SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION.
I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._--Origin of modesty--Absence of
modesty in the savage--Loan of wives in Melanesia and among the
Bochimans--Absence of modesty in the Esquimaux, the Redskins, and
Polynesians--Right of the husband in Polynesia--Loan or barter of
wives--Erotic training of little girls in Polynesia--Society of the
Areoïs--Man in a state of nature--Unnatural love in New Caledonia,
in the two Americas, among Asiatic peoples, and in Greco-Roman
antiquity--The _erastes_ of Crete.
II. _Some Strange Forms of Marriage._--Coarseness of primitive
marriage--Horror of incest artificially created--Incest among
various peoples--Artificial defloration--Experimental marriages
among the Redskins, the Otomies, the Sonthals, the Tartars, and
in Ceylon--Temporary marriages among the Jews of Morocco and the
Tapyres--Free unions--Partial marriages and marriages for a term
among the Arabs--Marriage and the right of the strongest in savage
countries--Savage coarseness and civilised depravity.
I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._
In a former work[112] I have attempted to trace the genesis of a
sentiment peculiar to humanity--the sentiment of modesty. It would be
inexpedient here to treat the subject afresh in detail, but I will
recall the conclusions arrived at by that investigation. Modesty is
_par excellence_ a human sentiment, and is totally unknown to the
animals, although the procreative need inspires them with desires and
passions essentially identical with what in man we call love; it is
therefore certainly an artificial sentiment, and comparative ethnology
proves that it must have resulted from the enforced chastity imposed
on women under the most terrible penalties. In reality, primitive
marriage hardly merits the name; it is simply the taking possession
of one or several women by one man, who holds them by the same title
as all other property, and who treats adultery, when unauthorised by
himself, strictly as robbery. This ferocious restraint has resulted,
especially in the woman, in the formation of particular mental
impressions, corresponding psychically to the sentiment of modesty, and
inducing a certain sexual reserve which has become instinctive. But
this moral inhibition is still very weak in races of low development,
and, taking the whole human species, it exists chiefly in the woman;
it is a sexual peculiarity of character, and is of relatively recent
origin.
If we keep well in mind these preliminary considerations, we shall
not be much surprised at the forms of sexual association which we
are about to consider, although they are singularly repulsive to our
ideas of morality. We shall be still less surprised at them when we
are acquainted with the extreme licence permitted in many savage and
barbarous societies.
There is nothing more difficult for us to realise, civilised as we
are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation as
regards what we call _par excellence_ “morality.” It is not indecency;
it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably
quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need,
essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral
and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous
restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we cannot
help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still
imperfect conscience of the primitive man. On this point facts are
eloquent and abundant; I will quote a few of them.
In Tasmania it way thought an honour for women to prostitute themselves
to Europeans, who were ennobled in the eyes of the natives by the
prestige of their superiority.[113] The Australians, who were a little
more developed than the Tasmanians, willingly lent or hired out
their women--at least those that were their own property--to their
friends.[114]
The women were not less bestial than their males. They often engaged,
says Peltier, in furious combats, fighting with spears, for the
possession of a man. This is a peculiar case, and is an entirely human
instance of that _law of battle_ of which I have spoken in regard to
animals. Like the females of animals also the Australian women adored
strength, and when the men of their own horde were beaten in battle
they sometimes went over to the camp of the conquerors of their own
accord (Mitchell).[115] In these facts there is nothing exceptional,
and we may change the country without changing the customs. Thus the
Bochimans treat their wives as simple domestic animals, and offer them
willingly to strangers,[116] as do also the Australians.
In the Andaman Islands and elsewhere the women give themselves up
before marriage--that is, before becoming the property of one man--to
the most unbridled prostitution,[117] and yet the most innocent,
according to the morality of the country.
Among the Esquimaux the laxity of sexual customs, both for men and
women, is extreme. The husbands feel no shame in selling, or rather
hiring out, their wives; and the latter, as soon as their proprietors
are gone to the chase or to fish, abandon themselves to an uncontrolled
debauch, taking care to post their children outside the hut to warn
them in case of the unexpected return of the master.[118] Sexual
morality does not yet exist among the Esquimaux, and an Aleout said
quite simply to the missionary Langsdorff, “When my people couple they
do it like the sea-otters.”[119] In fact, if the cold permitted, the
Esquimaux would not be any more clothed than the sea-otters. In their
common houses, where two or three hundred people are crowded together,
and a high degree of temperature is maintained, they throw off their
clothing without distinction of age or sex.[120] They go further
still, and, like many savages, practise what is called Socratic love
openly and without shame. Thus, among the Inoits, well-favoured boys
are brought up with care, dressed as girls, and sold at a high price
towards the age of fifteen,[121] without any harm being seen in it.
The Redskins of the extreme north are scarcely more modest than the
Esquimaux. Carver relates that among the Nandowessics a woman was
particularly honoured because she had first entertained and then
treated as husbands the forty chief warriors of the tribe.[122]
But it is especially in Polynesia that the naïve immodesty of primitive
peoples was displayed with the greatest indifference to the opinions of
others.
“The principal difficulty of the missionaries in the Sandwich Isles,”
says M. de Varigny, “consisted in teaching the women chastity; they
were ignorant of the name and of the thing. Adultery, incest, and
fornication were common things, approved by public opinion, and even
consecrated by religion.”[123]
These customs are of ancient date in Polynesia. The travellers of
last century had observed them still the same. The Tahitian women,
if they were free, openly bartered their persons, and the fathers,
mothers, brothers, and sometimes the husbands, often brought them to
the European sailors and hired them out, after a lively bargaining, for
nails, red feathers, etc.[124]
At Noukahiva “the young girls of the island,” says Porter, “are the
wives of all those who can buy their favours, and a beautiful daughter
is considered by her parents as a means of procuring them for a time
riches and plenty. However, when they are older, they form more lasting
connections, and seem then as firmly attached to their husbands as
women of any other country.”[125]
In the same archipelago, the surgeon Roblet says that the French
sailors were frequently offered girls of eight years; “and,” he adds,
“they were not virgins.”[126]
“Virtue,” says Porter, “such as we understand it, was unknown among
them, and they attached no shame to acts which they regarded not only
as natural, but as an inoffensive amusement. Many parents thought
themselves honoured by the preference given to their daughters, and
showed their satisfaction by presents of pigs and fruits, which, on
their part, was an extreme of munificence.”[127]
In Polynesia public opinion forbade married women to yield themselves
without the authorisation of their owners, and this was almost the only
strict rule of morals existing; but the husbands trafficked in their
wives without scruple. “Tawee,” says Porter, “was one of the handsomest
men of the island, and loved to adorn his person; a bit of red stuff,
some morsels of glass, or a whale’s tooth, had irresistible charms
for him, and in order to procure these objects he would offer any of
the most precious things he possessed. Thus, though his wife was of
remarkable beauty, and he was the tenderest of husbands, Tawee offered
his wife more than once for a necklace.”[128]
To offer a woman to a visitor to whom one would do honour was, for that
matter, a simple act of courtesy in Polynesia, and the same courtesy
prescribed the immediate acceptance of the offer, _coram populo_
(Bougainville). It was frequently his own wife that the husband thus
gave up to his guest, and the case of Porter, which I have just quoted,
had nothing exceptional in it. A similar thing happened to Captain
Beechey,[129] and to many other travellers. This conjugal liberality
was one of the customs of the country; the friend, or _tayo_, acquired
conjugal rights over the wife or wives of his friend. Between brothers
and relations the exchange of wives was frequent,[130] to such a degree
that at Toubouai, etc., Moerenhout tells us the women were nearly held
in common, and that in the Marquesas a woman had sometimes as many as
twenty lovers.[131]
For the Polynesians the pleasures of sensual love were the chief
business of life; they neither saw evil nor practised restraint in
them. The women were trained with a view to amorous sports;[132] they
were fattened on a soup of bread fruit, and from earliest infancy
taught by their mothers to dance the _timorodie_, a very lewd dance,
accompanied by appropriate words.[133] The conversation also was in
keeping with the morals. “One thing which particularly struck me,” says
Moerenhout, “as soon as I began to understand their language, was the
extreme licence in conversation--a licence pushed to the limit of most
shameless cynicism, and which is the same even with the women; for
these people think and talk of nothing but sensual pleasure, and speak
openly of everything, having no idea of the euphemisms of our civilised
societies, where we use double meanings and veiled words, or terms
that are permitted in mentioning things which would appear revolting
and cause scandal if plainly expressed; but these islanders could not
understand this, and the missionaries have never been able to make them
do so.”[134]
Lastly, the existence of the religious and aristocratic society of
the _Areoïs_, in Tahiti and other archipelagoes, finishes the picture
of the mental condition of the Polynesians as regards morals. Without
describing afresh this curious association, I shall only remind
my readers that it had for its object an unrestrained and public
abandonment to amorous pleasures, and that, for this reason, the
community of women and the obligation of infanticide were decreed.
During the last century sentimentality invaded the brains of thinkers
and writers like an epidemic, and gave rise to the belief that
primitive man, or “man in a state of nature,” as the phrase went,
was the model of all virtues. But we must discount much of this.
As we might naturally expect, the uncultivated man is a mammal of
the grossest kind. We have already seen that his sexual morality is
extremely loose, and necessarily so; we are, however, surprised to find
him addicted to certain aberrations from nature which the chroniclers
of the Greco-Latin world have accustomed us to regard as the result
of a refined and depraved civilisation,--an opinion which is quite
erroneous, as comparative ethnography irrefutably proves. Nothing is
more common among primitive races than what is called Socratic love,
and on this point I will briefly quote a few facts, without pausing
longer on them than my subject requires. In the vast sociological
investigation which I am undertaking, moral bestiality must not
discourage scientific analysis any more than putrefaction arrests the
scalpel of the anatomist; it does not therefore follow that we take
delight in it.
As a matter of fact, many human races have practised, from the first,
vices contrary to nature. The Kanaks of New Caledonia frequently
assemble at night in a cabin to give themselves up to this kind of
debauchery.[135] The New Zealanders practised it even among their
women.[136] It was also a widely-spread custom throughout Polynesia,
and even a special deity presided over it. In the whole of America,
from north to south, similar customs have existed or still exist. We
have previously seen that the Esquimaux reared young boys for this
purpose. The Southern Californians did the same, and the Spanish
missionaries, on their arrival in the country, found men dressed as
women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth,
and often publicly married to the chiefs.[137] Nero was evidently a
mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved
amongst the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of
Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, and the ancient Illinois, etc.[138]
The two chief forms of sexual excess of which I have been speaking,
unnatural vice and the debauchery of girls or free women, are habitual
in savage countries; and later, when civilisation and morality have
evolved, the same inveterate inclinations still persist for a long
time, in spite of public opinion and even of legal repression.
The Incas, according to the chronicler Garcilaso, were merciless in
regard to these sexual aberrations, and the Mexican law was equally
severe, but all without much effect, if we may believe the accounts of
Garcilaso himself, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, etc. I have elsewhere related
how the ancient legislations of the great Asiatic states repressed
these base aberrations of the procreative sense, and nevertheless,
at the present day, the Arabs frequently give way to them, even in
the holy Mosque at Mecca;[139] and other Eastern peoples, Hindoos,
Persians, and Chinese, are also very imperfectly reformed on this point.
When we remember that morality is essentially relative, and that
ancestral impressions are extremely tenacious in the human brain,
we shall not be much surprised to see these low tendencies persist
as survivals in the midst of civilisations already far advanced.
Nevertheless, the theoretic morality of all the great nations of the
East has for centuries condemned these repugnant excesses, which our
European ancestors, both Celts and Teutons, have early reproved and
repressed. It is all the more singular to find the most intelligent
race of antiquity, the ancient Greeks, practising the greatest
tolerance on this subject, so much so that the names of Socrates and
Plato, those fathers of ethereal spiritualism, are attached to amours
the mere thought of which now excites disgust in a civilised European.
A very slight acquaintance with Greco-Roman literature furnishes
abundant information on this matter. I have no need, therefore, to
dwell on it, but I must quote a curious passage of Strabo, from
which we learn that the ancient Cretans associated with so-called
Socratic amours the ceremonial of marriage by capture, of which I
shall soon have to speak. This strange passage is as follows:--“It
is not by persuasion, but by capture, that they obtain possession
of the beloved object. Three days or more in advance the _erastes_
apprises the friends of the young boy of his project of abduction.
It would be considered the greatest disgrace for them to conceal the
child, or prevent him from passing by the road indicated. By so doing
they would appear to confess that he did not merit the favours of
such a distinguished _erastes_. What do they do therefore? They meet
together, and if the ravisher is equal or superior in rank and all
other respects to the family of the child, they are content in their
pursuit to comply with the idea of the law, and to make a semblance of
attack only, allowing the child to be carried off, and even testifying
their satisfaction; but if, on the contrary, the ravisher should be of
greatly inferior rank, they invariably rescue the child from his hands.
In any case the pursuit comes to an end when the child has crossed the
threshold of the _andrion_ of his captor.” We may doubtless presume,
from this passage, that the ancient Cretans were no longer in the state
of bestial coarseness of the New Caledonians. With them the capture was
a symbol or comedy. It was a mark of esteem, paid less to the beauty of
the child than to his valour and propriety of manners. In fact, the boy
had the legal right to revenge himself, if he had suffered any violence
in his capture; and in restoring him to liberty his ravisher loaded
him with presents, some of which were obligatory and legal, namely,
a warrior’s cloak, an ox, and a goblet; it was a kind of initiation
in virility, and it was considered a disgrace for a young boy not to
obtain an _erastes_.[140]
But even if we admit that all the ceremonial of this singular platonic
marriage among the Cretans was perfectly innocent, it arose, none the
less, from a moral laxity, plainly showing that ancient morals were
gross in the extreme.
I here conclude my enumeration. Short as it has been, for I have
purposely limited my facts to a small number, it is sufficient to
prove that for an immense period man has been a very coarse animal. We
may, therefore, expect to find him adapting without scruple forms of
marriage or sexual association quite unusual among Europeans, and which
it now remains for me to describe briefly.
II. _Some Strange Forms of Marriage._
In savage societies, where no delicacy yet exists in regard to sexual
union, and where, on the other hand, woman is strictly assimilated
to things and domestic animals, marriage, or what we please to call
so, is an affair of small importance, which is regulated according
to individual caprice. More generally the parents, and sometimes the
friends or the chiefs, pair the young people as they think fit, and
quite naturally they have little regard for monogamic marriage, to
the strictness of which, even in civilised societies, man finds it so
difficult to bend.
The young people, on their part, have hardly any individual
preferences. The young boys of the Redskins, as Lafitau tells us, never
even troubled to see, before marriage, the wife chosen for them by
their parents.[141] In Bargo, according to R. and J. Lander, they marry
with perfect indifference; “a man does not care any more about choosing
a wife than about which ear of corn he shall pick.” There is never any
question as to the sentiments of the contracting parties.[142]
It is quite certain, also, that during the first ages of the evolution
of societies, the ties of kinship, even those we are accustomed to
regard as sacred, and respect for which seems to be incarnate in us,
have not been any impediment to sexual unions. Like the sentiment of
modesty, the horror of incest has only been engraved on the human
conscience with great difficulty and by long culture. Scruples of
this kind are unknown to the animal, and before they could arise in
the human brain it was first necessary that the family should be
constituted, and then that, from some motive or other, the custom of
exogamous marriage should be adopted. Now, as we shall see later, the
family has at first been matriarchal or rather maternal, and with such
a familial system, the children have no legal father; the prohibitions
relative to incest could therefore, at the most, only exist in regard
to the female line, and, in fact, we find it to be so in many countries
where this system of filiation prevails. But primitive morals, existing
before the formation of a morality condemning incest, have left many
traces in the past, and even in the present. “The Chippeways,” says
Hearne, “frequently cohabit with their mother, and oftener still with
their sisters and daughters.”[143] And yet he is speaking here of
Redskins, a people reputed to be fanatical on the matter of exogamy.
Langsdorff says the same of the Kadiaks, who unite indiscriminately,
brothers with sisters, and parents with children.[144] It is well
known, besides, that in the matter of sexual unions no race has fewer
prejudices than the Esquimaux. The Coucous of Chili, and the Caribs
also, willingly married at the same time a mother and daughter. With
the Karens, too, of Tenasserim, marriages between brother and sister,
or father and daughter, are frequent enough, even in our own day.[145]
But these unions, though incestuous for us, have not been practised
amongst savages and inferior races only. According to Strabo, the
ancient Irish married, without distinction, their mothers and
sisters.[146]
We are told by Justin and Tertullian[147] that the Parthians and
Persians married their own mothers without scruple. In ancient Persia,
religion went so far even as to sanctify the union of a son with his
mother.[148] Priscus relates that these marriages were also permitted
among the Tartars and Scythians, and it is reported, too, that Attila
married his daughter Esca.[149]
Whether from a survival of ancient morals, or the care to preserve
purity of race, conjugal unions between brother and sister were
authorised, or even prescribed, in various countries, for the royal
families. The kings of ancient Egypt were obliged to marry their
sisters, and Cleopatra thus became the wife of her brother Ptolemy
Dionysius. The Incas of Peru were subject to a similar law; and at Siam
also, when the traveller La Loubère visited it, the king had married
his sister.[150] But I shall have to return to the subject of marriage
between relations in treating of the endogamic _régime_ which has been,
or is, in force among many peoples.
These incestuous marriages astonish us, and certain of them are even
revolting to our ideas, as, for example, the union of the mother with
the son. Another custom will probably surprise, if not shock us quite
as much. I allude to experimental marriages, which are far from being
rare. They will appear, however, less singular, if we remember that in
societies of low order little value is set on the chastity of young
girls; virginal purity is not at all prized, and there are even some
peoples, as the Saccalaves of Madagascar,[151] for instance, and also
certain indigenous peoples of India,[152] among whom it is regarded as
a duty for the mothers themselves to deflower their daughters before
marrying them.
With such morals prevailing, experimental marriages seem natural
enough. De Champlain, an ancient French traveller in North America,
relates that the Redskins of Canada always lived a few days together,
and then quitted each other if the trial had not been satisfactory to
either of them.[153]
A Spanish chronicler, Herrara, reports that the Otomies of Mexico spent
a night of trial with the woman that they desired to marry; they could
quit her afterwards, but only on condition of not retaining her during
the following day.[154]
Among the Sonthals also, an aboriginal tribe of India, whose marriages
are celebrated simultaneously once a year, the candidates for marriage
must first live six days together, and it is only after this trial
that it is lawful for them to marry.[155] With certain Tartar tribes
of Russia in Europe and of Siberia there existed an institution of
experimental marriages lasting for a year, if the woman did not become
a mother during that period.[156] In the island of Ceylon, according to
Davy, there are also provisional marriages, confirmed or annulled at
the end of a fortnight.[157]
Among the Jews in Morocco the Rabbis consecrate temporary marriages,
for three or six months, according to agreement. The man only engages
to acknowledge the child if needful, and to make a certain donation to
the mother.[158]
Strabo tells us of an analogous custom prevailing in antiquity among
the Tapyres (Parthians), according to which a woman, after having
had two or three children by a man, was forced by law to change her
husband.[159] This is almost exactly what Marshal Saxe demanded for
Frenchwomen in the last century.
We must not confound these experimental marriages, which are regulated,
and in some sort legal, with free and easily cancelled unions still
more common, as, for example, those of the Nouka-Hivians, that are
broken at will, provided there are no children;[160] those of the
Hottentots;[161] those of the Abyssinians, who marry, part, and
re-marry at will.[162] These last unions, founded merely on individual
caprice, have nothing extraordinary about them, and we know that they
are not rare in civilised countries.
Much more curious, from a point of view of sexual and conjugal
morality, are the partial marriages, which only bind the parties for
certain days of the week. This is a rare kind of marriage that seems
improbable to us, yet it has been proved to have existed among the
Hassinyehs of the White Nile, of Arab or perhaps Berber race.
By an agreement, which is sharply discussed beforehand, the Hassinyeh
woman engages to be a faithful wife for a fixed number of days in the
week, generally three or four, but this is in proportion to the number
of heads of cattle given to the parents by the bridegroom as the price
of their daughter, and it is the mother herself who makes the bargain.
Naturally, on the days that are not reserved the woman is free, and she
has a right to use her liberty as she pleases.[163]
These strange customs amongst the Arabs must surely date from old
pre-Islamite ages, and we may class them with other antique customs,
as, for example, marriage for a term, called _mot’a_ marriage, which
was in use with the Arabs until the time of Mahomet, and which
doubtless they imported later into Persia, where it exists in our own
day. And again, in the kingdom of Omân, in the fourteenth century, the
Sultan could still grant to a woman, indeed to any woman he pleased,
the permission to have lovers according to her fancy, and her relations
had no right to interfere.[164]
The partial marriage of the Hassinyeh Arabs is therefore not so
surprising as it seems at first sight when isolated from other
practices of the same kind. And it must be confessed that, immoral as
it may appear to us, it is superior to the other modes of primitive
conjugal association in use among the greater number of savage peoples.
Doubtless it denotes an extreme of moral grossness, but at the same
time it shows a certain respect for feminine independence, contrasting
strongly with the animal subjection imposed on women in the greater
number of societies of little or no civilisation. The situation of the
woman who is owned and treated as a simple domestic animal, hired out
or lent to strangers or to friends, according to the caprice of her
master, but not allowed, at the peril of her life, to be unfaithful to
her owner without his leave, is surely far more abject still.
I shall not dwell any more on these mere sketches of marriage, free
and transient unions broken as soon as made, experimental marriages,
three-quarter marriages, and marriages for a term, all of which show
the very slight importance attached to sexual union by man in a low
stage of development. And yet we must not refuse the name of marriage
to these ephemeral and incomplete unions, since they are arranged by
means of serious contracts which have been well discussed beforehand,
and by agreements entered into at least between the husband and the
relatives of the wife. The men of the horde or tribe do not, however,
profess a very strict respect for these marriages; the husband is often
uneasy in the enjoyment of his feminine property, and although legally
obtained, he must always be ready to defend it.
Among the Bochimans, says Liechtenstein, with whom marriage is reduced
to its most simple expression, “the strongest man often carries off the
wife of the weakest,” because it is the proper thing for him to do,
since he is called “the lion.”
In fact, these abuses of strength exist, more or less, in all countries
and all races; but among the Redskins of America and the Esquimaux it
seems that public opinion ratifies them, and that might has morally
become right.
“When a Toski,” says Hooper, “desires the wife of another man, he
simply fights with her husband.”
“A very ancient custom,” says Hearne, “obliges the men to wrestle for
any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest party
always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter
and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger
man thinks worth his notice. This custom prevails throughout all the
tribes.”[165]
In the same way, among the Copper and Chippeway Indians woman is a
property which is little respected, and which the strong may always
take from the weak.[166]
Richardson also says that among the Redskins every man has the right
to challenge another to fight, and if he is victor, to carry off his
wife.[167]
The same customs prevail among the Indians of South America--at least
among certain of them. Thus Azara relates that the Guanas never marry
before they are over twenty, for earlier than this they would be beaten
by their rivals.[168]
It has been attempted to show that these conflicts are the equivalent
of what is called in regard to animals “the law of battle,” but the
comparison is not exact, for animals seem in this respect much more
delicate than men. If they fight it is before pairing, and besides, as
we have seen, their combats are often courteous, like the tournaments
of our ancestors; frequently, too, the object of these assaults is
much less to capture the female than to seduce her by displaying
before her eyes the qualities with which they are endowed--courage,
force, address, and beauty. On her part, the female for whom they are
competing is so little alarmed at their violence that, in general, she
tranquilly looks on at the duels, and afterwards gives herself, one
may say, freely to the victor. With certain species of birds a lyric
tourney is substituted for the fight, and so ardently do the birds
engage in it that a competitor will often die of exhaustion.
Lastly, when the tourney is over, the couples paired, and the marriage
concluded, all rivalry ceases, the newly-mated birds isolate themselves
more or less, and devote all their energies to the production of a
family. Now these are delicate refinements unknown to primitive man,
whose rivalries on the subject of the possession of women resemble far
more the struggles of the old males with the young in the hordes of the
gorillas or chimpanzees. We are forced to acknowledge that the sexual
morality of primitive man does not much differ from that of anthropoid
apes, and it is quite a stranger to the æsthetic and poetic refinements
of certain birds.
I here end my short inquiry into the morals of primitive man and the
eccentric modes of conjugal union which have preceded the institution
of a more durable, exclusive, and solemn marriage.
We are filled with astonishment when we find such complete animal
laxity in our undeveloped ancestors, and we can hardly understand the
total absence of scruples which are now profoundly incarnate in us.
Those anthropologists who insist on making man a being apart in the
universe shut their eyes to these gross aberrations. Evolutionists are
not so timid, and do not fear to face the truth.
If, as it is impossible to deny, man is subject to the laws of
evolution like all other beings, we are forced to admit that he
must have passed through very inferior phases of physical and moral
development. _Homo sapiens_ surely descends from an ancient pithecoid
ancestor, and this original blot has necessarily been a drawback to his
moral evolution.
But here it is important to make a distinction. The resemblance
between the moral coarseness of the savage and the depravation of the
civilised man is quite superficial. Who thinks of being shocked at the
morals of animals? Now those of primitive man are quite as innocent,
and the brutality of the savage has nothing in common with the moral
retrogression of the civilised man struck with decay.
How unlike is the Aleout, imitating the sea-otter, without thinking
any evil, to the European degraded by the vices of our civilisation!
For the latter the future is closed; there are some declivities that
can never be remounted. The posterity of the savage, on the contrary,
may, with the aid of time and culture, attain to great moral elevation,
for there are vital forces within him which are fresh and intact. The
primitive man is still young, and he possesses many latent energies
susceptible of development. In short, the savage is a child, while the
civilised man, whose moral nature is corrupt, presents to us rather the
picture of decrepid old age.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] _L’Évolution de la Morale._
[113] Wake, vol. i. p. 77.
[114] _Id._ vol. i. p. 71.
[115] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 213.
[116] Wake, vol. i. p. 205.
[117] Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 68.
[118] Parry (_Third Voyage_), _Hist. Univ. des Voyages_, t. xl. p. 456.
[119] Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 96.
[120] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_, p. 70.
[121] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_, p. 80.
[122] Carver, _Travels in North America_, p. 245.
[123] De Varigny, _Quatorze ans aux îles Sandwich_, p. 159.
[124] Wallis, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 364.--Edwards,
_ibid._ t. xiii. p. 426.
[125] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 232.
[126] Marchand, _ibid._ t. xv. p. 406.--Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, t.
I^{er.} p. 313.
[127] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 229.
[128] _Id., loc. cit._, t. xvi. p. 245.
[129] _Ibid._ t. xix. p. 213.
[130] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 79.
[131] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 56.
[132] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 206.
[133] Cook, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. v. p. 268.
[134] Moerenhout, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 229.
[135] Bourgarel, _Des Races de l’Océanie française_, in _Mém. Soc.
d’Anthropologie_, t. ii. p. 390.--De Rochas, _Nouvelle Calédonie_, p.
235.
[136] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 167.--Marion, _Hist.
Univ. des Voy._, t. iii. p. 487.
[137] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 241.
[138] Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 408.
[139] Burckhardt, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxii. p. 155.
[140] Strabo, x. 21.
[141] Démeunier, _Esprit des Différents Peuples_, t. I^{er.} p. 153
[142] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxx. p. 94.
[143] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 218.
[144] Langsdorff, _Voyages_, t. ii. p. 64.
[145] Heber, quoted by H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 248.
[146] _Geography_, Lib. iv. par. 4.
[147] Justin, _Agatha_, vol. ii. Tertullian, in _Apologet._
[148] A. Hovelacque, _L’Avesta_, pp. 465, 466.
[149] Démeunier, t. I^{er.} pp. 465, 466.
[150] _Ibid._ p. 166.
[151] Noël, _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Paris, 1843.
[152] Collection Ramusio, t. I^{er.} libro di Odoardo Barbosa,
portoghese.
[153] Démeunier, t. I^{er.} p. 155.
[154] _Ibid._
[155] _The People of India_, vol. i. p. 2.
[156] _Travels through the Russian Empire and Tartary_, by D. J. Cook,
vol. i.
[157] Davy, _Ceylon_, p. 286.
[158] Dr. Decugis, _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Paris.
[159] Strabo, vol. ii. p. 514.
[160] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 323.
[161] Levaillant, _ibid_. t. xxi. p. 164.
[162] Bruce, _Travels_, vol. ix. p. 187; vol. v. p. 1.
[163] Ausland, Jan. 1867, p. 114.
[164] Ibn Batûta, vol. ii. p. 230 (quoted by R. Smith in _Kinship and
Marriage in Early Arabia_).
[165] Hearne, _A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort_, p. 104 (1796).
[166] Franklin, _Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea_, vol. viii. p.
43.
[167] Richardson, _Boat Journey_, vol. ii. p. 21.
[168] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 614.