The moral mission of Jealousy, as stated on a preceding page, is, by
means of watchfulness and the inspiring of fear, to ensure fidelity and
chastity. Darwin says that from the strength of the feeling of jealousy
all through the animal kingdom, as well as from the analogy of the lower
animals, especially those which come nearest to man, he “cannot believe
that absolutely promiscuous intercourse prevailed in times past, shortly
before man attained to his present rank in the zoological scale.” This
may be true, yet it is astonishing to find how many of the lower tribes
are utterly unconcerned regarding the morals both of married and
unmarried women. A vast number of cases illustrating this absence of
jealousy are collected in Waitz’s _Anthropology_, Spencer’s _Sociology_,
the works of Lubbock, and especially in Ploss’s _Das Weib_, i. 205-214.
In some cases girls are allowed to do as they please until after
marriage, when they are jealously guarded; in other cases the reverse is
true. In some parts of Africa a breach of faith on the wife’s part is
regarded as an attack not on the husband’s honour but on his property;
hence a pecuniary compensation is all that is required. Lubbock
enumerates a large number of races among whom the lending of a wife or
daughter is a common and obligatory form of hospitality. And the
Chibchas of South America went so far in their indifference to virginity
that they considered a virgin bride to be unfortunate, “as she had not
inspired affection in men.”
Jealousy for the possession of a woman, however, was much sooner
developed than jealous regard for her conduct. The statement of Sir John
Lubbock about the men of an Indian tribe, that they “fight for the
possession of the women, just like stags,” and similar statements
regarding other savages, imply that, just like stags, these men feel the
pangs of primitive Jealousy.
Among polygamous nations the women, too, often fight for the men,
whose favourites in their absence are apt to suffer much at the hands
of jealous rivals. It is among the polygamous semi-civilised nations
in general that Jealousy asserts itself in the most shrill and
dissonant manner. It is not that bitter-sweet romantic Jealousy which
by its constant fluctuations between hope and doubt fans a modern
lover’s passion into brighter flames; it is a more vicious kind of
conjugal Jealousy which destroys domestic peace and plots the ruin of
rivals. In Madagascar, Mr. Spencer tells us, “the name for
Polygyny—‘fampovafesana’—signifies ‘the means of causing enmity’”; and
that kindred names are commonly applicable to it we are shown by their
use among the Hebrews: in the Mishna a man’s several wives are called
‘tzârot,’ that is, troubles, adversaries, or rivals. In modern Persia,
where polygamy prevails, the same state of affairs is encountered.
Says Ploss: “If there are several women in the house, each one
inhabits a separate division; in the houses of the wealthy each wife,
moreover, has her own servants. Constantly apprehending evil
intentions, no woman touches the dishes of a rival.”
It is among the polygamous nations of the East, too, that history
records such a profusion of bloody wars of succession waged by
half-brothers; for how could fraternal or any other kind of domestic
affection flourish in families where the mothers are constantly goaded
by Jealousy into deadly hatred of one another?