Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iii Part 18

THE s.e.xUAL INSTINCT IN SAVAGES.

I.

In the eighteenth century, when savage tribes in various parts of the world first began to be visited, extravagantly romantic views widely prevailed as to the simple and idyllic lives led by primitive peoples. During the greater part of the nineteenth century the tendency of opinion was to the opposite extreme, and it became usual to insist on the degraded and licentious morals of savages.[181]

In reality, however, savage life is just as little a prolonged debauch as a prolonged idyll. The inquiries of such writers as Westermarck, Frazer, and Crawley are tending to introduce a sounder conception of the actual, often highly complex, conditions of primitive life in its relations to the s.e.xual instinct.

At the same time it is not difficult to account for the belief, widely spread during the nineteenth century, in the unbridled licentiousness of savages. In the first place, the doctrine of evolution inevitably created a prejudice in favor of such a view. It was a.s.sumed that modesty, chast.i.ty, and restraint were the finest and ultimate flowers of moral development; therefore at the beginnings of civilization we must needs expect to find the opposite of these things. Apart, however, from any mere prejudice of this kind, a superficial observation of the actual facts necessarily led to much misunderstanding. Just as the nakedness of many savage peoples led to the belief that they were lacking in modesty, although, as a matter of fact, modesty is more highly developed in savage life than in civilization,[182] so the absence of our European rules of s.e.xual behavior among savages led to the conclusion that they were abandoned to debauchery. The widespread custom of lending the wife under certain circ.u.mstances was especially regarded as indicating gross licentiousness. Moreover, even when intercourse was found to be free before marriage, scarcely any investigator sought to ascertain what amount of s.e.xual intercourse this freedom involved. It was not clearly understood that such freedom must by no means be necessarily a.s.sumed to involve very frequent intercourse. Again, it often happened that no clear distinction was made between peoples contaminated by a.s.sociation with civilization, and peoples not so contaminated. For instance, when prost.i.tution is attributed to a savage people we must usually suppose either that a mistake has been made or that the people in question have been degraded by intercourse with white peoples, for among unspoilt savages customs that can properly be called prost.i.tution rarely prevail. Nor, indeed, would they be in harmony with the conditions of primitive life.

It has been seriously maintained that the chast.i.ty of savages, so far as it exists at all, is due to European civilization. It is doubtless true that this is the case with individual persons and tribes, but there is ample evidence from various parts of the world to show that this is by no means the rule. And, indeed, it may be said-with no disregard of the energy and sincerity of missionary efforts-that it could not be so. A new system of beliefs and practices, however excellent it may be in itself, can never possess the same stringent and unquestionable force as the system in which an individual and his ancestors have always lived, and which they have never doubted the validity of. That this is so we may have occasion to observe among ourselves. Christian teachers question the wisdom of bringing young people under free-thinking influence, because, although they do not deny the morals of free-thinkers, they believe that to unsettle the young may have a disastrous effect, not only on belief, but also on conduct. Yet this dangerously unsettling process has been applied by missionaries on a wholesale scale to races which in some respect are often little more than children. When, therefore, we are considering the chast.i.ty of savages we must not take into account those peoples which have been brought into close contact with Europeans.

In order to understand the s.e.xual habits of savages generally there are two points which always have to be borne in mind as of the first importance: (1) the checks restraining s.e.xual intercourse among savages, especially as regards time and season, are so numerous, and the sanctions upholding those checks so stringent, that s.e.xual excess cannot prevail to the same extent as in civilization; (2) even in the absence of such checks, that difficulty of obtaining s.e.xual erethism which has been noted as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor, tending to produce a natural chast.i.ty. There is a third consideration which, though from the present point of view subsidiary, is not without bearing on our conception of chast.i.ty among savages: the importance, even sacredness, of procreation is much more generally recognized by savage than by civilized peoples, and also a certain symbolic significance is frequently attached to human procreation as related to natural fruitfulness generally; so that a primitive s.e.xual orgy, instead of being a mere manifestation of licentiousness, may have a ritual significance, as a magical means of evoking the fruitfulness of fields and herds.[183]

When a savage practises extraconjugal s.e.xual 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 together-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,-sometimes only during the day, sometimes at night,-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 s.e.xual intercourse a.s.sists 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 s.e.xual intercourse-the fact that it is among the things that are at once "divine" and "impure," these two conceptions not being differentiated in primitive thought-which leads to the frequency with which in savage life a taboo is put upon its exercise. Robertson Smith added an appendix to his Religion of the Semites on "Taboo on the Intercourse of the s.e.xes."[185] Westermarck brought together evidence showing the frequency with which this and allied causes tended to the chast.i.ty of savages.[186] Frazer has very luminously expounded the whole primitive conception of s.e.xual intercourse, and showed how it affected chast.i.ty.[187] Warriors must often be chaste; 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 s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty 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 s.e.xual continence prevalent among savages is largely due to a belief in the enervating effects of coitus; so dangerous are the s.e.xes to each other that, as he points out, even now s.e.xual separation of the s.e.xes 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 violation-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 s.e.xual intercourse itself bears witness to the weakness of the s.e.xual impulse. Evidence of another order which seems to point to the undeveloped state of the s.e.xual impulse among savages may be found in the comparatively undeveloped condition of their s.e.xual organs, a condition not, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 s.e.xes and the restraints on intercourse may be a.s.sociated with weak s.e.xual impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the s.e.xual organs may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the s.e.xual organs-disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic representation-more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic emotion.[191] And this is probably more marked in cases in which the s.e.xual instinct is const.i.tutionally feeble. A lady who had no marked s.e.xual desires, and who considered it well bred to be indifferent to such matters, on inspecting her s.e.xual 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,-and here is the significant point,-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 hideous they 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 s.e.xual 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 ca.n.a.l. 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 s.e.xual congress as a mere evacuation, the s.e.xual instinct apparently not being strong.

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

The weakness of the physical s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sion.[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 s.e.xual impulse. Spencer and Gillen note the comparative absence of jealousy in men among the Central Australian tribes they studied.[193] Negresses, it is said by a French army surgeon in his Untrodden 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 s.e.xual instinct in savages to periodicity, to seasonal manifestations, I do not discuss here, as I have dealt with it in the first volume of these Studies.[194] It has, however, a very important bearing on this subject. Periodicity of s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual instinct-during which the organic impulse to tumescence becomes so powerful that external stimuli are no longer necessary-that has led to the belief in the peculiar strength of the impulse in savages.[195]

[181]

Thus, Lubbock (Lord Avebury), in the Origin of Civilization, fifth edition, 1889, brings forward a number of references in evidence of this belief. More recently Finck, in his Primitive Love and Love-stories, 1899, seeks to acc.u.mulate 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 these Studies.

[183]

The sacredness of s.e.xual relations often applies also to individual marriage. Thus, Skeat, in his Malay 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 Pa.s.sage, pa.s.sim.

[184]

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

[185]

Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1894, p. 454 et 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 in Encyclopaedia 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 att.i.tude, 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'Annee Sociologique, 1899, pp. 50-51.

[189]

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

[190]

Das Weib, vol. i, section 6.

[191]

This statement has been questioned. It should, however, be fairly evident that the s.e.xual organs in either s.e.x, when closely examined, can scarcely be regarded as beautiful except in the eyes of a person of the opposite s.e.x who is in a condition of s.e.xual excitement, and they are not always attractive even then. Moreover, it must be remembered that the snake-like apt.i.tude of the p.e.n.i.s 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 apt.i.tude of the p.e.n.i.s 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, Anfange 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. 89 et seq.

[194]

"The Phenomena of s.e.xual Periodicity." The subject has also been more recently discussed by Walter Heape, "The 's.e.xual 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," s.e.xual-Probleme, Oct., 1909), who, on grounds which I cannot regard as sound, seeks to maintain the belief that the s.e.xual instinct is more highly developed among savage than among civilized peoples.

II.

The facts thus seem to indicate that among primitive peoples, while the magical, ceremonial, and traditional restraints on s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty a thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that "it is untrue that in s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty, and by the frequent freedom of s.e.xual 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 a.s.sumed that freedom here means all that it would mean in a European population.

In order to ill.u.s.trate the actual circ.u.mstances 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 s.e.xual desire is very moderate; in males it appears at the age of 18, but, as "their love for sport is greater than their pa.s.sions, these are not gratified to any great extent till after marriage, which rarely takes place till a man is about 26."[198]

Although chast.i.ty is not esteemed by the Fuegians, and virginity is lost at a very early age, yet both men and women are extremely moderate in s.e.xual indulgence.[199]

Among the Eskimo at the other end of the American continent, according to Dr. F. Cook, the s.e.xual pa.s.sions 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 s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty, 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 s.e.xual abstinence is imposed. Among some branches of the Salish Indians of British Columbia a young widower must refrain from s.e.xual intercourse for a year, and sometimes lives entirely apart during that period.[203]

In many parts of Polynesia, although the s.e.xual 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 ill.u.s.trating his statement that s.e.xual erethism is with difficulty attained by primitive peoples except during s.e.xual seasons.[204] Herman Melville's detailed account in Typee of the Marquesans (somewhat idealized, no doubt) reveals nothing that can fairly be called licentiousness. At Rotuma, J. Stanley Gardiner remarks, before the missionaries came s.e.xual intercourse before marriage was free, but gross immorality and prost.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstances restraining 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xes 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 s.e.xes have occasional s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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.... The Orang Laut 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 s.e.xual relations".[211] Skeat tells us also that among Malays in war-time strict chast.i.ty must be observed in a stockade, or the bullets of the garrison will lose their power.[212]