The pictures of the utter degradation of the most famous of the hetairai—Leontium, Lais, Phryne, and others, drawn by Athenaeus, need not be transferred to these pages. Combined with the revelations made in Lucian's [Greek: Etairikoi dialogoi], they demonstrate absolutely that these degraded, mercenary, mawkish creatures could not have inspired romantic sentiment in the hearts of the men, even if the latter had been capable of it.
It is to such vulgar persons that the poets of classical Greece and Alexandria addressed their verses. And herein they were followed by those of the Latins who may be regarded as imitators of the Alexandrians—Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, the principal erotic poets of Rome. They wrote all their love-poems to, for, or about, a class of women corresponding to the Greek hetairai. Of Ovid I have already spoken (189), and what I said of him practically applies to the others. Propertius not only writes with the hetairai in his mind, but, like his Alexandrian models, he appears as one who is forever writing love-poems without ever being really in love. With Catullus the sensual passion at least is sincere. Yet even Professor Sellar, who declares that he is, "with the exception perhaps of Sappho, the greatest and truest of all the ancient poets of love," is obliged to admit that he "has not the romance and purity of modern sentiment" (349, 22). Like the Greeks, he had a vague idea that there is something higher than sensual passion, but, like a Greek, in expressing it, he ignores women as a matter of course. "There was a time," he writes to his profligate Lesbia, "when I loved you not as a man loves his mistress, butas a father loves his son or his son-in-law"!
Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum,Lesbia, nee prae me velle tenere Iovem.Dilexi tum te non ut volgus amicam,Sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos.
In Tibullus there is a note of tenderness which, however, is a mark of effeminacy rather than of an improved manliness. His passion is fickle, his adoration little more than adulation, and the expressions of unselfish devotion here and there do not mean more than the altiloquent words of Achilles about Briseis or of Admetus about Alcestis, for they are not backed up by altruistic actions. In a word, his poems belong to the region of sentimentality, not sentiment. Morally he is as rotten as any of his colleagues. He began his poetic career with a glorification of [Greek: paiderastia], and continued it as an admirer of the most abandoned women. A French author who wrote a history of prostitution in three volumes quite properly devoted a chapter to Tibullus and his love-affairs.[325]
A big volume might be filled with the short love-stories in prose or verse scattered through a thousand years of Greek literature. But, although some of them are quite romantic, I must emphatically reiterate what I said in my first book (76)—that romantic love does not appear in the writings of any Greek author and that the passion of the desperately enamoured young people so often portrayed sprang entirely from sensuality. One of the critics referred to at the beginning of this chapter held me up to the ridicule of the British public because I ignored such romantic love-stories as Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcyone and Ceyx, Atalanta and Meleager, Cephalus and Procris, and "a dozen others" which "any school girl" could tell me. To begin with the one last named, the critic asks: "What can be said against Cephalus and Procris?" A great deal, I am afraid. As told by Antoninus Liberalis in No. 41 of hisMetamorphoses([Greek: metamorphoseon synagogae]) it is one of the most abominable and obscene stories ever penned even by a Greek. Some of the disgusting details are omitted in the versions of Ovid and Hyginus, but in the least offensive version that can be made the story runs thus:
Cephalus, having had experience of woman's unbridled passion, doubts his wife's fidelity and, to test her, disguises himself and offers her a bag of gold. At first she refuses, but when he doubles the sum, she submits, whereupon he throws away his disguise and confronts her with her guilt. Covered with shame, she flies. Afterward she cuts her hair like a man's, changes her clothes so as to be unrecognizable, and joins him in the chase. Being more successful than he, she promises to teach him on a certain condition; and on his assenting, she reveals her identity and accuses him of being just as bad as she was. Another version reads that after their reconciliation she suspected his fidelity on hearing that he used to ascend a hill and cry out "Come, Nephela, come" ([Greek: Nephelae] means cloud). So she went and concealed herself on the hill in a thicket, where her husband accidentally killed her with his javelin.
Is this the kind of Greek "love-stories" that English school girls learn by the dozen? Coarse as it is, the majority of these stories are no better, being absolutely unfit for literal translation, which is doubtless the reason why no publisher has ever brought out a collection of Greek "love-stories." Of those referred to above none is so objectionable as the tale of Cephalus and Procris, nor, on the other hand, is any one of them in any way related to what we call romantic love. Atalanta was a sweet masculine maiden who could run faster than any athlete. Her father was anxious to have her marry, and she finally agreed to wed any man who could reach a certain goal before her, the condition being, however, that she should be allowed to transfix with her spear every suitor who failed. She had already ornamented the place of contest with the heads of many courageous young men, this tender-hearted, romantic maiden had, when her fun was rudely spoiled by Meleager, who threw before her three golden apples which she stopped to pick up, thus losing the race to that hero, who, no doubt, was extremely happy with such a wife ever after. Even to this story an improper sequel was added.
Alcyone and Ceyx is the story of a wife who committed suicide on discovering the body of her husband on the sea-beach; and the story of Orpheus, who grieved so over the death of his wife Eurydice that he went to the lower world to bring her up again, but lost her again because, contrary to his agreement with Pluto and Proserpina, he looked back to see if she was following, is known to everybody. The conjugal attachment and grief at the loss of a spouse which these two legends tell of, are things the existence of which in Greece no one has ever denied. They are simple phenomena quite apart from the complex state of mind we call romantic love, and are shared by man with many of the lower animals. In such attachment and grief there is no evidence of altruistic affection. Orpheus tried to bring back Eurydice to please himself, not her, and Alcyone's suicide was of no possible use to Ceyx.[326]
The story of Panthea and Abradates, to which Professor Ebers refers so triumphantly, is equally inconclusive as to the existence of altruistic affection. Abradates, having been urged by his wife Panthea to show himself worthy of the friendship of Cyrus by doing valorous deeds, falls in a battle, whereat Panthea is so grieved at the result of her advice that she commits suicide. From the modern Christian point of view this was not a rational proof of affection, but a foolish and criminal act. But it harmonized finely with the Greek ideal—the notion that patriotism is even a woman's first duty, and her life not worth living except in subservience to her husband. There is good reason to believe[327] that this story was a pure invention of Xenophon and deliberately intended to be an object lesson to women regarding the ideal they ought to live up to. The whole of the book in which it appears—[Greek: Kyrou paideia]—is what the Germans call aTendenzroman—a historic romance with a moral, illustrating the importance of a correct education and glorifying a certain form of government.
To a student of Greek love one of the most instructive documents is the [Greek: erotika pathaemata] of Parthenius, who was a contemporary of the most famous Roman poets (first century before Christ), and the teacher of Virgil. It is a collection of thirty-six short love-stories in prose, made for him by his friend Cornelius Gallus, who was in quest of subjects which he might turn into elegies. It has been remarked that these poems are peculiarly sad, but a better word for them is coarse. Unbridled lust, incest, [Greek:paiderastia], and adultery are the favorite motives in them, and few rise above the mephitic atmosphere which breathes from Cephalus and Procris or other stories of crime, like that of Philomela and Procne, which were so popular among Greek and Roman poets, and presumably suited their readers. With amusing naïveté Eckstein pleads for these "specimens of antique romance" on the ground that there is more lubricity in Bandello and Boccaccio!—which is like declaring that a man who assassinates another by simply hitting him on the head is virtuous because there are others who make murder a fine art. I commend the stories of Parthenius to the special attention of any one who may have any lingering doubts as to the difference between Greek ideas of love and modern ideals.[328]
Parthenius is regarded as a connecting link of the Alexandrian school with the Roman poets on one side, and on the other with the romances which constitute the last phase of Greek erotic literature.[329] In these romances too, a number of my critics professed to discover romantic love. The reviewer of my book inNature(London) asked me to see whether Heliodorus's account of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea does not come up to my standard. I am sorry to say it does not. Jowett perhaps dismisses this story somewhat too curtly as "silly and obscene"; but it certainly is far from being a love-story in the modern sense of the word, though its moral tone is doubtless superior to that of the other Greek romances. The notion that it indicates an advance in erotic literature may no doubt be traced to the legend that Heliodorus was a bishop, and that he introduced Christian ideas into his romance—a theory which Professor Rohde has scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea.[330] The preservation of the heroine's virginity amid incredible perils and temptations is one of the tricks of the Greek novelists, the real object of which is made most apparent inDaphnis and Chloe. The extraordinary emphasis placed on it on every possible occasion is not only very indelicate, but it shows how novel and remarkable such an idea was considered at the time. It was one of the tricks of the Sophists (with whom Heliodorus must be classed), who were in the habit of treating a moral question like a mathematical problem. "Given a maiden's innocence, how can it be preserved to the end of the story?" is the artificial, silly, and vulgar leading motive of this Greek romance, as of others. Huet, Villemain, and many other critics have been duped by this sophistico-mathematical aspect of the story into descanting on the peculiar purity and delicacy of its moral tone; but one need only read a few of the heroine's speeches to see how absurd this judgment is. When she says to her lover,
"I resigned myself to you, not as to a paramour, but as to a legitimate husband, and I have preserved my chastity with you, resisting your urgent solicitations because I always had in mind the lawful marriage to which we pledged ourselves,"
she uses the language of a shrewd hetaira, not of an innocent girl; nor could the author have made her say the following had his subject been romantic love: [Greek: _Hormaen gar, hos oistha, kratousaes epithumias machae men antitupos epipeinei, logos d' eikon kai pros to boulaema syntrechon taen protaen kai zeousan phoran esteile kai to katoxu taes orezeos to haedei taes epaggelias kateunase.]
The story of Heliodorus is full of such coarse remarks, and his idea of love is plainly enough revealed when he moralizes that "a lover inclines to drink and one who is drunk is inclined to love."
It is not only on account of this coarseness that the story of Theagenes and Chariclea fails to come up to the standard of romantic love. When Arsace (VIII., 9) imprisons the lovers together, with the idea that the sight of their chains will increase the sufferings of each, we have an intimation of crude sympathy; but apart from that the symptoms of love referred to in the course of the romance are the same that I have previously enumerated, as peculiar to Alexandrian literature. The maxims, "dread the revenge that follows neglected love;" "love soon finds its end in satiety;" and "the greatest happiness is to be free from love," take us back to the oldest Greek times. Peculiarly Greek, too, is the scene in which the women, unable to restrain their feelings, fling fruits and flowers at a young man because he is so beautiful; although on the same page we are surprised by the admission that woman's beauty is even more alluring than man's, which is not a Greek sentiment.
In this last respect, as in some others, the romance of Heliodorus differs favorably from that of Achilles Tatius, which relates the adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon; but I need not dwell on this amazingly obscene and licentious narrative, as its author's whole philosophy of love, like that of Heliodorus, is summed up in this passage:
"As the wine produced its effect I cast lawless glances at Leucippe: for Love and Bacchus are violent gods, they invade the soul and so inflame it that they forget modesty, and while one kindles the flame the other supplies the fuel; for wine is the food of love."
Nor need I dwell on the stories of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, or the epicDionysiacaof Nonnus, as they yield us no new points of view. The romance of Longus, however, calls for some remarks, as it is the best known of the Greek novels and has often been pronounced a story of refined love worthy of a modern writer.
Goethe found inDaphnis and Chloe"a delicacy of feeling which cannot be excelled." Professor Murray backs up the morals of Longus: "It needs an unintelligent reader or a morbid translator," he writes (403), "to find harm in theHistory of Daphnis and Chloe;" and an editorial writer in the New YorkMail and Expressaccused me, as before intimated, of unexampled ignorance for not knowing thatDaphnis and Chloeis "as sweet and beautiful a love-story as ever skipped in prose." This, indeed, is the prevalent opinion. How it ever arose is a mystery to me. Fiction has always been the sphere of the most unrestrained license, yet Dunlop wrote in hisHistory of Fictionthat there are in this story "particular passages so extremely reprehensible that I know nothing like them in almost any work whatever." In collecting the material for the present volume I have been obliged to examine thousands of books referring to the relations of men and women, but I declare that of all the books I have seen only the HindooK[=a]masutr[=a]m, the literal version of theArabian Nights, and the American Indian stories collected by Dr. Boas, can compare with this "sweet and beautiful" romance of Longus in downright obscenity or deliberate laciviousness. I have been able, without going beyond the latitude permissible to anthropologists, to give a fairly accurate idea of the love-affairs of savages and barbarians; but I find it impossible, after several trials, to sum up the story of Daphnis and Chloe without going beyond the limits of propriety. Among all the deliberate pictures ofmoral depravitypainted by Greek and Roman authors not one is so objectionable as this "idyllic" picture of theinnocentshepherd boy and girl. Pastoral love is coarse enough, in all truth: but this story is infinitely more immoral than, for instance, the frank and natural sensualism of the twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus. Professor Anthon (755) described the story ofDaphnis and Chloeas
"the romance,par excellence, of physical love. It is a history of the senses rather than of the mind, a picture of the development of the instincts rather than of the sentiments….Paul and Virginiais nothing more thanDaphnis and Chloedelineated by a refined and cultivated mind, and spiritualized and purified by the influence of Christianity."
This is true; but Anthon erred decidedly in saying that in the Greek story "vice is advocated by no sophistry." On the contrary, what makes this romance so peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from his sly sophistry:
"The way in which Longus excites the sensual desires of the lovers by means of licentious experiments going always only to the verge of gratification, betrays an abominably hypocriticalraffinement[331] which reveals in the most disagreeable manner that the naïveté of this idyllist is a premeditated artifice and he himself nothing but a sophist. It is difficult to understand how anyone could have ever been deceived so far as to overlook the sophistical character of this pastoral romance of Longus, or could have discovered genuine naïveté in this most artificial of all rhetorical productions. No attentive reader who has some acquaintance with the ways of the Sophistic writers will have any difficulty in apprehending the true inwardness of the story… As this sophist, in those offensively licentious love-scenes, suddenly shows the cloven foot under the cloak of innocence, so, on the other hand, his eager desire to appear as simple and childlike as possible often enough makes him cold, finical, trifling, or utterly silly in his affectation."[332]
Our survey of Greek erotic literature may be brought to a close with two famous stories which are closely allied to the Greek romances, although one of them—Hero and Leander—was written in verse, and the other—Cupid and Psyche—in Latin prose. While Apuleius was an African and wrote his story in Latin, he evidently derived it from a Greek source.[333] He lived in the second century of our era, and Musaeus, the author ofHero and Leander, in the fifth. It is more than probable that Musaeus did not invent the story, but found it as a local legend and simply adorned it with his pen.
On the shores of the Hellespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic story. To the present day the Turks point out what they claim to be her tower, and it is well-known that in 1810, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, in order to test the possibility of Leander's feat, swam from Europe to Asia at this place; it took them an hour and five and an hour and ten minutes respectively, and on account of the strong current the distance actually traversed was estimated at more than four miles, while in a straight line it was only a mile from shore to shore.
I have already pointed out (202, 204) that the action of Leander in swimming across this strait for the sake of enjoying the favor of Hero, and her suicide when she finds him dead on the rocks, have nothing so do with the altruistic self-sacrifice that indicatessoul-love. Here I merely wish to remark that apart from that there is not a line or word in the whole poem to prove that this story "completely upsets" my theory, as one critic wrote. The story is not merely frivolous and cold, as W. von Humboldt called it; it is as unmitigatedly sensual asDaphnis and Chloe, though less offensively so because it does not add the vice of hypocrisy to its immodesty. From beginning to end there is but one thought in Leanders mind, as there is in Hero's, whose words and actions are even more indelicate than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess of Venus true to her function—a girl to whom the higher feminine virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the impulse of the moment, in response to coarse flattery, she makes an assignation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid's version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic love—soul-love—there is no trace in either version. There are touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).
To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of whichLohengrinis a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy thatCupid and Psycheis a story of "modern" romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love—or conjugal affection either—it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated. Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (amore flagrantissimo) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother's orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (jamque aderat ignobilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat).
Now follow some months in which Psyche is neither maiden nor wife. Even if they had been properly married there would have been no opportunity for the development or manifestation of supersensual conjugal attachment, for all this time Psyche is never allowed even to see her lover; and when an opportunity arises for her to show her devotion to him she fails utterly to rise to the occasion. One night he informs her that her two sisters, who are unhappily married, are trying to find her, and he warns her seriously not to heed them in any way, should they succeed in their efforts. She promises, but spends the whole of the next day weeping and wailing because she is locked up in a beautiful prison, unable to see her sisters—very unlike a loving modern girl on her honeymoon, whose one desire is to be alone with her beloved, giving him a monopoly of her affection and enjoying a monopoly of his, with no distractions or jealousies to mar their happiness. Cupid chides her for being sad and dissatisfied even amid his caresses and he again warns her against her scheming sisters; whereat she goes so far as to threaten to kill herself unless he allows her to receive her sisters. He consents at last, after making her promise not to let them persuade her to try to find out anything about his personal appearance, lest such forbidden curiosity make her lose him forever. Nevertheless, when, on their second visit, the sisters, filled with envy, try to persuade her that her unseen lover is a monster who intends to eat her after she has grown fat, and that to save herself she must cut off his head while he is asleep, she resolves to follow their advice. But when she enters the room at night, with a knife in one hand and a lamp in the other, and sees the beautiful god Cupid in her bed, she is so agitated that a drop of hot oil falls from her lamp on his face and wakes him; whereupon, after reproaching her, he rises on his wings and forsakes her.
Overcome with grief, Psyche tries to end her life by jumping into a river, but Zephir saves her. Then she takes revenge on her sisters by calling on them separately and telling each one that Cupid had deserted her because he had seen her with lamp and knife, and that he was now going to marry one of them. The sisters hasten one after the other to the rock, but Zephir fails to catch them, and they are dashed to pieces. Venus meanwhile had discovered the escapade of her boy and locked him up till his wound from the hot oil was healed. Her anger now vents itself on Psyche. She sets her several impossible tasks, but Psyche, with supernatural aid, accomplishes all of them safely. At last Cupid manages to escape through a window. He finds Psyche lying on the road like a corpse, wakes her and Mercury brings her to heaven, where at last she is properly married to Cupid—sic rite Psyche convenit in manum Cupidinis et nascitur illis maturo partu filia, quam Voluptatem nominamus.
Such is the much-vaunted "love-story" of Cupid and Psyche! Commentators have found all sorts of fanciful and absurd allegories in this legend. Its real significance I have already pointed out. But it may be looked at from still another point of view. Psyche means soul, and in the story of Apuleius Cupid does not fall in love with a soul, but with a beautiful body. This sums up Hellenic love in general.The Greek CupidNEVERfell in love with a Psyche.
The Greek view that love is a disease and a calamity still prevails extensively among persons who, like the Greeks, have never experienced real love and do not know what it is. In a book dated 1868 and entitledModern WomenI find the following passage (325):
"Already the great philosopher of the age has pronounced that the passion of love plays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress. The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mill."
It is significant that this opinion should have emanated from a man whose idea of femininity was as masculine as that of the Greeks—an ideal which, by eliminating or suppressing the secondary and tertiary (mental) sexual qualities, necessarily makes love synonymous with lust.
There is another large class of persons who likewise consider love a disease, but a harmless one, like the measles, or mumps, which it is well to have as early as possible, so as to be done with it, and which seldom does any harm. Others, still, regard it as a sort of juvenile holiday, like a trip to Italy or California, which is delightful while it lasts and leaves pleasant memories thoughout life, but is otherwise of no particular use.
It shows a most extraordinary ignorance of the ways of nature to suppose that it should have developed so powerful an instinct and sentiment for no useful purpose, or even as a detriment to the race. That is not the way nature operates. In reality love is the most useful thing in the world. The two most important objects of the human race are its own preservation and improvement, and in both of these directions love is the mightiest of all agencies. It makes the world go round. Take it away, and in a few years animal life will be as extinct on this planet as it is on the moon. And by preferring youth to age, health to disease, beauty to deformity, it improves the human type, slowly but steadily.
The first thinker who clearly recognized and emphatically asserted the superlative importance of love was Schopenhauer. Whereas Hegel (II., 184) parroted the popular opinion that love is peculiarly and exclusively the affair of the two individuals whom it directly involves, having no concern with the eternal interests of family and race, no universality (Allgemeinheit). Schopenhauer's keen mind on the contrary saw that love, though the most individualized of all passions, concerns the race even more than the individual. "Die Zusammensetzung der nächsten Generation, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes"—the very composition and essence of the next generation and of countless generations following it, depends, as he says, on the particular choice of a mate. If an ugly, vicious, diseased mate be chosen, his or her bad qualities are transmitted to the following generations, for "the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," as even the old sages knew, long before science had revealed the laws of heredity. Not only the husband's and the wife's personal qualities are thus transmitted to the children and children's children, but those also of four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on; and when we bear in mind the tremendous differences in the inheritable ancestral traits of families—virtues or infirmities—we see of what incalculable importance to the future of families is that individual preference which is so vital an ingredient of romantic love.
It is true that love is not infallible. It is still, as Browning puts it, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened." It may be said that marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species; but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence natural selection has favored it—especially the monogamous form—in the interest of coming generations.Love is simply an extension of this process—-making it efficacious before marriage and thus quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as wisely as the higher. Where animal passion alone is involved, parents cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But, with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason, because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled lust) always is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous offspring.
If it be asked, "Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and physical?" the answer is a most emphatic "No." Parental fondness, sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian father's object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters and giving them in marriage was to secure cows or ponies in return for them. In India the object of marriage was the rearing of sons or daughters' sons for the purpose of saving the souls of their parents from perdition; so they flung them into the arms of anyone who would take them. The Greeks and the Hebrews married to perpetuate their family name or to supply the state with soldiers. In Japan and China ancestral and family considerations have always been of infinitely more importance than the individual inclinations or happiness of the bridal couple. Wherever we look we find this topsy-turvy state of affairs—marriages made to suit the parents instead of the bride and groom; while the welfare of the grandchildren is of course never dreamt of.
This outrageous parental selfishness and tyranny, so detrimental to the interests of the human race, was gradually mitigated as civilization progressed in Europe. Marriages were no longer made for the benefit of the parents alone, but with a view to the comfort and worldly advantages of the couple to be wedded. But rank, money, dowry, continued—and continue in Europe to this day—to be the chief matchmakers, few parents rising to the consideration of the welfare of the grandchildren. The grandest task of the morality of the future will be tomake parental altruism extend to these grandchildren; that is, to make parents and everyone else abhor and discountenance all marriages that do not insure the health and happiness of future generations. Love will show the way. Far from being useless or detrimental to the human race, it is an instinct evolved by nature as a defence of the race against parental selfishness and criminal myopia regarding future generations.
Plato observed in hisStatesman(310) that
"most persons form marriage connections without due regard to what is best for procreation of children." "They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of serious censure."
But his remedy for this evil was, as we have seen (775), quite as bad as the evil itself, since it involved promiscuity and the elimination of chastity and family life. Love accomplishes the results that Plato and Lycurgus aimed at, so far as healthy offspring is concerned, without making the same sacrifices and reducing human marriage to the level of the cattle-breeder. It accomplishes, moreover, the same result that natural selection secures, and without its cruelty, by simply excluding from marriage the criminal, vicious, crippled, imbecile, incurably diseased and all who do not come up to its standard of health, vigor, and beauty.
While claiming that love is an instinct developed by nature as a defence against the short-sighted selfishness of parents who would sacrifice the future of the race to their own advantage or that of their children, I do not forget that in the past it has often secured its results in an illegitimate way. That, however, was no fault of its own, being due to the artificial and foolish obstacles placed in its way. Laws of nature cannot be altered by man, and if the safety valve is tied down the boiler is bound to explode. In countries where marriages are habitually arranged by the parents with reference to rank or money alone, in defiance of love, the only "love-children" are necessarily illegitimate. This has given rise to the notion that illegitimate children are apt to be more beautiful, healthy, and vigorous than the issue of regular marriages: and, under the circumstances, it was true. But for this topsy-turvyness, this folly, this immorality, we must not blame love, but those who persistently thwarted love—or tried to thwart it. As soon as love was allowed a voice in the arrangement of marriages illegitimacy decreased rapidly. Had the rights of love been recognized sooner, it would have proved a useful ally of morality instead its craftiest enemy.[335]
The utility of love from a moral point of view can be shown in other ways. Many tendencies—such as club life, the greater ease of securing divorces, the growing independence of women and their disinclination to domesticity—are undermining that family life which civilization has so slowly and laboriously built up, and fostering celibacy. Now celibacy is not only unnatural and detrimental to health and longevity, but it is the main root of immorality. Its antidote is love, the most persuasive champion and promoter of marriage. No reader of the present volume can fail to see that man has generally managed to have a good time at the expense of woman and it is she who benefits particularly by the modern phases of love and marriage. Yet in recent years the notion that family life is not good enough for women, and that they should be brought up in a spirit of manly independence, has come over society like a noxious epidemic. It is quite proper that there should be avenues of employment for women who have no one to support them; but it is a grievous error to extend this to women in general, to give them the education, tastes, habits, sports, and politics of the men. It antagonizes that sexual differentiation of the more refined sort on which romantic love depends and tempts men to seek amusement in ephemeral, shallow amours. In plain English, while there are many charming exceptions, the growing masculinity of girls is the main reason why so many of them remain unmarried; thus fulfilling the prediction: "Could we make her as the man, sweet love were slain." Let girls return to their domestic sphere, make themselves as delightfully feminine as possible, not trying to be gnarled oaks but lovely vines clinging around them, and the sturdy oaks will joyously extend their love and protection to them amid all the storms of life. In love lies the remedy for many of the economic problems of the day.
There is not one of the fourteen ingredients of romantic love which cannot be shown to be useful in some way. Of individual preference and its importance in securing a happy blend of qualities for the next generation I have just spoken, and I have devoted nearly a page (131) to the utility of coyness. Jealousy has helped to develop chastity, woman's cardinal virtue and the condition of all refinement in love and society. Monopolism has been the most powerful enemy of those two colossal evils of savagery and barbarism—promiscuity and polygamy; and it will in future prove as fatal an enemy to all attempts to bring back promiscuity under the absurd name of "free love," which would reduce all women to the level of prostitutes and make men desert them after their charms have faded. Two other ingredients of love—purity and the admiration of personal beauty—are of great value to the cause of morality as conquerors of lust, which they antagonize and suppress by favoring the higher (mental) sexual qualities; while the sense of beauty also co-operates with the instinct which makes for the health of future generations; beauty being simply the flower of health, and inheritable.
At first sight it may seem difficult to assign any use to the pride, the hyperbole, and the mixed moods which are component elements of love; but they are of value inasmuch as they exalt the mind, and give to the beloved such prominence and importance that the way is paved for the altruistic ingredients of romantic love, the utility of which is so obvious that it hardly needs to be hinted at. If love were nothing more than a lesson in altruism—with many the first and only lesson in their lives—it would be second in importance to no other factor of civilization. Sympathy lifts the lover out of the deep groove of selfishness, teaching him the miracle of feeling another's pains and pleasures more keenly than his own. Man's adoration of woman as a superior being—which she really is, as the distinctively feminine virtues are more truly Christian and have a higher ethical value than the masculine virtues—creates an ideal which has improved women by making them ambitious to live up to it. No one, again, who has read the preceding pages relating to the treatment of women before romantic love existed, and compares it with their treatment at present, can fail to recognize the wonderful transformation brought about by gallantry and self-sacrifice—altruistic habits which have changed men from ruffians to gentlemen. I do not say that love alone is responsible for this improvement, but it has been one of the most potent factors. Finally, there is affection, which, in conjunction with the other altruistic ingredients of love, has changed it from an appetite like that of a fly for sugar to a self-oblivious devotion like a mother's for her child, thus raising it to the highest ethical rank as an agency of culture.
We are still very far from the final stage in the evolution of love. There is no reason to doubt that it will continue to develop, as in the past, in the direction of the esthetic, supersensual, and altruistic. As a physician's eye becomes trained for the subtle diagnosis of disease, a clergyman's for the diagnosis of moral evil, so will the love-instinct become more and more expert, critical, and refined, rejecting those who are vicious or diseased. Compare the lustrous eyes of a consumptive girl with the sparkling eyes of a healthy maiden in buoyant spirits. Both are beautiful, but to a doctor, or to anyone else who knows the deadliness and horrors of tuberculosis, the beauty of the consumptive girl's eyes will seem uncanny, like the charm of a snake, and it will inspire pity, which in this case is not akin to love, but fatal to it. Thus may superior knowledge influence our sense of beauty and liability to fall in love. I know a man who was in love with a girl and had made up his mind to propose. He went to call on her, and as he approached the door he heard her abusing her mother in the most heartless manner. He did not ring the bell, and never called again. His love was of the highest type, but he suppressed his feelings.
More important than the further improvement of romantic love is the task of increasing the proportion of men and women who will be capable of experiencing it as now known to us. The vast majority are still strangers to anything beyond primitive love. The analysis made in the present volume will enable all persons who fancy themselves in love to see whether their passion is merely self-love in a roundabout way or true romantic affection for another. They can see whether it is mere selfish liking, attachment, or fondness, or else unselfish affection. If adoration, purity, sympathy, and the altruistic impulses of gallantry and self-sacrifice are lacking, they can be cultivated by deliberate exercise:
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
The affections can be trained as well as the muscles; and thus the lesson taught in this book may help to bring about a new era of unselfish devotion and true love. No man, surely, can read the foregoing disclosures regarding man's primitive coarseness and heartlessness without feeling ashamed for his sex and resolving to be an unselfish lover and husband to the end of his life.
A great mistake was made by the Greeks when they distinguished celestial from earthly love. The distinction itself was all right, but their application of it was all wrong. Had they known romantic love as we know it, they could not have made the grievous blunder of calling the love between men and women worldly, reserving the word celestial for the friendship between men. Equally mistaken were those mediaeval sages who taught that the celestial sexual virtues are celibacy and virginity—a doctrine which, if adopted, would involve the suicide of the human race, and thus stands self-condemned. No,celestial love is not asceticism; it is altruism. Romantic love is celestial, for it is altruistic, yet it does not preach contempt of the body, and its goal is marriage, the chief pillar of civilization. The admiration of a beautiful, well-rounded, healthy body is as legitimate and laudable an ingredient of romantic love as the admiration of that mental beauty which distinguishes it from sensual love. It is not only that the lovers themselves are entitled to partners with healthy, attractive bodies; it is a duty they owe to the next generation not to marry anyone who is likely to transmit bodily or mental infirmities to the next generation. It is quite as reprehensible to marry for spiritual reasons alone as to be guided only by physical charms.
Love is nature's radical remedy for disease, whereas marriage, as practised in the past, and too often in the present, is little more than a legalized crime. "One of the last things that occur to a marrying couple is whether they are fit to be represented in posterity," writes Dr. Harry Campbell (Lancet, 1898).
"Theft and murder are considered the blackest of crimes, but neither the law nor the church has raised its voice against the marriage of the unfit, for neither has realized that worse than theft and well-nigh as bad as murder is the bringing into the world, through disregard of parental fitness, of individuals full of disease-tendencies."
On this point the public conscience needs a thorough rousing. If a mother deliberately gave her daughter a draught which made her a cripple, or an invalid, or an imbecile, or tuberculous, everybody would cry out with horror, and she would become a social outcast. But if she inflicts these injuries on her granddaughter, by marrying her daughter to a drunkard, in the hope of reforming him, or to a wealthy degenerate, or an imbecile baron, no one says a word, provided the marriage law has been complied with.
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.
[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 YorkNationof September 22, and theEvening Postof 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 ofLotos-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 myLotos-Time in Japan.
[9] Bancroft, II., 75; Wallace, 357; Westermarck, 195; Humboldt, III., 230.
[10] See especially the ninth chapter of Westermarck'sHistory 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 offormpromiscuity may not have been the earliest phase of human marriage, but as a matter offactit 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 theJournal of the Anthropological Institute, xxvi.
[26] New YorkEvening 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'sTravels in North America(245).
[29] GarciaOrigin 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 onPersian 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 "gratifieshimself" 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 theMedical Times, April 18, 1885.
[44]Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, 1885, p. 181.
[45] In theJournal 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 hisTropical Nature, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, andDarwinism. InR.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, inJour. 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'sTotemism, 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 myRomantic 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 inZeitschr. für Ethnologie.1888, 415.
[99] See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.
[100] Seee.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 isnot allowed to unmarried girls. D'Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the "new honorhis wife was securing by these decorations." (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that theyare 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 ownreductio ad absurdumby 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 theContemporary Review, 1881.
[118] II., 271-74. See alsoZeitschrift 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 MortuaryCustoms 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.)