, he knows no more than Sappho did a
thousand years before him. Indeed, in making lovers become indolent,
cry out as if they had been beaten, and jump into rivers as if they
were afire, he is even cruder and more absurd than Sappho was in her
painting of sensual passion. His whole idea of love is summed up in
what the old shepherd Philetas says to Daphnis and Chloe (II., 7):
[Greek: _Egvov d' ego kai tauron erasthenta kai hos oistro plaegeis
emukato, kai tragon philaesanta aiga kai aekolouthei pantachou. Autos
men gar aemaen neos kai aerasthen Amarullidos_].
[333] See Rehde, 345; on Musaeus, 472, 133.
[334] Lucii Apulei _Metamorphoseon_, Libri XI., Ed. van der Vliet
(_Teubner_), IV., 89-135.
[335] See the remarks on _Tristan and Isolde_ in my _Wagner and his
Works_, II., 138.