I.

In the eighteenth century, when savage tribes in various parts of the

world first began to be visited, extravagantly romantic views widely

prevailed as to the simple and idyllic lives led by primitive peoples.

During the greater part of the nineteenth century the tendency of opinion

was to the opposite extreme, and it became usual to insist on the degraded

and licentious morals of savages.[181]

In reality, however, savage life is just as little a prolonged debauch as

a prolonged idyll. The inquiries of such writers as Westermarck, Frazer,

and Crawley are tending to introduce a sounder conception of the actual,

often highly complex, conditions of primitive life in its relations to the

sexual instinct.

At the same time it is not difficult to account for the belief, widely

spread during the nineteenth century, in the unbridled licentiousness of

savages. In the first place, the doctrine of evolution inevitably created

a prejudice in favor of such a view. It was assumed that modesty,

chastity, and restraint were the finest and ultimate flowers of moral

development; therefore at the beginnings of civilization we must needs

expect to find the opposite of these things. Apart, however, from any mere

prejudice of this kind, a superficial observation of the actual facts

necessarily led to much misunderstanding. Just as the nakedness of many

savage peoples led to the belief that they were lacking in modesty,

although, as a matter of fact, modesty is more highly developed in savage

life than in civilization,[182] so the absence of our European rules of

sexual behavior among savages led to the conclusion that they were

abandoned to debauchery. The widespread custom of lending the wife under

certain circumstances was especially regarded as indicating gross

licentiousness. Moreover, even when intercourse was found to be free

before marriage, scarcely any investigator sought to ascertain what amount

of sexual intercourse this freedom involved. It was not clearly understood

that such freedom must by no means be necessarily assumed to involve very

frequent intercourse. Again, it often happened that no clear distinction

was made between peoples contaminated by association with civilization,

and peoples not so contaminated. For instance, when prostitution is

attributed to a savage people we must usually suppose either that a

mistake has been made or that the people in question have been degraded by

intercourse with white peoples, for among unspoilt savages customs that

can properly be called prostitution rarely prevail. Nor, indeed, would

they be in harmony with the conditions of primitive life.

It has been seriously maintained that the chastity of savages, so far as

it exists at all, is due to European civilization. It is doubtless true

that this is the case with individual persons and tribes, but there is

ample evidence from various parts of the world to show that this is by no

means the rule. And, indeed, it may be said--with no disregard of the

energy and sincerity of missionary efforts--that it could not be so. A new

system of beliefs and practices, however excellent it may be in itself,

can never possess the same stringent and unquestionable force as the

system in which an individual and his ancestors have always lived, and

which they have never doubted the validity of. That this is so we may have

occasion to observe among ourselves. Christian teachers question the

wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because,

although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that

to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief,

but also on conduct. Yet this dangerously unsettling process has been

applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some

respect are often little more than children. When, therefore, we are

considering the chastity of savages we must not take into account those

peoples which have been brought into close contact with Europeans.

In order to understand the sexual habits of savages generally there are

two points which always have to be borne in mind as of the first

importance: (1) the checks restraining sexual intercourse among savages,

especially as regards time and season, are so numerous, and the sanctions

upholding those checks so stringent, that sexual excess cannot prevail to

the same extent as in civilization; (2) even in the absence of such

checks, that difficulty of obtaining sexual erethism which has been noted

as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating

influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably

in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an

insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor,

tending to produce a natural chastity. There is a third consideration

which, though from the present point of view subsidiary, is not without

bearing on our conception of chastity among savages: the importance, even

sacredness, of procreation is much more generally recognized by savage

than by civilized peoples, and also a certain symbolic significance is

frequently attached to human procreation as related to natural

fruitfulness generally; so that a primitive sexual orgy, instead of being

a mere manifestation of licentiousness, may have a ritual significance, as

a magical means of evoking the fruitfulness of fields and herds.[183]

When a savage practises extraconjugal sexual intercourse, the act is

frequently not, as it has come to be conventionally regarded in

civilization, an immorality or at least an illegitimate indulgence; it is

a useful and entirely justifiable act, producing definite benefits,

conducing alike to cosmic order and social order, although these benefits

are not always such as we in civilization believe to be caused by the act.

Thus, speaking of the northern tribes of central Australia, Spencer and

Gillen remark: "It is very usual amongst all of the tribes to allow

considerable license during the performance of certain of their ceremonies

when a large number of natives, some of them coming often from distant

parts, are gathered together--in fact, on such occasions all of the

ordinary marital rules seem to be more or less set aside for the time

being. Each day, in some tribes, one or more women are told off whose duty

it is to attend at the corrobboree grounds,--sometimes only during the

day, sometimes at night,--and all of the men, except those who are

fathers, elder and younger brothers, and sons, have access to them.... The

idea is that the sexual intercourse assists in some way in the proper

performance of the ceremony, causing everything to work smoothly and

preventing the decorations from falling off."[184]

It is largely this sacred character of sexual intercourse--the fact that

it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two

conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thought--which leads to

the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise.

Robertson Smith added an appendix to his _Religion of the Semites_ on

"Taboo on the Intercourse of the Sexes."[185] Westermarck brought together

evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to

the chastity of savages.[186] Frazer has very luminously expounded the

whole primitive conception of sexual intercourse, and showed how it

affected chastity.[187] Warriors must often be chaste; the men who go on

any hunting or other expedition require to be chaste to be successful; the

women left behind must be strictly chaste; sometimes even the whole of the

people left behind, and for long periods, must be chaste in order to

insure the success of the expedition. Hubert and Maus touched on the same

point in their elaborate essay on sacrifice, pointing out how frequently

sexual relationships are prohibited on the occasion of any ceremony

whatever.[188] Crawley, in elaborating the primitive conception of taboo,

has dealt fully with ritual and traditional influences making for chastity

among savages. He brings forward, for instance, a number of cases, from

various parts of the world, in which intercourse has to be delayed for

days, weeks, even months, after marriage. He considers that the sexual

continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the

enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the sexes to each other

that, as he points out, even now sexual separation of the sexes commonly

occurs.[189]

There are thus a great number of constantly recurring occasions in savage

life when continence must be preserved, and when, it is firmly believed,

terrible risks would be incurred by its violation--during war, after

victory, after festivals, during mourning, on journeys, in hunting and

fishing, in a vast number of agricultural and industrial occupations.

It might fairly be argued that the facility with which the savage places

these checks on sexual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of

the sexual impulse. Evidence of another order which seems to point to the

undeveloped state of the sexual impulse among savages may be found in the

comparatively undeveloped condition of their sexual organs, a condition

not, indeed, by any means constant, but very frequently noted. As regards

women, it has in many parts of the world been observed to be the rule, and

the data which Ploss and Bartels have accumulated seem to me, on the

whole, to point clearly in this direction.[190]

At another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the

sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual

impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs

may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of

desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual

organs--disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic

representation--more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic

emotion.[191] And this is probably more marked in cases in which the

sexual instinct is constitutionally feeble. A lady who had no marked

sexual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such

matters, on inspecting her sexual parts in a mirror for the first time in

her life was shocked and disgusted at the sight. Certainly many women

could record a similar experience on being first approached by a man,

although artistic conventions present the male form with greater truth

than the female. Moreover,--and here is the significant point,--this

feeling is by no means restricted to the refined and cultured. "When

working at Michelangelo," wrote a correspondent from Italy, "my upper

gondolier used to see photographs and statuettes of all that man's works.

Stopping one day before the Night and Dawn of S. Lorenzo, sprawling naked

women, he exclaimed: 'How hideous they are!' I pressed him to explain

himself. He went on: 'The ugliest man naked is handsomer than the finest

woman naked. Women have crooked legs, and their sexual organs stink. I

only once saw a naked woman. It was in a brothel, when I was 18. The sight

of her "natura" made me go out and vomit into the canal. You know I have

been twice married, but I never saw either of my wives without clothing.'

Of very rank cheese he said one day: 'Puzza come la natura d'una donna.'"

This man, my correspondent added, was entirely normal and robust, but

seemed to regard sexual congress as a mere evacuation, the sexual instinct

apparently not being strong.

It seems possible that, if the sexual impulse had no existence, all men

would regard women with this _horror feminæ_. As things are, however, at

all events in civilization, sexual emotions begin to develop even earlier,

usually, than acquaintance with the organs of the other sex begins; so

that this disgust is inhibited. If, however, among savages the sexual

impulse is habitually weak, and only aroused to strength under the impetus

of powerful stimuli, often acting periodically, then we should expect the

_horror_ to be a factor of considerable importance.

The weakness of the physical sexual impulse among savages is reflected in

the psychic sphere. Many writers have pointed out that love plays but a

small part in their lives. They practise few endearments; they often only

kiss children (Westermarck notes that sexual love is far less strong than

parental love); love-poems are among some primitive peoples few (mostly

originating with the women), and their literature often gives little or no

attention to passion.[192] Affection and devotion are, however, often

strong, especially in savage women.

It is not surprising that jealousy should often, though not by any means

invariably, be absent, both among men and among women. Among savages this

is doubtless a proof of the weakness of the sexual impulse. Spencer and

Gillen note the comparative absence of jealousy in men among the Central

Australian tribes they studied.[193] Negresses, it is said by a French

army surgeon in his _Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, do not know what

jealousy is, and the first wife will even borrow money to buy the second

wife. Among a much higher race, the women in a Korean household, it is

said, live together happily, as an almost invariable rule, though it

appears that this was not always the case among a polygamous people of

European race, the Mormons.

The tendency of the sexual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal

manifestations, I do not discuss here, as I have dealt with it in the

first volume of these _Studies_.[194] It has, however, a very important

bearing on this subject. Periodicity of sexual manifestations is, indeed,

less absolute in primitive man than in most animals, but it is still very

often quite clearly marked. It is largely the occurrence of these violent

occasional outbursts of the sexual instinct--during which the organic

impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no

longer necessary--that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of

the impulse in savages.[195]