WILES OF AN ORIENTAL GIRL
But is the German field-marshal quite just to the Turk? I have before me a passage which seems to indicate that these Orientals do know a thing or two about the "rigmarole of love-making." It is cited by Kremer[121] from the Kitâb almowaschâ, a book treating of social matters in Baghdad. Its author devotes a special chapter to the dangers lurking in female singers and musical slaves, in the course of which he says:
"If one of these girls meets a rich young man, she sets about ensnaring him, makes eyes at him, invites him with gestures, sings for him ... drinks the wine he left in his cup, throws kisses with her hands, till she has the poor fellow in her net and he is enamoured. ... Then she sends messages to him and continues her crafty arts, lets him understand that she is losing sleep for love of him, is pining for him; maybe she sends him a ring, or a lock of her hair, a paring of her nails, a splinter from her lute, or part of her toothbrush, or a piece of fragrant gum (chewed by her) as a substitute for a kiss, or a note written and folded with her own hands and tied with a string from her lute, with a tearstain on it; and finally sealed with Ghâlija, her ring, on which some appropriate words are carved."
Having captured her victim, she makes him give her valuable presents till his purse is empty, whereupon she discards him.
Was Count Moltke, then, wrong? Have we here, after all, the sentimental symptoms of romantic love? Let us apply the tests provided by our analysis of love--tests as reliable as those which chemists use to analyze fluids or gases. Did the Baghdad music-girl prefer that man to all other individuals? Did she want to monopolize him jealously? Oh, no! any man, however old and ugly, would have suited her, provided he had plenty of money. Was she coy toward him? Perhaps; but not from a feeling of modesty and timidity inspired by love, but to make him more ardent and ready to pay. Was she proud of his love? She thought him a fool. Were her feelings toward him chaste and pure? As chaste and pure as his. Did she sympathize with his pleasures and pains? She dismissed him as soon as his purse was empty, and looked about for another victim. Were his presents the result of gallant impulses to please her, or merely advance payment for favors expected? Would he have sacrificed his life to save her any more than she would hers to save him? Did he respect her as an immaculate superior being, adore her as an angel from above--or look on her as an inferior, a slave in rank, a slave to passion?
The obvious moral of this immoral episode is that it is not permissible to infer the existence of anything higher than sensual love from the mere fact that certain romantic tricks are associated with the amorous dalliance of Orientals, or Greeks and Romans. Drinking from the same cup, throwing kisses, sending locks of hair or tear-stained letters, adjusting a foot-stool, or fanning a heated brow, are no doubt romantic incidents, but they are no proof of romantic feeling for the reason that they are frequently associated with the most heartless and mercenary sensuality. The coquetry of the Baghdad girl is romantic, but there is no sentiment in it. Yet--and here we reach the most important aspect of that episode--there is an affectation of sentiment in that sending of locks, notes, and splinters from her lute; and this affectation of sentiment is designated by the word sentimentality. In the history of love sentimentality precedes sentiment; and for a proper understanding of the history and psychology of love it is as important to distinguish sentimentality from sentiment as it is to differentiate love from lust.
When Lowell wrote, "Let us be thankful that in every man's life there is a holiday of romance, an illumination of the senses by the soul, that makes him a poet while it lasts," he made a sad error in assuming that there is such a holiday of romance in every man's life; millions never enjoy it; but the words I have italicized--"an illumination of the senses by the soul"--are one of those flashes of inspiration which sometimes enable a poet to give a better description of a psychic process than professional philosophers have put forth.
From one point of view the love sentiment may be called an illumination of the senses by the soul. Elsewhere Lowell has given another admirable definition: "Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals of thought." Excellent, too, is J.F. Clarke's definition: "Sentiment is nothing but thought blended with feeling; thought made affectionate, sympathetic, moral." The Century Dictionary throws further light on this word:
"Sentiment has a peculiar place between thought and feeling, in which it also approaches the meaning of principle. It is more than that feeling which is sensation or emotion, by containing more of thought and by being more lofty, while it contains too much feeling to be merely thought, and it has large influence over the will; for example, the sentiment of patriotism; the sentiment of honor; the world is ruled by sentiment. The thought in a sentiment is often that of duty, and is penetrated and exalted by feeling."
Herbert Spencer sums up the matter concisely (Psych., II., 578) when he speaks of "that remoteness from sensations and appetites and from ideas of such sensations and appetites which is the common trait of the feelings we call sentiments."
It is hardly necessary to point out that in our Baghdad girl's love-affairs there is no "remoteness from sensations and appetites," no "illumination of the senses by the soul," no "intellectualized emotion," no "thought made affectionate, sympathetic, moral." But there is in it, as I have said, a touch of sentimentality. If sentiment is properly defined as "higher feeling," sentimentality is "affectation of fine or tender feeling or exquisite sensibility." Heartless coquetry, prudery, mock modesty, are bosom friends of sentimentality. While sentiment is the noblest thing in the world, sentimentality is its counterfeit, its caricature; there is something theatrical, operatic, painted-and-powdered about it; it differs from sentiment as astrology differs from astronomy, alchemy from chemistry, the sham from the real, hypocrisy from sincerity, artificial posing from natural grace, genuine affection from selfish attachment.
RARITY OF TRUE LOVE
Sentimentality, as I have said, precedes sentiment in the history of love, and it has been a special characteristic of certain periods, like that of the Alexandrian Greeks and their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's books (Psch. Sex., 9):
"Sentimental love runs the risk of degenerating into caricature, especially in cases where the sensual ingredient is weak.... Such love has a flat, saccharine tang. It is apt to become positively ludicrous, whereas in other cases the manifestations of this strongest of all feelings inspire in us sympathy, respect, awe, according to circumstances."
Steele speaks in The Lover (23, No. 5) of the extraordinary skill of a poet in making a loose people "attend to a Passion which they never, or that very faintly, felt in their own Bosoms." La Rochefoucauld wrote: "It is with true love as with ghosts; everybody speaks of it, but few have seen it." A writer in Science expressed his belief that romantic love, as described in my first book, could really be experienced only by men of genius. I think that this makes the circle too small; yet in these twelve years of additional observation I have come to the conclusion that even at this stage of civilization only a small proportion of men and women are able to experience full-fledged romantic love, which seems to require a special emotional or esthetic gift, like the talent for music. A few years ago I came across the following in the London Tidbits which echoes the sentiments of multitudes:
"Latour, who sent a pathetic complaint the other day that though he wished to do so he was unable to fall in love, has called forth a sympathetic response from a number of readers of both sexes. These ladies and gentlemen write to say that they also, like Latour, cannot understand how it is that they are not able to feel any experience of tender passion which they read about so much in novels, and hear about in actual life."
At the same time there are not a few men of genius, too, who never felt true love in their own hearts. Herder believed that Goethe was not capable of genuine love, and Grimm, too, thought that Goethe had never experienced a self-absorbing passion. Tolstoi must have been ever a stranger to genuine love, for to him it seems a degrading thing even in marriage. A suggestive and frank confession may be found in the literary memoirs of Goncourt.[122] At a small gathering of men of letters Goncourt remarked that hitherto love had not been studied scientifically in novels. Zola thereupon declared that love was not a specific emotion; that it does not affect persons so absolutely as the writers say; that the phenomena characterizing it are also found in friendship, in patriotism, and that the intensity of this emotion is due entirely to the anticipation of carnal enjoyment. Turgenieff objected to these views; in his opinion love is a sentiment which has a unique color of its own--a quality differentiating it from all other sentiments--eliminating the lover's own personality, as it were. The Russian novelist obviously had a conception of the purity of love, for Goncourt reports him as "speaking of his first love for a woman as a thing entirely spiritual, having nothing in common with materiality." And now follows Goncourt's confession:
"In all this, the thing to regret is that neither Flaubert ... nor Zola, nor myself, have ever been very seriously in love and that we are therefore unable to describe love. Turgenieff alone could have done that, but he lacks precisely the critical sense which we could have exercised in this matter had we been in love after his fashion."
The vast majority of the human race has not yet got beyond the sensual stage of amorous evolution, or realized the difference between sentimentality and sentiment. There is much food for thought in this sentence from Henry James's charming essay on France's most poetic writer--Théophile Gautier:
"It has seemed to me rather a painful exhibition of the prurience of the human mind that in most of the notices of the author's death (those at least published in England and America), this work alone [Mile. de Maupin] should have been selected as the critic's text."
Readers are interested only in emotions with which they are familiar by experience. Howells's refined love-scenes have often been sneered at by men who like raw whiskey but cannot appreciate the delicate bouquet of Chambertin. As Professor Ribot remarks: in the higher regions of science, art, religion, and morals there are emotions so subtle and elevated that
"not more than one individual in a hundred thousand or even in a million can experience them. The others are strangers to them, or do not know of their existence except vaguely, from what they hear about them. It is a promised land, which only the select can enter."
I believe that romantic love is a sentiment which more than one person in a million can experience, and more than one in a hundred thousand. How many more, I shall not venture to guess. All the others know love only as a sensual craving. To them "I love you" means "I long for you, covet you, am eager to enjoy you"; and this feeling is not love of another but self-love, more or less disguised--the kind of "love" which makes a young man shoot a girl who refuses him. The mediaeval writer Leon Hebraeus evidently knew of no other when he defined love as "a desire to enjoy that which is good"; nor Spinoza when he defined it as laetetia concomitante idea externae causae--a pleasure accompanied by the thought of its external cause.
MISTAKES REGARDING CONJUGAL LOVE
Having distinguished romantic or sentimental love from sentimentality on one side and sensuality on the other, it remains to show how it differs from conjugal affection.
HOW ROMANTIC LOVE IS METAMORPHOSED
On hearing the words "love letters," does anybody ever think of a man's letters to his wife? No more than of his letters to his mother. He may love both his wife and his mother dearly, but when he writes love letters he writes them to his sweetheart. Thus, public opinion and every-day literary usage clearly recognize the difference between romantic love and conjugal affection. Yet when I maintained in my first book that romantic love differs as widely from conjugal affection as maternal love differs from friendship; that romantic love is almost as modern as the telegraph, the railway, and the electric light; and that perhaps the main reasons why no one had anticipated me in an attempt to write a book to prove this, were that no distinction had heretofore been made between conjugal and romantic love, and that the apparent occurrence of noble examples of conjugal attachment among the ancient Greeks had obscured the issue--there was a chorus of dissenting voices. "The distinction drawn by him between romantic and conjugal love," wrote one critic, "seems more fanciful than real." "He will not succeed," wrote another, "in convincing anybody that romantic and conjugal love differ in kind instead of only in degree or place"; while a third even objected to my theory as "essentially immoral!"
Mr. W.D. Howells, on the other hand, accepted my distinction, and in a letter to me declared that he found conjugal affection an even more interesting field of study than romantic love. Why, indeed, should anyone be alarmed at the distinction I made? Is not a man's feeling toward his sweetheart different from his feeling toward his mother or sister? Why then should it be absurd or "immoral" to maintain that it differs from his feeling toward his wife? What I maintain is that romantic love disappears gradually, to be replaced, as a rule, by conjugal affection, which is sometimes a less intense, at other times a more intense, feeling than the emotions aroused during courtship. The process may be compared to a modulation in music, in which some of the tones in a chord are retained while others are displaced by new ones. Such modulations are delightful, and the new harmony may be as beautiful as the old. A visitor to Wordsworth's home wrote:
"I saw the old man walking in the garden with his wife. They were both quite old, and he was almost blind; but they seemed like sweethearts courting, they were so tender to each other and attentive."
A husband may be, and should be, quite as tender, as attentive, as gallant and self-sacrificing, as sympathetic, proud, and devoted as a lover; yet all his emotions will appear in a new orchestration, as it were. In the gallant attentions of a loving husband, the anxious eagerness to please is displaced by a pleasant sense of duty and gentlemanly courtesy. He still prefers his wife to all other women and wants a monopoly of her love; but this feeling has a proprietary tinge that was absent before. Jealousy, too, assumes a new aspect; it may, temporarily, bring back the uncertainty of courtship, but the emotion is colored by entirely different ideas: jealousy in a lover is a green-eyed monster gnawing merely at his hopes, and not, as in a husband, threatening to destroy his property and his family honor--which makes a great difference in the quality of the feeling and its manifestation. The wife, on her part, has no more use for coyness, but can indulge in the luxury of bestowing gallant attentions which before marriage would have seemed indelicate or forward, while after marriage they are a pleasant duty, rising in some cases to heroic self-sacrifice.
If even within the sphere of romantic love no two cases are exactly alike, how could love before marriage be the same as after marriage when so many new experiences, ideas, and associations come into play? Above all, the feelings relating to the children bring an entirely new group of tones into the complex harmony of affection. The intimacies of married life, the revelation of characteristics undiscovered before marriage, the deeper sympathy, the knowledge that theirs is "one glory an' one shame"--these and a hundred other domestic experiences make romantic love undergo a change into something that may be equally rich and strange but is certainly quite different. A wife's charms are different from a girl's and inspire a different kind of love. The husband loves
Those virtues which, before untried, The wife has added to the bride,
as Samuel Bishop rhymes it. In their predilection for maidens, poets, like novelists, have until recently ignored the wife too much. But Cowper sang:
What is there in the vale of life Half so delightful as a wife, When friendship, love and peace combine To stamp the marriage bond divine? The stream of pure and genuine love Derives its current from above; And earth a second Eden shows, Where'er the healing water flows.
Some of the specifically romantic ingredients of love, on the other hand--adoration, hyperbole, the mixed moods of hope and despair--do not normally enter into conjugal affection. No one would fail to see the absurdity of a husband's exclaiming
O that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek.
He may touch that cheek, and kiss it too--and that makes a tremendous difference in the tone and tension of his feelings. Unlike the lover, the husband does not think, feel, and speak in perpetual hyperboles. He does not use expressions like "beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical," or speak of
The cruel madness of love The honey of poisonous flowers.
There is no madness or cruelty in conjugal love: in its normal state it is all peace, contentment, happiness, while romantic love, in its normal state, is chiefly unrest, doubt, fear, anxiety, torture and anguish of heart--with alternating hours of frantic elation--until the Yes has been spoken.
The emotions of a husband are those of a mariner who has entered into the calm harbor of matrimony with his treasure safe and sound, while the romantic lover is as one who is still on the high seas of uncertainty, storm-tossed one moment, lifted sky-high on a wave of hope, the next in a dark abyss of despair. It is indeed lucky that conjugal affection does differ so widely from romantic love; such nervous tension, doubt, worry, and constant friction between hope and despair would, if continued after marriage, make life a burden to the most loving couples.
WHY SAVAGES VALUE WIVES
The notion that genuine romantic love does not undergo a metamorphosis in marriage is the first of five mistakes I have undertaken to correct in this chapter. The second is summed up in Westermarck's assertion (359-60) that it is
"impossible to believe that there ever was a time when conjugal affection was entirely wanting in the human race ... it seems, in its most primitive form, to have been as old as marriage itself. It must be a certain degree of affection that induces the male to defend the female during her period of pregnancy."
Now I concede that natural selection must have developed at an early period in the history of man, as in the lower animals, some kind of an attachment between male and females. A wife could not seek her daily food in the forest and at the same time defend herself and her helpless babe against wild beasts and human enemies. Hence natural selection favored those groups in which the males attached themselves to a particular female for a longer time than the breeding-season, defending her from enemies and giving her a share of their game. But from this admitted fact to the inference that it is "affection" that makes the husband defend his wife, there is a tremendous logical skip not warranted by the situation. Instead of making such an assumption offhand, the scientific method requires us to ask if there is not some other way of accounting for the facts more in accordance with the selfish disposition and habits of savages. The solution of the problem is easily found. A savage's wife is his property, which he has acquired by barter, service, fighting, or purchase, and which he would be a fool not to protect against injury or rivals. She is to him a source of utility, comfort, and pleasure, which is reason enough why he should not allow a lion to devour her or a rival to carry her off. She is his cook, his slave, his mule; she fetches wood and water, prepares the food, puts up the camp, and when it is time to move carries the tent and kitchen utensils, as well as her child to the next place. If his motive in protecting her against men and beasts were affection, he would not thus compel her to do all the work while he walks unburdened to the next camping-place.
Apart from these home comforts there are selfish reasons enough why savages should take the trouble to protect their wives and rear children. In Australia it is a universal custom to exchange a daughter for a new wife, discarding or neglecting the old one; and the habit of treating children as merchandise prevails in various other parts of the world. The gross utilitarianism of South African marriages is illustrated in Dr. Fritsch's remarks on the Ama-Zulus. "As these women too are slaves, there is not much to say about love, marriage, or conjugal life," he says. The husband pays for his wife, but expects her to repay him for his outlay by hard work and by bearing children whom he can sell. "If she fails to make herself thus useful, if she falls ill, becomes weak, or remains childless, he often sends her back to her father and demands restitution of the cattle he had paid for her;" and his demand has to be complied with. Lord Randolph Churchill (249) was informed by a native of Mashonaland that he had his eye on a girl whom he desired to marry, because "if he was lucky, his wife might have daughters whom he would be able to sell in exchange for goats." Samuel Baker writes in one of his books of African exploration (Ism., 341):
"Girls are always purchased if required as wives. It would be quite impossible to obtain a wife for love from any tribe that I have visited. 'Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of them' (daughters). A large family of girls is a source of wealth to the father, as he sells each daughter for twelve or fifteen cows to her suitor."
Of the Central African, Macdonald says (I., 141):
"The more wives he has the richer he is. It is his wives that maintain him. They do all his ploughing, milling, cooking, etc. They may be viewed as superior servants, who combine all the capacities of male servants and female servants in Britain--who do all his work and ask no wages."
We need not assume a problematic affection to explain why such a man marries.
But the savage's principal marriage motive is, of course, sensualism. If he wants to own a particular girl he must take care of her. If he tires of her it is easy enough to get rid of her or to make her a drudge pure and simple, while her successor enjoys his caresses. Speaking of Pennsylvania Indians, Buchanan remarks naïvely (II., 95) that "the wives are the true servants of their husbands; otherwise the men are very affectionate to them." On another page (102) he inadvertently explains what he means by this paradox: "the ancient women are used for cooks, barbers, and other services, the younger for dalliance." In other words, Buchanan makes the common mistake of applying the altruistic word affection to what is nothing more than selfish indulgence of the sensual appetite. So does Pajeken when he tells us in the Ausland about the "touching tenderness" of a Crow chief toward a fourteen-year-old girl whom he had just added to the number of his wives.
"While he was in the wigwam he did not leave her a moment. With his own hands he adorned her with chains, and strings of teeth and pearls, and he found a special pleasure in combing her black, soft, silken hair. He gambolled with her like a child and rocked her on his knees, telling her stories. Of his other wives he demanded the utmost respect in their treatment of his little one."
This reference to the other wives ought to have opened Pajeken's eyes as to the silliness of speaking of the "touching" tenderness of the Crow chief to his latest favorite. In a few years she was doomed to be discarded, like the others, in favor of a new victim of his carnal appetite. Affection is entirely out of the question in such cases.
The Malayans of Sumatra have, as Carl Bock tells us (314), a local custom allowing a wife to marry again if her faithless spouse has deserted her for three months:
"The early age at which marriage is contracted is an obstacle to any real affection between couples; for girls to be wives at fourteen is a common occurrence; indeed, that age may be put down as the average age of first marriage. The girls are then frequently good-looking, but hard work and the cares of maternity soon stamp their faces with the marks of age, and spoil their figures, and then the Malay husband forsakes his wife, if, indeed, he keeps her so long."
Marriage with these people is, as Bock adds, a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. His servant had married a "grass-widow" of three months' desertion. But
"before she had enjoyed her new title six weeks, a coolness sprang up between her and her husband. I inquired the reason, and she naïvely confessed that her husband had no more rupees to give her, and so she did not care for him any longer."
Concerning Damara women Galton writes (197):
"They were extremely patient, though not feminine, according to our ideas: they had no strong affections either for spouse or children; in fact, the spouse was changed almost weekly, and I seldom knew without inquiry who the pro tempore husband of each lady was at any particular time."
Among the Singhalese, if a wife is sick and can no longer minister to her husband's comforts and pleasure he repudiates her. Bailey says[123] that this heartless desertion of a sick wife is "the worst trait in the Kandyan character, and the cool and unconcerned manner in which they themselves allude to it shows that it is as common as it is cruel."
"How can a man be contented with one wife," exclaimed an Arab sheik to Sir Samuel Baker (N.T.A., 263). "It is ridiculous, absurd." And then he proceeded to explain why, in his opinion, monogamy is such an absurdity:
"What is he to do when she becomes old? When she is young, if very lovely, perhaps, he might be satisfied with her, but even the young must some day grow old, and the beautiful must fade. The man does not fade like a woman; therefore, as he remains the same for many years, Nature has arranged that the man shall have young wives to replace the old; does not the prophet allow it?"
He then pointed out what further advantage there was in having several wives:
"This one carries water, that one grinds corn; this makes the bread; the last does not do much, as she is the youngest and my favorite; and if they neglect their work they get a taste of this!"
shaking a long and tolerably thick stick.
There you have the typical male polygamist with his reasons frankly stated--sensual gratification and utilitarianism.
MOURNING TO ORDER
One of the most gossipy and least critical of all writers on primitive man, Bonwick, declares (97), in describing Tasmanian funerals, that
"the affectionate nature of women appeared on such melancholy occasions.... The women not only wept, but lacerated their bodies with sharp shells and stones, even burning their thighs with fire-sticks.... The hair cut off in grief was thrown upon the mound."
Descriptions of the howling and tortures to which savages subject themselves as part of their funeral rites abound in works of travel, and although every school-boy knows that the deepest waters are silent, it is usually assumed that these howling antics betray the deep grief and affection of the mourners. Now I do not deny that the lower races do feel grief at the loss of a relative or friend; it is one of the earliest emotions to develop in mankind. What I object to in particular is the notion that the penances to which widows submit on the death of their husbands indicate deep and genuine conjugal affection. As a matter of fact, these penances are not voluntary but prescribed, each widow in a tribe being expected to indulge in the same howlings and mutilations, so that this circumstance alone would make it impossible to say whether her lamentations over her late spouse came under the head of affection, fondness, liking, or attachment, or whether they are associated with indifference or hatred. It is instructive to note that, in descriptions of mourning widows, the words "must" or "obliged to" nearly always occur. Among the Mandans, we read in Catlin (I., 95), "in mourning, like the Crows and most other tribes, the women are obliged to crop their hair all off; and the usual term of that condolence is until the hair has grown again to its former length." The locks of the men (who make them do this), "are of much greater importance," and only one or two can be spared. According to Schomburgk, on the death of her husband, an Arawak wife must cut her hair; and until this has again grown to a certain length she cannot remarry. (Spencer, D.S., 20.) Among the Patagonians, "the widow, or widows, of the dead, are obliged to mourn and fast for a whole year after the death of their husbands." They must abstain from certain kinds of food, and must not wash their faces and hands for a whole year; while "during the year of mourning they are forbidden to marry." (Falkner, 119.) The grief is all prescribed and regulated according to tribal fancy. The Brazilians "repeat the lamentation for the dead twice a day." (Spix and Martins, II., 250.) The Comanches
"mourn for the dead systematically and periodically with great noise and vehemence; at which time the female relatives of the deceased scarify their arms and legs with sharp flints until the blood trickles from a thousand pores. The duration of these lamentations depends on the quality and estimation of the deceased; varying from three to five or seven days."
(Schoolcraft, I., 237.) James Adair says in his History of the American Indians (188), "They compel the widow to act the part of the disconsolate dove, for the irreparable loss of her mate."
In Dahomey, during mourning "the weeping relatives must fast and refrain from bathing," etc. (Burton, II., 164.) In the Transvaal, writes the missionary Posselt,
"there are a number of heathenish customs which the widows are obliged to observe. There is, first, the terrible lamentation for the dead. Secondly, the widows must allow themselves to be fumigated," etc.
Concerning the Asiatic Turks Vambéry writes that the women are not allowed to attend the funeral, but "are obliged meanwhile to remain in their tent, and, while lamenting incessantly, scratch their cheeks with their nails, i.e., mar their beauty." The widow must lament or sing dirges for a whole year, etc. Chippewa widows are obliged to fast and must not comb their hair for a year or wear any ornament. A Shushwap widow must not allow her shadow to fall on any one, and must bed her head on thorns. Bancroft notes (I., 731) that among the Mosquito Indians
"the widow was bound to supply the grave of her husband with provisions for a year, after which she took up the bones and carried them with her for another year, at last placing them upon the roof of her house, and then only was she allowed to marry again."
The widows of the Tolkotin Indians in Oregon were subjected to such maltreatment that some of them committed suicide to escape their sufferings. For nine days they were obliged to sleep beside the corpse and follow certain rules in regard to dressing and eating. If a widow neglected any of these, she was on the tenth day thrown on the funeral pile with the corpse and tossed about and scorched till she lost consciousness. Afterward she was obliged to perform the function of a slave to all the other women and children of the tribe.[124]
So far as I am aware, no previous writer on the subject has emphasized the obligatory character of all these performances by widows. To me that seems by far the most important aspect of the question, as it shows that the widows were not prompted to these actions by affectionate grief or self-sacrificing impulses, but by the command of the men; and if we bear in mind the superlative selfishness of these men we have no difficulty in comprehending that what makes them compel the women to do these penances is the desire to make them eager to care for the comfort and welfare of their husbands lest the latter die and they thus bring upon themselves the discomforts arid terrors of widowhood.
Martius justly remarks that the great dependance of savage women makes them eager to please their husbands (121); and this eagerness would naturally be doubled by making widowhood forbidding. Bruhier wrote, in 1743, that in Corsica it was customary, in case a man died, for the women to fall upon his widow and give her a sound drubbing. This custom, he adds significantly, "prompted the women to take good care of their husbands."
It is true that the widowers also in some cases subjected themselves to penance; but usually they made it very much easier for themselves than for the widows. In his Lettres sur le Congo (152) Edouard Dupont relates that a man who has lost his wife and wants to show grief shaves his head, blackens himself, stops work, and sits in front of his chimbeque several days. His neighbors meanwhile feed him [no fasting for him!], and at last a friend brings him a calabash of malofar and tells him "stop mourning or you will die of starvation." "It does not happen often," Dupont adds, "that the advice is not promptly followed."
Selfish utilitarianism does not desert the savage even at the grave of his wife. An amusing illustration of the shallowness of aboriginal grief where it seems "truly touching" may be found in an article by the Rev. F. McFarlane on British New Guinea.[125] Scene: "A woman is being buried. The husband is lying by the side of the grave, apparently in an agony of grief; he sobs and cries as if his heart would break." Then he jumps into the grave and whispers into the ears of the corpse--what? a last farewell? Oh, no! "He is asking the spirit of his wife to go with him when he goes fishing, and make him successful also when he goes hunting, or goes to battle," etc.; his last request being, "And please don't be angry if I get another wife!"
The simple truth is that in their grief, as in everything else, savages are nothing but big children, crying one moment, laughing the next. Whatever feelings they may have are shallow and without devotion. If the widows of Mandans, Arawaks, Patagonians, etc., do not marry until a year after the death of their husband this is not on account of affectionate grief, but, as we have seen, because they are not allowed to. Where custom prescribes a different course, they follow that with the same docility. When a Kansas or Osage wife finds, on the return of a war-party, that she is a widow, she howls dismally, but forthwith seeks an avenger in the shape of a new husband. "After the death of a husband, the sooner a squaw marries again, the greater respect and regard she is considered to show for his memory." (Hunter, 246.) The Australian custom for women, especially widows, is to mourn by scratching the face and branding the body. As for the grief itself, its quality may be inferred from the fact that these women sit day after day by the grave or platform, howling their monotonous dirge, but, as soon as they are allowed to pause for a meal they indulge in the merriest pranks. (K.E. Jung, 111.)
MOURNING FOR ENTERTAINMENT
In many cases the mourning of savages, instead of being an expression of affection and grief, appears to be simply a mode of gratifying their love of ceremonial and excitement. That is, they mourn for entertainment--I had almost said for fun; and it is easy to see too, that vanity and superstition play their rôle here as in their "ornamenting" and everything else they do. By the Abipones "women are appointed to go forward on swift steeds to dig the grave, and honor the funeral with lamentations." (Dobrizhoffer II., 267.) During the ceremony of making a skeleton of a body the Patagonians, as Falkner informs us (119), indulge in singing in a mournful tone of voice, and striking the ground, to frighten away the Valichus or Evil Beings. Some of the Indians also visit the relatives of the dead, indulging in antics which show that the whole thing is done for effect and pastime. "During this visit of condolence," Falkner continues,
"they cry, howl, and sing, in the most dismal manner; straining out tears, and pricking their arms and thighs with sharp thorns, to make them bleed. For this show of grief they are paid with glass beads," etc.
The Rev. W. Ellis writes that the Tahitians, when someone had died, "not only wailed in the loudest and most affecting tone, but tore their hair, rent their garments, and cut themselves with shark's teeth or knives in a most shocking manner." That this was less an expression of genuine grief than a result of the barbarous love of excitement, follows from what he adds: that in a milder form, this loud wailing and cutting with shark's teeth was "an expression of joy as well as of grief." (Pol. Res., I., 527.) The same writer relates in his book on Hawaii (148) that when a chief or king died on that island,
"the people ran to and fro without their clothes, appearing and acting more like demons than human beings; every vice was practised and almost every species of crime perpetrated."
J.T. Irving tells a characteristic story (226-27) of an Indian girl whom he found one day lying on a grave singing a song "so despairing that it seemed to well out from a broken heart." A half-breed friend, who thoroughly understood the native customs, marred his illusion by informing him that he had heard the girl say to her mother that as she had nothing else to do, she believed she would go and take a bawl over her brother's grave. The brother had been dead five years!
The whole question of aboriginal mourning is patly summed up in a witty remark made by James Adair more than a century ago (1775). He has seen Choctaw mourners, he declares (187), "pour out tears like fountains of water; but after thus tiring themselves they might with perfect propriety have asked themselves, ' And who is dead?'"
THE TRUTH ABOUT WIDOW-BURNING
Instructive, from several points of view, is an incident related by McLean (I., 254-55): A carrier Indian having been killed, his widow threw herself on the body, shrieking and tearing her hair. The other females "evinced all the external symptoms of extreme grief, chanting the death-song in a most lugubrious tone, the tears streaming down their cheeks, and beating their breasts;" yet as soon as the rites were ended, these women "were seen as gay and cheerful as if they had returned from a wedding." The widow alone remained, being "obliged by custom" to mourn day and night.
"The bodies were formerly burned; the relatives of the deceased, as well as those of the widow, being present, all armed; a funeral pile was erected, and the body placed upon it. The widow then set fire to the pile, and was compelled to stand by it, anointing her breast with the fat that oozed from the body, until the heat became insupportable; when the wretched creature, however, attempted to draw back, she was thrust forward by her husband's relatives at the point of their spears, and forced to endure the dreadful torture until either the body was reduced to ashes, or she herself almost scorched to death. Her relatives were present merely to preserve her life; when no longer able to stand they dragged her away, and this intervention often led to bloody quarrels."
Obviously the compulsory mourning enforced in McLean's day was simply a mild survival of this former torture, which, in turn, was a survival of the still earlier practice of actually burning the widows alive, or otherwise killing them, which used to prevail in various parts of the world, as in India, among some Chinese aboriginal tribes, the old Germans, the Thracians and Scythians, some of the Greeks, the Lithuanians, the Basutos, the natives of Congo and other African countries, the inhabitants of New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Fiji Islands, the Crees, Comanches, Caribs, and various other Indian tribes in California, Darien, Peru, etc.[126]
Some writers have advanced the opinion that jealousy prompted the men to compel their wives to follow them into death. But the most widely accepted opinion is that expressed long ago by St. Boniface when he declared regarding the Wends that
"they preserve their conjugal love with such ardent zeal that the wife refuses to survive her husband; and she is especially admired among women who takes her own life in order to be burnt on the same pile with her master."
This view is the fourth of the mistakes I have undertaken to demolish in this chapter.
In the monumental work of Ploss and Bartels (II., 514), the opinion is advanced that the custom of slaughtering widows on the death of their husbands is the result of the grossly materialistic view the races in question hold in regard to a future world. It is supposed that a warrior will reappear with all his physical attributes and wants; for which reason he is arranged in his best clothes, his weapons are placed by his side, and often animals and slaves are slaughtered to be useful to him in his new existence. His principal servant and provider of home comforts, however, is his wife, wherefore she, too, is expected to follow him.
This, no doubt, is the truth about widow-burning; but it is not the whole truth. To comprehend all the horrors of the situation we must realize clearly that it was the fiendish selfishness of the men, extending even beyond death, which thus subjected their wives to a cruel death, and that the widows, on their part, did not follow them because of the promptings of affection, but either under physical compulsion or in consequence of a systematic course of moral reprobation and social persecution which made death preferable to life. In Peru, for instance, where widows were not killed against their will, but were allowed to choose between widowhood and being buried alive,
"the wife or servant who preferred life to the act of martyrdom, which was to attest their fidelity, was an object of general contempt, and devoted or doomed to a life worse than death."
The consequence of this was that
"generally the wives and servants offered themselves voluntarily, and there are even instances of wives who preferred suicide to prove their conjugal devotion when they were prevented from descending to the grave with the body of their consort." (Rivero and Tschudi, 186.)
Usually, too, superstition was called to aid to make the widows docile. In Fiji, for instance, to quote Westermarck's summing up (125) of several authorities, widows
"were either buried alive or strangled, often at their own desire, because they believed that in this way alone could they reach the realms of bliss, and that she who met her death with the greatest devotedness would become the favorite wife in the abode of spirits. On the other hand, a widow who did not permit herself to be killed was considered an adulteress."
To realize vividly how far widow-burning is from being an act of voluntary wifely devotion one must read Abbé Dubois's account of the matter (I., chap. 21). He explains that, however chaste and devoted a wife may have been during her husband's life, she is treated worse than the lowest outcast if she wants to survive him. By a "voluntary" death, on the contrary, she becomes "an illustrious victim of conjugal attachment," and is "considered in the light of a deity." On the way to the funeral pyre the accompanying multitude stretch out their hands toward her in token of admiration. They behold her as already translated into the paradise of Vishnu and seem to envy her happy lot. The women run up to her to receive her blessing, and she knows that afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine. The Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore, stand around with sabres and rifles to intimidate her. In short, with satanic ingenuity, every possible appeal is made to her family pride, vanity, longing for future bliss and divine honors after life, enforced by the knowledge that if she lives earth will be a hell to her, so that refusal is next to impossible. And this is the much-vaunted "conjugal affection and fidelity" of Hindoo widows!
FEMININE DEVOTION IN ANCIENT LITERATURE
The practice of "voluntary" widow-burning is, as the foregoing shows, about as convincing proof of wifely devotion as the presence of an ox in the butcher's stall is proof of his gastronomic devotion to man. In reality it is, as I have said, simply the most diabolical aspect of man's aboriginal disposition to look on woman as made solely for his own comfort and pleasure, here and hereafter. Now it is very instructive to note that whenever there is a story of conjugal devotion in Oriental or ancient classical literature it is nearly always inspired by the same spirit--the idea that the woman, as an inferior being, should subject herself to any amount of suffering if she can thereby save her sacred lord and master the slightest pang. For instance, an old Arabic writer (Kamil Mobarrad, p. 529) relates how a devoted wife whose husband was condemned to death disfigured her beautiful face in order to let him die with the consoling feeling that she would not marry again. The current notion that such stories are proof of conjugal devotion is the fifth of the mistakes to be corrected in this chapter. These stories were written by men, selfish men, who intended them as lessons to indicate to the women what was expected of them. Were it otherwise, why should not the men, too, be represented, at least occasionally, as devoted and self-sacrificing? Hector is tender to Andromache, and in the Sanscrit drama, Kanisika's Wrath, the King and the Queen contend with one another as to who shall be the victim of that wrath; but these are the only instances of the kind that occur to me. This interesting question will be further considered in the chapters on India and Greece, where corroborative stories will be quoted. Here I wish only to emphasize again the need of caution and suspicion in interpreting the evidence relating to the human feelings.
WIVES ESTEEMED AS MOTHERS ONLY
So much for the feminine aspect of conjugal devotion. In regard to the masculine aspect something must be added to what was said in preceding pages (307-10). We saw there that primitive man desires wives chiefly as drudges and concubines. It was also indicated briefly that wives are valued as mothers of daughters who can be sold to suitors. As a rule, sons are more desired than daughters, as they increase a man's power and authority, and because they alone can keep up the superstitious rites which are deemed necessary for the salvation of the father's selfish old soul. Now the non-existence or extreme rarity of conjugal attachment--not to speak of affection--is painfully indicated by the circumstance that wives were, among many races, valued (apart from grossly utilitarian and sensual motives) as mothers only, and that the men had a right, of which they commonly availed themselves, of repudiating a wife if she proved barren. On the lower Congo, says Dupont (96), a wife is not respected unless she has at least three children. Among the Somali, barren women are dieted and dosed, and if that proves unavailing they are usually chased away. (Paulitschke, B.E.A.S., 30.) If a Greenlander's wife did not bear him any children he generally took another one. (Cranz, I., 147.) Among the Mexican Aztecs divorce, even from a concubine, was not easy; but in case of barrenness even the principal wife could be repudiated. (Bancroft, II., 263-65.) The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Germans, the Chinese and Japanese, could divorce a wife on account of barrenness. For a Hindoo the laws of Manu indicate that "a barren wife may be dispensed with in the eighth year; one whose children all die, in the tenth; one who bears only daughters, in the eleventh." The tragic import of such bare statements is hardly realized until we come upon particular instances like those related by the Indian authoress Ramabai (15):
"Of the four wives of a certain prince, the eldest had borne him two sons; she was therefore his favorite, and her face beamed with happiness.... But oh! what contrast to this happiness was presented in the apartments of the childless three. Their faces were sad and careworn; there seemed no hope for them in this world, since their lord was displeased with them on account of their misfortune."
"A lady friend of mine in Calcutta told me that her husband had warned her not to give birth to a girl, the first time, or he would never see her face again." Another woman
"had been notified by her husband that if she persisted in bearing daughters she should be superseded by another wife, have coarse clothes to wear, scanty food to eat," etc.[127]
WHY CONJUGAL PRECEDES ROMANTIC LOVE
The conclusion to be drawn from the testimony collected in this chapter is that genuine conjugal love--the affection for a wife for her own sake--is, like romantic love, a product chiefly of modern civilization.
I say chiefly, because I am convinced that conjugal love was known sooner than romantic love, and for a very simple reason. Among those of the lower races where the sexes were not separated in youth, a license prevailed which led to shallow, premature, temporary alliances that precluded all idea of genuine affection, even had these folk been capable of such a sentiment; while among those tribes and peoples that practised the custom of separating the boys and girls from the earliest age, and not allowing them to become acquainted till after marriage, the growth of real, prematrimonial affection was, of course, equally impossible. In married life this was different. Living together for years, having a common interest in their children, sharing the same joys and sorrows, husband and wife would learn the rudiments of sympathy, and in happy cases there would be an opportunity for the growth of liking, attachment, fondness, or even, in exceptional instances, of affection. I cannot sufficiently emphasize the fact that my theory is psychological or cultural, not chronological. The fact that a man lives in the year 1900 makes it no more self-evident that he should be capable of sexual affection than the fact that a man lived seven centuries before Christ makes it self-evident that he could not love affectionately. Hector and Andromache existed only in the brain of Homer, who was in many respects thousands of years ahead of his contemporaries. Whether such a couple could really have existed at that time among the Trojans, or the Greeks, we do not know, but in any case it would have been an exception, proving the rule by the painful contrast of the surrounding barbarism.
Exceptions may possibly occur among the lower races, through happy combinations of circumstances. C.C. Jones describes (69) a picture of conjugal devotion among Cherokee Indians:
"By the side of the aged Mico Tomo-chi-chi, as, thin and weak, he lies upon his blanket, hourly expecting the summons of the pale-king, we see the sorrowing form of his old wife, Scenauki, bending over and fanning him with a bunch of feathers."
In his work on the Indians of California (271), Powers writes:
"An aged Achomauri lost his wife, to whom he had been married probably half a century, and he tarred his face in mourning for her as though he were a woman--an act totally unprecedented, and regarded by the Indians as evincing an extraordinary affection."
St. John relates the following incident in his book on Borneo:
"Ijan, a Balau chief, was bathing with his wife in the Lingga River, a place notorious for man-eating alligators, when Indra Lela, passing in a boat, remarked, 'I have just seen a very large animal swimming up the stream.' Upon hearing this, Ijan told his wife to go up the steps and he would follow. She got safely up, but he, stopping to wash his feet, was seized by the alligator, dragged into the middle of the stream, and disappeared from view. His wife, hearing a cry, turned round, and seeing her husband's fate, sprang into the river, shrieking 'Take me also,' and dived down at the spot where she had seen the alligator sink with his prey. No persuasion could induce her to come out of the water; she swam about, diving in all the places most dreaded from being a resort of ferocious reptiles, seeking to die with her husband; at last her friends came down and forcibly removed her to their house."
These stories certainly imply conjugal attachment, but is there any indication in them of affection? The Cherokee squaw mourns the impending death of her husband, which is a selfish feeling. The Californian, similarly, laments the loss of his spouse. The only thing he does is to "tar his face in mourning," and even this is regarded by the other Indians as "extraordinary" and "unprecedented." As for the woman in the third story, it is to be noted that her act is one of selfish despair, not of self-sacrifice for her husband's sake. We shall see in later chapters that women of her grade abandon themselves to suicidal impulses, not only where there is occasion for real distress, but often on the most trivial pretexts. A few days later, in all probability, that same woman would have been ready to marry another man. There is no evidence of altruistic action--action for another's benefit--in any of these incidents, and altruism is the only test of genuine affection as distinguished from mere liking, attachment, and fondness, which, as was explained in the chapter on Affection, are the products of selfishness, more or less disguised. If this distinction had been borne in mind a vast amount of confusion could have been avoided in works of exploration and the anthropological treatises based on them. Westermarck, for instance, cites on page 357 a number of authors who asserted that sexual affection, or even the appearance of it, was unknown to the Hovas of Madagascar, the Gold Coast, and Winnabah natives, the Kabyles, the Beni-Amer, the Chittagong Hill Tribes, the Ponape islanders, the Eskimo, the Kutchin, the Iroquois, and North American Indians in general; while on the next pages he cites approvingly authors who fancied they had discovered sexual affection among tribes some of whom (Australians, Andamanese, Bushmans) are far below the peoples just mentioned. The cause of this discrepancy lies not in these races themselves, but in the inaccurate use of words, and the different standards of the writers, some accepting the rubbing of noses or other sexual caresses as evidence of "affection," while others take any acts indicating fondness, attachment, or a suicidal impulse as signs of it. In a recent work by Tyrrell (165), I find it stated that the Eskimo marriage is "purely a love union;" and in reading on I discover that the author's idea of a "love union" is the absence of a marriage ceremony! Yet I have no doubt that Tyrrell will be cited hereafter as evidence that love unions are common among the Eskimos. So, again, when Lumholtz writes (213) that an Australian woman
"may happen to change husbands many times in her life, but sometimes, despite the fact that her consent is not asked, she gets the one she loves--for a black woman can love too"
--we are left entirely in the dark as to what kind of "love" is meant--sensual or sentimental, liking, attachment, fondness, or real affection. Surely it is time to put an end to such confusion, at least in scientific treatises, and to acquire in psychological discussions the precision which we always employ in describing the simplest weeds or insects.
Morgan, the great authority on the Iroquois--the most intelligent of North American Indians--lived long enough among them to realize vaguely that there must be a difference between sexual attachment before and after marriage, and that the latter is an earlier phenomenon in human evolution. After declaring that among the Indians "marriage was not founded on the affections ... but was regulated exclusively as a matter of physical necessity," he goes on to say:
"Affection after marriage would naturally spring up between the parties from association, from habit, and from mutual dependence; but of that marvellous passion which originates in a higher development of the passions of the human heart, and is founded upon a cultivation of the affections between the sexes, they were entirely ignorant. In their temperaments they were below this passion in its simplest forms."
He is no doubt right in declaring that the Indians before marriage were "in their temperaments" below affectionate love "in its simplest forms"; but, that being so, it is difficult to see how they could have acquired real affection after marriage. As a matter of fact we know that they treated their wives with a selfishness which is entirely incompatible with true affection. The Rev. Peter Jones, moreover, an Indian himself, tells us in his book on the Ojibwas:
"I have scarcely ever seen anything like social intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable that the women say little in presence of the men."
Obviously, at the beginning of the passage quoted, Morgan should have used the word attachment in place of affection. Bulmer (by accident, I suspect) uses the right word when he says (Brough Smyth, 77) that Australians, notwithstanding their brutal forms of marriage, often "get much attached to each other." At the same time it is easy to show that, if not among Australians or Indians, at any rate with such a people as the ancient Greeks, conjugal affection may have existed while romantic love was still impossible. The Greeks looked down on their women as inferior beings. Now one can feel affection--conjugal or friendly--toward an inferior, but one cannot feel adoration--and adoration is absolutely essential to romantic love. Before romantic love could be born it was necessary that women should not only be respected as equal to man but worshipped as his superior. This was not done by any of the lower or ancient races; hence romantic love is a peculiarly modern sentiment, later than any other form of human affection.
OBSTACLES TO ROMANTIC LOVE
When Shakspere wrote that "The course of true love never did run smooth" he had in mind individual cases of courtship. But what is true of individuals also applies to the story of love itself. For many thousands of years savagery and barbarism "proved an unrelenting foe to love," and it was with almost diabolical ingenuity that obstacles to its birth and growth were maintained and multiplied. It was crushed, balked, discountenanced, antagonized, discredited, disheartened so persistently that the wonder is not that there should be so little true love even at the present day, but that there is any at all. A whole volume might be written on the Obstacles to Love; my original plan for this book included a long chapter on this matter; but partly to avoid repetition, partly to save space, I will condense my material to a few pages, considering briefly the following obstacles: I. Ignorance and stupidity. II. Coarseness and obscenity. III. War. IV. Cruelty. V. Masculine selfishness. VI. Contempt for women. VII. Capture and sale of brides. VIII. Infant marriages. IX. Prevention of free choice. X. Separation of the sexes. XI. Sexual taboos. XII. Race aversion. XIII. Multiplicity of languages. XIV. Social barriers. XV. Religious prejudice.
I. IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
Intelligence alone does not imply a capacity for romantic love. Dogs are the most intelligent of all animals, but they know nothing of love; the most intelligent nations of antiquity--the Greeks, Romans and Hebrews--were strangers to this feeling; and in our times we have seen that such intelligent persons as Tolstoi, Zola, Groncourt, Flaubert have been confessedly unable to experience real love such as Turgenieff held up to them. On the other hand, there can be no genuine love without intelligence. It is true that maternal love exists among the lowly, but that is an instinct developed by natural selection, because without it the race could not have persisted. Conjugal attachment also was, as we have seen, necessary for the preservation of the race; whereas romantic love is not necessary for the preservation of the race, but is merely a means for its improvement; wherefore it developed slowly, keeping pace with the growth of the intellectual powers of discrimination, the gradual refinement of the emotions, and the removal of diverse obstacles created by selfishness, coarseness, foolish taboos, and prejudices. A savage lives entirely in his senses, hence sensual love is the only kind he can know. His love is as coarse and simple as his music, which is little more than a monotonous rhythmic noise. Just as a man, unless he has musical culture, cannot understand a Schumann symphony, so, unless he has intellectual culture, he cannot love a woman as Schumann loved Clara Wieck.
Stupid persons, men and women with blunt intellects, also have blunt feelings, excepting those of a criminal, vengeful kind. Savages have keener senses than we have, but their intellect and emotions are blunt and untrained. An Australian cannot count above ten, and Galton says (132) that Damaras in counting "puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units." Spix and Martins (384) found it very difficult to get any information from the Brazilian (Coroado) because "scarcely has one begun to question him about his language when he gets impatient, complains of headache, and shows that he cannot endure this effort"--for he is used to living entirely in and for his senses. Fancy such savages writing or reading a book like The Reveries of a Bachelor and you will understand why stupidity is an obstacle to love, and realize the unspeakable folly of the notion that love is always and everywhere the same. The savage has no imagination, and imagination is the organ of romantic love; without it there can be no sympathy, and without sympathy there can be no love.
II. COARSENESS AND OBSCENITY
Kissing and other caresses are, as we have seen, practices unknown to savages. Their nerves being too coarse to appreciate even the more refined forms of sensualism, it follows of necessity that they are too coarse to experience the subtle manifestations of imaginative sentimental love. Their national addiction to obscene practices and conversation proves an insuperable obstacle to the growth of refined sexual feelings. Details given in later chapters will show that what Turner says of the Samoans, "From their childhood their ears are familiar with the most obscene conversation;" and what the Rev. George Taplan writes of the "immodest and lewd" dances of the Australians, applies to the lower races in general. The history of love is, indeed, epitomized in the evolution of the dance from its aboriginal obscenity and licentiousness to its present function as chiefly a means of bringing young people together and providing innocent opportunities for courtship; two extremes differing as widely as the coarse drum accompaniment of a primitive dance from the sentimental melodies, soulful harmonies, and exquisite orchestral colors of a Strauss waltz. A remark made by Taine on Burns suggests how even acquired coarseness in a mind naturally refined may crush the capacity for true love:
"He had enjoyed too much.... Debauch had all but spoiled his fine imagination, which had before been 'the chief source of his happiness'; and he confessed that, instead of tender reveries, he had now nothing but sensual desires."
The poets have done much to confuse the public mind in this matter by their fanciful and impossible pastoral lovers. The remark made in my first book, that "only an educated mind can feel romantic love," led one of its reviewers to remark, half indignantly, half mournfully, "There goes the pastoral poetry of the world at a single stroke of the pen." Well, let it go. I am quite sure that if these poetic dreamers had ever come across a shepherdess in real life--dirty, unkempt, ignorant, coarse, immoral--they would themselves have made haste to disavow their heroines and seek less malodorous "maidens" for embodiments of their exalted fancies of love[128]. Richard Wagner was promptly disillusioned when he came across some of those modern shepherdesses, the Swiss dairy-maids. "There are magnificent women here in the Oberland," he wrote to a friend, "but only so to the eye; they are all tainted with rabid vulgarity."
III. WAR
Herbert Spencer has devoted some eloquent pages[129] to showing that along with chronic militancy there goes a brutal treatment of women, whereas industrial tribes are likely to treat their wives and daughters well. To militancy is due the disregard of women's claims shown in stealing or buying them, the inequality of status between the sexes entailed by polygamy; the use of women as laboring slaves, the life-and-death power over wife and child. To which we may add that war proves an obstacle to love, by fostering cruelty and smothering sympathy, and all the other tender feelings; by giving the coarsest masculine qualities of aggressiveness and brute prowess the aspect of cardinal virtues and causing the feminine virtues of gentleness, mercy, kindness, to be despised, and women themselves to be esteemed only in so far as they appropriate masculine qualities; and by fostering rape and licentiousness in general. When Plutarch wrote that "the most warlike nations are the most addicted to love," he meant, of course, lust. In wars of the past no incentive to brutal courage proved so powerful as the promise that the soldiers might have the women of captured cities. "Plunder if you succeed, and paradise if you fall. Female captives in the one case, celestial houris in the other"--such was, according to Burckhardt, the promise to their men given by Wahabi chiefs on the eve of battle.
IV. CRUELTY
Love depends on sympathy, and sympathy is incompatible with cruelty. It has been maintained that the notorious cruelty of the lower and war-like races is manifested only toward enemies; but this is an error. Some of the instances cited under "Sentimental Murder" and "Sympathy" show how often superstitious and utilitarian considerations smother all the family feelings. Three or four more illustrations may be added here. Burton says of the East Africans, that "when childhood is past, the father and son become natural enemies, after the manner of wild beasts." The Bedouins are not compelled by law or custom to support their aged parents, and Burckhardt (156) came across such men whom their sons would have allowed to perish. Among the Somals it frequently occurs that an old father is simply driven away and exposed to distress and starvation. Nay, incredible cases are related of fathers being sold as slaves, or killed. The African missionary, Moffat, one day came across an old woman who had been left to die within an enclosure. He asked her why she had been thus deserted, and she replied:
"I am old, you see, and no longer able to serve them [her grown children]. When they kill game, I am too feeble to aid in carrying home the flesh; I am incapable of gathering wood to make fire, and I cannot carry their children on my back as I used to do."
V. MASCULINE SELFISHNESS
The South American Chiquitos, as Dobrizhoffer informs us (II., 264), used to kill the wife of a sick man, believing her to be the cause of his illness, and fancying that his recovery would follow her disappearance. Fijians have been known to kill and eat their wives, when they had no other use for them. Carl Bock (275) says of the Malays of Sumatra, that the men are extremely indolent and make the women their beasts of burden (as the lower races do in general).
"I have," he says,
"continually met a file of women carrying loads of rice or coffee on their heads, while the men would follow, lazily lounging along, with a long stick in their hands, like shepherds driving a flock of sheep.... I have seen a man go into his house, where his wife was lying asleep on the bed, rudely awake her, and order her to lie on the floor, while he made himself comfortable on the cushions."
But I need not add in this place any further instances to the hundreds given in other parts of this volume, revealing uncivilized man's disposition to regard woman as made for his convenience, both in this world and the next. Nor is it necessary to add that such an attitude is an insuperable obstacle to love, which in its essence is altruistic.
VI. CONTEMPT FOR WOMEN
As late as the sixth century the Christian Provincial Council of Macon debated the question whether women have souls. I know of no early people, savage, barbarous, semi-civilized or civilized--from the Australian to the Greek--in which the men did not look down on the women as inferior beings. Now contempt is the exact opposite of adoration, and where it prevails there can of course be no romantic love.[130]
VII. CAPTURE AND SALE OF BRIDES
In the Homeric poems we read much about young women who were captured and forced to become the concubines of the men who had slain their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Other brides are referred to as [Greek: alphesiboiai], wooed with rich presents, literally "bringing in oxen." Among other ancient nations--Assyrians, Hebrews, Babylonians, Chaldeans, etc., brides had to be bought with property or its equivalent in service (as in the case of Jacob and Rachel). Serving for a bride until the parents feel repaid for their selfish trouble in bringing her up, also prevails among savages as low as the African Bushman and the Fuegian Indians, and is not therefore, as Herbert Spencer holds, a higher or later form of "courtship" than capture or purchase. But it is less common than purchase, which has been a universal custom. "All over the earth," says Letourneau (137),
"among all races and at all times, wherever history gives us information, we find well-authenticated examples of marriage by purchase, which allows us to assert that during the middle period of civilization, the right of parents over their children, and especially over their daughters, included in all countries the privilege of selling them."
In Australia a knife or a glass bottle has been held sufficient compensation for a wife. A Tartar parent will sell his daughter for a certain number of sheep, horses, oxen, or pounds of butter; and so on in innumerable regions. As an obstacle to free choice and love unions, nothing more effective could be devised; for what Burckhardt writes (B. and W., I., 278) of the Egyptian peasant girls has a general application. They are, he says, "sold in matrimony by their fathers to the highest bidders; a circumstance that frequently causes the most mean and unfeeling transactions."
In his collection of Esthonian folk-songs Neus has a poem which pathetically pictures the fate of a bartered bride. A girl going to the field to cut flax meets a young man who informs her bluntly that she belongs to him, as he has bought her. "And who undertook to sell me?" she asks. "Your father and mother, your sister and brother," he replies, adding frankly that he won the father's favor with a present of a horse, the mother's with a cow, the sister's with a bracelet, the brother's with an ox. Then the unwilling bride lifts her voice and curses the family: "May the father's horse rot under him; may the mother's cow yield blood instead of milk!" Hundreds of millions of bartered brides have borne their fate more meekly. It is needless to add that what has been said here applies a fortiori to captured brides.
VIII. INFANT MARRIAGES
Of the diabolical habit of forcing girls into marriage before they had reached the age of puberty and its wide prevalence I have already spoken (293), and reference will be made to it in many of the pages following this. Here I may, therefore, confine myself to a few details relating to one country, by way of showing vividly what a deadly obstacle to courtship, free choice, love, and every tender and merciful feeling, this cruel custom forms. Among all classes and castes of Hindoos it has been customary from time immemorial to unite boys of eight; seven, even six years, to girls still younger. It is even prescribed by the laws of Manu that a man of twenty-four should marry a girl of eight. Old Sanscrit verses have been found declaring that "the mother, father, and oldest brother of a girl shall all be damned if they allow her to reach maturity without being married;" and the girl herself, in such a case, is cast out into the lowest class, too low for anyone to marry her.[131] In some cases marriage means merely engagement, the bride remaining at home with her parents, who do not part with her till some years later. Often, however, the husband takes immediate possession of his child-wife, and the consequences are horrible. Of 205 cases reported in a Bengal Medico-Legal Report, 5 ended fatally, 38 were crippled, and the general effect of such cruelty is pathetically touched on by Mme. Ryder, who found it impossible to describe the anguish she felt when she saw these half-developed females, with their expression of hopeless suffering, their skeleton arms and legs, marching behind their husbands at the prescribed distance, with never a smile on their faces.
It would be a mistake to seek a partial excuse for this inhumanity in the early maturing effects of a warm climate. Mme. Ryder expressly states that a Hindoo girl of ten, instead of seeming older than a European girl of that age, resembles our children at five or six years.
IX. PREVENTION OF FREE CHOICE
One of the unfortunate consequences of Darwin's theory of sexual selection was that it made him assume that
"in utterly barbarous tribes the women have more power in choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of afterward exchanging their husbands than might have been expected. As this is a point of importance,"
he adds, "I will give in detail such evidence as I have been able to collect;" which he proceeds to do. This "evidence in detail" consists of three cases in Africa, five among American Indians, and a few others among Fijians, Kalmucks, Malayans, and the Korarks of Northeastern Asia. Having referred to these twelve cases, he proceeds with his argument, utterly ignoring the twelve hundred facts that oppose his assumption--a proceeding so unlike his usual candid habit of stating the difficulties confronting him, that this circumstance alone indicates how shaky he felt in regard to this point. Moreover, even the few instances he cites fail to bear out his doctrine. It is incomprehensible to me how he could claim the Kaffirs for his side. Though these Africans "buy their wives, and girls are severely beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband, it is nevertheless manifest," Darwin writes, "from many facts given by the Rev. Mr. Shooter, that they have considerable power of choice. Thus, very ugly, though rich men, have been known to fail in getting wives." What Shooter really does (50) is to relate the case of a man so ill-favored that he had never been able to get a wife till he offered a big sum to a chief for one of his wards. She refused to go, but "her arms were bound and she was delivered like a captive. Later she escaped and claimed the protection of a rival chief."
In other words, this man did not fail to get a wife, and the girl had no choice. Darwin ignores the rest of Shooter's narrative (55-58), which shows that while perhaps as a rule moral persuasion is first tried before physical violence is used, the girl in any case is obliged to take the man chosen for her. The man is highly praised in her presence, and if she still remains obstinate she has to "encounter the wrath of her enraged father ... the furious parent will hear nothing--go with her husband she must--if she return she shall be slain." Even if she elopes with another man she "may be forcibly brought back and sent to the one chosen by her father," and only by the utmost perseverance can she escape his tyranny. Leslie (whom Darwin cites) is therefore wrong when he says "it is a mistake to imagine that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner, and with the same authority, with which he would dispose of a cow." Those who knew the Kaffirs most intimately agree with Shooter; the Rev. W.C. Holden, e.g., who writes in his elaborate work, The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (189-211) that "it is common for the youngest, the healthiest, ... the handsomest girls to be sold to old men who perhaps have already half-a-dozen concubines," and whom the work of these wives has made rich enough to buy another. A girl is in many instances "compelled by torture to accept the man she hates. The whole is as purely a business transaction as the bartering of an ox or buying a horse." From Dugmore's Laws and Customs he cites the following: "It sometimes occurs that the entreaties of the daughter prevail over the avarice of the father; but such cases, the Kaffirs admit, are rare ... the highest bidder usually gains the prize." Holden adds that when a girl is obstreperous "they seize her by main strength, and drag her on the ground, as I have repeatedly seen;" and in his chapter on polygamy he gives the most harrowing details of the various cruelties practised on the poor girls who do not wish to be sold like cows.
That Kaffir girls "have been known to propose to a man," as Darwin says, does not indicate that they have a choice, any more than the fact that they "not rarely run away with a favored lover." They might propose to a hundred men and not have their choice; and as for the elopement, that in itself shows they have no liberty of choice; for if they had they would not be obliged to run away. Finally, how could Darwin reconcile his attitude with the remark of C. Hamilton, cited by himself, that with the Kaffirs "the chiefs generally have the pick of the women for many miles round, and are most persevering in establishing or confirming their privilege"?
I have discussed this case "in detail" in order to show to what desperate straits a hopeless theory may reduce a great thinker. To suppose that in this "utterly barbarous tribe" the looks of the race can be gradually improved by the women accepting only those males who "excite or charm them most" is simply grotesque. Nor is Darwin much happier with his other cases. When he wrote that "Among the degraded Bushmen of Africa" (citing Burchell) "'when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen, her lover must gain her approbation as well as that of her parents'"--the words I have italicized ought to have shown him that this testimony was not for but against his theory. Burchell himself tells us that Bushman girls "are most commonly betrothed" when about seven years old, and become mothers at twelve, or even at ten. To speak of choice in such cases, in any rational sense of the word, would be farcical even if the girls were free to do as they please, which they are not. With regard to the Fuegians, Darwin cites King and Fitzroy to the effect that the Indian obtains the consent of the parents by doing them some service, and then attempts to carry off the girl; "but if she is unwilling, she hides herself in the woods until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her and gives up his pursuit; but this seldom happens." If this passage means anything, it means that it is customary for the parents to decide upon who is to marry their daughters, and that, though she may frustrate the plan, "this seldom happens." Darwin further informs us that "Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes of Arctic America repeatedly ran away from her husband and joined her lover." How much this single instance proves in regard to woman's liberty of choice or power to aid sexual selection, may be inferred from the statement by the same "excellent observer" of Indian traits (as Darwin himself calls him) that "it has ever been the custom among these people to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always carries off the prize"--an assertion borne out by Richardson (II., 24) and others. But if the strongest man "always carries off the prize," where does woman's choice come in? Hearne adds that "this custom prevails throughout all their tribes" (104). And while the other Indian instances referred to by Darwin indicate that in case of decided aversion a girl is not absolutely compelled, as among the Kaffirs, to marry the man selected for her, the custom nevertheless is for the parents to make the choice, as among most Indians, North and South.
Whereas Darwin's claim that primitive women have "more power" to decide their fate as regards marriage "than might have been expected," is comparatively modest, Westermarck goes so far as to declare that these women "are not, as a rule, married without having any voice of their own in the matter." He feels compelled to this course because he realizes that his theory that savages originally ornamented themselves in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex "presupposes of course that savage girls enjoy great liberty in the choice of a mate." In the compilation of his evidence, unfortunately, Westermarck is even less critical and reliable than Darwin. In reference to the Bushmen, he follows Darwin's example in citing Burchell, but leaves out the words "which, however, does not often happen," which show that liberty of choice on the woman's part is not the rule but a rare exception.[132] He also claims the Kaffirs, though, as I have just shown, such a claim is preposterous. To the evidence already cited on my side I may add Shooter's remarks (55), that if there are several lovers the girl is asked to decide for herself. "This, however, is merely formal," for if she chooses one who is poor the father recommends to her the one of whom he calculated to get the most cattle, and that settles the matter. Not even the widows are allowed the liberty of choice, for, as Shooter further informs us (86), "when a man dies those wives who have not left the kraal remain with the eldest son. If they wish to marry again, they must go to one of their late husband's brothers." Among the African women "who have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire," Westermarck mentions the Ashantees, on the authority of Beecham (125). On consulting that page of Beecham I find that he does indeed declare that "no Ashantee compels his daughter to become the wife of one she dislikes;" but this is a very different thing from saying that she can choose the man she may desire. "In the affair of courtship," writes Beecham, "the wishes of the female are but little consulted; the business being chiefly settled between the suitor and her parents." And in the same page he adds that "it is not infrequently the case that infants are married to each other ... and infants are also frequently wedded to adults, and even to elderly men," while it is also customary "to contract for a child before it is born." The same destructive criticism might be applied to other negroes of Western Africa whom both Darwin and Westermarck claim on the very dubious evidence of Reade.[133]
Among other peoples to whom Westermarck looks for support of his argument are the Fijians, Tongans, and natives of New Britain, Java, and Sumatra. He claims the Fijians on the peculiar ground (the italics are mine) that among them "forced marriages are comparatively rare among the higher classes." That may be; but are not the higher classes a small minority? And do not all classes indulge in the habits of infant betrothal and of appropriating women by violence without consulting their wishes? Regarding the Tongans, Westermarck cites the supposition of Mariner that perhaps two-thirds of the girls had married with their own free consent; which does not agree with the observations of Vason (144), who spent four years among them:
"As the choice of a husband is not in the power of the daughters but he is provided by the discretion of the parents, an instance of refusal on the part of the daughter is unknown in Tonga."
He adds that this is not deemed a hardship there, where divorce and unchastity are so general.
"In the New Britain Group, according to Mr. Romilly, after the man has worked for years to pay for his wife, and is finally in a position to take her to his house, she may refuse to go, and he cannot claim back from the parents the large sums he has paid them in yams, cocoa-nuts, and sugar-canes."
This Westermarck guilelessly accepts as proof of the liberty of choice on the girl's part, missing the very philosophy of the whole matter. Why are girls not allowed in so many cases to choose their own husbands? Because their selfish parents want to benefit by selling them to the highest bidder. In the above case, on the contrary, as the italics show, the selfish parents benefit by making the girl refuse to go with that man, keeping her as a bait for another profitable suitor. In all probability she refuses to go with him at the positive command of her parents. What the real state of affairs is on the New Britain Group we may gather from the revelations given in an article on the marriage customs of the natives by the Rev. B. Danks in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1888, 290-93): In New Britain, he says, "the marriage tie has much the appearance of a money tie." There are instances of sham capture, when there is much laughter and fun;
"but in many cases which came under my notice it was not a matter of form but painful earnestness." "It often happens that the young woman has a liking for another and none for the man who has purchased her. She may refuse to go to him. In that case her friends consider themselves disgraced by her conduct. She ought, according to their notions, to fall in with their arrangements with thankfulness and gladness of heart! They drag her along, beat her, kick and abuse her, and it has been my misfortune to see girls dragged past my house, struggling in vain to escape from their fate. Sometimes they have broken loose and then ran for the only place of refuge in all the country, the mission-house. I could render them no assistance until they had bounded up the steps of my veranda into our bedroom and hidden themselves under the bed, trembling for their lives. It has been my privilege and duty to stand between the infuriated brother or father, who has followed close upon the poor girl, spear in hand, vowing to put her to death for the disgrace she has brought upon them." "Liberty of choice,"
indeed!
"In some parts of Java, much deference is paid to the bride's inclinations," writes Westermarck. But Earl declares (58) that among the Javanese "courtship is carried on entirely through the medium of the parents of the young people, and any interference on the part of the bride would be considered highly indecorous," And Raffles writes (I., Ch. VII.) that in Java "marriages are invariably contracted, not by the parties themselves, but by their parents or relations on their behalf." Betrothals of children, too, are customary. Regarding the Sumatrans, Westermarck cites Marsden to the effect that among the Rejang a man may run away with a virgin without violating the laws, provided he pays her parents for her afterward--which tells us little about the girl's choice. But why does he ignore Marsden's full account, a few pages farther on, of Sumatran marriages in general? There are four kinds, one of which, he says, is a regular treaty between the parties on a footing of equality; this is called marriage by semando. In the jujur a sum of money is given by one man to another "as a consideration for the person of his daughter, whose situation in this case differs not much from that of a slave to the man she marries, and to his family." In other cases one virgin is given in exchange for another, and in the marriage by ambel anak the father of a young man chooses a wife for him. Finally he shows that the customs of Sumatrans do not favor courtship, the young men and women being kept carefully apart.
At first sight Westermarck's chapter on the Liberty of Choice seems rather imposing, as it consists of twenty-seven pages, while Darwin devoted only two to the subject. In reality, however, Westermarck has filled only eight pages with what he considers proofs of his theory, and after scouring the whole world he has not succeeded in bringing together thirty cases which stand the test of critical examination. I grant him, though in several instances with suspicions, some American Indian tribes, natives of Arorae, of the Society Islands, Micronesians in general (?), Dyaks, Minabassers of Celebes, Burmese, Shans, Chittagong Hill tribes, and a few other wild tribes of India, possibly some aboriginal Chinese tribes, Ainos, Kamchadales, Jakuts, Ossetes, Kalmucks, Aenezes, Touaregs, Shulis, Madis, the ancient Cathaei and Lydians. My reasons for rejecting his other instances have already been given in part, and most of the other cases will be disposed of in the pages relating to Australians, New Zealanders, American Indians, Hindoos, and Wild Tribes of India. In the chapter on Australia, after commenting on Westermarck's preposterous attempt to include that race in his list in the face of all the authorities, I shall explain also why it is not likely that, as he maintains, still more primitive races allowed their women greater freedom of choice than modern savages enjoy in his opinion.
To become convinced that the women of the lower races do not "as a rule" enjoy the liberty of choice, we need only contrast the meagre results obtained by Darwin and Westermarck with the vast number of races and tribes whose customs indicate that women are habitually given in marriage without being consulted as to their wishes. Among these customs are infant marriage, infant betrothal, capture, purchase, marrying whole families of sisters, and the levirate. It is true that some of these customs do not affect all members of the tribes involved, but the very fact of their prevalence shows that the idea of consulting a woman's preference does not enter into the heads of the men, barring a few cases, where a young woman is so obstreperous that she may at any rate succeed in escaping a hated suitor, though even this (which is far from implying liberty of choice) is altogether exceptional. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances, as in the case of the Moors of Senegambia, concerning whom Letourneau says (138) that a daughter has the right to refuse the husband selected for her, on condition of remaining unmarried; if she marries another, she becomes the slave of the man first selected for her. Of the Christian Abyssinians, Combes and Tamisier say (II., 106) that the girls are never "seriously" consulted; and "at Sackatou a girl is usually consulted by her parents, but only as a matter of form; she never refuses." (Letourneau, 139.) The same may be said of China and Japan, where the sacred duty of filial obedience is so ingrained in a girl's soul that she would never dream of opposing her parents' wishes.
Of the horrible custom of marrying helpless girls before they are mature in body or mind--often, indeed, before they have reached the age of puberty--I have already spoken, instancing some Borneans, Javanese, Egyptians, American Indians, Australians, Hottentots, natives of Old Calabar, Hindoos; to which may be added some Arabs and Persians, Syrians, Kurds, Turks, natives of Celebes, Madagascar, Bechuanas, Basutos, and many other Africans, etc. As for those who practise infant betrothal, Westermarck's own list includes Eskimos, Chippewayans, Botocudos, Patagonians, Shoshones, Arawaks, Macusis, Iroquois; Gold Coast negroes, Bushmen, Marutse, Bechuanas, Ashantees, Australians; tribes of New Guinea, New Zealand, Tonga, Tahiti, and many other islands of the South Sea; some tribes of the Malay Archipelago; tribes of British India; all peoples of the Turkish stock; Samoyedes and Tuski; Jews of Western Russia.
As regards capture, good authorities now hold that it was not a universal practice in all parts of the world; yet it prevailed very widely--for instance, among Aleutian Islanders, Ahts, Bonaks, Macas Indians of Ecuador, all Carib tribes, some Brazilians, Mosquito Indians, Fuegians; Bushmen, Bechuanas, Wakamba, and other Africans; Australians, Tasmanians, Maoris, Fijians, natives of Samoa, Tukopia, New Guinea, Indian Archipelago; wild tribes of India; Arabs, Tartars, and other Central Asians; some Russians, Laplanders, Esthonians, Finns, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Scandinavians, Slavonians, etc. "The list," says Westermarck (387), "might easily be enlarged." As for the list of peoples among whom brides were sold--usually to the highest bidder and without reference to feminine choice--that would be much larger still. Eight pages are devoted to it and two only to the exceptions, by Westermarck himself, who concludes (390) that "Purchase of wives may, with even more reason than marriage by capture, be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind," How nearly universal the practice is, or has been, may be inferred from the fact that Sutherland (I., 208), after examining sixty-one negro races, found fifty-seven recorded as purchasing their wives.
Widely prevalent also was the custom of allowing a man who had married a girl to claim all her sisters as soon as they reached a marriageable age. Whatever their own preferences might be, they had no choice. Among the Indian tribes alone, Morgan mentions forty who indulged in this custom. As for the levirate, that is another very wide-spread custom which shows an utter disregard of woman's preference and choice. It might be supposed that widows, at any rate, ought always to be allowed, in case they wished to marry again, to follow their own choice. But they are, like the daughters, regarded as personal property, and are inherited by their late husband's brother or some other male relative, who marries them himself or disposes of them as he pleases. Whether the acceptance of a brother's widow or widows is a right or a duty (prescribed by the desire for sons and ancestor-worship) is immaterial for our purpose; for in either case the widow must go as custom commands, and has no liberty of choice. The levirate prevails, or has prevailed, among a great number of races, from the lowest to those considerably advanced.
The list includes Australians, many Indians, from the low Brazilians to the advanced Iroquois, Aleuts, Eskimos, Fijians, Samoans, Caroline Islanders, natives of New Caledonia, New Guinea, New Britain, New Hebrides, the Malay Archipelago, Wild tribes of India, Kamchadales, Ostiaks, Kirghiz, Mongolians in general, Arabs, Egyptians, Hebrews, natives of Madagascar, many Kaffir tribes, negroes of the Gold Coast, Senegambians, Bechuanas, and a great many other Africans, etc.
Twelve pages of Westermarck's chapter on the Liberty of Choice are devoted to peoples among whom not even a son is, or was, allowed to marry without the father's consent. The list includes Mexicans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Hindoos, Germans, Celts, Russians, etc. In all these cases the daughters, of course, enjoyed still less liberty of disposing of their hand. In short, the argument against Darwin and Westermarck is simply overwhelming--all the more when we look at the numbers of the races who do not permit women their choice--the 400,000,000 Chinese, 300,000,000 Hindoos, the Mohammedan millions, the whole continent of Australia, nearly all of aboriginal America and Africa, etc.
A drowning man clings to a straw. "In Indian and Scandinavian tales," Westermarck informs us,
"virgins are represented as having the power to dispose of themselves freely. Thus it was agreed that Skade should choose for herself a husband among the Asas, but she was to make her choice by the feet, the only part of their persons she was allowed to see."
Obviously the author of this tale from the Younger Edda had more sense of humor than some modern anthropologists have. No less topsy-turvy is the Hindoo Svayamvara or "Maiden's Choice," to which Westermarck alludes (162). This is an incident often referred to in epics and dramas. "It was a custom in royal circles," writes Samuelson, "when a princess became marriageable, for a tournament to be held, and the victor was chosen by the princess as her husband." If the sarcasm of the expression "Maiden's Choice" is unconscious, it is all the more amusing. How far Hindoo women of all classes were and are from enjoying the liberty of choice, we shall see in the chapter on India.
X. SEPARATION OF THE SEXES
I have given so much space to the question of choice because it is one of exceptional importance. Where there is no choice there can he no real courtship, and where there is no courtship there is no opportunity for the development of those imaginative and sentimental traits which constitute the essence of romantic love. It by no means follows, however, that where choice is permitted to girls, as with the Dyaks, real love follows as a matter of course; for it may be prevented, as it is in the case of these Dyaks, by their sensuality, coarseness, and general emotional shallowness and sexual frivolity. The prevention of choice is only one of the obstacles to love, but it is one of the most formidable, because it has acted at all times and among races of all degrees of barbarism or civilization up to modern Europe of two or three centuries ago. And to the frustration and free choice was added another obstacle--the separation of the sexes. Some Indians and even Australians tried to keep the sexes apart, though usually without much success. In their cause no harm was done to the cause of love, because these races are constitutionally incapable of romantic love; but in higher stages of civilization the strict seclusion of the women was a fatal obstacle to love. Wherever separation of the sexes and chaperonage prevails, the only kind of amorous infatuation possible, as a rule, is sensual passion, fiery but transient. To love a girl sentimentally--that is, for her mental beauty and moral refinement as well as her bodily charms--a man must get acquainted with her, be allowed to meet her frequently. This was not possible until within a few generations. The separation of the sexes, by preventing all possibility of refined and legitimate courtship, favored illicit amours on one side, loveless marriages on the other, thus proving one of the most formidable obstacles to love. "It is not enough to give time for mutual knowledge and affection after marriage," wrote the late Henry Drummond.
"Nature must deepen the result by extending it to the time before marriage.... Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened emotions, is a great opportunity for evolution; and to institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich in impression is one of its latest and brightest efforts."
XI. SEXUAL TABOOS
If a law were passed compelling every man living in Rochester, N.Y., who wanted a wife to get her outside of that city, in Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, or some other place, it would be considered an outrageous restriction of free choice, calculated to diminish greatly the chances of love-matches based on intimate acquaintance. If such a law had existed for generations and centuries, sanctioned by religion and custom and so strictly enforced that violation of it entailed the danger of capital punishment, a sentiment would have grown up in course of time making the inhabitants of Rochester look upon marriage within the city with the same horror as they do upon incestuous unions. This is not an absurd or fanciful supposition. Such laws and customs actually did prevail in this very section of New York State. The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Indians was divided into two phratries, each of which was again subdivided into four clans, named after their totems or animals; the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans belonging to one phratry, while the other included the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans. Morgan's researches show that originally an Indian belonging to one phratry could marry a woman belonging to the other only. Subsequently the line was drawn less strictly, but still no Indian was allowed to marry a squaw of his own clan, though there might be no blood, relationship between them. If an Algonkin married a girl of his clan he committed a crime for which his nearest relatives might put him to death. This law has prevailed widely among the wild races in various parts of the globe. McLennan, who first called attention to its prevalence and importance, called it exogamy, or marrying-out.
What led to this custom is not known definitely; nearly every anthropologist has his own theory on the subject.[134] Luckily we are not concerned here with the origin and causes of exogamy, but only with the fact of its existence. It occurs not only among barbarians of a comparatively high type, like the North American Indians, but among the lowest Australian savages, who put to death any man who marries or assaults a woman of the same clan as his. In some Polynesian islands, among the wild tribes of India as well as the Hindoos, in various parts of Africa, the law of exogamy prevails, and wherever it exists it forms a serious obstacle to free choice--i.e., free love, in the proper sense of the expression. As Herbert Spencer remarks,
"The exogamous custom as at first established [being connected with capture] implies an extremely abject condition of women; a brutal treatment of them; an entire absence of the higher sentiments that accompany the relations of the sexes."
While exogamy thwarts love by minimizing the chances of intimate acquaintance and genuine courtship, there is another form of sexual taboo which conversely and designedly frustrates the tendency of intimate acquaintance to ripen into passion and love. Though we do not know just how the horror of incest arose, there can be no doubt that there must be a natural basis for so strong and widely prevalent a sentiment. In so far as this horror of incest prevents the marriage of near relatives, it is an obstacle to love that must be commended as doubtless useful to the race. But when we find that in China there are only 530 surnames, and that a man who marries a woman of the same surname is punished for the crime of "incest"; that the Church under Theodosius the Great forbade the union of relatives to the seventh degree; that in many countries a man could not wed a relative by marriage; that in Rome union with an adopted brother or sister was as rigidly forbidden as with a real sister or brother;--when we come across such facts we see that artificial and foolish notions regarding incest must be added to the long list of agencies that have retarded the growth of free choice and true love. And it should be noted that in all these cases of exogamy and taboos of artificial incest, the man's liberty of choice was restricted as well as the woman's. Thus our cumulative evidence against the Darwin-Westermarck theory of free choice is constantly gaining in weight.
XII. RACE AVERSION
Max O'Rell once wrote that he did not understand how there could be such a thing as mulattoes in the world. It is certainly safe to say that there are none such as a consequence of love. The features, color, odor, tastes, and habits of one race have ever aroused the antagonism of other races and prevented the growth of that sympathy which is essential to love. In a man strong passion may overcome the aversion to a more or less enduring union with a woman of a lower race, just as extreme hunger may urge him to eat what his palate would normally reject; but women seem to be proof against this temptation to stoop: in mixed marriages it is nearly always the man who belongs to the superior race. At first thought it might seem as if this racial aversion could not do much to retard the growth of free choice and love, since in early times, when facilities for travel were poor, the races could not mix anyway as they do now. But this would be a great error. Migrations, wars, slave-making and plundering expeditions have at all times commingled the peoples of the earth, yet nothing is more remarkable than the stubborn tenacity of racial prejudices.
"Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common religion and country can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav. Indeed, so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethnical isolation that, as a traveller relates, at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself forever dishonored if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock."[135]
We might suppose that the coarser races would be less capable of such aversions than the half-civilized, but the contrary is true. In Australia nearly every tribe is the deadly enemy of every other tribe, and according to Chapman a Bushman woman would consider herself degraded by intercourse with anyone not belonging to her tribe. "Savage nations," says Humboldt, in speaking of the Chaymas of New Andalusia,
"are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitation."
Here there is no chance for Leanders to swim across the waters to meet their Heros. Poor Cupid! Everybody and everything seems to be against him.
XIII. MULTIPLICITY OF LANGUAGES
Apart from racial prejudice there is the further obstacle of language. A man cannot court a girl and learn to love her sentimentally unless he can speak to her. Now Africa alone has 438 languages, besides a number of dialects. Dr. Finsch says (38) that on the Melanasian island of Tanua nearly every village has a dialect of its own which those of the next village cannot understand; and this is a typical case. American Indians usually communicate with each other by means of a sign language. India has countless languages and dialects, and in Canton the Chinamen from various parts of the Empire have to converse with each other in "pidjin English." The Australians, who are perhaps all of one race, nevertheless have no end of different names for even so common a thing as the omnipresent kangaroo.[136] In Brazil, says von Martins, travellers often come across a language
"used only by a few individuals connected with each other by relationship, who are thus completely isolated, and can hold no communication with any of their other countrymen far or near";
and how great was the confusion of tongues among other South American Indians may be inferred from the statement (Waitz, III., 355) that the Caribs were so much in the habit of capturing wives from different tribes and peoples that the men and women of each tribe never spoke the same language. Under such circumstances a wife might become attached to her husband as a captured, mute, and maltreated dog might to his master; but romantic love is as utterly out of the question as it is between master and dog.
XIV. SOCIAL BARRIERS
Not content with hating one another cordially, the different races, peoples, and tribes have taken special pains at all times and everywhere to erect within their own limits a number of barriers against free choice and love. In France, Germany, and other European countries there is still a strong prejudice against marriages between nobles and commoners, though the commoner may be much nobler than the aristocrat in everything except the genealogical table. Civilization is gradually destroying this obstacle to love, which has done so much to promote immorality and has led to so many tragedies involving a number of kings and princes, victims to the illusion that accident of birth is nobler than brains or refinement. But among the ancient civilized and mediaeval peoples the social barrier was as rigidly held up as the racial prejudices. Milman remarks, in his History of Latin Christianity (I., 499, 528), that among the ancient Romans
"there could be no marriages with slaves [though slaves, being captives, were not necessarily of a lower rank, but might be princesses].... The Emperor Valentinian further defined low and abject persons who might not aspire to lawful union with freemen--actresses, daughters of actresses, tavern-keepers, the daughters of tavern-keepers, procurers (leones) or gladiators, or those who had kept a public shop.... Till Roman citizenship had been imparted to the whole Roman Empire, it would not acknowledge marriage with barbarians to be more than a concubinage. Cleopatra was called only in scorn the wife of Antony. Berenice might not presume to be more than the mistress of Titus. The Christian world closed marriages again within still more and more jealous limits. Interdictory statutes declared marriages with Jews and heathens not only invalid but adulterous."
"The Salic and Ripuarian law condemned the freeman guilty of this degradation [marrying a slave] to slavery; where the union was between a free woman and a slave, that of the Lombards and of the Burgundians, condemned both parties to death; but if her parents refused to put her to death, she became a slave of the crown. The Ripuarian law condemned the female delinquent to slavery; but the woman had the alternative of killing her base-born husband. She was offered a distaff and a sword. If she chose the distaff she became a slave; if a sword she struck it to the heart of her paramour and emancipated herself from her degrading connection."
In mediaeval Germany the line was so sharply drawn between the social classes that for a long time slavery, or even death, was the punishment for a mixed marriage. In course of time this barbarous custom fell into disuse, but free choice continued to be discouraged by the law that if a man married a woman beneath him in rank, neither she nor her children were raised to his rank, and in case of his death she had no claim to the usual provisions legally made for widows.
In India the caste prejudices are so strong and varied that they form almost insuperable barriers to free love-choice. "We find castes within castes," says Sir Monier Williams (153), "so that even the Brahmans are broken up and divided into numerous races, which again are subdivided into numerous tribes, families, or sub-castes," and all these, he adds, "do not intermarry." In Japan, until three decades ago, social barriers as to marriage were rigidly enforced, and in China, to this day, slaves, boatmen, actors, policemen, can marry women of their own class only. Nor are these difficulties eliminated at once as we descend the ladder of civilization. In Brazil, Central America, in the Polynesian and other Pacific Islands and elsewhere we find such barriers to free marriage, and among the Malayan Hovas of Madagascar even the slaves are subdivided into three classes, which do not intermarry! It is only among those peoples which are too low to be able to experience sentimental love anyway that this formidable obstacle of class prejudice vanishes, while race and tribal hatred remain in full force.
XV. RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE
Among peoples sufficiently advanced to have dogmas, religion has always proved a strong barrier in the way of the free bestowal of affection. Not only have Mohammedans and Christians hated and shunned each other, but the different Christian sects for a long time detested and tabooed one another as cordially as they did the heathen and the Jews. Tertullian denounced the marriage of a Christian with a heathen as fornication, and Westermarck cites Jacobs's remark that
"the folk-lore of Europe regarded the Jews as something infra-human, and it would require an almost impossible amount of large toleration for a Christian maiden of the Middle Ages to regard union with a Jew as anything other than unnatural."
There are various minor obstacles that might be dwelt on, but enough has been said to make it clear why romantic love was the last of the sentiments to be developed.
Having considered the divers ingredients and different kinds of love and distinguished romantic love from sensual passion and sentimentality, as well as from conjugal affection, we are now in a position to examine intelligently and in some detail a number of races in all parts of the world, by way of further corroborating and emphasizing the conclusions reached.
SPECIMENS OF AFRICAN LOVE
What is the lowest of all human races? The Bushmen of South Africa, say some ethnologists, while others urge the claims of the natives of Australia, the Veddahs of Ceylon, or the Fuegians of South America. As culture cannot be measured with a yardstick, it is impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion. For literary and geographic reasons, which will become apparent later on, I prefer to begin the search for traces of romantic love with the Bushmen of South Africa. And here we are at once confronted by the startling assertion of the explorer James Chapman, that there is "love in all their marriages." If this is true--if there is love in all the marriages of what is one of the lowest human races--then I have been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp in the preceding pages of this book, and it will be a waste of ink and paper to write another line. But is it true? Let us first see what manner of mortals these Bushmen are, before subjecting Mr. Chapman's special testimony to a cross-examination. The following facts are compiled from the most approved authorities.
BUSHMAN QUALIFICATIONS FOR LOVE
The eminent anatomist Fritsch, in his valuable work on the natives of South Africa (386-407), describes the Bushmen as being even in physical development far below the normal standard. Their limbs are "horribly thin" in both sexes; both women and men are "frightfully ugly," and so much alike that, although they go about almost naked, it is difficult to tell them apart. He thinks they are probably the aboriginal inhabitants of Africa, scattered from the Cape to the Zambesi, and perhaps beyond. They are filthy in their habits, and "washing the body is a proceeding unknown to them." When the French anatomist Cuvier examined a Bushman woman, he was reminded of an ape by her head, her ears, her movements, and her way of pouting the lips. The language of the Bushmen has often been likened to the chattering of monkeys. According to Bleek, who has collected their tales, their language is of the lowest known type. Lichtenstein (II., 42) found the Bushman women like the men, "ugly in the extreme," adding that "they understand each other more by their gestures than by their speaking." "No one has a name peculiar to himself." Others have described them as having protuberant stomachs, prominent posteriors, hollowed-out backs, and "few ideas but those of vengeance and eating." They have only two numerals, everything beyond two being "much," and except in those directions where the struggle for life has sharpened their wits, their intellectual faculties in general are on a level with their mathematics. Their childish ignorance is illustrated by a question which some of them seriously asked Chapman (I., 83) one day--whether his big wagons were not the mothers of the little ones with slender tires.
How well their minds are otherwise adapted for such an intellectualized, refined, and esthetic feeling as love, may also be inferred from the following observations. Lichtenstein points out that while necessity has given them acute sight and hearing,
"they might almost be supposed to have neither taste, smell, nor feeling; no disgust is ever evinced by them at even the most nauseous kind of food, nor do they appear to have any feeling of even the most striking changes in the temperature of the atmosphere."
"No meat," says Chapman (I., 57), "in whatever state of decomposition, is ever discarded by Bushmen." They dispute carrion with wolves and vultures. Rabbits they eat skins and all, and their menu is varied by all sorts of loathsome reptiles and insects.
No other savages, says Lichtenstein, betray "so high a degree of brutal ferocity" as the Bushmen. They "kill their own children without remorse." The missionary Moffat says (57) that "when a mother dies whose infant is not able to shift for itself, it is, without any ceremony, buried alive with the corpse of its mother." Kicherer, another missionary, says
"there are instances of parents throwing their tender offspring to the hungry lion, who stands roaring before their cavern, refusing to depart till some peace-offering be made to him."
He adds that after a quarrel between husband and wife the one beaten is apt to take revenge by killing their child; and that, on various occasions, parents smother their children, cast them away in the desert, or bury them alive without remorse. Murder is an amusement, and is considered a praiseworthy act. Livingstone (M.T., 159) tells of a Bushman who thought his god would consider him a "clever fellow" because he had murdered a man, two women, and two children. When fathers and mothers become too old to be of any use, or to take care of themselves, they are abandoned in the desert to be devoured alive by wild beasts. "I have often reasoned with the natives on this cruel practice," says the missionary Moffat (99); "in reply to which, they would only laugh." "It appears an awful exhibition of human depravity," he adds, "when children compel their parents to perish for want, or to be devoured by beasts of prey in a desert, from no other motive but sheer laziness." Kicherer says there are a few cases of "natural affection" sufficient to raise these creatures to "a level with the brute creation," Moffat, too, refers to exceptional cases of kindness, but the only instance he gives (112) describes their terror on finding he had drunk some water poisoned by them, and their gladness when he escaped--which terror and gladness were, however, very probably inspired not by sympathy but by the idea of punishment at causing the death of a white man. Chapman himself, the chosen champion of the Bushmen, relates (I., 67) how, having heard of Bushmen rescuing and carrying home some Makalolos whom they had found dying of thirst in the desert, he believed it at first; but he adds:
"Had I at that time possessed a sufficient knowledge of native character, I should not have been so credulous as to have listened to this report, for the idea of Bushmen carrying human beings whom they had found half dead out of a desert implies an act of charity quite inconsistent with their natural disposition and habits."
Barrow declares (269) that if Bushmen come across a Hottentot guarding his master's cattle,
"not contented with putting him to immediate death, they torture him by every means of cruelty that their invention can frame, as drawing out his bowels, tearing off his nails, scalping, and other acts equally savage."
They sometimes bury a victim up to the neck in the ground and thus leave him to be pecked to death by crows.
"LOVE IN ALL THEIR MARRIAGES"
And yet--I say it once more--we are asked to believe there is "love in all the marriages" of these fiendish creatures--beings who, as Kicherer says, live in holes or caves, where they "lie close together like pigs in a sty" and of whom Moffat declares that with the exception of Pliny's Troglodites "no tribe or people are surely more brutish, ignorant, and miserable." Our amazement at Chapman's assertion increases when we examine his argument more closely. Here it is (I., 258-59):
"Although they have a plurality of wives, which they also obtain by purchase, there is still love in all their marriages, and courtship among them is a very formal and, in some respects, a rather punctilious affair. When a young Bushman falls in love, he sends his sister to ask permission to pay his addresses; with becoming modesty the girl holds off in a playful, yet not scornful or repulsive manner if she likes him. The young man next sends his sister with a spear, or some other trifling article, which she leaves at the door of the girl's home. If this be not returned within the three or four days allowed for consideration, the Bushman takes it for granted that he is accepted, and gathering a number of his friends, he makes a grand hunt, generally killing an elephant or some other large animal and bringing the whole of the flesh to his intended father-in-law. The family now riot in an abundant supply.... After this the couple are proclaimed husband and wife, and the man goes to live with his father-in-law for a couple of winters, killing game, and always laying the produce of the chase at his feet as a mark of respect, duty, and gratitude."
It would take considerable ingenuity to condense into an equal number of lines a greater amount of ignorance and naïveté than this passage includes. And yet a number of anthropologists have accepted this passage serenely as expert evidence that there is love in all the marriages of the lowest of African races. Peschel was misled by it; Westermarck triumphantly puts it at the head of his cases intended to prove that "even very rude savages may have conjugal affection;" Moll meekly accepts it as a fact (Lib. Sex., Bd. I., Pt. 2, 403); and it seems to have made an impression on Katzel, and even on Fritsch. If these writers had taken the trouble to examine Chapman's qualifications for serving as a witness in anthropological questions, they would have saved themselves the humiliation of being thus duped. His very assertion that there is love in all Bushman marriages ought to have shown them what an untrustworthy witness he is; for a more reckless and absurd statement surely was never penned by any globe-trotter. There is not now, and there never has been, a people among whom love could be found in all marriages, or half the marriages. In another place (I., 43) Chapman gives still more striking evidence of his unfitness to serve as a witness. Speaking of the family of a Bamanwato chief, he says:
"I was not aware of this practice of early marriages until the wife of an old man I had engaged here to accompany us, a child of about eight years of age, was pointed out to me, and in my ignorance I laughed outright, until my interpreter explained the matrimonial usages of their people."
Chapman's own editor was tempted by this exhibition of ignorance to write the following footnote: "The author seems not to have been aware that such early marriages are common among the Hindoos." He might have added "and among most of the lower races."
The ignorance which made Chapman "laugh outright" when he was confronted by one of the most elementary facts of anthropology, is responsible for his reckless assertions in the paragraph above quoted. It is an ignorant assumption on his part that it is the feelings of "respect, duty, and gratitude" that make a Bushman provide his bride's father with game for a couple of winters. Such feelings are unknown to the Bushman's soul. Working for the bride's father is simply his way (if he has no property to give) of paying for his wife--an illustration of the widespread custom of service. If polygamy and the custom of purchasing wives do not, as Chapman intimates, prevent love from entering into all Bushman marriages, then these aborigines must be constructed on an entirely different plan from other human beings, among whom we know that polygamy crushes monopoly of affection, while a marriage by purchase is a purse-affair, not a heart-affair--the girl going nearly always to the highest bidder.
But Chapman's most serious error--the one on which he founded his theory that there is love in all Bushman marriages--lies in his assumption that the ceremony of sham capture indicates modesty and love, whereas, as we saw in the chapter on Coyness, it is a mere survival of capture, the most ruffianly way of securing a bride, in which her choice or feelings are absolutely disregarded, and which tells us nothing except that a man covets a woman and that she feigns resistance because custom, as taught by her parents, compels her to do so. Inasmuch as she must resist whether she likes the man or not, how could such sham "coyness" be a symptom of love? Moreover, it appears that even this sham coyness is exceptional, since, as Burchell informs us (II., 59), it is only when a girl grows up to womanhood without having been betrothed--"which, however, seldom happens"--that the female receives the man's attentions with such an "affectation of great alarm and disinclination on her part."
Burchell also informs us that a Bushman will take a second wife when the first one has become old, "not in years but in constitution;" and Barrow discovered the same thing (I., 276): "It appeared that it was customary for the elderly men to have two wives, one old and past child-bearing, the other young." Chapman, too, relates that a Bushman will often cast off his early wife and take a younger one, and as that does not prevent him from finding affection in their conjugal unions, we are enabled from this to infer that "love" means to him not enduring sympathy or altruistic capacity and eagerness for self-sacrifice, but a selfish, transient fondness continuing only as long as a woman is young and can gratify a man's sexual appetite. That kind of love doubtless does exist in all Bushman marriages.
Chapman further declares (II., 75) that these people lead "comparatively" chaste lives. I had supposed that, as an egg is either good or bad, so a man or woman is either chaste or unchaste. Other writers, who had no desire to whitewash savages, tell us not only "comparatively" but positively what Bushman morals are. A Bushman told Theophilus Halm (Globus, XVIII., 122) that quarrels for the possession of women often lead to murder; "nevertheless, the lascivious fellow assured me it was a fine thing to appropriate the wives of others." Wake (I., 205) says they lend their wives to strangers, and Lichtenstein tells us (II., 48) that "the wife is not indissolubly united to the husband; but when he gives her permission, she may go whither she will and associate with any other man." And again (42):
"Infidelity to the marriage compact is not considered a crime, it is scarcely regarded by the offended person.... They seem to have no idea of the distinction of girl, maiden, and wife; they are all expressed by one word alone. I leave every reader to draw from this single circumstance his own inference with regard to the nature of love and every kind of moral feeling among them."[137]
That this is not too severe a criticism is obvious from the fact that Lichtenstein, in judging savages, was rather apt to err on the side of leniency. The equally generous and amiable missionary Moffat (174-75) censures him, for instance, for his favorable view of the Bechuanas, saying that he was not with them long enough to know their real character. Had he dwelt among them, accompanied them on journeys, and known them as he (Moffat) did, "he would not have attempted to revive the fabled delights and bliss of ignorance reported to exist in the abodes of heathenism."
It is in comparison with these Bechuanas that Chapman calls the Bushmen moral, obviously confounding morality with licentiousness. Without having any moral principles at all, it is quite likely that the Bushmen are less licentious than their neighbors for the simple reason that they are less well-fed; for as old Burton remarks, for the most part those are "aptest to love that are young and lusty, live at ease, stall-fed, free from cares, like cattle in a rank pasture"--whereas the Bushmen are nearly always thin, half-starved denizens of the African deserts, enervated by constant fears, and so unmanly that "a single musket shot," says Lichtenstein, "will put a hundred to flight, and whoever rushes upon them with only a good stick in his hand has no reason to fear any resistance from ever so large a number."
Such men are not apt to be heroes among women in any sense. Indeed, Galton says (T.S.A., 178), "I am sure that Bushmen are, generally speaking, henpecked. They always consult their wives. The Damaras do not." Chapman himself, with unconscious humor, gives us (I., 391) a sample of the "love" which he found in "all Bushman marriages;" his remarks confirming at the same time the truth I dwelt on in the chapter on Individual Preference, that among savages the sexes are less individualized than with us, the men being more effeminate, the women viragoes:
"The passive and effeminate disposition of the men, of which we have had frequent reason to complain in the course of this narrative, was illustrated in the revel which accompanied the parting feast, when the men allowed themselves to be beaten by the women, who, I am told, are in the constant habit of belaboring their devoted husbands, in order to keep them in proper subjection. On this occasion the men got broken heads at the hands of their gentle partners; one had his nose, another his ear, nearly bitten off."
Notwithstanding this affectionate "constant habit" of breaking their husbands' heads, the Bushman women have not succeeded in teaching them even the rudiments of gallantry. "The woman is a beast of burden," says Hahn; "at the same time she is subjected to ill-treatment which not seldom leads to death." When camp is moved, the gallant husband carries his spear and quiver, the wife "does the rest," carrying the baby, the mat, the earthen cooking-pot, the ostrich shells, and a bundle of skins. If it happens, as it often does, that there is not enough to eat, the wife has to go hungry. In revenge she usually prepares her own food only, leaving him to do his own cooking. If a wife falls ill on the way to a new camping-place, she is left behind to perish. (Ratzel, I., 7.)
In conclusion, and as a climax to my argument, I will quote the testimony of three missionaries who did not simply make a flying visit or two to the country of the Bushmen, as Chapman did, but lived among them. The Rev. R. Moffat (49) cites the missionary Kicherer, "whose circumstances while living among them afforded abundant opportunities of becoming intimately acquainted with their real condition," and who wrote that the Bushmen "are total strangers to domestic happiness. The men have several wives, but conjugal affection is little known." This opinion is thus endorsed by Moffat, and a third missionary, the Rev. F. Fleming, wrote (167) that among Bushmen "conjugal affection seems totally unknown," and pre-matrimonial love is of course out of question in a region where girls are married as infants. The wife always has to work harder than the husband. If she becomes weak or ill she is unceremoniously left behind to starve. (Ratzel, I., 72.)
FALSE FACTS REGARDING HOTTENTOTS
Darwin has well observed that a false argument is comparatively harmless because subsequent discussion is sure to demolish it, whereas a false fact may perplex speculation for ages. Chapman's assertion that there is love in all Bushman marriages is one of these false facts, as our cross-examination has shown. In passing now to the neighbors of the Bushmen, the Hottentots, let us bear in mind the lesson taught. They called themselves Khoi-Khoin, "men of men," while Van Riebeck's followers referred to them as "black stinking hounds." There is a prevalent impression that nearly all Africans are negroes. But the Hottentots are not negroes any more than are the Bushmen, or the Kaffirs, whom we shall consider next. Ethnologists are not agreed as to the relationship that exists between Bushmen and Hottentots, but it is certain that the latter represent a somewhat higher level of civilization. Yet, here again we must guard carefully against "false facts," especially in reference to the topic that interests us--the relations of the sexes. As late as 1896 the eminent American anthropologist, Dr. Brinton, had an article in Science (October 16th), in which he remarked that "one trait which we admire in Hottentots is their regard for women," He was led into making this assertion by an article entitled "Woman in Hottentot Poetry," which appeared in the German periodical Globus (Vol. 70, pp. 173-77). It was written by Dr. L. Jakobowski, and is quite as misleading as Chapman's book. Its logic is most peculiar. The writer first shows (to his own satisfaction) that the Hottentots treat their women somewhat better than other South Africans do, and from this "fact" he goes on to infer that they must have love-songs! He admits, indeed, that (with a few exceptions, to be presently considered) we know nothing of these songs, but it "seems certain" that they must be sung at the erotic dances of the natives; these, however, carefully conceal them from the missionaries, and as Jakobowski naïvely adds, to heed the missionaries "would be tantamount to giving up their old sensual dances."
What facts does Jakobowski adduce in support of his assertion that Hottentots have a high regard for their women? He says:
"Without his wife's permission a Hottentot does not drink a drop of milk, and should he dare to do so, the women of his family will take away the cows and sheep and add them to their flocks. A girl has the right to punish her brother if he violates the laws of courtesy. The oldest sister may have him chained and punished, and if a slave who is being castigated implores his master by the name of his (the master's) sister to desist, the blows must cease or else the master is bound to pay a fine to the sister who has been invoked."
EFFEMINATE MEN AND MASCULINE WOMEN
If all these statements were real facts--and we shall presently see that they are not--they would prove no more than that the modern Hottentots, like their neighbors, the Bushmen, are hen-pecked. Barrow (I., 286) speaks of the "timid and pusillanimous mind which characterizes the Hottentots," and elsewhere (144) he says that their
"impolitic custom of hording together in families, and of not marrying out of their own kraals, has, no doubt, tended to enervate this race of men, and reduced them to their present degenerated condition, which is that of a languid, listless, phlegmatic people, in whom the prolific powers of nature seem to be almost exhausted."
It does not, therefore, surprise us to be told (by Thunberg) that "it frequently happens that a woman marries two husbands." And these women are anything but feminine and lovable. One of the champions of the Hottentots, Theophilus Hahn, says (Globus, XII., 304) of the Namaqua women that they love to torture their slaves: "When they cudgel a slave one can easily read in their faces the infernal joy it gives them to witness the tortures of their victims." He often saw women belaboring the naked back of a slave with branches of the cruel acacia delinens, and finally rub salt or saltpetre into the wounds. Napier (I., 59) says of the Hottentots, that
"if the parents of a newly born child found him or her de trop, the poor little wretch was either mercilessly buried alive, or exposed in a thicket, there to be devoured by beasts of prey."
While he had to take it for granted that there must be love-songs among these cruel Hottentots, Jakobowski had no trouble in finding songs of hate, of defiance, and revenge. Even these cannot be cited without omitting objectionable words. Here is one, properly expurgated:
"Take this man away from me that he may be beaten and his mother weep over him and the worms eat him.... Let this man be brought before your counsel and cudgelled until not a shred of flesh remains on his ... that the worms would care to eat; for the reason that he has done me such a painful injury," etc.
HOW THE HOTTENTOT WOMAN "RULES AT HOME"
Jakobowski's assertion that a man's oldest sister may have him chained and punished is obviously a cock-and-bull story. It is diametrically opposed to what Peter Kolben says: "The eldest son has in a manner an absolute authority over all his brothers and sisters." "Among the Hottentots an eldest son may after his father's death retain his brothers and sisters in a sort of slavery." Kolben is now accepted as the leading authority on the aboriginal Hottentots, as he found them two centuries ago, before the missionaries had had time to influence their customs. What makes him the more unimpeachable as a witness in our case is that he is decidedly prejudiced in favor of the Hottentots.[138] What was the treatment of women by Hottentots as witnessed by Kolben? Is it true that, as Jakobowski asserts, the Hottentot woman rules at home? Quite true; most emphatically so. The husband, says Kolben (I., 252-55), after the hut is built,
"has absolutely nothing more to do with the house and domestic affairs; he turns the care for them over to his wife, who is obliged to procure provisions as well as she can and cook them. The husband devotes himself to drinking, eating, smoking, loafing, and sleeping, and takes no more concern about the affairs of his family than if he had none at all. If he goes out to fish or hunt, it is rather to amuse himself than to help his wife and children.... Even the care of his cattle the poor wife, despite all her other work, shares with him. The only thing she is not allowed to meddle with is the sale. This is a prerogative which constitutes the man's honor and which he would not allow anyone to take away from him with impunity."
The wife, he goes on to say, has to cut the fire-wood and carry it to the house, gather roots and other food and prepare it for the whole family, milk the cows, and take care of the children. The older daughters help her, but need so much watching that they are only an additional care; and all this time the husband "lies lazily on his back." "Such is the wretched life of the Hottentot woman," he sums up; "she lives in a perpetual slavery." Nor is there any family life or companionship, they eat separately, and
"the wife never sets foot in the husband's room, which is separated from the rest of the house; she seldom enjoys his company. He commands as master, she obeys as slave, without ever complaining."
"REGARD FOR WOMEN"
"What we admire in Hottentots is their regard for women." Here are some more illustrations of this loving "regard for women." The Rev. J. Philip (II., 207) says that the Namaqua women begged Moffat to remain with them, telling him that before he came "we were treated by the men as brutes, and worse than they treated brutes." While the men loafed they had to go and collect food, and if they returned unsuccessful, as was often the case, they were generally beaten. They had to cook for the men and were not allowed a bite till they had finished their meal. "When they had eaten, we were obliged to retire from their presence to consume the offals given to us." When twins are born, says Kolben (304), there is great rejoicing if they are boys; two fat buffaloes are killed, and all the neighbors invited to the feast; but if the twins are girls, two sheep only are killed and there is no feast or rejoicing. If one of the twins is a girl she is invariably killed, buried alive, or exposed on a tree or in the bushes. When a boy has reached a certain age he is subjected to a peculiarly disgusting ceremony, and after that he may insult his mother with impunity whenever he chooses: "he may cudgel her, if he pleases, to suit his whim, without any danger of being called to an account for it." Kolben says he often witnessed such insolence, which was even applauded as a sign of manliness and courage. "What barbarity!" he exclaims. "It is a result of the contempt which these peoples feel for women." He used to remonstrate with them, but they could hardly restrain their impatience, and the only answer he could get was "it is the custom of the Hottentots, they have never done otherwise."
Andersson (Ngami, 332) says of the Namaqua Hottentots:
"If a man becomes tired of his wife, he unceremoniously returns her to the parental roof, and however much she (or the parents) may object to so summary a proceeding, there is no remedy."
In Kolben's time wives convicted of adultery were killed, while the men could do as they chose. In later times a lashing with a strap of rhinoceros hide was substituted for burning. Kolben thought that the serious punishment for adultery prevalent in his time argued that there must be love among the Hottentots, though he confessed he could see no signs of it. He was of course mistaken in his assumption, for, as was made clear in our chapter on Jealousy, murderous rage at an infringement on a man's conjugal property does not constitute or prove love, but exists entirely apart from it.
CAPACITY FOR REFINED LOVE
The injuriousness of "false facts" to science is illustrated by a remark which occurs in the great work on the natives of South Africa by Dr. Fritsch, who is justly regarded as one of the leading authorities on that subject. Speaking of the Hottentots (Namaqua) he says (351) that "whereas Tindall indicates sensuality and selfishness as two of their most prominent characteristics, Th. Hahn lauds their conjugal attachment independent of fleshly love." Here surely is unimpeachable evidence, for Theophilus Hahn, the son of a missionary, was born and bred among these peoples. But if we refer to the passage which Fritsch alluded to (Globus, XII., 306), we find that the reasons Hahn gives for believing that Hottentots are capable of something higher than carnal desires are that many of them, though rich enough to have a harem, content themselves with one wife, and that if a wife dies before her husband, he very seldom marries again. Yet in the very next sentence Hahn mentions a native trait which sufficiently explains both these customs. "Brides," he says, "cost many oxen and sheep, and the men, as among other South African peoples, the Kaffirs, for instance, would rather have big herds of cattle than a good-looking wife." Apart from this explanation, I fail to see what necessary connection there is between a man's being content with one wife and his capacity for sentimental love, since his greed for cattle and his lack of physical stamina and appetite fully account for his monogamy. This matter must be judged from the Hottentot point of view, not from ours. It is well known that in regions where polygamy prevails a man who wishes to be kind to his wife does not content himself with her, but marries another, or several others, to share the hard work with her. These Hottentots have not enough consideration for their hard-worked wives to do even that.
HOTTENTOT COARSENESS
The coarseness and obscenity of the Hottentots constitute further reasons for believing them incapable of refined love. Their eulogist, Kolben, himself was obliged to admit that they "find a peculiar pleasure in filth and stench" and "are in the matter of diet the filthiest people in the world." The women eat their own vermin, which swarm in their scant attire. Nor is decency the object for which they wear this scant dress---quite the reverse. Speaking of the male Hottentot's very simple dress, Barrow says (I., 154) that
"if the real intent of it was the promotion of decency, it should seem that he has widely missed his aim, as it is certainly one of the most immodest objects, in such a situation as he places it, that could have been contrived."
And concerning the little apron worn by the women he says:
"Great pains seem to be taken by the women to attract notice toward this part of their persons. Large metal buttons ... or anything that makes a great show, are fastened to the borders of this apron."
Kolben relates that when a Hottentot desires to marry a girl he goes with his father to the girl's father, who gives the answer after consulting with his wife. If the verdict is unfavorable "the gallant's love for the beauty is readily cured and he casts his eyes on another one." But a refusal is rarely given unless the girl is already promised to another. The girl, too, is consulted, but only nominally, for if she refuses she can retain her liberty only by an all-night struggle with her suitor in which she usually succumbs, after which she has to marry him whether she wishes to or not. Kolben gives other details of the marriage ceremony which are too filthy to be even hinted at here.
FAT VERSUS SENTIMENT
By persons who had lived many years among the Colonial Hottentots, Fritsch (328) was assured that these people, far from being the models of chastity Kolben tried to prove them, indulged in licentious festivals lasting several days, at which all restraints were cast aside. And this brings us back to our starting-point--Dr. Jakobowski's peculiar argument concerning the "love poems" which he feels sure must be sung at the erotic dances of the natives, though they are carefully concealed from the missionaries. If they were poems of sentiment, the missionaries would not disapprove, and there would be no reason for concealing them; but the foregoing remarks show clearly enough what kind of "love" they would be likely to sing about. If any doubt remained on the subject the following delightful confession, which the eugolist Hahn makes in a moment of confidence, would settle the matter. To appreciate the passage, bear in mind that the Hottentots are the people among whom excessive posterior corpulence (steatopyga) is especially admired as the acme of physical attractions. Now Hahn says (335):
"The young girls drink whole cups of liquid fat, and for a good reason, the object being to attain a very rotund body by a fattening process, in order that Hymen may claim them as soon as possible. They do not grow sentimental and sick from love and jealousy, nor do they die from the anguish and woes of love, as our women do, nor engage in love-intrigues, but they look at the whole matter in a very materialistic and sober way. Their sole love-affair is the fattening process, on the result of which, as with a pig, depends the girl's value and the demand for her."
In this last sentence, which I have taken the liberty to italicize, lies the philosophy of African "love" in general, and I am glad to be able to declare it on such unquestionable authority. What a Hottentot "regards" in a woman is Fat; Sentiment is out of the question. When Hottentots are together, says Kolben,
"you never see them give tender kisses or cast loving glances at each other. Day and night, on every occasion, they are so cold and so indifferent to each other that you would not believe that they love each other or are married. If in a hut there were twenty Hottentots with their wives, it would be impossible to tell, either from their words or actions, which of them belonged together."
SOUTH AFRICAN LOVE-POEMS
As intimated on a preceding page, there are, among Dr. Jakobowski's examples of Hottentot lyrics[139] a few which may be vaguely included in the category of love-poems. "Where did you hear that I love you while you are unloving toward me?" complained one Hottentot; while another warned his friend: "That is the misfortune pursuing you that you love where you ought not to!" A third declared. "I shall not cease to love however much they (i.e., the parents or guardians) may oppose me," A fourth addresses this song to a young girl:
My lioness! Are you afraid that I may bewitch you? You milk the cow with fleshy hand. Bite me! Pour out (the milk) for me! My lioness! Daughter of a great man!
It is needless to say that in the first three of these aboriginal "lyrics" there is not the slightest indication that the "love" expressed rises above mere covetous desire of the senses; and as for the fourth, what is there in it besides reference to the girl's fatness (fleshy hand), her utility in milking and serving the milk and her carnal bites? Yet in this frank avowal of masculine selfishness and sensuality Hahn finds "a certain refinement of sentiment"!
A HOTTENTOT FLIRT
Though a Hottentot belle's value in the marriage market is determined chiefly by the degree of her corpulence, girls of the higher families are not, it seems, devoid of other means of attracting the attention of men. At least I infer so from the following passage in Dalton's book (T.S.A., 104) relating to a certain chief:
"He had a charming daughter, the greatest belle among the blacks that I had ever seen, and the most thorough-paced coquette. Her main piece of finery, and one that she flirted about in a most captivating manner, was a shell of the size of a penny-piece. She had fastened it to the end of a lock of front hair, which was of such length as to permit the shell to dangle to the precise level of her eyes. She had learned to move her head with so great precision as to throw the shell exactly over whichever eye she pleased, and the lady's winning grace consisted in this feat of bo-peep, first eclipsing an eye and languishing out of the other, and then with an elegant toss of the head reversing the proceedings."
KAFFIR MORALS
Our search for true love in Africa has thus far resulted in failure, the alleged discoveries of a few sanguine sentimentalists having proved to be illusory. If we now turn to the Kaffirs, who share with the Hottentots the southern extremity of Africa, we find that here again we must above all things guard against "false facts." Westermarck (61), after citing Barrow (I., 206) to the effect that "a Kaffir woman is chaste and extremely modest," adds:
"and Mr. Cousins informs me that between their various feasts the Kaffirs, both men and women, have to live in strict continence, the penalty being banishment from the tribe if this law is broken."
It would be interesting to know what Barrow means by "extremely modest" since he admits that that attribute
"might be questioned. If, for instance, a young woman be asked whether she be married, not content with giving the simple negative, she throws open her cloak and displays her bosom; and as most frequently she has no other covering beneath, she perhaps may discover at the same time, though unintentionally, more of her charms."
But it is his assertion that "a Kaffir woman is chaste" that clashes most outrageously with all recorded facts and the testimony of the leading authorities, including many missionaries. Dr. Fritsch says in the preface to his standard book on the natives of South Africa that the assertions of Barrow are to be accepted "with caution, or rather with suspicion." It is the absence of this caution and suspicion that has led Westermarck into so many erroneous conclusions. In the present instance, however, it is absolutely incomprehensible why he should have cited the one author who calls the Kaffirs chaste, ignoring the crushing weight of countless facts showing them to be extremely dissolute.
It is worthy of note that testimony as to the chastity of wild races generally comes from mere travellers among them, ignorant of their language and intimate habits, whereas the writings of those who have dwelt among them give one a very different idea. As the Rev. Mr. Holden remarks (187), those who have "boasted of the chastity, purity, and innocence of heathen life" have not been "behind the scenes." Here, for instance, is Geo. McCall Theal, who lived among the Kaffir people twenty years, filling various positions among them, varying from a mission teacher to a border magistrate, and so well acquainted with their language that he was able to collect and print a volume on Kaffir Folk Lore. Like all writers who have made a specialty of a subject, he is naturally somewhat biased in favor of it, and this gives still more weight to his words on negative points. Regarding the question of chastity he says:
"Kaffir ideas of some kinds of morality are very low. The custom is general for a married woman to have a lover who is not her husband, and little or no disgrace attaches to her on this account. The lover is generally subject to a fine of no great amount, and the husband may give the woman a beating, but that finishes the penalty."
The German missionary Neuhaus bears witness to the fact that (like the Bushmen and most other Africans) the Kaffirs are in one respect lower than the lowest beasts, inasmuch as for the sake of filthy lucre parents often marry off their daughters before they have attained maturity. Girls of eight to ten are often given into the clutches of wealthy old men who are already supplied with a harem. Concerning girls in general, and widows, we are told that they can do whatever they please, and that they only ask their lovers not to be imprudent, as they do not wish to lose their liberty and assume maternal duties too soon if they can help it. Lichtenstein says (I., 264) that
"a traveller remaining some time with a horde easily finds an unmarried young woman with whom he contracts the closest intimacy; nay, it is not uncommon, as a mark of hospitality, to offer him one as a companion,"
and no wonder, for among these Kaffirs there is "no feeling of love in marriage" (161). The German missionary Alberti relates (97) that sometimes a Kaffir girl is offered to a man in marriage. Having assured himself of her health, he claims the further privilege of a night's acquaintance; after which, if she pleases him, he proceeds to bargain for her permanent possession. Another competent and reliable observer, Stephen Kay, corresponding member of the South African Institution, who censures Barrow sharply for his incorrect remarks on Kaffir morals, says:
"No man deems it any sin whatever to seduce his neighbor's wife: his only grounds of fear are the probability of detection, and the fine demanded by law in such cases. The females, accustomed from their youth up to this gross depravity of manners, neither manifest, nor apparently feel, any delicacy in stating and describing circumstances of the most shameful nature before an assemblage of men, whose language is often obscene beyond description" (105). "Fornication is a common and crying sin. The women are well acquainted with the means of procuring miscarriage; and those means are not unfrequently resorted to without bringing upon the offender any punishment or disgrace whatever.... When adultery is clearly proved the husband is generally fully satisfied with the fine usually levied upon the delinquent.... So degraded indeed are their views on subjects of this nature ... that the man who has thus obtained six or eight head of cattle deems it a fortunate circumstance rather than otherwise; he at once renews his intimacy with the seducer, and in the course of a few days becomes as friendly and familiar with him as ever" (141-42).
"Whenever the Kaffir monarch hears of a young woman possessed of more than ordinary beauty, and at all within his reach, he unceremoniously sends for her or fetches her himself.... Seldom or never does any young girl, residing in his immediate neighborhood, escape defilement after attaining the age of puberty (165)." "Widows are constantly constrained to be the servants of sin" (177).
"The following singular usage obtains universally ... all conjugal intercourse is entirely suspended from the time of accouchement until the child be completely weaned, which seldom takes place before it is able to run about. Hence during the whole of that period, an illicit and clandestine intercourse with strangers is generally kept up by both parties, to the utter subversion of everything like attachment and connubial bliss. Something like affection is in some instances apparent for awhile, but it is generally of comparatively short duration."
Fritsch (95) describes a Kaffir custom called U'pundhlo which has only lately been abolished:
"Once in awhile a troupe of young men was sent from the principal town to the surrounding country to capture all the unmarried girls they could get hold of and carry them away forcibly. These girls had to serve for awhile as concubines of strangers visiting the court. After a few days they were allowed to go and their places were taken by other girls captured in the same way."
Before the Kaffirs came under the influence of civilization, this custom gave no special offence; "and why should it?" adds Fritsch, "since with the Kaffirs marriageable girls are morally free and their purity seems a matter of no special significance." When boys reach the age of puberty, he says (109), they are circumcised;
"thereupon, while they are in the transition stage between boyhood and manhood, they are almost entirely independent of all laws, especially in their sexual relations, so that they are allowed to take possession with impunity of any unmarried women they choose."
The Kaffirs also indulge in obscene dances and feasts. Warner says (97) that at the ceremony of circumcision virtue is polluted while yet in its embryo. "A really pure girl is unknown among the raw Kaffirs," writes Hol. "All demoraln sense of purity and shame is lost." While superstition forbids the marrying of first cousins as incestuous, real "incest in its worst forms"--between mother and sons--prevails. At the ceremony called Ntonjane the young girls "are degraded and polluted at the very threshold of womanhood, and every spark of virtuous feeling annihilated" (197, 207, 185).
"Immorality," says Fritsch (112),
"is too deeply rooted in African blood to make it difficult to find an occasion for indulging in it; wherefore the custom of celebrating puberty, harmless in itself, is made the occasion for lascivious practices; the unmarried girls choose companions with whom they cohabit as long as the festival lasts ... usually three or four days."
After giving other details, Fritsch thus sums up the situation:
"These diverse facts make it clear that with these tribes (Ama-Xosa) woman stands, if not morally, at least judicially, little above cattle, and consequently it is impossible to speak of family life in one sense of the word."
In his Nursery Tales of the Zulus (255) Callaway gives an account, in the native language as well as in the English, of the license indulged in at Kaffir puberty festivals. Young men assemble from all quarters. The maidens have a "girl-king" to whom the men are obliged to give a present before they are allowed to enter the hut chosen for the meeting. "The young people remain alone and sport after their own fancies in every way." "It is a day of filthiness in which everything may be done according to the heart's desire of those who gather around the umgongo." The Rev. J. MacDonald, a man of scientific attainments, gives a detailed account of the incredibly obscene ceremonies to which the girls of the Zulu-Kaffirs are subjected, and the licentious yet Malthusian conduct of the young folks in general who "separate into pairs and sleep in puris naturalibus, for that is strictly ordained by custom." The father of a girl thus treated feels honored on receiving a present from her partner.[140]
INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE FOR--COWS
The utter indifference of the Kaffirs to chastity and their licentiousness, approved and even prescribed by national custom, were not the only obstacle to the growth of sentiments rising above mere sensuality. Commercialism was another fatal obstacle. I have already quoted Hahn's testimony that a Kaffir "would rather have big herds of cattle than a good-looking wife." Dohne asserts (Shooter, 88) that "a Kaffir loves his cattle more than his daughter," and Kay (111) tells us that
"he is scarcely ever seen shedding tears, excepting when the chief lays violent hands upon some part of his horned family; this pierces him to the heart and produces more real grief than would be evinced over the loss of wife and child."
On another page (85) he says that in time of war the poor women fall into the enemy's hands, because
"their husbands afford them no assistance or protection whatever. The preservation of the cattle constitutes the grand object of their solicitude; and with these, which are trained for the purpose, they run at an astonishing rate, leaving both wives and children to take their chances."
Such being the Kaffir's relative estimation of cows and women, we might infer that in matrimonial arrangements bovine interests were much more regarded than any possible sentimental considerations; and this we find to be the case. Barrow (149) tells us that
"the females being considered as the property of their parents, are always disposed of by sale. The common price of a wife is an ox or a couple of cows. Love with them is a very confined passion, taking but little hold on the mind. When an offer is made for the purchase of a daughter, she feels little inclination to refuse; she considers herself as an article at market, and is neither surprised, nor unhappy, nor interested, on being told that she is about to be disposed of. There is no previous courtship, no exchange of fine sentiments, no nice feelings, no attentions to catch the affections and to attach the heart."[141]
BARGAINING FOR BRIDES
The Rev. L. Grout says in his Zululand (166):
"So long as the government allows the custom called ukulobolisha, the selling of women in marriage for cattle, just so long the richer and so, for the most part, the older and the already married man will be found, too often, the successful suitor--not indeed at the feet of the maiden, for she is allowed little or no right to a voice as to whom she shall marry, but at the hands of her heathen proprietor, who, in his degradation, looks less at the affections and preferences of his daughter than at the surest way of filling his kraal with cattle, and thus providing for buying another wife or two."
So purely commercial is the transaction that if a wife proves very fruitful and healthy, a demand for more cattle is made on her husband (165). Should she be feeble or barren he may send her back to her father and demand compensation. A favorite way is to retain a wife as a slave and go on marrying other girls as fast as the man's means allow. Theal says (213) that if a wife has no children the husband has a right to return her to her parents and if she has a marriageable sister, take her in exchange. But the acme of commercialism is reached in a Zulu marriage ceremony described by Shooter. At the wedding the matrons belonging to the bridegroom's party tell the bride that too many cows have been given for her; that she is rather plain than otherwise, and will never be able to do a married woman's work, and that altogether it is very kind of the bridegroom to condescend to marry her. Then the bride's friends have their innings. They condole with her parents on the very inadequate number of cows paid for her, the loveliest girl in the village; declare that the husband is quite unworthy of her, and ought to be ashamed for driving such a hard bargain with her parents.
Leslie's assertion (194) that it is "a mistake to imagine that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner and with the same authority with which he would dispose of a cow," is contradicted by the concurrent testimony of the leading authorities. Some of these have already been cited. The reliable Fritsch says (112) of the Ama-Xosa branch:
"It is characteristic that as a rule the inclination of the girl to be married is never consulted, but that her nearest male relatives select a husband for her to whom she is unceremoniously sent. They choose, of course, a man who can pay."
If she is a useful girl he is not likely to refuse the offer, yet he bargains to get her as cheaply as possible (though he knows that a Kaffir girl's chief pride is the knowledge that many heads of cattle were paid for her). Regarding the Ama-Zulu, Fritsch says (141-42) that the women are slaves and a wife is regarded as so much invested capital. "If she falls ill, or remains childless, so that the man does not get his money's worth, he often returns her to her father and asks his cattle back." Older and less attractive women are sometimes married off on credit, or to be paid for in instalments. "In all this," Fritsch sums up, "there is certainly little of poetry and romance, but it cannot be denied that under the influence of European residents an improvement has been effected in some quarters." He himself saw at Natal a young couple who "showed a certain interest in each other," such as one expects of married persons; but in parts untouched by European influence, he adds, true conjugal devotion is an unusual thing.
AMOROUS PREFERENCES
It is probably owing to such European influences that Theal (209) found that although a woman is not legally supposed to be consulted in the choice of a husband, in point of fact "matches arising from mutual love are not uncommon. In such cases, if any difficulties are arranged by the guardians on either side, the young people do not scruple to run away together." The word "love" in this passage is of course used in that vague sense which indicates nothing but a preference of one man or woman to others. That a Kaffir girl should prefer a young man to an old suitor to the point of running away with him is to be expected, even if there is nothing more than a merely sensual attachment. The question how far there are any amorous preferences among Kaffirs is an interesting one. From the fact that they prefer their cows to their wives in moments of danger, we infer that though they might also like one girl better than another, such preference would be apt to prove rather weak; and this inference is borne out by some remarks of the German missionary Alberti which I will translate:
"The sentiment of tender and chaste love is as unknown to the Kaffir as that respect which is founded on agreement and moral worth. The need of mutual aid in domestic life, combined with the natural instinct for the propagation of the species, alone seem to occasion a union of young men and women which afterward gains permanence through habitual intercourse and a community of interests."
"It is true that the young man commonly seeks to gain the favor of the girl he likes before he applies to her parents, in which case, if his suit is accepted, the supreme favor is at once granted him by the girl; but inasmuch as he does not need her good will necessarily, the parental consent being sufficient to secure possession of her, he shows little zeal, and his peace of mind is not in the least disturbed by a possible refusal. Altogether, he is much less solicitous about gaining her predilection than about getting her for the lowest possible price."
Alberti was evidently a thinker as well as a careful observer. His lucid remarks gives us a deep insight into primitive conditions when love had hardly yet begun to germinate. What a worldwide difference between this languid Kaffir wooer, hardly caring whether he gets this girl or another, and the modern lover who thinks life not worth living, unless he can gain the love of his chosen one. In all the literature on the subject, I have been able to find only one case of stubborn preference among Kaffirs. Neuhaus knew a young man who refused for two years to marry the girl chosen for him by his father, and finally succeeded in having his way with another girl whom he preferred. As a matter of course, strong aversion is more frequently manifested than decided preference, especially in the case of girls who are compelled to marry old men. Neuhaus[142] saw a Zulu girl whose hands had been nearly burned off by her tormentors; he knew of two girls who committed suicide, one just before, the other just after, an enforced marriage. Grout (167) speaks of the "various kinds of torture resorted to by the father and friends of a girl to compel her to marry contrary to her choice." One girl, who had fled to his house for refuge, told him repeatedly that if delivered into the hands of her tormentors "she would be cruelly beaten as soon as they were out of sight and be subjected to every possible abuse, till she should comply with the wishes of her proprietor."
ZULU GIRLS NOT COY
Where men are so deficient in sentiment and manly instincts that one young woman seems to them about as good as another, it is hardly strange that the women too should lack those qualities of delicacy, gentleness, and modesty which make the weaker sex adorable. The description of the bloody duels often fought by Kaffir women given by the British missionary Beste (Ploss, II., 421) indicates a decidedly Amazonian disposition. But the most suggestive trait of Kaffir women is the lack of feminine coyness in their matrimonial preliminaries. According to Gardiner (97),
"it is not regarded as a matter either of etiquette or of delicacy from which side the proposal of marriage may proceed--the overture is as often made by the women as the men."
"Courtship," says Shooter (50), "does not always begin with the men." Sometimes the girl's father proposes for her; and when a young woman does not receive an early proposal, her father or brother go from kraal to kraal and offer her till a bidder is found. Callaway (60) relates that when a young Zulu woman is ready to be married she goes to the kraal of the bridegroom, to stand there. She remains without speaking, but they understand her. If they "acknowledge" her, a goat is killed and she is entertained. If they do not like her, they give her a burning piece of firewood, to intimate that there is no fire in that kraal to warm herself by; she must go and kindle a fire for herself.[143]
CHARMS AHD POEMS
Though in all this there is considerable romance, there is no evidence of romantic love. But how about love-charms, poems, and stories? According to Grout (171), love-charms are not unknown in Zulu land. They are made of certain herbs or barks, reduced to a powder, and sent by the hand of some unsuspected friend to be given in a pinch of snuff, deposited in the dress, or sprinkled upon the person of the party whose favor is to be won. But love-powders argue a very materialistic way of regarding love and tell us nothing about sentiments. A hint at something more poetic is given by the Rev. J. Tyler (61), who relates that flowers are often seen on Zulu heads, and that one of them, the "love-making posy," is said to foster "love." Unfortunately that is all the information he gives us on this particular point, and the further details supplied by him (120-22) dash all hopes of finding traces of sentiment. The husband "eats alone," and when the wife brings him a drink of home-made beer "she must first sip to show there is no 'death in the pot.'" While he guzzles beer, loafs, smokes, and gossips, she has to do all the work at home as well as in the field, carrying her child on her back and returning in the evening with a bundle of firewood on her head. "In the winter the natives assemble almost daily for drinking and dancing, and these orgies are accompanied by the vilest obscenities and evil practices."
As regards poems Wallaschek remarks (6) that "the Kaffir in his poetry only recognizes a threefold subject: war, cattle, and excessive adulation of his ruler." One Kaffir love-poem, or rather marriage-poem, I have been able to find (Shooter, 236), and it is delightfully characteristic:
We tell you to dig well, Come, girl of ours, Bring food and eat it; Fetch fire-wood And don't be lazy.
A KAFFIR LOVE-STORY
Among the twenty-one tales collected in Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore there is one which approximates what we call a love-story. As it takes up six pages of his book it cannot be quoted entire, but in the following condensed version I have retained every detail that is pertinent to our inquiry. It is entitled The Story of Mbulukazi.
There was once a man who had two wives; one of them had no children, wherefore he did not love her. The other one had one daughter, who was very black, and several children besides, but they were all crows. The barren wife was very downcast and often wept all day.
One day two doves perching near her asked why she cried. When they had heard her story they told her to bring two earthen jars. Then they scratched her knees until the blood flowed, and put it into the jars. Every day they came and told her to look in the jars, till one day she found in them two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. They grew up in her hut, for she lived apart from her husband, and he knew nothing of their existence.
When they were big, they went to the river one day to fetch water. On the way they met some young men, among whom was Broad Breast, a chief's son who was looking for a pretty girl to be his wife. The men asked for a drink and the boy gave them all some water, but the young chief would take it only from the girl. He was very much smitten with her beauty, and watched her to see where she lived. He then went home to his father and asked for cattle with which to marry her. The chief, being rich, gave him many fine cattle, and with these the young man went to the husband of the girl's mother and said: "I want to marry your daughter." So the girl who was very black was told to come, but the young chief said: "That is not the one I want; the one I saw was lighter in color and much prettier." The father replied: "I have no other children but crows."
But Broad Breast persisted, and finally the servant-girl told the father about the other daughter. In the evening he went to his neglected wife's hut and to his great joy saw the boy and his sister. He remained all night and it was agreed that the young chief should have the girl. When Broad Breast saw her he said: "This is the girl I meant." So he gave the cattle to the father and married the girl, whose name was Mbulukazi.
To appease the jealousy of the very black girl's mother he also married that girl, and each of them received from her father an ox, with which they went to their new home. But the young chief did not care for the very black girl and gave her an old rickety hut to live in while Mbulukazi had a very nice new house. This made the other girl jealous, and she plotted revenge, which she carried out one day by pushing her rival over the edge of a rock, so that she fell into the river and was drowned. The corpse was, however, found by her favorite ox, who licked her till her life came back, and as soon as she was strong once more she told what had happened.
When the young chief heard the story he was angry with the dark wife and said to her: "Go home to your father; I never wanted you at all; it was your mother who brought you to me." So she had to go away in sorrow and Mbulukazi remained the great wife of the chief.
In this interesting story there are two suspicious details. Theal says he has taken care in his collection not to give a single sentence that did not come from native sources. He calls attention, however, to the fact that tens of thousands of Kaffirs have adopted the religion of Europeans and have accepted ideas from their teachers, wherefore "it will surprise no one to learn that these tales are already undergoing great changes among a very large section of the natives on the border." I suspect that the touch of sentiment in the place where the young chief will accept a drink from the girl's hand alone is such a case of European influence, and so, in all probability is the preference for a light complexion implied in the tale; for Shooter (p. I) tells us expressly that to be told that he is light-colored "would be esteemed a very poor compliment by a Kaffir."
The following passage, which occurs in another of Theal's stories (107), shows how unceremonious Kaffir "courtship" is in relation to the girl's wishes.
"Hlakanyana met a girl herding some goats.
"He said: 'Where are the boys of your village, that the goats are herded by a girl?'
"The girl answered: 'There are no boys in the village.'
"He went to the father of the girl and said: 'You must give me your daughter to be my concubine, and I will herd the goats.'
"The father of the girl agreed to that. Then Hlakanyana went with the goats, and every day he killed one and ate it till all were done."
LOWER THAN BEASTS
If we now leave the degraded and licentious Kaffirs, going northward in Eastern Africa, into the region of the lakes--Nyassa, Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza--embracing British Central, German East, and British East Africa, we are doomed to disappointment if we expect to find conditions more favorable to the growth of refined romantic or conjugal love. We shall not only discover no evidence of what is vaguely called Platonic love, but we shall find men ignoring even Plato's injunction (Laws, VIII., 840) that they should not be lower than beasts, which do not mate till they have reached the age of maturity. H.H. Johnston, in his recent work on British Central Africa, gives some startling revelations of aboriginal depravity. As these regions have been known a few years only, the universality of this depravity disproves most emphatically the ridiculous notion that savages are naturally pure in their conduct and owe their degradation to intercourse with corrupt white men. Johnston (409) says:
"A medical missionary who was at work for some time on the west coast of Lake Nyassa gave me information regarding the depravity prevalent among the young boys in the Atonga tribe of a character not even to be described in obscure Latin. These statements might be applied with almost equal exactitude to boys and girls in many other parts of Africa. As regards the little girls, over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition.... Before a girl becomes a woman (that is to say, before she is able to conceive), it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about five years of age."
Girls are often betrothed at birth, or even before, and when four or five years old are placed at the mercy of the degraded husbands. Capture is another method of getting a wife, and Johnston's description of this custom indicates that individual preference is as weak as we have found it among Kaffirs:
"The women as a rule make no very great resistance on these occasions. It is almost like playing a game. A woman is surprised as she goes to get water at the stream, or when she is on her way to or from the plantation. The man has only got to show her she is cornered and that escape is not easy or pleasant and she submits to be carried off. Of course there are cases where the woman takes the first opportunity of running back to her first husband if her captor treats her badly, and again she may be really attached to her first husband and make every effort to return to him for that reason. But as a general rule they seem to accept very cheerfully these abrupt changes in their matrimonial existence."
In a footnote he adds:
"The Rev. Duff Macdonald, a competent authority on Yao manners and customs, says in his book Africana: 'I was told ... that a native man would not pass a solitary woman, and that her refusal of him would be so contrary to custom that he might kill her.' Of course this would apply only to females that are not engaged."
COLONIES OF FREE LOVERS
Of the Taveita forest region Johnston says:
"After marriage the greatest laxity of manners is allowed among the women, who often court their lovers under their husband's gaze; provided the lover pays, no objection is raised to his addresses."
And regarding the Masai (415):
"The Masai men rarely marry until they are twenty-five nor the women until twenty. But both sexes, avant de se ranger, lead a very dissolute life before marriage, the young warriors and unmarried girls living together in free love."
The fullest account of the Masai and their neighbors we owe to Thomson. With the M-teita marriage is entirely a question of cows.
"There is a very great disproportion between the sexes, the female predominating greatly, and yet very few of the young men are able to marry for want of the proper number of cows--a state of affairs which not unfrequently leads to marriage with sisters, though this practice is highly reprobated."
Of the Wa-taveta, Thomson says (113): "Conjugal fidelity is unknown, and certainly not expected on either side; they might almost be described as colonies of free lovers." As for life among the Masai warriors, he says (431) that it
"was promiscuous in a remarkable degree. They may indeed be proclaimed as a colony of free lovers. Curiously enough the sweetheart system was largely in vogue; though no one confined his or her attentions to one only. Each girl in fact had several sweethearts, and what is still stranger, this seemed to give rise to no jealousies. The most perfect equality prevailed between the Ditto and Elmoran, and in their savage circumstances it was really pleasant to see how common it was for a young girl to wander about the camp with her arm round the waist of a stalwart warrior."[144]
A LESSON IN GALLANTRY
Crossing the waters of the Victoria Nyanza we come to Uganda, a region which has been entertainingly described by Speke. One day, he tells us (379), he was crossing a swamp with the king and his wives:
"The bridge was broken, as a matter of course; and the logs which composed it, lying concealed beneath the water, were toed successively by the leading men, that those who followed should not be tripped up by them. This favor the King did for me, and I in return for the women behind; they had never been favored in their lives with such gallantry and therefore could not refrain from laughing. He afterward helped the girls over a brook. The king noticed it, but instead of upbraiding me, passed it off as a joke, and running up to the Kamraviona, gave him a poke in the ribs and whispered what he had seen, as if it had been a secret. 'Woh, woh!' says the Kamraviona, 'what wonders will happen next?'"
There is perhaps no part of Africa where such an act of gallantry would not have been laughed at as an absurd prank. In Eastern Central Africa
"when a woman meets any man on the path, the etiquette is for her to go off the path, to kneel, and clasp her hands to the 'lords of creation' as they pass. Even if a female possesses male slaves of her own she observes the custom when she meets them on the public highway. A woman always kneels when she has occasion to talk to a man" (Macdonald, I., 129).
"It is interesting to meet a couple returning from a journey for firewood," says the same writer (137). "The man goes first, carrying his gun, bow and arrows, while the woman carries the invariable bundle of firewood on her head." He used to amuse such parties by taking the wife's load and putting it on the husband, telling him, 'This is the custom in our country.' The wife has to do not only all the domestic but all the hard field work, and the only thing the lazy husband does in return is to mend her clothes. That constitutes her "rights;" neglect of it is a cause for divorce! Burton notes the absence of chivalrous ideas among the Somals (F.F., 122), adding that
"on first entering the nuptial hut, the bridegroom draws forth his horsewhip and inflicts memorable chastisement upon the fair person of his bride, with the view of taming any lurking propensity to shrewishness."
Among the natives of Massua, on the eighth of the month of Ashur, "boys are allowed," says Munzinger,
"to mercilessly whip any girl they may meet--a liberty of which they make use in anything but a sentimental way. As the girls naturally hide themselves in their houses on this day, the boys disguise themselves as beggars, or use some other ruse to get them out."
Adults sometimes take part in this gallant sport. But let us return to Uganda.
The Queen of Uganda offered Speke the choice between two of her daughters as a wife. The girls were brought and made to squat in front of him. They had never seen him.
"The elder, who was in the prime of youth and beauty, very large of limb, dark in color, cried considerably; whilst the younger one ... laughed as if she thought the change in her destiny very good fun."
He had been advised that when the marriage came off he was to chain the girl two or three days, until she became used to him, else, from mere fright, she might run away.
A high official also bestowed on him a favor which throws light on the treatment of Uganda women. He had his women come in, made them strip to the waist, and asked Speke what he thought of them. He assured him he had paid him an unusual compliment, the Uganda men being very jealous of one another, so much so that anyone would be killed if found staring upon a woman, even in the highways. Speke asked him what use he had for so many women, to which he replied,
"None whatever; the King gives them to us to keep up our rank, sometimes as many as one hundred together, and we either turn them into wives, or make servants of them, as we please."
NOT A PARTICLE OF ROMANCE
The northeastern boundary of Uganda is formed by the waters of the lake whose name Sir Samuel Baker chose for the title of one of his fascinating books on African travel, the Albert N'yanza. Baker was a keen observer and he had abundant experience on which to base the following conclusions (148):
"There is no such thing as love in these countries, the feeling is not understood, nor does it exist in the shape in which we understand it. Everything is practical, without a particle of romance. Women are so far appreciated as they are valuable animals. They grind the corn, fetch the water, gather firewood, cement the floors, cook the food, and propagate the race; but they are mere servants, and as such are valuable.... A savage holds to his cows and to his women, but especially to his cows. In a razzia fight he will seldom stand for the sake of his wives, but when he does fight it is to save his cattle."
The sentimentalist's heart will throb with a flutter of hope when he reads in the same book (240) that among the Latookas it is considered a disgrace to kill a woman in war. Have these men that respect for women which makes romantic love possible? Alas, no! They spare them because women are scarce and have a money value, a female being worth from five to ten cows, according to her age and appearance. It would therefore be a waste of money to kill them.
I may as well add here what Baker says elsewhere (Ismailia, 501) by way of explaining why there is no insanity in Central Africa: there are "no hearts to break with overwhelming love." Where coarseness is bliss, 'twere folly to be refined.
NO LOVE AMONG NEGROES
Let us now cross Central Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, the Somali, and their neighbors.
In his book Angola and the River Congo (133-34) Monteiro says that negroes show less tenderness and love than some animals:
"In all the long years I have been in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for or to a negress.... I have never seen a negro put his arm round a woman's waist or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side. They have no words or expressions in their language indicative of affection or love. Their passion is purely of an animal description, unaccompanied by the least sympathetic affections of love or endearment."[145]
In other words, these negroes not only do not show any tenderness, affection, sympathy, in their sexual relations, they are too coarse even to appreciate the more subtle manifestations of sensual passion which we call caresses. Jealousy, too, Monteiro says, hardly exists. In case of adultery "the fine is generally a pig, and rum or other drink, with which a feast is celebrated by all parties. The woman is not punished in any way, nor does any disgrace attach to her conduct." As a matter of course, where all these sentiments are lacking, admiration of personal beauty cannot exist.
"From their utter want of love and appreciation of female beauty or charms they are quite satisfied and content with any woman possessing even the greatest amount of hideous ugliness with which nature has so bountifully provided them."
A QUEER STORY
Thus we find the African mind differing from ours as widely as a picture seen directly with the eyes differs from one reflected in a concave mirror. This is vividly illustrated by a quaint story recorded in the Folk Tales of Angola (Memoirs of Amer. Folk Lore Soc., Vol. I., 1804, 235-39), of which the following is a condensed version:
An elderly man had an only child, a daughter. This daughter, a number of men wanted her. But whenever a suitor came, her father demanded of him a living deer; and then they all gave up, saying, "The living deer, we cannot get it."
One day two men came, each asking for the daughter. The father answered as usual, "He who brings me the living deer; the same, I will give him my daughter."
The two men made up their minds to hunt for the living deer in the forest. They came across one and pursued it; but one of them soon got tired and said to himself: "That woman will destroy my life. Shall I suffer distress because of a woman? If I bring her home, if she dies, would I seek another? I will not run again to catch a living deer. I never saw it, that a girl was wooed with a living deer." And he gave up the chase.
The other man persevered and caught the deer. When he approached with it, his companion said, "Friend, the deer, didst thou catch it indeed?" Then the other: "I caught it. The girl delights me much. Rather I would sleep in forest, than to fail to catch it."
Then they returned to the father and brought him the deer. But the father called four old men, told them what had happened, and asked them to choose a son-in-law for him among the two hunters. Being questioned by the aged men, the successful hunter said: "My comrade pursued and gave up; I, your daughter charmed me much, even to the heart, and I pursued the deer till it gave in.... My comrade he came only to accompany me."
Then the other was asked why he gave up the chase, if he wanted the girl, and he replied: "I never saw that they wooed a girl with a deer.... When I saw the great running I said, 'No, that woman will cost my life. Women are plentiful,' and I sat down to await my comrade."
Then the aged men: "Thou who gavest up catching the deer, thou art our son-in-law. This gentleman who caught the deer, he may go with it; he may eat it or he may sell it, for he is a man of great heart. If he wants to kill he kills at once; he does not listen to one who scolds him, or gives him advice. Our daughter, if we gave her to him, and she did wrong, when he would beat her he would not hear (one) who entreats for her. We do not want him; let him go. This gentleman who gave up the deer, he is our son-in-law; because, our daughter, when she does wrong, when we come to pacify him, he will listen to us. Although he were in great anger, when he sees us, his anger will cease. He is our good son-in-law, whom we have chosen."
SUICIDES
According to Livingstone, in Angola suicide is sometimes committed by a girl if it is predicted to her that she will never have any children, which would be a great disgrace. A writer in the Globus (Vol. 69, p. 358) sums up the observations of the medical missionary, G. Liengme, on suicides among the peoples of Africa. The most frequent cause is a family quarrel. Sometimes a girl commits suicide rather than marry a man whom she detests, "whereas on the other hand suicide from unhappy love seems to be unknown." In another number of the Globus (70: 100), however, I find mention of a negro who killed himself because he could not get the girl he wanted. This, of course, does not of itself suffice to prove the existence of true love, for we know that lust may be as maddening and as obstinate as love itself; moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect. Savages are apt to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial provocation.
POETIC LOVE ON THE CONGO
In his entertaining book on the Congo, H.H. Johnston says (423) of the races living along the upper part of that river: "They are decidedly amorous in disposition, but there is a certain poetry in their feelings which ennobles their love above the mere sexual lust of the negro." If this is true, it is one of the most important discoveries ever made by an African explorer, one on which we should expect the author to dwell at great length. What does he tell us about the Congo tribes? "The women," he says of the Ba-Kongo, "have little regard for their virtue, either before or after marriage, and but for the jealousy of the men there would be promiscuous intercourse between the sexes." These women, he says, rate it as especially honorable to be a white man's mistress:
"Moreover, though the men evince some marital jealousy among themselves, they are far from displaying anything but satisfaction when a European is induced to accept the loan of a wife, either as an act of hospitality or in consideration of some small payment. Unmarried girls they are more chary of offering, as their value in the market is greater; but it may be truly said that among these people womanly chastity is unknown and a woman's honor is measured by the price she costs."
These remarks, it is true, refer to the lower Congo, and it is only of the upper river that Johnston predicates the poetic features which ennoble love. Stanley Pool being accepted by him as the dividing line, we may there perhaps begin our search for romantic love. One day, the author relates, rain had driven him to a hut on the shore of the Pool, where there was a family with two marriageable daughters. The father
"was most anxious I should become his son-in-law, 'moyennant' several 'longs' of cloth. Seeing my hesitation, he mistook it for scorn and hastened to point out the manifold charms of his girls, whilst these damsels waxed hotly indignant at my coldness. Then another inspiration seized their father--perhaps I liked a maturer style of beauty, and his wife, by no means an uncomely person, was dragged forward while her husband explained with the most expressive gestures, putting his outspread hands before his eyes and affecting to look another way, that, again with the simple intermediary of a little cloth, he would remain perfectly unconscious of whatever amatory passages might occur between us."
Evidently the poetry of love had not drifted down as far as the Pool. Let us therefore see what Johnston has to say of the Upper Congo (423):
"Husbands are fond of their own wives, as well as of those of other people." "Marriage is a mere question of purchase, and is attended by no rejoicings or special ceremony. A man procures as many wives as possible, partly because they labor for him and also because soon after one wife becomes with child she leaves him for two or three years until her baby is weaned." Apart from these facts Johnston gives us no hint as to what he understands by affection except what the following sentence allows us to infer (429):
"The attachment between these dogs and their African masters is deep and fully reciprocated. They are considered very dainty eating by the natives, and are indeed such a luxury that by an unwritten law only the superior sex--the men--are allowed to partake of roasted dog."
The amusing italics are mine.
If Johnston really found traces of poetic, ennobling love in this region, surely so startling a novelty in West Africa would have called for a full "bill of particulars," which would have been of infinitely greater scientific value than the details he gives regarding unchastity, infidelity, commercialism, separation from wives and contempt for women, which are so common throughout the continent as to call for no special notice. Evidently his ideas regarding "poetic love" were as hazy as those of some other writers quoted in this chapter, and we have once more been led on by the mirage of a "false fact."[146]
In 1891 the Swedish explorer Westermarck published a book describing his adventures among the cannibal tribes of the Upper Congo. I have not seen the book, but the Rev. James Johnston, in summing up its contents, says (193):
"A man can sell wife and children according to his own depraved pleasure. Women are the slave drudges, the men spending their hours in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Cannibalism in its worst features prevails. Young women are prized as special delicacies, particularly girls' ears prepared in palm oil, and, in order to make the flesh more palatable, the luckless victims are kept in water up to their necks for three or four days before they are slaughtered and served as food."
BLACK LOVE IN KAMERUN
From the banks of the Congo to Kamerun is not a very far cry as distances go in Africa. Kamerun is under the German flag, and a German writer, Hugo Zöller, has described life in that colony with the eyes of a shrewd observer. What he says about the negro's capacity for love shows deep psychological insight (III., 68-70):
"Europeans residing in Africa who have married a negro woman declare unanimously that there is no such thing there as love and fidelity in the European sense. It happens with infinitely greater frequency that a European falls in love with his black companion than she with him; or rather the latter does not happen at all. A hundred times I have listened to discussions of this topic in many different places, but I have never heard of a single case of a genuine full-blooded negress falling in love with a white man.... The stupidest European peasant girl is, in comparison with an African princess, still an ideally endowed being."
Zöller adds that in all his African experiences he never found a negress of whom he should have been willing to assume that she would sacrifice herself for a man she was attached to. On another page he says:
"A negro woman does not fall in love in the same sense as a European, not even as the least civilized peasant girl. Love, in our sense of the word, is a product of our culture belonging to a higher stage in the development of latent faculties than the negro race has reached. Not only is the negro a stranger to the diverse intellectual and sentimental qualities which we denote by the name of love: nay, even in a purely bodily sense it may be asserted that his nervous system is not only less sensitive, but less well-developed. The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as little as a black epicure have I ever been able to discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative phases of amorous dalliance. A negro ... may buy dozens upon dozens of wives without ever being drawn by an overpowering feeling to any one of them. Love is, among the blacks, as much a matter of money as the palm oil or ivory trade. The black man buys his wife when she is still a child; when she reaches the age at which our maidens go to their first ball, her nervous system, which never was particularly sensitive anyway, is completely blunted, so that she takes it as a matter of course to be sold again and again as a piece of property. One hears often enough of a 'woman palaver,' which is regarded exactly like a 'goat palaver,' as a damage to property, but one never, positively never, hears of a love-affair. The negress never has a sweetheart, either in her youngest days or after her so-called marriage. She is regarded, and regards herself, as a piece of property and a beast of burden."
A SLAVE COAST LOVE-STORY
Travelling a short distance northwest from Kamerun we reach the Slave Coast of West Africa, to which A.B. Ellis has devoted two interesting books, including chapters in the folklore of the Yoruba and Ewe-speaking peoples of this region. Among the tales recorded are two which illustrate African ideas regarding love. I copy the first verbatim from Ellis's book on the Yoruba (269-70):
"There was a young maiden named Buje, the slender, whom all the men wanted. The rich wanted her, but she refused. Chiefs wanted her, and she refused. The King wanted her, and she still refused.
"Tortoise came to the King and said to him, 'She whom you all want and cannot get, I will get. I will have her, I.' And the King said, 'If you succeed in having her, I will divide my palace into two halves and will give you one-half.'
"One day Buje, the slender, took an earthen pot and went to fetch water. Tortoise, seeing this, took his hoe, and cleared the path that led to the spring. He found a snake in the grass, and killed it. Then he put the snake in the middle of the path.
"When Buje, the slender, had filled her pot, she came back. She saw the snake in the path, and called out, 'Hi! hi! Come and kill this snake.'
"Tortoise ran up with his cutlass in his hand. He struck at the snake and wounded himself in the leg.
"Then he cried out, 'Buje the slender, has killed me. I was cutting the bush, I was clearing the path for her. She called to me to kill the snake, but I have wounded myself in the leg. O Buje, the slender, Buje, the slender, take me upon your back and hold me close.'
"He cried this many times, and at last Buje, the slender, took Tortoise and put him on her back. And then he slipped his legs down over her hips....
"Next day, as soon as it was light, Tortoise went to the King. He said, 'Did I not tell you I should have Buje, the slender? Call all the people of the town to assemble on the fifth day, and you will hear what I have to say.'
"When it was the fifth day, the King sent out his crier to call all the people together. The people came. Tortoise cried out, 'Everybody wanted Buje, the slender, and Buje refused everybody, but I have had her.'
"The King sent a messenger, with his stick, to summon Buje, the slender. When she came the King said, 'We have heard that Tortoise is your husband; is it so?'
"Buje, the slender, was ashamed, and could not answer. She covered her head with her cloth, and ran away into the bush.
"And there she was changed into the plant called Buje."
THE MAIDEN WHO ALWAYS REFUSED
Robert Hartmann (480) describes the Yoruba people as vivacious and intelligent. But the details given by Ellis (154) regarding the peculiar functions of bridesmaids, and the assertion that "virginity in a bride is only of paramount importance when the girl has been betrothed in childhood," explain sufficiently why we must not look for sentimental features in a Yoruba love-story. The most noticeable thing in the above tale is the girl's power to refuse chiefs and even the King. In Ellis's book on the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, there is also a love-story (271) concerning a "Maiden who always refused." It has a moral which seems to indicate masculine disapproval of such a feminine privilege. The following is a condensed version:
There was a beautiful girl whose parents were rich. Men came to marry her, but she always said "Not yet." Men continued to come, but she said "My shape is good, my skin is good, therefore I shall stay;" and she stayed.
Now the leopard, in the leopard's place, hears this. He turns himself to resemble man. He takes a musical instrument in his hand and makes himself a fine young man. His shape is good. Then he goes to the parents of the maiden and says, "I look strong and manly, but I do not look stronger than I love." Then the father says, "Who looks strong takes;" and the young man says, "I am ready."
The young man comes in the house. His shape pleases the young girl. They give him to eat and they give him to drink. Then the young man asks the maiden if she is ready to go, and the maiden says she is ready to go. Her parents give her two female slaves to take along, and goats, sheep, and fowls. Ere long, as they travel along the road, the husband says, "I am hungry." He eats the fowls, but is still hungry: he eats the goats and sheep and is hungry still. The two slaves next fall a victim to his voracity, and then he says, "I am hungry."
Then the wife weeps and cries aloud and throws herself on the ground. Immediately the leopard, having resumed his own shape, makes a leap toward her. But there is a hunter concealed in the bush; he has witnessed the scene; he aims his gun and kills the leopard on the leap. Then he cuts off his tail and takes the young woman home.
"This is the way of young women," the tale concludes. "The young men come to ask; the young women meet them, and continue to refuse--again, again, again--and so the wild animals turn themselves into men and carry them off."
AFRICAN STORY-BOOKS
While the main object of this discussion is to show that Africans are incapable of feeling sentimental love, I have taken the greatest pains to discover such traces of more refined feelings as may exist. These one might expect to find particularly in the collections of African tales such as Callaway's Nursery Tales of the Zulus, Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore, the Folk Lore of Angola, Stanley's My Dark Companions and their Stories, Koelle's African Native Literature, Jacottet's Contes Populaires des Bassoutos. All that I have been able to find in these books and others bearing on our topic is included in this chapter--and how very little it is! Love, even of the sensual kind, seems to be almost entirely ignored by these dusky story-tellers in favor of a hundred other subjects--in striking contrast to our own literature, in which love is the ruling passion. I have before me another interesting collection of South and North African stories and fables--Bleek's Reinecke Fuchs in Afrika. Its author had unusual facilities for collecting them, having been curator of Sir G. Grey's library at Cape Town, which includes a fine collection of African manuscripts. In Bleek's book there are forty-four South African, chiefly Hottentot, fables and tales, and thirty-nine relating to North Africans. Yet among these eighty-three tales there are only three that come under the head of love-stories. As they take up eight pages, I can give only a condensed version of them, taking care, however, to omit no essential feature.[147]
THE FIVE SUITORS
Four handsome youths tried to win a beautiful girl living in the same town. While they were quarrelling among themselves a youth came from another town, lifted the girl on his horse and galloped away with her. The father followed in pursuit on his camel, entered the youth's house, and brought back the girl.
One day the father called together all the men of his tribe. The girl stepped among them and said, "Whoever of you can ride on my father's camel without falling off, may have me as wife." Dressed in their best finery, the young men tried, one after another, but were all thrown. Among them sat the stranger youth, wrapped only in a mat. Turning toward him the girl said, "Let the stranger make a trial." The men demurred, but the stranger got on the camel, rode about the party three times safely, and when he passed the girl for the fourth time he snatched her up and rode away with her hastily.
Quickly the father mounted his fleet horse and followed the fugitives. He gained on them until his horse's head touched the camel's tail. At that moment the youth reached his home, jumped off the camel and carried the bride into the house. He closed the door so violently that one foot of the pursuing horse caught between the posts. The father drew it out with difficulty and returned to the four disappointed suitors.
TAMBA AND THE PRINCESS
A king had a beautiful daughter and many desired to marry her. But all failed, because none could answer the King's question: "What is enclosed in my amulet?" Undismayed by the failure of men of wealth and rank, Tamba, who lived far in the East and had nothing to boast of, made up his mind to win the princess. His friends laughed at him but he started out on his trip, taking with him some chickens, a goat, rice, rice-straw, millet-seed, and palm-oil. He met in succession a hungry porcupine, an alligator, a horned viper, and some ants, of all of whom he made friends by feeding them the things he had taken along. He reserved some of the rice, and when he arrived at the King's court he gave it to a hungry servant who in turn told him the secret of the amulet. So when he was asked what the amulet contained, he replied: "Hair clipped from the King's head when he was a child; a piece of the calabash from which he first drank milk; and the tooth of the first snake he killed."
This answer angered the King's minister, and Tamba was put in chains. He was subjected to various tests which he overcame with the aid of the animals he had fed on his trip. But again he was fettered and even lashed.
One day the King wanted to bathe, so he sent his four wives to fetch water. A young girl accompanying them saw how all of them were bitten by a horned viper and ran back to tell the news. The wives were brought back unconscious, and no one could help them. The King then thought of Tamba, who was brought before him. Tamba administered an antidote which the viper he had fed had given him, the wives recovered, the wicked minister was beheaded and Tamba was rewarded with the hand of the princess.
THE SEWING MATCH
The third tale is herewith translated verbatim:
"There was a man who had a most beautiful daughter, the favorite of all the young men of the place; two, especially, tried to win her regard. One day these two came together and begged her to choose one of them. The young girl called her father; when the young men had told him that they were suing for his daughter's hand, he requested them to come there the next day, when he would set them a task and the one who got through with it first should have the girl.
"Meanwhile the father bought in the market a piece of cloth and cut it up for two garments. Now when the two rivals appeared the next morning he gave to each the materials for a garment and told them to sew them together, promising his daughter to the one who should get done first. The daughter he ordered to thread the needles for both the men.
"Now the girl knew very well which of the two young men she would rather have for a husband; to him, therefore, she always handed needles with short threads, while the other was always supplied with long threads. Noon came and neither of them had finished his garment. After awhile, however, the one who always got the short threads finished his task.
"The father was then summoned and the young man showed him the garment; whereupon the father said: 'You are a quick worker and will therefore surely be able to support your wife. Take my daughter as your wife and always do your work rapidly, then you will always have food for yourself and your wife.'
"Thus did the young man win his beloved by means of her cunning. Joyfully he led her home as his wife."
BALING OUT THE BROOK
This tale reveals the existence of individual preference, but does not hint at any other ingredient of love, while the father's promise of the girl to the fastest worker shows a total indifference to what that preference might be. In the following tale (also from Koelle) the girl again is not consulted.
"A certain man had a most beautiful daughter who was beset by many suitors. But as soon as they were told that the sole condition on which they could obtain her was to bale out a brook with a ground-nut shell (which is about half the size of a walnut shell), they always walked away in disappointment. However, at last one took heart of grace, and began the task. He obtained the beauty; for the father said, 'Kam ago tsuru baditsia tsido--he who undertakes whatever he says, will do it.'"
PROVERBS ABOUT WOMEN
The last two tales I have cited were gathered among the Bornu people in the Soudan. In Burton's Wit and Wisdom from West Africa we find a few proverbs about women that are current in the same region.
"If a woman speaks two words, take one and leave the other." "Whatever be thy intimacy, never give thy heart to a woman." "If thou givest thy heart to a woman, she will kill thee." "If a man tells his secrets to his wife, she will bring him into the way of Satan." "A woman never brings a man into the right way." "Men who listen to what women say, are counted as women."
It is significant that in the four hundred and fifty-five pages of Burton's book, which includes over four hundred proverbs and tales, there are only half a dozen brief references to women, and those are sneers.
AFRICAN AMAZONS
As I have had occasion to remark before, African women lack the finer feminine qualities, both bodily and mental, wherefore even if an African man were able to feel sentimental love he could not find an object to bestow it on. An incident related by Du Chaillu (Ashango Land, 187) illustrates the martial side of African femininity. A married man named Mayolo had called another man's wife toward him. His own wife, hearing of this, got jealous, told him the other must be his sweetheart, and rushed out to seek her rival. A battle ensued:
"Women's fights in this country always begin by their throwing off their dengui--that is, stripping themselves entirely naked. The challenger having thus denuded herself, her enemy showed pluck and answered the challenge by promptly doing the same; so that the two elegant figures immediately went at it literally tooth and nail, for they fought like cats, and between the rounds reviled each other in language the most filthy that could possibly be uttered. Mayolo being asleep in his house, and no one seeming ready to interfere, I went myself and separated the two furies."
In Dahomey, as everybody knows, the bellicose possibilities of the African woman have been utilized in forming bands of Amazons which are described as "the flower of the army." They are made up of female captives and other women, wear special uniforms, and in battle are credited with even greater ferocity than the men. These women are Amazons not of their own accord but by order of the king. But in other parts of Africa there is reason to believe that bands of self-constituted female warriors have existed at various times. Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar, says that on the western coast of Libya (Africa) there used to live a people governed by women, who carried on wars and the government, the men being obliged to do domestic work and take care of the children. In our time Livingstone found in the villages of the Bechuanas and Banyas that men were often badly treated by the women, and the eminent German anthropologist Bastian says(S.S., 178) that in "the Soudan the power of the women banded together for mutual protection is so great that men are often put under ban and obliged to emigrate." Mungo Park described the curious bugaboo(mumbo-jumbo)by means of which the Mandingo negroes used to keep their rebellious women in subjection. According to Bastian, associations for keeping women in subjection are common among men along the whole African West Coast. The women, too, have their associations, and at their meetings compare notes on the meanness and cruelty of their husbands. Now it is easy to conceive that among tribes where many of the men have been killed off in wars the women, being in a great majority, may, for a time at least, turn the tables on the men, assume their weapons and make them realize how it feels to be the "inferior sex." For this reason Bastian sees no occasion to share the modern disposition to regard all the Amazon legends as myths.