Among the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific we meet with

apparent exceptions. These natives are practically amphibious,
spending half their time in the ocean, and are therefore of necessity
clean. So are certain coast negroes and Indian tribes living along
river-banks. But Ellis _(Pol. Res._, I., 110) was shrewd enough to see
that the habit of frequent bathing indulged in by the South Sea
Islanders was a luxury--a result of the hot climate--and not an
indication of the virtue of cleanliness. In this respect Captain Cook
showed less acumen, for he remarks (II., 148) that "nothing appears to
give them greater pleasure than personal cleanliness, to produce which
they frequently bathe in ponds." His confusion of ideas is made
apparent in the very next sentence, where he adds that the water in
most of these ponds "stinks intolerably." That it is merely the desire
for comfort and sport that induces the Polynesians to bathe so much is
proved further by the attitude of the New Zealanders. Hawksworth
declares (III., 451) that they "stink like Hottentots;" and the reason
lies in the colder climate which makes bathing less of a luxury to
them. The Micronesians also spend much of their time in the water, for
comfort, not for cleanliness. Gerland cites grewsome details of their
nastiness. (Waitz, V., Pt. II., 81, 188.) The Kaffirs, says Gardiner
(101), "although far from cleanly," are fond of bathing. In some other
cases the water is sought for its warmth instead of its coolness. In
Brazil the morning air is much colder than the water, wherefore the
natives take to the river for comfort, as the Japanese do in winter to
their hot tubs. All Indians, says Bancroft (I., 83), "attach great
importance to their sweatbaths," not for cleanliness--for they are
"extremely filthy in their persons and habits"--but "as a remedial
measure."

Unless they happen to indulge in bathing for comfort, the lowest of
savages are also the dirtiest. Leigh writes (147) that in South
Australia many of the women, including the wives of chiefs, had "sore
eyes from the smoke, the filth, and their abominable want of
cleanliness." Sturt (II., 53) refers to the Australian women as
"disgusting objects." At funerals, "the women besmear themselves with
the most disgusting filth." The naked boys in Taplin's school "had no
notion of cleanliness." The youths from the age of ten to sixteen or
seventeen were compelled by custom to let their hair grow, the result
being "a revolting mass of tangled locks and filth." (Woods, 20, 85.)
Sturt sums up his impressions by declaring (II., 126): "Really, the
loathsome condition and hideous countenances of the women would, I
should imagine, have been a complete antidote to the sexual passion."


CORPULENCE VERSUS BEAUTY

An instructive instance of the loose reasoning which prevails in the
esthetic sphere is provided by the Rev. H.N. Hutchinson, in his
_Marriage Customs in Many Lands_. After describing some of the customs
of the Australians, he goes on to say:

"One would think that such degraded creatures as these men
are would be quite incapable of appreciating female beauty,
but that is not the case. Good-looking girls are much
admired and consequently frequently stolen away."

As a matter of fact, beauty has nothing to do with the stealing of the
women. The real motive is revealed in the following passage from
Brough Smyth (79):

"_A very fat woman_ presents such an attractive appearance
to the eyes of the blacks that she is always liable to be
stolen. _However old and ugly she way be_, she will be
courted and petted and sought for by the warriors, who
seldom hesitate to risk their lives if there is a chance for
obtaining so great a prize."

An Australian Shakspere obviously would have written "Fat provoketh
thieves sooner than gold," instead of "beauty provoketh thieves." And
the amended maxim applies to savages in general, as well as to
barbarians and Orientals. In his _Savage Life in Polynesia_, the Rev.
W.W. Gill remarks:

"The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat
and as fair as their dusky skins will permit. To insure
this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were
regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a
little gentle exercise was permitted. If refractory, the
guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more."[115]

American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and
Polynesians. The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast
used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand
how anyone could marry such fat abominations. Concerning the South
American tribes, Humboldt says (_Trav.,_ I., 301): "In several
languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they
say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead."


FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET

The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and
tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief
criterion of a woman's charms. The hideous deformity known as
steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African
Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women. Darwin says that Sir Andrew
Smith

"once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was
so immensely developed behind that when seated on level
ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along
until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various
negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to
Burton, the Somal men, 'are said to choose their wives by
ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects
farthest _a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro
than the opposite form.'"[116]

The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist,
according to Lander, in "the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the
object."

Among the Karagué, women were exempted from hard labor because the men
were anxious to have them as fat as possible. To please the men, they
ate enormous quantities of bananas and drank milk by the gallon. Three
of Rumanika's wives were so fat that they could not go through an
ordinary door, and when they walked they needed two men each to
support them.

Speke measured one of the much-admired African wonders of obesity, who
was unable to stand except on all fours. Result: around the arms, 1
foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf,
1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches.

"Meanwhile, the daughter, a lass of sixteen, sat stark-naked
before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on which her father kept
her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for as fattening
is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be
duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of
flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake
hands with me. Her features were lovely, but her body was
round as a ball."

Speke also tells (370) of a girl who, a mere child when the king died,
was such a favorite of his, that he left her twenty cows, in order
that she might fatten upon milk after her native fashion.


ORIENTAL IDEALS

Mungo Park declared that the Moorish women

"seem to be brought up for no other purpose than that of
ministering to the sensual pleasures of their imperious
masters. Voluptuousness is therefore considered as their
chief accomplishment.... The Moors have singular ideas of
feminine perfection. The gracefulness of figure and motion,
and a countenance enlivened by expression, are by no means
essential points in their standard: With them _corpulence
and beauty seem to be terms nearly synonymous_: A woman of
even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk
without a slave under each arm, to support her; and a
perfect beauty is a load for a camel.... Many of the young
girls are compelled, by their mothers, to devour a great
quantity of kouskous, and drink a large bowl of camel's milk
every morning.... I have seen a poor girl sit crying, with
the bowl at her lips, for more than an hour; and her mother,
with a stick in her hand watching her all the while, and
using the stick without mercy, whenever she observed that
her daughter was not swallowing."

A Somali love-song says: "You are beautiful and your limbs are fat;
but if you would drink camel's milk you would be still more
beautiful." Nubian girls are especially fattened for their marriage by
rubbing grease over them and stuffing them with polenta and goat milk.
When the process is completed they are poetically likened to a
hippopotamus. In Egypt and India, where the climate naturally tends to
make women thin, the fat ones are, as in Australia, the ideals of
beauty, as their poets would make plain to us if it were not known
otherwise. A Sanscrit poet declares proudly that his beloved is so
borne down by the weight of her thighs and breasts that she cannot
walk fast; and in the songs of Halâ there are numerous "sentiments"
like that. The Arabian poet Amru declares rapturously that his
favorite beauty has thighs so delightfully exuberant that she can
scarcely enter the tent door. Another Arabian poet apostrophizes "the
maid of Okaib, who has haunches like sand-hills, whence her body rises
like a palm-tree." And regarding the references to personal appearance
in the writings of the ancient Hebrews, Rossbach remarks:

"In all these descriptions human beauty is recognized in the
luxurious fulness of parts, not in their harmony and
proportion. Spiritual expression in the sensual form is not
adverted to" (238).

Thus, from the Australian and the Indian to the Hebrew, the Arab, and
the Hindoo, what pleases the men in women is not their beauty, but
their voluptuous rotundity; they care only for those sensual aspects
which emphasize the difference between the sexes. The object of the
modern wasp waist (in the minds of the class of females who, strange
to say, are allowed by respectable women to set the fashion for them)
is to grossly exaggerate the bust and the hips, and it is for the same
reason that barbarian and Oriental girls are fattened for the marriage
market. The appeal is to the appetite, not to the esthetic sense.


THE CONCUPISCENCE THEORY OF BEAUTY

In writing this I do not ignore the fact that many authors have held
that personal beauty and sensuality are practically identical or
indissolubly associated. The sober philosopher, Bain, gravely advances
the opinion that, on the whole, personal beauty turns, 1, upon
qualities and appearances that heighten the expression of favor or
good-will; and, 2, upon qualities and appearances that suggest the
endearing embrace. Eckstein expresses the same idea more coarsely by
saying that "finding a thing beautiful is simply another way of
expressing the manifestation of the sexual appetite." But it remained
for Mantegazza to give this view the most cynical expression:

"We look at woman through the prism of desire, and she looks
at us in the same way; her beauty appears to us the more
perfect the more it arouses our sexual desires--that is, the
more voluptuous enjoyment the possession of her promises
us."

He adds that for this reason a man of twenty finds nearly all women
beautiful.

Thus the beauty of a woman, in the opinion of these writers, consists
in those physical qualities which arouse a man's concupiscence. I
admit that this theory applies to savages and to Orientals; the
details given in the preceding pages prove that. It applies also, I
must confess, to the majority of Europeans and Americans. I have paid
special attention to this point in various countries and have noticed
that a girl with a voluptuous though coarse figure and a plain face
will attract much more masculine attention than a girl whose figure
and face are artistically beautiful without being voluptuous. But this
only helps to prove my main thesis--that the sense of personal beauty
is one of the latest products of civilization, rare even at the
present day. What I deny most emphatically is that the theory
advocated by Bain, Eckstein, and Mantegazza applies to those persons
who are so lucky as to have a sense of beauty. These fortunate
individuals can admire the charms of a living beauty without any more
concupiscence or thought of an endearing embrace than accompanies
their contemplation of the Venus de Milo or a Madonna painted by
Murillo; and if they are in love with a particular girl their
admiration of her beauty is superlatively free from carnal
ingredients, as we saw in the section on Mental Purity. Since in such
a question personal evidence is of importance, I will add that,
fortunately, I have been deeply in love several times in my life and
can therefore testify that each time my admiration of the girl's
beauty was as purely esthetic as if she had been a flower. In each
case the mischief was begun by a pair of brown eyes.

Eyes, it is true, can be as wanton and as voluptuous as a plump
figure. Powers notes (20) that some California Indian girls are pretty
and have "large, voluptuous eyes." Such eyes are common among the
lower races and Orientals; but they are not the eyes which inspire
romantic love. Lips, too, it might be said, invite kisses; but a lover
would consider it sacrilege to touch his idol's lips unchastely.
Savages are strangers to kissing for the exactly opposite reason--that
it is too refined a detail of sensuality to appeal to their coarse
nerves. How far they are from being able to appreciate lips
esthetically appears from the way in which they so often deform them.
The mouth is peculiarly the index of mental and moral refinement, and
a refined pair of lips can inspire as pure a love as the celestial
beauty of innocent eyes. As for the other features, what is there to
suggest lascivious thoughts in a clear complexion, an oval chin, ivory
teeth, rosy cheeks, or in curved eyebrows, long, dark lashes, or
flowing tresses? Our admiration of these, and of a graceful gait, is
as pure and esthetic--as purely esthetic--as our admiration of a
sunset, a flower, a humming-bird, a lovely child. It has been truly
said that a girl's marriage chances have been made or marred by the
size or shape of her nose. What has the size or shape of a girl's nose
to do with the "endearing embrace?" This question alone reduces the
concupiscence theory _ad absurdum_.


UTILITY IS NOT BEAUTY

Almost as repulsive as the view which identifies the sense of personal
beauty with concupiscence is that which would reduce it to a matter of
coarse utility. Thus Eckstein, misled by Schopenhauer, holds that
healthy teeth are beautiful for the reason that they guarantee the
proper mastication of the food; while small breasts are ugly because
they do not promise sufficient nourishment to the child that is to be
born.

This argument is refuted by the simple statement that our teeth, if
they looked like rusty nails, might be even more useful than now, but
could no longer be beautiful. As for women's breasts, if utility were
the criterion, the most beautiful would be those of the African
mothers who can throw them over their shoulders to suckle the infants
on their backs without impeding their work. As a matter of fact, the
loveliest breast is the virginal, which serves no use while it remains
so. A dray horse is infinitely more useful to us than an Arab racer,
but is he as beautiful? Tigers and snakes are anything but useful to
the human race, but we consider their skins beautiful.


A NEW SENSE EASILY LOST AGAIN

No, the sense of personal beauty is neither a synonyme for libidinous
desires nor is it based on utilitarian considerations. It is
practically a new sense, born of mental refinement and imagination. It
by no means scorns a slight touch of the voluptuous, so far as it does
not exceed the limits of artistic taste and moral refinement--a
well-rounded figure and "a face voluptuous, yet pure"--but it is an
entirely different thing from the predilection for fat and other
coarse exaggerations of sexuality which inspire lust instead of love.
This new sense is still, as I have said, rare everywhere; and, like
the other results of high and recent culture, it is easily
obliterated. In his treatise on insanity Professor Krafft-Ebing shows
that in degeneration of the brain the esthetic and moral qualities are
among the first to disappear. It is the same with normal man when he
descends into a lower sphere. Zoller relates (III., 68) that when
Europeans arrive in Africa they find the women so ugly they can hardly
look at them without a feeling of repulsion. Gradually they become
habituated to their sight, and finally they are glad to accept them as
companions. Stanley has an eloquent passage on the same topic (_II. I.
F.L_., 265):

"The eye that at first despised the unclassic face of the
black woman of Africa soon loses its regard for fine lines
and mellow pale color; it finds itself ere long lingering
_wantonly_ over the inharmonious and heavy curves of a
negroid form, and looking lovingly on the broad,
unintellectual face, and into jet eyes that never flash with
the dazzling love-light that makes poor humanity beautiful."

The word I have italicized explains it all. The sense of personal
beauty is displaced again by the concupiscence which had held its
place in the early history of mankind.


MORAL UGLINESS

To realize fully what such a relapse may mean, read what Galton says
(123) of the Hottentots. They have

"that peculiar set of features which is so characteristic of
bad characters in England, and so general among prisoners
that it is usually, I believe, known by the name of the
'felon-face;' I mean that they have prominent cheek-bones,
bullet-shaped head, cowering but restless eyes, and heavy
sensual lips, and added to this a shackling dress and
manner."

Of the Damaras Galton says (99) that "their features are often
beautifully chiselled, though the expression in them is always coarse
and disagreeable." And to quote Mungo Park on the Moors once more
(158):

"I fancied that I discovered in the features of most of them
a disposition toward cruelty and low cunning.... From the
staring wildness of their eyes, a stranger would immediately
set them down as a nation of lunatics. The treachery and
malevolence of their character are manifested in their
plundering excursions against the negro villages."


BEAUTIFYING INTELLIGENCE

Galton's reference to the Damaras illustrates the well-known fact
that, even where nature makes an effort at chiselling beautiful
features the result is a failure if there is no moral and intellectual
culture to inspire them, and this puts the grave-stone on the
Concupiscence Theory--for what have moral and intellectual culture to
do with carnal desires? A noble soul even possesses the magic power of
transforming a plain face into a radiant vision of beauty, the emotion
changing not only the expression but the lines of the face. Goethe
(Eckermann, 1824) and others have indeed maintained that intellect in
a woman does not help a man to fall in love with her. This is true in
so far as brains in a woman will not make a man fall in love with her
if she is otherwise unattractive or unfeminine. But Goethe forgot that
there is such a thing as _hereditary intellectual culture incarnated
in the face_. This, I maintain, makes up more than half of the
personal beauty which makes a man fall in love. A girl with good
features is twice as beautiful if she is morally pure and has a bright
mind. Sometimes a face is accidentally moulded, into such a regular
beauty of form that it seems to mirror mental beauty too. A man may
fall in love with such a face, but as soon as he finds out that it is
inhabited by a stupid or coarse mind he will make haste to fall out
again, unless his love was predominantly sensual. I remember once
falling in love with a country girl at first sight; her face and
figure seemed to me extremely beautiful, except that hard work had
enlarged and hardened her hands. But when I found that her intellect
was as coarse as her hands, my ardor cooled at once.

If intellect, as revealed in the face, in words, and in actions, did
not assist in inspiring the amorous sentiment, it would be as easy to
fall in love with a doll-faced, silly girl as with a woman of culture;
it would even be possible to fall in love with a statue or with a
demented person. Let us imagine a belle who is thrown from a horse and
has become insane from the shock. For a time her features will remain
as regular, her figure as plump, as before; but the mind will be gone,
and with it everything that could make a man fall in love with her.
Who has ever heard of a beautiful idiot, of anyone falling in love
with an imbecile? The vacant stare, the absence of intellect, make
beauty and love alike impossible in such a case.


THE STRANGE GREEK ATTITUDE

The important corollary follows, from all this, that in countries
where women receive no education sensual love is the only kind men can
feel toward them. Oriental women are of that kind, and so were the
ancient Greeks. The Greeks are indeed renowned for their statuary, yet
their attitude toward personal beauty was of a very peculiar kind.
Their highest ideal was not the feminine but the masculine type, and
accordingly we find that it was toward men only that they professed to
feel a noble passion. The beauty of the women was regarded merely from
a sensual point of view. Their respectable women were deliberately
left without education, wherefore their charms can have been at best
of a bodily kind and capable of inspiring love of body only. There is
a prevalent superstition that the Greeks of the day of Perikles had a
class of intelligent women known as hetairai, who were capable of
being true companions and inspirers of men; but I shall show, in a
later chapter, that the mentality of these women has been ludicrously
exaggerated; they were coarse and obscene in their wit and
conversation, and their morals were such that no man could have
respected them, much less loved them with a pure affection; while the
men whom they are supposed to have inspired were in most cases
voluptuaries of the most dissolute sort.


A COMPOSITE AND VARIABLE SENTIMENT

Our attempt to answer the question "What is romantic love," has taken
up no fewer than two hundred and thirty-five pages, and even this
answer is a mere preliminary sketch, the details of which will be
supplied in the following chapters, chiefly, it is true, in a negative
way, by showing what is _not_ romantic love; for the subject of this
book is Primitive Love.


DEFINITION OF LOVE

Can love be defined in one sentence? The _Century Dictionary's_
definition, which is as good as any, is: "Intimate personal affection
between individuals of opposite sex capable of intermarriage; the
emotional incentive to and normal basis of conjugal union." This is
correct enough as far as it goes; but how little it tells us of the
nature of love! I have tried repeatedly to condense the essential
traits of romantic love into one brief definition, but have not
succeeded. Perhaps the following will serve as an approximation. Love
is an intense longing for the reciprocal affection and jealously
exclusive possession of a particular individual of the opposite sex; a
chaste, proud, ecstatic adoration of one who appears a paragon of
personal beauty and otherwise immeasurably superior to all other
persons; an emotional state constantly hovering between doubt and
hope, aggravated in the female heart by the fear of revealing her
feelings too soon; a self-forgetful impulse to share the tastes and
feelings of the beloved, and to go so far in affectionate and gallant
devotion as to eagerly sacrifice, for the other's good, all comfort
and life itself if necessary.

These are the essential traits. But romantic love is altogether too
complex and variable to be defined in one sentence; and it is this
complexity and variability that I wish to emphasize particularly.
Eckermann once suggested to Goethe that no two cases of love are quite
alike, and the poet agreed with him. They did not, however, explain
their seeming paradox, so diametrically opposed to the current notion
that love is everywhere and always the same, in individuals as in
nations; nor could they have explained it unless they had analyzed
love into its component elements as I have done in this volume. With
the aid of this analysis it is easy to show how and why love has
changed and grown, like other sentiments; to explain how and why the
love of a civilized white man must differ from that of an Australian
or African savage, just as their faces differ. Since no two races look
alike, and no two individuals in the same race, why should their loves
be alike? Is not love the heart of the soul and the face merely its
mirror? Love is varied through a thousand climatic, racial, family,
and cultural peculiarities. It is varied through individual tastes and
proclivities. In one case of love admiration of personal beauty may be
the strongest ingredient, in another jealous monopoly, in a third
self-sacrificing affection, and so on. The permutations and
combinations are countless, and hence it is that love-stories are
always fresh, since they can be endlessly varied. A lover's varied
feelings in relation to the beloved become gradually blended into a
sentiment which is a composite photograph of all the emotions she has
ever aroused in him. This has given rise to the delusion that love is
a simple feeling.[117]


WHY CALLED ROMANTIC

In the introductory chapter of this book I alluded briefly to my
reasons for calling pure prematrimonial infatuation romantic love,
giving some historic precedents for such a use of the word. We are now
in a position to appreciate the peculiar appropriateness of the term.
What is the dictionary definition of "romantic"?

"Pertaining to or resembling romance, or an ideal state of
things; partaking of the heroic, the marvellous, the
supernatural, or the imaginative; chimerical, fanciful,
extravagantly enthusiastic."

Every one of these terms applies to love in the sense in which I use
the word. Love is ideal, heroic, marvellous, imaginative, chimerical,
fanciful, extravagantly enthusiastic; its hyperbolic adoration even
gives it a supernatural tinge, for the adored girl seems more like an
angel or a fairy than a common mortal. The lover's heroine is as
fictitious as any heroine of romance; he considers her the most
beautiful and lovable person in the world, though to others she may
seem ugly and ill-tempered. Thus love is called romantic, because it
is so great a romancer, attributing to the beloved all sorts of
perfections which exist only in the lover's fancy. What could be more
fantastic than a lover's stubborn preference for a particular
individual and his conviction that no one ever loved so frantically as
he does? What more extravagant and unreasonable than his imperious
desire to completely monopolize her affection, sometimes guarding her
jealously even from her girl friends or her nearest relatives? What
more romantic than the tortures and tragedies, the mixed emotions,
that doubt or jealousy gives rise to? Does not a willing but coyly
reserved maiden romance about her feelings? What could be more
fanciful and romantic than her shy reserve and coldness when she is
longing to throw herself into the lover's arms? Is not her proud
belief that her lover--probably as commonplace and foolish a fellow as
ever lived--is a hero or a genius a romantic exaggeration? Is not the
lover's purity of imagination, though real as a feeling, a romantic
illusion, since he craves ultimate possession of her and would be the
unhappiest of mortals if she went to a nunnery, though she promised to
love him always? What could be more marvellous, more chimerical, than
this temporary suppression of a strong appetite at the time when it
would be supposed to manifest itself most irresistibly--this
distilling of the finer emotions, leaving all the gross, material
elements behind? Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic than
the gallant attentions of a man on his knees before a girl whom, with
his stronger muscles, he could command as a slave? Who but a romantic
lover would obliterate his selfish ego in sympathetic devotion to
another, trying to feel her feelings, forgetting his own? Who but a
romantic lover would sacrifice his life in the effort to save or
please another? A mother would indeed do the same for her child; but
the child is of her own flesh and blood, whereas the beloved may have
been a stranger until an hour ago. How romantic!

The appropriateness of the word romantic is still further emphasized
by the consideration that, just as romantic art, romantic literature,
and romantic music are a revolt against artificial rules and barriers
to the free expression of feeling, so romantic love is a revolt
against the obstacles to free matrimonial choice imposed by parental
and social tyranny.

Indeed, I can see only one objection to the use of the word--its
frequent application to any strange or exciting incidents, whence some
confusion may ensue. But the trouble is obviated by simply bearing in
mind the distinction between romantic _incidents_ and romantic
_feelings_ which I have summed up in the maxim that _a romantic
love-story is not necessarily a story of romantic love_. Nearly all
the tales brought together in this volume are romantic love-stories,
but not one of them is a story of romantic love. In the end the
antithesis will aid us in remembering the distinction.

In place of "romantic" I might have used the word "sentimental"; but
in the first place that word fails to indicate the essentially
romantic nature of love, on which I have just dwelt; and secondly, it
also is liable to be misunderstood, because of its unfortunate
association with the word sentimentality, which is a very different
thing from sentiment. The differences between sentiment,
sentimentality, and sensuality are indeed important enough to merit a
brief chapter of elucidation.


SENSUALITY, SENTIMENTALITY, AND SENTIMENT

From beginnings not yet understood--though Haeckel and others have
speculated plausibly on the subject--there has been developed in
animals and human beings an appetite which insures the perpetuation of
the species as the appetite for food does that of the individual. Both
these appetites pass through various degrees of development, from the
utmost grossness to a high degree of refinement, from which, however,
relapses occur in many individuals. We read of Indians tearing out the
liver from living animals and devouring it raw and bloody; of Eskimos
eating the contents of a reindeer's stomach as a vegetable dish; and
the books of explorers describe many scenes like the following from
Baker's _Ismailia_ (275) relating to the antics of negroes after
killing a buffalo:

"There was now an extraordinary scene over the carcass; four
hundred men scrambling over a mass of blood and entrails,
fighting and tearing with each other and cutting off pieces
of flesh with their lance-heads, with which they escaped as
dogs may retreat with a bone."


APPETITE AND LONGING

What aeons of culture lie between such a scene and a dinner party in
Europe or America, with its refined, well-behaved guests, its table
etiquette, its varied menu, its choice viands, skilfully cooked and
blended so as to bring out the most diverse and delicate flavors, its
esthetic features--fine linen and porcelains, silver and cut glass,
flowers, lights--its bright conversation, and flow of wit. Yet there
are writers who would have us believe that these Indians, Eskimos, and
Africans, who manifest their appetite for food in so disgustingly
coarse a way, are in their love-affairs as sentimental and aesthetic
as we are! In truth they are as gross, gluttonous, and selfish in the
gratification of one appetite as in that of the other. To a savage a
woman is not an object of chaste adoration and gallant devotion, but a
mere bait for wanton lust; and when his lust hath dined he kicks her
away like a mangy dog till he is hungry again. In Ploss-Bartels[118]
may be found an abundance of facts culled from various sources in all
parts of the world, showing that the bestiality of many savages is not
even restrained by the presence of spectators. At the phallic and
bacchanalian festivals of ancient and Oriental nations all
distinctions of rank and all family ties were forgotten in a carnival
of lust. Licentious orgies are indeed carried on to this day in our
own large cities; but their participants are the criminal classes, and
occasionally some foolish young men who would be very much ashamed to
have their doings known; whereas the orgies and phallic festivals of
savages and barbarians are national or tribal institutions, approved
by custom, sanctioned by religion, and indulged in openly by every man
and woman in the community; often regardless even of incest.

More shockingly still are the grossness and diabolical selfishness of
the savage's carnal appetite revealed by his habit of sacrificing
young girls to it years before they have reached the age of puberty.
Some details will be found in the chapters on Australia, Africa, and
India. Here it may be noted--to indicate the wide prevalence of a
custom which it would be unjust to animals to call bestial, because
beasts never sink so low--that Borneans, as Schwaner notes, marry off
girls from three to five; that in Egypt child-wives of seven or eight
can be seen; that Javanese girls may be married at seven; that North
American Indians often took brides of ten or eleven, while in Southern
Australia girls were appropriated as early as seven. Hottentot girls
were not spared after the age of seven, nor were Bushman girls, though
they did not become mothers till ten or twelve years old; while Kaffir
girls married at eight, Somals at six to eight. The cause of these
early marriages is not climatic, as some fancy, but simply, as
Roberton has pointed out, the coarseness of the men. The list might be
extended indefinitely. In Old Calabar sometimes, we read in Ploss,

"a man who has already several wives may be seen with an
infant of two or three weeks on his lap, caressing and
kissing it as his wife. Wives of four to six years we found
occasionally (in China, Guzuate, Ceylon, and Brazil); from
seven to nine years on they are no longer rare, and the
years from ten to twelve are a widely prevalent marriage
age."

The amorous savage betrays his inferiority to animals not only in his
cruel maltreatment of girls before they have reached the age of
puberty,[119] but in his ignorance, in most cases, of the simplest
caresses and kisses for which we often find corresponding acts in
birds and other animals. The nerves of primitive men are too coarse
for such a delicate sensation as labial contact, and an embrace would
leave them cold. An African approximation to a kiss is described by
Baker (_Ismailia_, 472). He had liberated a number of female slaves,
and presently, he says, "I found myself in the arms of a naked beauty,
who kissed me almost to suffocation, and, with a most unpleasant
embrace, licked both my eyes with her tongue." If we may venture an
inference from Mr. A.H. Savage Landor's experience[120] among the
aboriginal Ainos of Yezo (Japan), one of the lowest of human races, we
may conclude that, in the course of evolution, biting preceded
kissing. He had made the acquaintance of an Ainu maiden, the most
lovely Ainu girl he had ever come across. They strolled together into
the woods, and he sketched her picture. She clutched his hand tightly,
and pressed it to her chest:

"I would not have mentioned this small episode if her ways
of flirting had not been so extraordinary and funny. Loving
and biting went together with her.... As we sat on a stone
in the semi-darkness she began by gently biting my fingers
without hurting me, as affectionate dogs often do their
masters; she then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she
had worked herself up into a passion she put her arms round
my neck and bit my cheeks. It was undoubtedly a curious way
of making love, and when I had been bitten all over, and was
pretty tired of the new sensation, we retired to our
respective homes."

Sensuality has had its own evolution quite apart and distinct from
that of love. The ancient Greeks and Romans, and the Orientals,
especially the Hindoos, were familiar, thousands of years ago, with
refinements and variations of lust beyond which the human imagination
cannot go. According to Burton,

"Kornemannus in his book _de linea amoris,_ makes five
degrees of lust, out of Lucian belike, which he handles in
five chapters, _Visus, Colloquium, Convictus, Oscula,
Tactus_--sight, conference, association, kisses, touch."

All these degrees are abundantly illustrated in Burton, often in a way
that would not bear quotation in a modern book intended for general
reading.

It is interesting to observe, furthermore, that among the higher
barbarians and civilized races, lust has become to a certain extent
mentalized through hereditary memory and association. Aristotle made a
marvellous anticipation of modern scientific thought when he suggested
that what made birds sing in spring was the memory of former seasons
of love. In men as in animals, the pleasant experiences of love and
marriage become gradually ingrained in the brain, and when a youth
reaches the age for love-making the memory of ancestral amorous
experiences courses through his nerves vaguely but strongly. He longs
for something, he knows not what, and this mental longing is one of
the earliest and strongest symptoms of love. But it characterizes all
sorts of love; it may accompany pure fancies of the sentimental lover,
but it may also be a result of the lascivious imaginings and
anticipations of sensualism. It does not, therefore, in itself prove
the presence of romantic love; a point on which I must place great
emphasis, because certain primitive poems expressing a longing for an
absent girl or man have been quoted as positive evidence of romantic
love, when as a matter of fact there is nothing to prove that they may
not have been inspired by mere sensual desires. I shall cite and
comment on these poems in later chapters.

Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, leanness, hollow eyes, groans,
griefs, sadness, sighing, sobbing, alternating blushes and pallor,
feverish or unequal pulse, suicidal impulses, are other symptoms
occurring among such advanced nations as the Greeks and Hindoos and
often accepted as evidence of true love; but since, like longing, they
also accompany lust and other strong passions or violent emotions,
they cannot be accepted as reliable symptoms of romantic love. The
only certain criteria of love are to be found in the manifestation of
the altruistic factors--sympathy, gallantry, and self-sacrificing
affection. Romantic love is, as I have remarked before, not merely an
emotional phenomenon, but an _active impulse._ The true lover does
not, like the sensualist and the sentimentalist, ululate his time away
in dismal wailing about his bodily aches and tremors, woes and
pallors, but lets his feelings expend themselves in multitudinous acts
revealing his eagerness to immolate his personal pleasures on the
altar of his idol.