Chapter 16

When a savage practises extraconjugal sexual intercourse, the act is frequently not, as it has come to be conventionally regarded in civilization, an immorality or at least an illegitimate indulgence; it is a useful and entirely justifiable act, producing definite benefits, conducing alike to cosmic order and social order, although these benefits are not always such as we in civilization believe to be caused by the act. Thus, speaking of the northern tribes of central Australia, Spencer and Gillen remark: "It is very usual amongst all of the tribes to allow considerable license during the performance of certain of their ceremonies when a large number of natives, some of them coming often from distant parts, are gathered togetherâ€”in fact, on such occasions all of the ordinary marital rules seem to be more or less set aside for the time being. Each day, in some tribes, one or more women are told off whose duty it is to attend at the corrobboree grounds,â€”sometimes only during the day, sometimes at night,â€”and all of the men, except those who are fathers, elder and younger brothers, and sons, have access to them.... The idea is that the sexual intercourse assists in some way in the proper performance of the ceremony, causing everything to work smoothly and preventing the decorations from falling off."[184]

It is largely this sacred character of sexual intercourseâ€”the fact that it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thoughtâ€”which leads to the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise. Robertson Smith added an appendix to hisReligion of the Semiteson "Taboo on the Intercourse of the Sexes."[185]Westermarck brought together evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to the chastity of savages.[186]Frazer has very luminously expounded the whole primitive conception of sexual intercourse, and showed how it affected chastity.[187]Warriors must often bechaste; the men who go on any hunting or other expedition require to be chaste to be successful; the women left behind must be strictly chaste; sometimes even the whole of the people left behind, and for long periods, must be chaste in order to insure the success of the expedition. Hubert and Maus touched on the same point in their elaborate essay on sacrifice, pointing out how frequently sexual relationships are prohibited on the occasion of any ceremony whatever.[188]Crawley, in elaborating the primitive conception of taboo, has dealt fully with ritual and traditional influences making for chastity among savages. He brings forward, for instance, a number of cases, from various parts of the world, in which intercourse has to be delayed for days, weeks, even months, after marriage. He considers that the sexual continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the sexes to each other that, as he points out, even now sexual separation of the sexes commonly occurs.[189]

There are thus a great number of constantly recurring occasions in savage life when continence must be preserved, and when, it is firmly believed, terrible risks would be incurred by its violationâ€”during war, after victory, after festivals, during mourning, on journeys, in hunting and fishing, in a vast number of agricultural and industrial occupations.

It might fairly be argued that the facility with which the savage places these checks on sexual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of the sexual impulse. Evidence of another order which seems to point to the undeveloped state of the sexual impulse among savages may be found in the comparatively undeveloped condition of their sexual organs, a conditionnot, indeed, by any means constant, but very frequently noted. As regards women, it has in many parts of the world been observed to be the rule, and the data which Ploss and Bartels have accumulated seem to me, on the whole, to point clearly in this direction.[190]

At another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual organsâ€”disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic representationâ€”more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic emotion.[191]And this is probably more marked in cases in which the sexual instinct is constitutionally feeble. A lady who had no marked sexual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such matters, on inspecting her sexual parts in a mirror for the first time in her life was shocked and disgusted at the sight. Certainly many women could record a similar experience on being first approached by a man, although artistic conventions present the male form with greater truth than the female. Moreover,â€”and here is the significant point,â€”this feeling is by no means restricted to the refined and cultured. "When working at Michelangelo," wrote a correspondent from Italy, "my upper gondolier used to see photographs and statuettes of all that man's works. Stopping one day before the Night and Dawn of S. Lorenzo, sprawling naked women, he exclaimed: 'How hideousthey are!' I pressed him to explain himself. He went on: 'The ugliest man naked is handsomer than the finest woman naked. Women have crooked legs, and their sexual organs stink. I only once saw a naked woman. It was in a brothel, when I was 18. The sight of her "natura" made me go out and vomit into the canal. You know I have been twice married, but I never saw either of my wives without clothing.' Of very rank cheese he said one day: 'Puzza come la natura d'una donna.'" This man, my correspondent added, was entirely normal and robust, but seemed to regard sexual congress as a mere evacuation, the sexual instinct apparently not being strong.

It seems possible that, if the sexual impulse had no existence, all men would regard women with thishorror feminÃ¦. As things are, however, at all events in civilization, sexual emotions begin to develop even earlier, usually, than acquaintance with the organs of the other sex begins; so that this disgust is inhibited. If, however, among savages the sexual impulse is habitually weak, and only aroused to strength under the impetus of powerful stimuli, often acting periodically, then we should expect thehorrorto be a factor of considerable importance.

The weakness of the physical sexual impulse among savages is reflected in the psychic sphere. Many writers have pointed out that love plays but a small part in their lives. They practise few endearments; they often only kiss children (Westermarck notes that sexual love is far less strong than parental love); love-poems are among some primitive peoples few (mostly originating with the women), and their literature often gives little or no attention to passion.[192]Affection and devotion are, however, often strong, especially in savage women.

It is not surprising that jealousy should often, though not by any means invariably, be absent, both among men and among women. Among savages this is doubtless a proof of the weakness of the sexual impulse. Spencer and Gillen note the comparativeabsence of jealousy in men among the Central Australian tribes they studied.[193]Negresses, it is said by a French army surgeon in hisUntrodden Fields of Anthropology, do not know what jealousy is, and the first wife will even borrow money to buy the second wife. Among a much higher race, the women in a Korean household, it is said, live together happily, as an almost invariable rule, though it appears that this was not always the case among a polygamous people of European race, the Mormons.

The tendency of the sexual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal manifestations, I do not discuss here, as I have dealt with it in the first volume of theseStudies.[194]It has, however, a very important bearing on this subject. Periodicity of sexual manifestations is, indeed, less absolute in primitive man than in most animals, but it is still very often quite clearly marked. It is largely the occurrence of these violent occasional outbursts of the sexual instinctâ€”during which the organic impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no longer necessaryâ€”that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of the impulse in savages.[195]

[181]

Thus, Lubbock (Lord Avebury), in theOrigin of Civilization, fifth edition, 1889, brings forward a number of references in evidence of this belief. More recently Finck, in hisPrimitive Love and Love-stories, 1899, seeks to accumulate data in favor of the unbounded licentiousness of savages. He admits, however, that a view of the matter opposed to his own is now tending to prevail.

[182]

See "The Evolution of Modesty" in the first volume of theseStudies.

[183]

The sacredness of sexual relations often applies also to individual marriage. Thus, Skeat, in hisMalay Magic, shows that the bride and bridegroom are definitely recognized as sacred, in the same sense that the king is, and in Malay States the king is a very sacred person. See also, concerning the sacred character of coitus, whether individual or collective, A. Van Gennep,Rites de Passage, passim.

[184]

Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 136.

[185]

Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1894, p. 454et seq.

[186]

History of Marriage, pp. 66-70, 150-156, etc.

[187]

Golden Bough, third edition, part ii,Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. Frazer has discussed taboo generally. For a shorter account of taboo, see art. "Taboo" by Northcote Thomas inEncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica, eleventh edition, 1911. Freud has lately (Imago, 1912) made an attempt to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic obsessions. Taboo, Freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established. In this way Freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and things are both sacred and unclean.

[188]

"Essai sur le Sacrifice,"L'AnnÃ©e Sociologique, 1899, pp. 50-51.

[189]

The Mystic Rose, 1902, p. 187et seq., 215et seq., 342et seq.

[190]

Das Weib, vol. i, section 6.

[191]

This statement has been questioned. It should, however, be fairly evident that the sexual organs in either sex, when closely examined, can scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the opposite sex who is in a condition of sexual excitement, and they are not always attractive even then. Moreover, it must be remembered that the snake-like aptitude of the penis to enter into a state of erection apart from the control of the will puts it in a different category from any other organ of the body, and could not fail to attract the attention of primitive peoples so easily alarmed by unusual manifestations. We find even in the early ages of Christianity that St. Augustine attached immense importance to this alarming aptitude of the penis as a sign of man's sinful and degenerate state.

[192]

Lubbock,Origin of Civilization, fifth edition, pp. 69, 73; Westermarck,History of Marriage, p. 357; Grosse,AnfÃ¤nge der Kunst, p. 236; Herbert Spencer, "Origin of Music,"Mind, Oct., 1890.

[193]

Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 99;cf.Finck,Primitive Love and Love-stories, p. 89et seq.

[194]

"The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity." The subject has also been more recently discussed by Walter Heape, "The 'Sexual Season' of Mammals,"Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xliv, 1900. See also F. H. A. Marshall,The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910.

[195]

This view finds a belated supporter in Max Marcuse ("Geschlechtstrieb des Urmenschens,"Sexual-Probleme, Oct., 1909), who, on grounds which I cannot regard as sound, seeks to maintain the belief that the sexual instinct is more highly developed among savage than among civilized peoples.

The facts thus seem to indicate that among primitive peoples, while the magical, ceremonial, and traditional restraints on sexual intercourse are very numerous, very widespread, and nearly always very stringent, there is, underlying this prevalence of restraints on intercourse, a fundamental weakness of the sexual instinct, which craves less, and craves less frequently, than is the case among civilized peoples, but is liable to be powerfully manifested at special seasons. It is perfectly true that among savages, as Sutherland states, "there is no ideal which makes chastity a thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that "it is untrue that in sexual license the savage has everything to learn," we must demand greater precision of statement.[196]Travelers, and too often would-be scientific writers, have been so much impressed by the absence among savages of the civilized ideal of chastity, and by the frequent freedom of sexual intercourse, that they have not paused to inquire more carefully into the phenomena, or to put themselves at the primitive point of view, but have assumed that freedom here means all that it would mean in a European population.

In order to illustrate the actual circumstances of savage life in this respect from the scanty evidence furnished by the most careful observers, I have brought together from scattered sources a few statements concerning primitive peoples in very various parts of the world.[197]

Among the Andamanese, Portman, who knows them well, says that sexual desire is very moderate; in males it appears at the age of 18, but, as "their love for sport is greater than their passions, these are not gratified to any great extent till after marriage, which rarely takes place till a man is about 26."[198]

Although chastity is not esteemed by the Fuegians, and virginity is lost at a very early age, yet both men and women are extremely moderate in sexual indulgence.[199]

Among the Eskimo at the other end of the American continent, according to Dr. F. Cook, the sexual passions are suppressed during the long darkness of winter, as also is the menstrual function usually, and the majority of the children are born nine months after the appearance of the sun.[200]

Among the Indians of North America it is the custom of many tribes to refrain from sexual intercourse during the whole period of lactation, as also D'Orbigny found to be the case among South American Indians, although suckling went on for over three years.[201]Many of the Indian tribes have now been rendered licentious by contact with civilization. In the primitive condition their customs were entirely different. Dr. Holder, who knows many tribes of North American Indians well, has dealt in some detail with this point. "Several of the virtues," he states, "and among them chastity, were more faithfully practised by the Indian race before the invasion from the East than these same virtues are practised by the white race of the present day.... The race is less salacious than either the negro or white race.... That the women of some tribes are now more careful of their virtue than the women of any other community whose history I know, I am fully convinced."[202]It is not only on the women that sexual abstinence is imposed. Amongsome branches of the Salish Indians of British Columbia a young widower must refrain from sexual intercourse for a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.[203]

In many parts of Polynesia, although the sexual impulse seems often to have been highly developed before the arrival of Europeans, it is very doubtful whether license, in the European sense, at all generally prevailed. The Marquesans, who have sometimes been regarded as peculiarly licentious, are especially mentioned by Foley as illustrating his statement that sexual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive peoples except during sexual seasons.[204]Herman Melville's detailed account inTypeeof the Marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt) reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness. At Rotuma, J. Stanley Gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came sexual intercourse before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prostitution and adultery were unknown. Matters are much worse now.[205]The Maoris of New Zealand, in the old days, according to one who had lived among them, were more chaste than the English, and, though a chief might lend his wife to a friend as an honor, it would be very difficult to take her (private communication).[206]Captain Cook also represented these people as modest and virtuous.

Among the Papuans of New Guinea and Torres Straits, although intercourse before marriage is free, it is by no means unbridled, nor is it carried to excess. There are many circumstancesrestraining intercourse. Thus, unmarried men must not indulge in it during October and November at Torres Straits. It is the general rule also that there should be no sexual intercourse during pregnancy, while a child is being suckled (which goes on for three or four years), or even until it can speak or walk.[207]In Astrolabe Bay, New Guinea, according to Vahness, a young couple must abstain from intercourse for several weeks after marriage, and to break this rule would be disgraceful.[208]

As regards Australia, Brough Smyth wrote: "Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is not practised by the aborigines, and their laws on the subject, particularly those of New South Wales, are very strict. When at camp all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the extreme end, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the center. No conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or the married women. Infractions of these laws were visited by punishment; ... five or six warriors threw from a comparatively short distance several spears at him [the offender]. The man was often severely wounded and sometimes killed."[209]This author mentions that a black woman has been known to kill a white man who attempted to have intercourse with her by force. Yet both sexes have occasional sexual intercourse from an early age. After marriage, in various parts of Australia, there are numerous restraints on intercourse, which is forbidden not merely during menstruation, but during the latter part of pregnancy and for one moon after childbirth.[210]

Concerning the people of the Malay Peninsula, Hrolf Vaughan Stevens states: "The sexual impulse among the Belendas is only developed to a slight extent; they are not sensual, and the husband has intercourse with his wife not oftener than three times a month. The women also are not ardent.... TheOrang LÃ¢ut are more sensual than the Dyaks, who are, however, more given to obscene jokes than their neighbors.... With the Belendas there is little or no love-play in sexual relations".[211]Skeat tells us also that among Malays in war-time strict chastity must be observed in a stockade, or the bullets of the garrison will lose their power.[212]

It is a common notion that the negro and negroid races of Africa are peculiarly prone to sexual indulgence. This notion is not supported by those who have had the most intimate knowledge of these peoples. It probably gained currency in part owing to the open and expansive temperament of the negro, and in part owing to the extremely sexual character of many African orgies and festivals, though those might quite as legitimately be taken as evidence of difficulty in attaining sexual erethism.

A French army surgeon, speaking from knowledge of the black races in various French colonies, states in hisUntrodden Fields of Anthropologythat it is a mistake to imagine that the negress is very amorous. She is rather cold, and indifferent to the refinements of love, in which respects she is very unlike the mulatto. The white man is usually powerless to excite her, partly from his small penis, partly from his rapidity of emission; the black man, on account of his blunter nervous system, takes three times as long to reach emission as the white man. Among the Mohammedan peoples of West Africa, Daniell remarks, as well as in central and northern Africa, it is usual to suckle a child for two or more years. From the time when pregnancy becomes apparent to the end of weaning no intercourse takes place. It is believed that this would greatly endanger the infant, if not destroy it. This means that for every child the woman, at all events, must remain continent for about three years.[213]Sir H. H. Johnston, writing concerning the peoplesof central Africa, remarks that the man also must remain chaste during these periods. Thus, among the Atonga the wife leaves her husband at the sixth month of pregnancy, and does not resume relations with him until five or six months after the birth of the child. If, in the interval, he has relations with any other woman, it is believed his wife will certainly die. "The negro is very rarely vicious," Johnston says, "after he has attained to the age of puberty. He is only more or less uxorious. The children are vicious, as they are among most races of mankind, the boys outrageously so. As regards the little girls over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition, except perhaps among the A-nyanja. Before a girl is become a woman it is a matter of absolute indifference what she does, and scarcely any girl remains a virgin after about 5 years of age."[214]Among the Bangala of the upper Congo a woman suckles her child for six to eighteen months and during all this period the husband has no intercourse with his wife, for that, it is believed, would kill the child.[215]

Among the Yoruba-speaking people of West Africa A. B. Ellis mentions that suckling lasts for three years, during the whole of which period the wife must not cohabit with her husband.[216]

Although chastity before marriage appears to be, as a rule, little regarded in Africa, this is not always so. In some parts of West Africa, a girl, at all events if of high birth, when found guilty of unchastity may be punished by the insertion into her vagina of bird pepper, a kind of capsicum, beaten into a mass; this produces intense pain and such acute inflammation that the canal may even be obliterated.[217]

Among the Dahomey women there is no coitus during pregnancy nor during suckling, which lasts for nearly three years.The same is true among the Jekris and other tribes on the Niger, where it is believed that the milk would suffer if intercourse took place during lactation.[218]

In another part of Africa, among the Suaheli, even after marriage only incomplete coitus is at first allowed and there is no intercourse for a year after the child's birth.[219]

Farther south, among the Ba Wenda of north Transvaal, says the Rev. R. Wessmann, although the young men are permitted to "play" with the young girls before marriage, no sexual intercourse is allowed. If it is seen that a girl's labia are apart when she sits down on a stone, she is scolded, or even punished, as guilty of having had intercourse.[220]

Among the higher races in India the sexual instinct is very developed, and sexual intercourse has been cultivated as an art, perhaps more elaborately than anywhere else. Here, however, we are far removed from primitive conditions and among a people closely allied to the Europeans. Farther to the east, as among the Cambodians, strict chastity seems to prevail, and if we cross the Himalayas to the north we find ourselves among wild people to whom sexual license is unknown. Thus, among the Turcomans, even a few days after the marriage has been celebrated, the young couple are separated for an entire year.[221]

All the great organized religions have seized on this value of sexual abstinence, already consecrated by primitive magic and religion, and embodied it in their system. It was so in ancient Egypt. Thus, according to Diodorus, on the death of a king, the entire population of Egypt abstained from sexual intercourse for seventy-two days. The Persians, again, attached great value to sexual as to all other kinds of purity. Even involuntary seminal emissions were severely punishable. To lie with a menstruatingwoman, according to theVendidad, was as serious a matter as to pollute holy fire, and to lie with a pregnant woman was to incur a penalty of 2000 strokes. Among the modern Parsees a man must not lie with his wife after she is four months and ten days pregnant. Mohammedanism cannot be described as an ascetic religion, yet long and frequent periods of sexual abstinence are enjoined. There must be no sexual intercourse during the whole of pregnancy, during suckling, during menstruation (and for eight days before and after), nor during the thirty days of the Ramedan fast. Other times of sexual abstinence are also prescribed; thus among the Mohammedan Yezidis of Mardin in northern Mesopotamia there must be no sexual intercourse on Wednesdays or Fridays.[222]

In the early Christian Church many rules of sexual abstinence still prevailed, similar to those usual among savages, though not for such prolonged periods. In Egbert's Penitential, belonging to the ninth century, it is stated that a woman must abstain from intercourse with her husband three months after conception and for forty days after birth. There were a number of other occasions, including Lent, when a husband must not know his wife.[223]"Some canonists say," remarks Jeremy Taylor, "that the Church forbids a mutual congression of married pairs upon festival days.... The Council of Eliberis commanded abstinence from conjugal rights for three or four or seven days before the communion. Pope Liberius commanded the same during the whole time of Lent, supposing the fast is polluted by such congressions."[224]

[196]

A. Sutherland,Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, vol. i, pp. 8, 187. As has been shown by, for instance, Dr. Iwan Bloch (BeitrÃ¤ge zur Ã†tiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Erster Theil, 1902), every perverse sexual practice may be found, somewhere or other, among savages or barbarians; but, as the same writer acutely points out (p. 58), these devices bear witness to the need of overcoming frigidity rather than to the strength of the sexual impulse.

[197]

Ploss and Bartels have brought together inDas Weiba large number of facts in the same sense, more especially under the headings ofAbstinenz-VorschriftenandDie Fernhaltung der Schwangeren. I have not drawn upon their collection.

[198]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, May, 1896, p. 369.

[199]

Hyades and Deniker,Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 188.

[200]

F. Cook,New York Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 1894.

[201]

A. d'Orbigny,L'Homme AmÃ©ricain, 1839, vol. i, p. 47.

[202]

A. B. Holder, "Gynecic Notes Among the American Indians,"American Journal of Obstetrics, 1892, vol. xxvi, No. 1.

[203]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1905, p. 139.

[204]

[205]

J. S. Gardiner,Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February, 1898, p. 409.

[206]

As regards the modern Maoris, a medical correspondent in New Zealand writes: "It is nothing for members of both sexes to live in the same room, and for promiscuous intercourse to take place between father and daughter or brother and sister. Maori women, who will display a great deal of modesty when in the presence of male Maoris, will openly ask strange Europeans to have sexual intercourse with them, and without any desire for reward. The men, however, seem to prefer their own women, and even when staying in towns, where they can obtain prostitutes, they will remain continent until they return home again, a period of perhaps a month."

[207]

Schellong,Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Ethnologie, 1889, i, pp. 17, 19; Haddon,Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February, 1890, pp. 316, 397; Guise,ib., February and May, 1899, p. 207; Seligmann,ib., 1902, pp. 298, 301-302;Reports Cambridge Expedition, vol. v, pp. 199-200, 275.

[208]

Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Ethnologie, 1900, ht. v, p. 414.

[209]

R. Brough Smyth,The Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 318.

[210]

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1894, pp. 170, 177, 187.

[211]

Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Ethnologie, 1896, iv, pp. 180-181.

[212]

W. W. Skeat,Malay Magic, p. 524.

[213]

W. F. Daniell,Medical Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, p. 55.

[214]

Sir H. H. Johnston,British Central Africa, 1899, pp. 409, 414.

[215]

Rev. J. H. Weeks,Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1910, p. 418.

[216]

Sir A. B. Ellis,Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, p. 185.

[217]

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