Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 35

(Letourneau, 139.) The same may be said of China and j.a.pan, where the sacred duty of filial obedience is so ingrained in a girl's soul that she would never dream of opposing her parents' wishes.

Of the horrible custom of marrying helpless girls before they are mature in body or mind--often, indeed, before they have reached the age of p.u.b.erty--I have already spoken, instancing some Borneans, Javanese, Egyptians, American Indians, Australians, Hottentots, natives of Old Calabar, Hindoos; to which may be added some Arabs and Persians, Syrians, Kurds, Turks, natives of Celebes, Madagascar, Bechuanas, Basutos, and many other Africans, etc. As for those who practise infant betrothal, Westermarck's own list includes Eskimos, Chippewayans, Botocudos, Patagonians, Shoshones, Arawaks, Macusis, Iroquois; Gold Coast negroes, Bushmen, Marutse, Bechuanas, Ashantees, Australians; tribes of New Guinea, New Zealand, Tonga, Tahiti, and many other islands of the South Sea; some tribes of the Malay Archipelago; tribes of British India; all peoples of the Turkish stock; Samoyedes and Tuski; Jews of Western Russia.

As regards capture, good authorities now hold that it was not a universal practice in all parts of the world; yet it prevailed very widely--for instance, among Aleutian Islanders, Ahts, Bonaks, Macas Indians of Ecuador, all Carib tribes, some Brazilians, Mosquito Indians, Fuegians; Bushmen, Bechuanas, Wakamba, and other Africans; Australians, Tasmanians, Maoris, Fijians, natives of Samoa, Tukopia, New Guinea, Indian Archipelago; wild tribes of India; Arabs, Tartars, and other Central Asians; some Russians, Laplanders, Esthonians, Finns, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Scandinavians, Slavonians, etc. "The list," says Westermarck (387), "might easily be enlarged." As for the list of peoples among whom brides were sold--usually to the highest bidder and without reference to feminine choice--that would be much larger still. Eight pages are devoted to it and two only to the exceptions, by Westermarck himself, who concludes (390) that "Purchase of wives may, with even more reason than marriage by capture, be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind," How nearly universal the practice is, or has been, may be inferred from the fact that Sutherland (I., 208), after examining sixty-one negro races, found fifty-seven recorded as purchasing their wives.

Widely prevalent also was the custom of allowing a man who had married a girl to claim all her sisters as soon as they reached a marriageable age. Whatever their own preferences might be, they had no choice.

Among the Indian tribes alone, Morgan mentions forty who indulged in this custom. As for the levirate, that is another very wide-spread custom which shows an utter disregard of woman's preference and choice. It might be supposed that widows, at any rate, ought always to be allowed, in case they wished to marry again, to follow their own choice. But they are, like the daughters, regarded as personal property, and are inherited by their late husband's brother or some other male relative, who marries them himself or disposes of them as he pleases. Whether the acceptance of a brother's widow or widows is a right or a duty (prescribed by the desire for sons and ancestor-worship) is immaterial for our purpose; for in either case the widow must go as custom commands, and has no liberty of choice.

The levirate prevails, or has prevailed, among a great number of races, from the lowest to those considerably advanced.

The list includes Australians, many Indians, from the low Brazilians to the advanced Iroquois, Aleuts, Eskimos, Fijians, Samoans, Caroline Islanders, natives of New Caledonia, New Guinea, New Britain, New Hebrides, the Malay Archipelago, Wild tribes of India, Kamchadales, Ostiaks, Kirghiz, Mongolians in general, Arabs, Egyptians, Hebrews, natives of Madagascar, many Kaffir tribes, negroes of the Gold Coast, Senegambians, Bechuanas, and a great many other Africans, etc.

Twelve pages of Westermarck's chapter on the Liberty of Choice are devoted to peoples among whom not even a son is, or was, allowed to marry without the father's consent. The list includes Mexicans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Chinese, j.a.panese, Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Hindoos, Germans, Celts, Russians, etc. In all these cases the daughters, of course, enjoyed still less liberty of disposing of their hand. In short, the argument against Darwin and Westermarck is simply overwhelming--all the more when we look at the numbers of the races who do not permit women their choice--the 400,000,000 Chinese, 300,000,000 Hindoos, the Mohammedan millions, the whole continent of Australia, nearly all of aboriginal America and Africa, etc.

A drowning man clings to a straw. "In Indian and Scandinavian tales,"

Westermarck informs us,

"virgins are represented as having the power to dispose of themselves freely. Thus it was agreed that Skade should choose for herself a husband among the Asas, but she was to make her choice by the feet, the only part of their persons she was allowed to see."

Obviously the author of this tale from the _Younger Edda_ had more sense of humor than some modern anthropologists have. No less topsy-turvy is the Hindoo _Svayamvara_ or "Maiden's Choice," to which Westermarck alludes (162). This is an incident often referred to in epics and dramas. "It was a custom in royal circles," writes Samuelson, "when a princess became marriageable, for a tournament to be held, and the _victor was chosen_ by the princess as her husband."

If the sarcasm of the expression "Maiden's Choice" is unconscious, it is all the more amusing. How far Hindoo women of all cla.s.ses were and are from enjoying the liberty of choice, we shall see in the chapter on India.

X. SEPARATION OF THE s.e.xES

I have given so much s.p.a.ce to the question of choice because it is one of exceptional importance. Where there is no choice there can he no real courtship, and where there is no courtship there is no opportunity for the development of those imaginative and sentimental traits which const.i.tute the essence of romantic love. It by no means follows, however, that where choice is permitted to girls, as with the Dyaks, real love follows as a matter of course; for it may be prevented, as it is in the case of these Dyaks, by their sensuality, coa.r.s.eness, and general emotional shallowness and s.e.xual frivolity.

The prevention of choice is only one of the obstacles to love, but it is one of the most formidable, because it has acted at all times and among races of all degrees of barbarism or civilization up to modern Europe of two or three centuries ago. And to the frustration and free choice was added another obstacle--the separation of the s.e.xes. Some Indians and even Australians tried to keep the s.e.xes apart, though usually without much success. In their cause no harm was done to the cause of love, because these races are const.i.tutionally incapable of romantic love; but in higher stages of civilization the strict seclusion of the women was a fatal obstacle to love. Wherever separation of the s.e.xes and chaperonage prevails, the only kind of amorous infatuation possible, as a rule, is sensual pa.s.sion, fiery but transient. To love a girl sentimentally--that is, for her mental beauty and moral refinement as well as her bodily charms--a man must get acquainted with her, be allowed to meet her frequently. This was not possible until within a few generations. The separation of the s.e.xes, by preventing all possibility of refined and legitimate courtship, favored illicit amours on one side, loveless marriages on the other, thus proving one of the most formidable obstacles to love.

"It is not enough to give time for mutual knowledge and affection after marriage," wrote the late Henry Drummond.

"Nature must deepen the result by extending it to the time before marriage.... Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened emotions, is a great opportunity for evolution; and to inst.i.tute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich in impression is one of its latest and brightest efforts."

XI. s.e.xUAL TABOOS

If a law were pa.s.sed compelling every man living in Rochester, N.Y., who wanted a wife to get her outside of that city, in Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, or some other place, it would be considered an outrageous restriction of free choice, calculated to diminish greatly the chances of love-matches based on intimate acquaintance. If such a law had existed for generations and centuries, sanctioned by religion and custom and so strictly enforced that violation of it entailed the danger of capital punishment, a sentiment would have grown up in course of time making the inhabitants of Rochester look upon marriage within the city with the same horror as they do upon incestuous unions. This is not an absurd or fanciful supposition. Such laws and customs actually did prevail in this very section of New York State.

The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Indians was divided into two phratries, each of which was again subdivided into four clans, named after their totems or animals; the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans belonging to one phratry, while the other included the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans. Morgan's researches show that originally an Indian belonging to one phratry could marry a woman belonging to the other only. Subsequently the line was drawn less strictly, but still no Indian was allowed to marry a squaw of his own clan, though there might be no blood, relationship between them. If an Algonkin married a girl of his clan he committed a crime for which his nearest relatives might put him to death. This law has prevailed widely among the wild races in various parts of the globe. McLennan, who first called attention to its prevalence and importance, called it exogamy, or marrying-out.

What led to this custom is not known definitely; nearly every anthropologist has his own theory on the subject.[134] Luckily we are not concerned here with the origin and causes of exogamy, but only with the fact of its existence. It occurs not only among barbarians of a comparatively high type, like the North American Indians, but among the lowest Australian savages, who put to death any man who marries or a.s.saults a woman of the same clan as his. In some Polynesian islands, among the wild tribes of India as well as the Hindoos, in various parts of Africa, the law of exogamy prevails, and wherever it exists it forms a serious obstacle to free choice--_i.e._, free love, in the proper sense of the expression. As Herbert Spencer remarks,

"The exogamous custom as at first established [being connected with capture] implies an extremely abject condition of women; a brutal treatment of them; an entire absence of the higher sentiments that accompany the relations of the s.e.xes."

While exogamy thwarts love by minimizing the chances of intimate acquaintance and genuine courtship, there is another form of s.e.xual taboo which conversely and designedly frustrates the tendency of intimate acquaintance to ripen into pa.s.sion and love. Though we do not know just how the horror of incest arose, there can be no doubt that there must be a natural basis for so strong and widely prevalent a sentiment.

In so far as this horror of incest prevents the marriage of near relatives, it is an obstacle to love that must be commended as doubtless useful to the race. But when we find that in China there are only 530 surnames, and that a man who marries a woman of the same surname is punished for the crime of "incest"; that the Church under Theodosius the Great forbade the union of relatives to the seventh degree; that in many countries a man could not wed a relative by marriage; that in Rome union with an adopted brother or sister was as rigidly forbidden as with a real sister or brother;--when we come across such facts we see that artificial and foolish notions regarding incest must be added to the long list of agencies that have r.e.t.a.r.ded the growth of free choice and true love. And it should be noted that in all these cases of exogamy and taboos of artificial incest, the man's liberty of choice was restricted as well as the woman's. Thus our c.u.mulative evidence against the Darwin-Westermarck theory of free choice is constantly gaining in weight.

XII. RACE AVERSION

Max O'Rell once wrote that he did not understand how there could be such a thing as mulattoes in the world. It is certainly safe to say that there are none such as a consequence of love. The features, color, odor, tastes, and habits of one race have ever aroused the antagonism of other races and prevented the growth of that sympathy which is essential to love. In a man strong pa.s.sion may overcome the aversion to a more or less enduring union with a woman of a lower race, just as extreme hunger may urge him to eat what his palate would normally reject; but women seem to be proof against this temptation to stoop: in mixed marriages it is nearly always the man who belongs to the superior race. At first thought it might seem as if this racial aversion could not do much to r.e.t.a.r.d the growth of free choice and love, since in early times, when facilities for travel were poor, the races could not mix anyway as they do now. But this would be a great error. Migrations, wars, slave-making and plundering expeditions have at all times commingled the peoples of the earth, yet nothing is more remarkable than the stubborn tenacity of racial prejudices.

"Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common religion and country can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav. Indeed, so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethnical isolation that, as a traveller relates, at Djidda, where s.e.xual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself forever dishonored if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock."[135]

We might suppose that the coa.r.s.er races would be less capable of such aversions than the half-civilized, but the contrary is true. In Australia nearly every tribe is the deadly enemy of every other tribe, and according to Chapman a Bushman woman would consider herself degraded by intercourse with anyone not belonging to her tribe.

"Savage nations," says Humboldt, in speaking of the Chaymas of New Andalusia,

"are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitation."

Here there is no chance for Leanders to swim across the waters to meet their Heros. Poor Cupid! Everybody and everything seems to be against him.

XIII. MULTIPLICITY OF LANGUAGES

Apart from racial prejudice there is the further obstacle of language.

A man cannot court a girl and learn to love her sentimentally unless he can speak to her. Now Africa alone has 438 languages, besides a number of dialects. Dr. Finsch says (38) that on the Melanasian island of Tanua nearly every village has a dialect of its own which those of the next village cannot understand; and this is a typical case.

American Indians usually communicate with each other by means of a sign language. India has countless languages and dialects, and in Canton the Chinamen from various parts of the Empire have to converse with each other in "pidjin English." The Australians, who are perhaps all of one race, nevertheless have no end of different names for even so common a thing as the omnipresent kangaroo.[136] In Brazil, says von Martins, travellers often come across a language

"used only by a few individuals connected with each other by relationship, who are thus completely isolated, and can hold no communication with any of their other countrymen far or near";

and how great was the confusion of tongues among other South American Indians may be inferred from the statement (Waitz, III., 355) that the Caribs were so much in the habit of capturing wives from different tribes and peoples that the men and women of each tribe never spoke the same language. Under such circ.u.mstances a wife might become attached to her husband as a captured, mute, and maltreated dog might to his master; but romantic love is as utterly out of the question as it is between master and dog.

XIV. SOCIAL BARRIERS

Not content with hating one another cordially, the different races, peoples, and tribes have taken special pains at all times and everywhere to erect within their own limits a number of barriers against free choice and love. In France, Germany, and other European countries there is still a strong prejudice against marriages between n.o.bles and commoners, though the commoner may be much n.o.bler than the aristocrat in everything except the genealogical table. Civilization is gradually destroying this obstacle to love, which has done so much to promote immorality and has led to so many tragedies involving a number of kings and princes, victims to the illusion that accident of birth is n.o.bler than brains or refinement. But among the ancient civilized and mediaeval peoples the social barrier was as rigidly held up as the racial prejudices. Milman remarks, in his _History of Latin Christianity_ (I., 499, 528), that among the ancient Romans

"there could be no marriages with slaves [though slaves, being captives, were not necessarily of a lower rank, but might be princesses].... The Emperor Valentinian further defined low and abject persons who might not aspire to lawful union with freemen--actresses, daughters of actresses, tavern-keepers, the daughters of tavern-keepers, procurers (leones) or gladiators, or those who had kept a public shop.... Till Roman citizenship had been imparted to the whole Roman Empire, it would not acknowledge marriage with barbarians to be more than a concubinage. Cleopatra was called only in scorn the wife of Antony. Berenice might not presume to be more than the mistress of t.i.tus. The Christian world closed marriages again within still more and more jealous limits. Interdictory statutes declared marriages with Jews and heathens not only invalid but adulterous."

"The Salic and Ripuarian law condemned the freeman guilty of this degradation [marrying a slave] to slavery; where the union was between a free woman and a slave, that of the Lombards and of the Burgundians, condemned both parties to death; but if her parents refused to put her to death, she became a slave of the crown. The Ripuarian law condemned the female delinquent to slavery; but the woman had the alternative of killing her base-born husband. She was offered a distaff and a sword. If she chose the distaff she became a slave; if a sword she struck it to the heart of her paramour and emanc.i.p.ated herself from her degrading connection."

In mediaeval Germany the line was so sharply drawn between the social cla.s.ses that for a long time slavery, or even death, was the punishment for a mixed marriage. In course of time this barbarous custom fell into disuse, but free choice continued to be discouraged by the law that if a man married a woman beneath him in rank, neither she nor her children were raised to his rank, and in case of his death she had no claim to the usual provisions legally made for widows.

In India the caste prejudices are so strong and varied that they form almost insuperable barriers to free love-choice. "We find castes within castes," says Sir Monier Williams (153), "so that even the Brahmans are broken up and divided into numerous races, which again are subdivided into numerous tribes, families, or sub-castes," and all these, he adds, "do not intermarry." In j.a.pan, until three decades ago, social barriers as to marriage were rigidly enforced, and in China, to this day, slaves, boatmen, actors, policemen, can marry women of their own cla.s.s only. Nor are these difficulties eliminated at once as we descend the ladder of civilization. In Brazil, Central America, in the Polynesian and other Pacific Islands and elsewhere we find such barriers to free marriage, and among the Malayan Hovas of Madagascar even the slaves are subdivided into three cla.s.ses, which do not intermarry! It is only among those peoples which are too low to be able to experience sentimental love anyway that this formidable obstacle of cla.s.s prejudice vanishes, while race and tribal hatred remain in full force.

XV. RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE

Among peoples sufficiently advanced to have dogmas, religion has always proved a strong barrier in the way of the free bestowal of affection. Not only have Mohammedans and Christians hated and shunned each other, but the different Christian sects for a long time detested and tabooed one another as cordially as they did the heathen and the Jews. Tertullian denounced the marriage of a Christian with a heathen as fornication, and Westermarck cites Jacobs's remark that

"the folk-lore of Europe regarded the Jews as something infra-human, and it would require an almost impossible amount of large toleration for a Christian maiden of the Middle Ages to regard union with a Jew as anything other than unnatural."

There are various minor obstacles that might be dwelt on, but enough has been said to make it clear why romantic love was the last of the sentiments to be developed.

Having considered the divers ingredients and different kinds of love and distinguished romantic love from sensual pa.s.sion and sentimentality, as well as from conjugal affection, we are now in a position to examine intelligently and in some detail a number of races in all parts of the world, by way of further corroborating and emphasizing the conclusions reached.

SPECIMENS OF AFRICAN LOVE

What is the lowest of all human races? The Bushmen of South Africa, say some ethnologists, while others urge the claims of the natives of Australia, the Veddahs of Ceylon, or the Fuegians of South America. As culture cannot be measured with a yardstick, it is impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion. For literary and geographic reasons, which will become apparent later on, I prefer to begin the search for traces of romantic love with the Bushmen of South Africa.

And here we are at once confronted by the startling a.s.sertion of the explorer James Chapman, that there is "love in all their marriages."

If this is true--if there is love in all the marriages of what is one of the lowest human races--then I have been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp in the preceding pages of this book, and it will be a waste of ink and paper to write another line. But _is_ it true? Let us first see what manner of mortals these Bushmen are, before subjecting Mr. Chapman's special testimony to a cross-examination. The following facts are compiled from the most approved authorities.