Chapter 75

It is owing to these persistent crimes against grandchildren that the human race as a whole is still such a miserable rabble, and that recruiting offices and insurances companies tell such startling tales of degeneracy. Love would cure this, if there were more of the right kind. Until there is, much good may be done by accepting it as a guide, and building up a sentiment in favor of its instinctive object and ideal. I have described in one chapter the obstacles which retarded the growth of love, and in another I have shown how sentiments change and grow. Most of those obstacles are being gradually removed, and public opinion is slowly but surely changing in favor of love. Building up a new sentiment is a slow process. At first it may be a mere hut for a hermit thinker, but gradually it becomes larger and larger as thousands add their mite to the building fund, until at last it stands as a sublime cathedral admonishing all to do their duty. When the Cathedral of Love is finished the horror of disease and vice will have become as absolute a bar to marriage as the horror of incest is now; and it will be acknowledged that the only true marriage of reason is a marriage of love.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Albrecht Weber and other German scholars, while practically agreeing with Hegel regarding the Greeks and Romans, claim, that the amorous poetry of the ancient Hindoo has the sentimental qualities of modern European verse.

[2] In the New York _Nation_ of September 22, and the _Evening Post_ of September 24, 1887. My reasons for not agreeing with these two distinguished professors will be dwelt on repeatedly in the following pages. If they are right, then literature is not, as it is universally held to be, a mirror of life.

[3] No important truth is ever born full fledged. The Darwinian theory was conceived simultaneously by Wallace and Darwin, and both were anticipated by other writers. Nay, a German professor has written a treatise on the "Greek Predecessors of Darwin."

[4] _Studien über die Libido Sexualis_, I., Pt. I., 28.

[5] In the last chapter of _Lotos-Time in Japan_.

[6] An amusing instance of this trait may be found in Johnston's account of his ascent of the Kilima-Njaro (271-276).

[7] Roth's sumptuous volume, _British North Borneo_, gives a life-like picture of the Dyaks from every point of view, with numerous illustrations.

[8] See the chapter on Nudity and Bathing in my _Lotos-Time in Japan_.

[9] Bancroft, II., 75; Wallace, 357; Westermarck, 195; Humboldt, III., 230.

[10] See especially the ninth chapter of Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_, 186-201.

[11] Westermarck (74) devotes half a page in fine type to an enumeration of the peoples among whom many such customs prevailed, and his list is far from being complete.

[12] See Westermarck, Chap. XX., for a list of monogamous peoples.

[13] The vexed question of promiscuity hinges on this distinction. As a matter of _form_ promiscuity may not have been the earliest phase of human marriage, but as a matter of _fact_ it was. Westermarck's ingeniously and elaborately built up argument against the theory of promiscuity is a leaning tower which crashes to the ground when weighted by this one consideration. See the chapter on Australia.

[14] For a partial list of peoples who practised trial marriage and frequent divorce see Westermarck, 518-521, and C. Fischer, Über die Probennächte der deutschen Bauernmädchen_. Leipzig, 1780.

[15] For the distinction between sentiment and sentimentality see the chapter on Sensuality, Sentimentality, and Sentiment.

[16] Johnston states (in Schoolcraft, IV., 224) that the wild Indians of California had their rutting season as regularly as have the deer and other animals. See also Powers (206) and Westermarck (28). In the Andaman Islands a man and woman remained together only till their child was weaned, when they separated to seek new mates (_Trans. Ethnol. Soc_., V., 45).

[17] The other cases of "jealousy" cited by Westermarck (117-122) are all negatived by the same property argument; to which he indeed alludes, but the full significance of which he failed to grasp. It is a pity that language should be so crude as to use the same word jealousy to denote three such entirely different things as rage at a rival, revenge for stolen property, and anguish at the knowledge or suspicion of violated chastity and outraged conjugal affection. Anthropologists have studied only the lower phases of jealousy, just as they have failed to distinguish clearly between lust and love.

[18] All these facts, it is hardly necessary to add, serve as further illustrations to the chapter How Sentiments Change and Grow.

[19] For "love" read covet. We shall see in the chapter on Australia that love is a feeling altogether beyond the mental horizon of the natives.

[20] Rohde, 35, 28, 147. See his list of corroborative cases in the long footnote, pp. 147-148.

[21] Compare this with what Rohde says (42) about the Homeric heroes and their complete absorption in warlike doings.

[22] _Grundlage der Moral_, § 14.

[23] _Wagner and his Works_, II., 163.

[24] In Burton the translator has changed the sex of the beloved. This proceeding, a very common one, has done much to confuse the public regarding the modernity of Greek love. It is not Greek love of women, but romantic friendship for boys, that resembles modern love for women.

[25] A multitude of others may be found in an interesting article on "Sexual Taboo" by Crawley in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxvi.

[26] New York _Evening Post_, January 21, 1899.

[27] Fitzroy, II., 183; _Trans. Ethn. Soc_., New Series, III., 248-88.

[28] That moral infirmities, too, were capable of winning the respect of savages, may be seen in Carver's _Travels in North America_ (245).

[29] Garcia _Origin de los Indios de el Nuevo Mondo_; McLennan; Ingham (Westermarck, 113) concerning the Bakongo; Giraud-Teulon, 208, 209, concerning Nubians and other Ethiopians.

[30] See Letourneau, 332-400; Westermarck, 39-41, 96-113; Grosse, 11-12,50-63, 75-78, 101-163, 107, 180.

[31] Charlevoix, V. 397-424; Letourneau, 351. See also Mackenzie, _V. fr. M._, 84, 87; Smith, _Arauc._, 238; _Bur. Ethnol._, 1887, 468-70.

[32] How capable of honoring women the Babylonians were may be inferred from the testimony of Herodotus (I., ch. 199) that every woman had to sacrifice her chastity to strangers in the temple of Mylitta.

[33] It gives me great pleasure to correct my error in this place. Not a few critics of my first book censured me for underrating Roman advances in the refinements of love. As a matter of fact I overrated them.

[34] _Life Among the Modocs_ (228). It must be borne in mind that Joaquin Miller here describes his own ideas of chivalry. He did not, as a matter of course, find anything resembling them among the Modocs. If he had, he would have said so, for he was their friend, and married the girl referred to. But while the Indians themselves never entertain any chivalrous regard for women, they are acute enough to see that the whites do, and to profit thereby. One morning when I was writing some pages of this book under a tree at Lake Tahoe, California, an Indian came to me and told me a pitiful tale about his "sick squaw" in one of the neighboring camps. I gave him fifty cents "for the squaw," but ascertained later that after leaving me he had gone straight to the bar-room at the end of the pier and filled himself up with whiskey, though he had specially and repeatedly assured me he was "damned good Indian," and never drank.

[35] _Magazin von Reisebeschreibungen_, I., 283.

[36] The Rev. Isaac Malek Yonan tells us, in his book on _Persian Women_ (138), that most Armenian women "are very low in the moral scale." It is obvious that only one of the wanton class could be in question in Trumbull's story, for the respectable women are, as Yonan says, not even permitted to talk loudly or freely in the presence of men. This clergyman is a native Persian, and the account he gives of his countrywomen, unbiassed and sorrowful, shows that the chances for romantic love are no better in modern Persia than they were in the olden times. The women get no education, hence they grow up "really stupid and childlike." He refers to "the low estimation in which women are held," and says that the likes and dislikes of girls about to be married are not consulted. Girls are seldom betrothed later than the seventh to the tenth year, often, indeed, immediately after birth or even before. The wife cannot sit at the same table with her husband, but must wait on him "like an accomplished slave." After he has eaten she washes his hands, lights his pipe, then retires to a respectful distance, her face turned toward the mud wall, and finishes what is left. If she is ill or in trouble, she does not mention it to him, "for she could only be sure of harsh, rough words instead of loving sympathy." Their degraded Oriental customs have led the Persians to the conclusion that "love has nothing to do with the matrimonial connection," the main purpose of marriage being "the convenience and pleasure of a degenerate people" (34-114). So far this Persian clergyman. His conclusions are borne out by the observations of the keen-eyed Isabella Bird Bishop, who relates in her book on Persia how she was constantly besieged by the women for potions to bring back the "love" of their husbands, or to "make the favorite hateful to him." She was asked if European husbands "divorce their wives when they are forty?" A Persian who spoke French assured her that marriage in his country was like buying "a pig in a poke," and that "a woman's life in Persia is a very sad thing."

[37] _Magazin für d. Lit. des In-und Auslandes_, June 30, 1888.

[38] The philosophy of widow-burning will be explained under the head of Conjugal Love.

[39] Willoughby, in his article on Washington Indians, recognizes the predominance of the "animal instinct" in the parental fondness of savages, and so does Hutchinson (I., 119); but both erroneously use the word "affection," though Hutchinson reveals his own misuse of it when he writes that "the savage knows little of the higher affection subsequently developed, which has a worthier purpose than merely to disport itself in the mirth of childhood and at all hazards to avoid the annoyance of seeing its tears." He comprehends that the savage "gratifies _himself_" by humoring the whims "of his children." Dr. Abel, on the other hand, who has written an interesting pamphlet on the words used in Latin, Hebrew, English, and Russian to designate the different kinds and degrees of what is vaguely called love, while otherwise making clear the differences between liking, attachment, fondness, and affection, does not sufficiently emphasize the most important distinction between them--the selfishness of the first three and the unselfish nature of affection.

[40] Stanford-Wallace, _Australasia_, 89.

[41] See also the reference to the "peculiar delicacy" of his relations to Lili, in Eckermann, III., March 5, 1830.

[42] Renan, in one of his short stories, describes a girl, Emma Kosilis, whose love, at sixteen, is as innocent as it is unconscious, and who is unable to distinguish it from piety. Regarding the unconscious purity of woman's love see Moll, 3, and Paget, _Clinical Lectures_, which discuss the loss in women of instinctive sexual knowledge. _Cf_. Ribot, 251, and Moreau, _Psychologie Morbide_, 264-278. Ribot is sceptical, because the ultimate goal is the possession of the beloved. But that has nothing to do with the question, for what he refers to is unconscious and instinctive. Here we are considering love as a conscious feeling and ideal, and as such it is as spotless and sinless as the most confirmed ascetic could wish it.

[43] The case is described in the _Medical Times_, April 18, 1885.

[44] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan_, 1885, p. 181.

[45] In the _Journal des Goncourts_ (V., 214-215) a young Japanese, with characteristic topsy-turviness, comments on the "coarseness" of European ideas of love, which he could understand only in his own coarse way. "Vous dites à une femme, je vous aime! Eh bien! Chez nous, c'est comme si on disait Madame, je vais coucher avec vous. Tont ce que nous osons dire à la dame que nous aimons, c'est que nous envions près d'elle la place des canards mandarins. C'est messieurs, notre oiseau d'amour."

[46] In his _Tropical Nature, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_, and _Darwinism_. In _R.L.P.B._, 42-50, where I gave a summary of this question, I suggested that the "typical colors" (the numerous cases where both sexes are brilliantly colored) for which Wallace could "assign no function or use," owe their existence to the need of a means of recognition by the sexes; thus indicating how the love-affairs of animals may modify their appearance in a way quite different from that suggested by Darwin, and dispensing with his postulates of unproved female choice and problematic variations in esthetic taste.

[47] Angas, II., 65.

[48] Tylor, _Anthr._, 237.

[49] Musters, 171; cf. Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, 89, where we read that woman's coating of lampblack and castor-oil--her only dress--serves to prevent excessive perspiration in the day-time and ward off chills at night.

[50] C. Bock, 273.

[51] O. Baumann, _Mitth. Anthr. Ges._, Wien, 1887, 161.

[52] Nicaragua, II., 345.

[53] Sturt, II., 103.

[54] Tylor, 237.

[55] _Jesuit Relations_, I., 279.

[56] Prince Wied, 149.

[57] Belden, 145.

[58] Mallery, 1888-89, 631-33.

[59] Mallery, 1882-83, 183.

[60] Bourke, 497.

[61] Dobrizhoffer, II., 390.

[62] Mariner, Chapter X.

[63] Ellis, P.R., I., 243.

[64] J. Campbell, _Wild Tribes of Khondistan_.

[65] Mackenzie, _Day Dawn_, 67.

[66] Bastian, _Af.R_., 76.

[67] Burton, _Abcok_. I., 106.

[68] Spencer, _D. Soc._, 27.

[69] J. Franklin, _P.S._, 132.

[70] Dobrizhoffer, II., 17.

[71] Murdoch, 140.

[72] Crantz, I., 216.

[73] Mallery, 1888-89, 621.

[74] Lynd, II., 68.

[75] Bonwick, 27.

[76] Wilkes, III., 355.

[77] Westermarck opines (170) that "such tales are not of much importance, as any usage practised from time immemorial may easily he ascribed to the command of a god." On the contrary, such legends are of very great importance, since they show how utterly foreign to the thought of these races was the purpose of "decorating" themselves in these various ways "in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex."

[78] Dorsey, 486.

[79] Fison and Howitt, 253; Frazer, 28.

[80] Mallery, 1888-89, 395, 412, 417.

[81] Wilhelmi, in Woods.

[82] Angas, I., 86.

[83] Mitchell, I., 171.

[84] Spencer, _D.S._, 21, 22; 18, 19.

[85] Schweinfurth, _H.A_., I., 154.

[86] Ellis, _Haw_., 146.

[87] Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst_., XII.

[88] Powers, 166.

[89] Dall, 95.

[90] Boas, cited by Mallery, 534.

[91] Mallery, 1888-89, 197, 623-629.

[92] See also the remarks in Prazer's _Totemism_, 26.

[93] _Explor. and Surv. Mississippi River to Pacific Ocean_. Senate Reports, Washington, 1856, III., 33.

[94] See the pages (386-91) on the "Fashion Fetish" in my _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_.

[95] _Jour. Roy. As. Soc_., 1860, 13.

[96] Feathers also serve various other useful purposes to Australians. An apron of emu feathers distinguishes females who are not yet matrons. (Smyth, I., xl.) Howitt says that in Central Australia messengers sent to avenge a death are painted yellow and wear feathers on their head and in the girdle at the spine. (Mallery, 1888-89, 483.)

[97] Related by Dieffenbach. Heriot even declares of the northern Indians (352) that "they assert that they find no odor agreeable but that of food."

[98] For other references to ancient nations, see Joest in _Zeitschr. für Ethnologie._ 1888, 415.

[99] See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.

[100] See _e.g_. Eyre, II. 333-335; Brough Smith, L, XLI, 68, 295, II., 313; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, 140; _Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W_., 1882, 201; and the old authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 740; cf Frazer, 29. If Westermarck had been more anxious to ascertain the truth than to prove a theory, would he have found it necessary to ignore all this evidence, neglecting to refer even to Chatfield in speaking of Curr?

[101] H. Ward, 136.

[102] Roth, II, 83.

[103] Martius, I., 321.

[104] Boas, _Bur. Ethnol._, 1884-88, 561.

[105] Mann, _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, XII, 333.

[106] Galton, 148.

[107] Dalton, 251.

[108] Waitz-Gerland, VI., 30.

[109] Mallery, 1888-89, 414.

[110] To take three cases in place of many Carl Bock relates (67) that among some Borneans tattooing is one of the privileges of matrimony and is _not allowed to unmarried girls_. D'Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the "_new honor_ his wife was securing by these decorations." (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that they _are married_. (Mallery, 411.)

[111] It is significant that Westermarck (179) though he refers to page 90 of Turner, ignores the passage I have just cited, though it occurs on the same page.

[112] Australia is by no means the only country where the women are less decorated than the men. Various explanations have been offered, but none of them covers all the facts. The real reason becomes obvious if my view is accepted that the alleged ornaments of savages are not esthetic, but practical or utilitarian. The women are usually allowed to share such things as badges of mourning, amulets, and various devices that attract attention to wealth or rank; but the religious rites, and the manifold decorations associated with military life--the chief occupation of these peoples--they are not allowed to share, and these, with the tribal marks, furnish, as we have seen, the occasion for the most diverse and persistent "decorative" practices.

[113] The advocates of the sexual selection theory might have avoided many grotesque blunders had they possessed a sense of humor to counterbalance and control their erudition. The violent opposition of Madagascar women to King Radama's order that the men should have their hair cut, to which Westermarck refers (174-75), surely finds in the proverbial stupid conservatism of barbarous customs a simpler and more rational explanation than in his assumption that this riot illustrated "the important part played by the hair of the head as a stimulant of sexual passion" (to these coarse, masculine women, who had to be speared before they could be quieted). An argument which attributes to unwashed, vermin-covered savages a fanatic zeal for what they consider as beautiful, such as no civilized devotee of beauty would ever dream of, involves its own _reductio ad absurdum_ by proving too much. Westermarck also cites (177) from a book on Brazil the story that if a young maiden of the Tapoyers "be marriageable, and yet not courted by any, the mother paints her with some red color about the eyes," and in accordance with his theory we are soberly expected to accept this red paint about the eyes as an effective "stimulant of sexual passion," in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her! The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market. In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery's admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington). Belden relates (145) of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red. He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeballs, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courtship, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful. Belden himself further points out that "a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment," and on p. 144 he explains that "when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love." I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.

[114] _Trans. Eth. Soc.,_ London, N.S., VII., 238; _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal,_ XXXV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, _D.S._

[115] In Fiji fatness is also "a mark of high rank, for these people can only imagine one reason for any person being thin and spare, namely, not having enough to eat." (W.J. Smythe, 166.)

[116] Yet Westermarck has the audacity to remark (259), that natural deformity and the unsymmetrical shape of the body are "regarded by every race as unfavorable to personal appearance"!

[117] It is not strange that the human race should have had to wait so long for a complete analysis of love. It is not so very long ago since Newton showed that what was supposed to be a simple white light was really compounded of all the colors of the rainbow; or that Helmholtz analyzed sounds into their partial tones of different pitch, which are combined in what seems to be a simple tone of this or that pitch. Similarly, I have shown that the pleasures of the table, which everybody supposes to be simple, gustatory sensations (matters of taste), are in reality compound odors. See my article on "The Gastronomic Value of Odors," in the _Contemporary Review_, 1881.

[118] II., 271-74. See also _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1887, 31; Hellwald, 144.

[119] Which even in tropical countries seldom comes before the eleventh or twelfth year. See the statistics in Ploss-Bartels, I., 269-70.

[120] _Alone among the Hairy Ainu_, 140-41.

[121] _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, II, 109.

[122] _Journal des Goncourt_, Tome V. 328-29.

[123] _Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S._, II, 292.

[124] Ross Cox, cited by Yarrow in his valuable article on Mortuary Customs of North American Indians, I, _Report Bur. Ethnol.,_ 1879-80. See also Ploss-Bartels, II., 507-13; Westermarck, 126-28; Letourneau, Chap. XV., where many other cases are cited.

[125] _Trans. Ninth Internal. Congr. of Orientalists_, London, 1893, p. 781.

[126] Details and authorities in Ploss-Bartels, II., 514-17; Westermarck, 125-26; Letourneau, Chap. XV.

[127] For many other cases see references in footnotes 3 and 4, Westermarck, 378.

[128] The poets and a certain class of novelists also like to dwell on the love-matches among peasants as compared with commercial city marriages. As a matter of fact, in no class do sordid pecuniary matters play so great a rôle as among peasants. (_Cf._ Grosse. _F.d.F._, 16.)

[129] _Princ. of Soc._, American Edition, pp. 756, 772, 784, 787.

[130] The proofs of man's universal contempt for woman are to be found in the chapter on "Adoration," and everywhere in this book. Many additional illustrations are contained in several articles by Crawley in the _Jour. Anthrop. Inst_., Vol. XXIV.

[131] _Cf_. Ploss-Bartels, I., 471-87, where this topic of infant marriage is treated with truly German thoroughness and erudition.