It must not be supposed that sensual love is necessarily coarse and
obscene. An antique love-scene may in itself be proper and exquisitely
poetic without rising to the sphere of romantic love; as when
Theocritus declares: "I ask not for the land of Pelops nor for talents
of gold. But under this rock will I sing, holding you in my arms,
looking at the flocks feeding together toward the Sicilian Sea." A
pretty picture; but what evidence is there in it of affection? It is
pleasant for a man to hold a girl in his arms while gazing at the
Sicilian Sea, even though he does not love her any more than a
thousand other girls.

Even in Oriental literature, usually so gross and licentious, one may
come across a charmingly poetic yet entirely sensual picture like the
following from the Persian _Gulistan_ (339). On a very hot day, when
he was a young man, Saadi found the hot wind drying up the moisture of
his mouth and melting the marrow of his bones. Looking for a refuge
and refreshment, he beheld a moon-faced damsel of supreme loveliness
in the shaded portico of a mansion:

"She held in her hand a goblet of snow-cold water, into
which she dropt some sugar, and tempered it with spirit of
wine; but I know not whether she scented it with attar, or
sprinkled it with a few blossoms from her own rosy cheek. In
short, I received the beverage from her idol-fair hand: and
having drunk it off, found myself restored to new life."

Ward writes (115) that the following account of Sharuda, the daughter
of Brumha, translated from the Shiva Purana, may serve as a just
description of a perfect Hindoo beauty. This girl was of a yellow
color; had a nose like the flower of a secamum; her legs were taper,
like the plantain-tree; her eyes large, like the principal leaf of the
lotos; her eyebrows extended to her ears; her lips were red, like the
young leaves of the mango-tree; her face was like the full moon; her
voice like the sound of the cuckoo; her throat was like that of a
pigeon; her loins narrow, like those of a lion; her hair hung in curls
down to her feet; her teeth were like the seeds of the pomegranate;
and her gait like that of a drunken elephant or a goose.

There is nothing coarse in this description, yet every detail is
purely sensual, and so it is with the thousands of amorous rhapsodies
of Hindoo, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and other Eastern poets.
Concerning the Persians, Dr. Polak remarks (I., 206) that the word
_Ischk_ (love) is always associated with the idea of carnality
(_Was'l_). Of the Arabs, Burckardt says that "the passion of love
is indeed much talked of by the inhabitants of the towns; but I doubt
whether anything is meant by them more than the grossest animal
desire." In his letters from the East the keen-eyed Count von Moltke
notes that the Turk "passes over all the preliminary rigmarole of
falling in love, paying court, languishing, revelling in ecstatic joy,
as so much _faux frais_, and goes straight to the point."


WILES OF AN ORIENTAL GIRL

But is the German field-marshal quite just to the Turk? I have before
me a passage which seems to indicate that these Orientals do know a
thing or two about the "rigmarole of love-making." It is cited by
Kremer[121] from the Kitâb almowaschâ, a book treating of social
matters in Baghdad. Its author devotes a special chapter to the
dangers lurking in female singers and musical slaves, in the course of
which he says:

"If one of these girls meets a rich young man, she sets
about ensnaring him, makes eyes at him, invites him with
gestures, sings for him ... drinks the wine he left in his
cup, throws kisses with her hands, till she has the poor
fellow in her net and he is enamoured. ... Then she sends
messages to him and continues her crafty arts, lets him
understand that she is losing sleep for love of him, is
pining for him; maybe she sends him a ring, or a lock of her
hair, a paring of her nails, a splinter from her lute, or
part of her toothbrush, or a piece of fragrant gum (chewed
by her) as a substitute for a kiss, or a note written and
folded with her own hands and tied with a string from her
lute, with a tearstain on it; and finally sealed with
Ghâlija, her ring, on which some appropriate words are
carved."

Having captured her victim, she makes him give her valuable presents
till his purse is empty, whereupon she discards him.

Was Count Moltke, then, wrong? Have we here, after all, the
sentimental symptoms of romantic love? Let us apply the tests provided
by our analysis of love--tests as reliable as those which chemists use
to analyze fluids or gases. Did the Baghdad music-girl prefer that man
to all other individuals? Did she want to monopolize him jealously?
Oh, no! any man, however old and ugly, would have suited her, provided
he had plenty of money. Was she coy toward him? Perhaps; but not from
a feeling of modesty and timidity inspired by love, but to make him
more ardent and ready to pay. Was she proud of his love? She thought
him a fool. Were her feelings toward him chaste and pure? As chaste
and pure as his. Did she sympathize with his pleasures and pains? She
dismissed him as soon as his purse was empty, and looked about for
another victim. Were his presents the result of gallant impulses to
please her, or merely advance payment for favors expected? Would he
have sacrificed his life to save her any more than she would hers to
save him? Did he respect her as an immaculate superior being, adore
her as an angel from above--or look on her as an inferior, a slave in
rank, a slave to passion?

The obvious moral of this immoral episode is that it is not
permissible to infer the existence of anything higher than sensual
love from the mere fact that certain romantic tricks are associated
with the amorous dalliance of Orientals, or Greeks and Romans.
Drinking from the same cup, throwing kisses, sending locks of hair or
tear-stained letters, adjusting a foot-stool, or fanning a heated
brow, are no doubt romantic _incidents_, but they are no proof of
romantic _feeling_ for the reason that they are frequently associated
with the most heartless and mercenary sensuality. The coquetry of the
Baghdad girl is romantic, but there is no _sentiment_ in it. Yet--and
here we reach the most important aspect of that episode--there is an
_affectation of sentiment_ in that sending of locks, notes, and
splinters from her lute; and this affectation of sentiment is
designated by the word _sentimentality_. In the history of love
sentimentality precedes sentiment; and for a proper understanding of
the history and psychology of love it is as important to distinguish
sentimentality from sentiment as it is to differentiate love from
lust.

When Lowell wrote, "Let us be thankful that in every man's life there
is a holiday of romance, _an illumination of the senses by the soul_,
that makes him a poet while it lasts," he made a sad error in assuming
that there is such a holiday of romance in every man's life; millions
never enjoy it; but the words I have italicized--"an illumination of
the senses by the soul"--are one of those flashes of inspiration which
sometimes enable a poet to give a better description of a psychic
process than professional philosophers have put forth.

From one point of view the love sentiment may be called an
illumination of the senses by the soul. Elsewhere Lowell has given
another admirable definition: "Sentiment is intellectualized emotion,
emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals of thought."
Excellent, too, is J.F. Clarke's definition: "Sentiment is nothing but
thought blended with feeling; _thought made affectionate, sympathetic,
moral_." The Century Dictionary throws further light on this word:

"Sentiment has a peculiar place between thought and feeling,
in which it also approaches the meaning of principle. It is
more than that feeling which is sensation or emotion, by
containing more of thought and by being _more lofty_, while
it contains too much feeling to be merely thought, and it
_has large influence over the will_; for example, the
sentiment of patriotism; the sentiment of honor; the world
is ruled by sentiment. The thought in a sentiment is often
that of _duty_, and is penetrated and _exalted_ by feeling."

Herbert Spencer sums up the matter concisely _(Psych_., II., 578) when
he speaks of "that remoteness from sensations and appetites and from
ideas of such sensations and appetites which is the common trait of
the feelings we call sentiments."

It is hardly necessary to point out that in our Baghdad girl's
love-affairs there is no "remoteness from sensations and appetites,"
no "illumination of the senses by the soul," no "intellectualized
emotion," no "thought made affectionate, sympathetic, moral." But
there is in it, as I have said, a touch of sentimentality. If
sentiment is properly defined as "higher feeling," sentimentality is
"_affectation_ of fine or tender feeling or exquisite sensibility."
Heartless coquetry, prudery, mock modesty, are bosom friends of
sentimentality. While sentiment is the noblest thing in the world,
sentimentality is its counterfeit, its caricature; there is something
theatrical, operatic, painted-and-powdered about it; it differs from
sentiment as astrology differs from astronomy, alchemy from chemistry,
the sham from the real, hypocrisy from sincerity, artificial posing
from natural grace, genuine affection from selfish attachment.


RARITY OF TRUE LOVE

Sentimentality, as I have said, precedes sentiment in the history of
love, and it has been a special characteristic of certain periods,
like that of the Alexandrian Greeks and their Roman imitators, to whom
we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and
Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much
more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is
commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage
from one of Krafft-Ebing's books (_Psch. Sex_., 9):

"Sentimental love runs the risk of degenerating into
caricature, especially in cases where the sensual ingredient
is weak.... Such love has a flat, saccharine tang. It is apt
to become positively ludicrous, whereas in other cases the
manifestations of this strongest of all feelings inspire in
us sympathy, respect, awe, according to circumstances."

Steele speaks in _The Lover_ (23, No. 5) of the extraordinary skill of
a poet in making a loose people "attend to a Passion which they never,
or that very faintly, felt in their own Bosoms." La Rochefoucauld
wrote: "It is with true love as with ghosts; everybody speaks of it,
but few have seen it." A writer in _Science_ expressed his belief that
romantic love, as described in my first book, could really be
experienced only by men of genius. I think that this makes the circle
too small; yet in these twelve years of additional observation I have
come to the conclusion that even at this stage of civilization only a
small proportion of men and women are able to experience full-fledged
romantic love, which seems to require a special emotional or esthetic
gift, like the talent for music. A few years ago I came across the
following in the London _Tidbits_ which echoes the sentiments of
multitudes:

"Latour, who sent a pathetic complaint the other day that
though he wished to do so he was unable to fall in love, has
called forth a sympathetic response from a number of readers
of both sexes. These ladies and gentlemen write to say that
they also, like Latour, cannot understand how it is that
they are not able to feel any experience of tender passion
which they read about so much in novels, and hear about in
actual life."

At the same time there are not a few men of genius, too, who never
felt true love in their own hearts. Herder believed that Goethe was
not capable of genuine love, and Grimm, too, thought that Goethe had
never experienced a self-absorbing passion. Tolstoi must have been
ever a stranger to genuine love, for to him it seems a degrading thing
even in marriage. A suggestive and frank confession may be found in
the literary memoirs of Goncourt.[122] At a small gathering of men of
letters Goncourt remarked that hitherto love had not been studied
scientifically in novels. Zola thereupon declared that love was not a
specific emotion; that it does not affect persons so absolutely as the
writers say; that the phenomena characterizing it are also found in
friendship, in patriotism, and that the intensity of this emotion is
due entirely to the anticipation of carnal enjoyment. Turgenieff
objected to these views; in his opinion love is a sentiment which has
a unique color of its own--a quality differentiating it from all other
sentiments--eliminating the lover's own personality, as it were. The
Russian novelist obviously had a conception of the purity of love, for
Goncourt reports him as "speaking of his first love for a woman as a
thing entirely spiritual, having nothing in common with materiality."
And now follows Goncourt's confession:

"In all this, the thing to regret is that neither Flaubert
... nor Zola, nor myself, have ever been very seriously in
love and that we are therefore unable to describe love.
Turgenieff alone could have done that, but he lacks
precisely the critical sense which we could have exercised
in this matter had we been in love after his fashion."

The vast majority of the human race has not yet got beyond
the sensual stage of amorous evolution, or realized the
difference
between sentimentality and sentiment. There is much
food for thought in this sentence from Henry James's charming
essay on France's most poetic writer--Théophile Gautier:

"It has seemed to me rather a painful exhibition of the
prurience of the human mind that in most of the notices of
the author's death (those at least published in England and
America), this work alone [_Mile. de Maupin_] should have
been selected as the critic's text."

Readers are interested only in emotions with which they are familiar
by experience. Howells's refined love-scenes have often been sneered
at by men who like raw whiskey but cannot appreciate the delicate
bouquet of Chambertin. As Professor Ribot remarks: in the higher
regions of science, art, religion, and morals there are emotions so
subtle and elevated that

"not more than one individual in a hundred thousand or even
in a million can experience them. The others are strangers
to them, or do not know of their existence except vaguely,
from what they hear about them. It is a promised land, which
only the select can enter."

I believe that romantic love is a sentiment which more than one person
in a million can experience, and more than one in a hundred thousand.
How many more, I shall not venture to guess. All the others know love
only as a sensual craving. To them "I love you" means "I long for you,
covet you, am eager to enjoy you"; and this feeling is not love of
another but self-love, more or less disguised--the kind of "love"
which makes a young man shoot a girl who refuses him. The mediaeval
writer Leon Hebraeus evidently knew of no other when he defined love
as "a desire to enjoy that which is good"; nor Spinoza when he defined
it as _laetetia concomitante idea externae causae_--a pleasure
accompanied by the thought of its external cause.


MISTAKES REGARDING CONJUGAL LOVE

Having distinguished romantic or sentimental love from sentimentality
on one side and sensuality on the other, it remains to show how it
differs from conjugal affection.


HOW ROMANTIC LOVE IS METAMORPHOSED

On hearing the words "love letters," does anybody ever think of a
man's letters to his wife? No more than of his letters to his mother.
He may love both his wife and his mother dearly, but when he writes
love letters he writes them to his sweetheart. Thus, public opinion
and every-day literary usage clearly recognize the difference between
romantic love and conjugal affection. Yet when I maintained in my
first book that romantic love differs as widely from conjugal
affection as maternal love differs from friendship; that romantic love
is almost as modern as the telegraph, the railway, and the electric
light; and that perhaps the main reasons why no one had anticipated me
in an attempt to write a book to prove this, were that no distinction
had heretofore been made between conjugal and romantic love, and that
the apparent occurrence of noble examples of conjugal attachment among
the ancient Greeks had obscured the issue--there was a chorus of
dissenting voices. "The distinction drawn by him between romantic and
conjugal love," wrote one critic, "seems more fanciful than real." "He
will not succeed," wrote another, "in convincing anybody that romantic
and conjugal love differ in kind instead of only in degree or place";
while a third even objected to my theory as "essentially immoral!"

Mr. W.D. Howells, on the other hand, accepted my distinction, and in a
letter to me declared that he found conjugal affection an even more
interesting field of study than romantic love. Why, indeed, should
anyone be alarmed at the distinction I made? Is not a man's feeling
toward his sweetheart different from his feeling toward his mother or
sister? Why then should it be absurd or "immoral" to maintain that it
differs from his feeling toward his wife? What I maintain is that
romantic love disappears gradually, to be replaced, as a rule, by
conjugal affection, which is sometimes a less intense, at other times
a more intense, feeling than the emotions aroused during courtship.
The process may be compared to a modulation in music, in which some of
the tones in a chord are retained while others are displaced by new
ones. Such modulations are delightful, and the new harmony may be as
beautiful as the old. A visitor to Wordsworth's home wrote:

"I saw the old man walking in the garden with his wife. They
were both quite old, and he was almost blind; but they
seemed like sweethearts courting, they were so tender to
each other and attentive."

A husband may be, and should be, quite as tender, as attentive, as
gallant and self-sacrificing, as sympathetic, proud, and devoted as a
lover; yet all his emotions will appear in a new orchestration, as it
were. In the gallant attentions of a loving husband, the anxious
eagerness to please is displaced by a pleasant sense of duty and
gentlemanly courtesy. He still prefers his wife to all other women and
wants a monopoly of her love; but this feeling has a proprietary tinge
that was absent before. Jealousy, too, assumes a new aspect; it may,
temporarily, bring back the uncertainty of courtship, but the emotion
is colored by entirely different ideas: jealousy in a lover is a
green-eyed monster gnawing merely at his hopes, and not, as in a
husband, threatening to destroy his property and his family
honor--which makes a great difference in the quality of the feeling
and its manifestation. The wife, on her part, has no more use for
coyness, but can indulge in the luxury of bestowing gallant attentions
which before marriage would have seemed indelicate or forward, while
after marriage they are a pleasant duty, rising in some cases to
heroic self-sacrifice.

If even within the sphere of romantic love no two cases are exactly
alike, how could love before marriage be the same as after marriage
when so many new experiences, ideas, and associations come into play?
Above all, the feelings relating to the children bring an entirely new
group of tones into the complex harmony of affection. The intimacies
of married life, the revelation of characteristics undiscovered before
marriage, the deeper sympathy, the knowledge that theirs is "one glory
an' one shame"--these and a hundred other domestic experiences make
romantic love undergo a change into something that may be equally rich
and strange but is certainly quite different. A wife's charms are
different from a girl's and inspire a different kind of love. The
husband loves

Those virtues which, before untried,
The wife has added to the bride,

as Samuel Bishop rhymes it. In their predilection for maidens, poets,
like novelists, have until recently ignored the wife too much. But
Cowper sang:

What is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love and peace combine
To stamp the marriage bond divine?
The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows,
Where'er the healing water flows.

Some of the specifically romantic ingredients of love, on the other
hand--adoration, hyperbole, the mixed moods of hope and despair--do
not normally enter into conjugal affection. No one would fail to see
the absurdity of a husband's exclaiming

O that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek.

He _may_ touch that cheek, and kiss it too--and that makes a
tremendous difference in the tone and tension of his feelings. Unlike
the lover, the husband does not think, feel, and speak in perpetual
hyperboles. He does not use expressions like "beautiful tyrant, fiend
angelical," or speak of

The cruel madness of love
The honey of poisonous flowers.

There is no madness or cruelty in conjugal love: in its normal state
it is all peace, contentment, happiness, while romantic love, in its
normal state, is chiefly unrest, doubt, fear, anxiety, torture and
anguish of heart--with alternating hours of frantic elation--until the
Yes has been spoken.

The emotions of a husband are those of a mariner who has entered into
the calm harbor of matrimony with his treasure safe and sound, while
the romantic lover is as one who is still on the high seas of
uncertainty, storm-tossed one moment, lifted sky-high on a wave of
hope, the next in a dark abyss of despair. It is indeed lucky that
conjugal affection does differ so widely from romantic love; such
nervous tension, doubt, worry, and constant friction between hope and
despair would, if continued after marriage, make life a burden to the
most loving couples.


WHY SAVAGES VALUE WIVES

The notion that genuine romantic love does not undergo a metamorphosis
in marriage is the first of five mistakes I have undertaken to correct
in this chapter. The second is summed up in Westermarck's assertion
(359-60) that it is

"impossible to believe that there ever was a time when
conjugal affection was entirely wanting in the human race
... it seems, in its most primitive form, to have been as
old as marriage itself. It must be a certain degree of
affection that induces the male to defend the female during
her period of pregnancy."

Now I concede that natural selection must have developed at an early
period in the history of man, as in the lower animals, some kind of an
_attachment_ between male and females. A wife could not seek her daily
food in the forest and at the same time defend herself and her
helpless babe against wild beasts and human enemies. Hence natural
selection favored those groups in which the males attached themselves
to a particular female for a longer time than the breeding-season,
defending her from enemies and giving her a share of their game. But
from this admitted fact to the inference that it is "affection" that
makes the husband defend his wife, there is a tremendous logical skip
not warranted by the situation. Instead of making such an assumption
offhand, the scientific method requires us to ask if there is not some
other way of accounting for the facts more in accordance with the
selfish disposition and habits of savages. The solution of the problem
is easily found. A savage's wife is his property, which he has
acquired by barter, service, fighting, or purchase, and which he would
be a fool not to protect against injury or rivals. She is to him a
source of utility, comfort, and pleasure, which is reason enough why
he should not allow a lion to devour her or a rival to carry her off.
She is his cook, his slave, his mule; she fetches wood and water,
prepares the food, puts up the camp, and when it is time to move
carries the tent and kitchen utensils, as well as her child to the
next place. If his motive in protecting her against men and beasts
were _affection_, he would not thus compel her to do all the work
while he walks unburdened to the next camping-place.

Apart from these home comforts there are selfish reasons enough why
savages should take the trouble to protect their wives and rear
children. In Australia it is a universal custom to exchange a daughter
for a new wife, discarding or neglecting the old one; and the habit of
treating children as merchandise prevails in various other parts of
the world. The gross utilitarianism of South African marriages is
illustrated in Dr. Fritsch's remarks on the Ama-Zulus. "As these women
too are slaves, there is not much to say about love, marriage, or
conjugal life," he says. The husband pays for his wife, but expects
her to repay him for his outlay by hard work and _by bearing children
whom he can sell_. "If she fails to make herself thus useful, if she
falls ill, becomes weak, or remains childless, he often sends her back
to her father and demands restitution of the cattle he had paid for
her;" and his demand has to be complied with. Lord Randolph Churchill
(249) was informed by a native of Mashonaland that he had his eye on a
girl whom he desired to marry, because "if he was lucky, his wife
might have daughters whom he would be able to sell in exchange for
goats." Samuel Baker writes in one of his books of African exploration
(_Ism_., 341):

"Girls are always purchased if required as wives. It would
be quite impossible to obtain a wife for love from any tribe
that I have visited. 'Blessed is he that hath his quiver
full of them' (daughters). A large family of girls is a
source of wealth to the father, as he sells each daughter
for twelve or fifteen cows to her suitor."

Of the Central African, Macdonald says (I., 141):

"The more wives he has the richer he is. It is his wives
that maintain him. They do all his ploughing, milling,
cooking, etc. They may be viewed as superior servants, who
combine all the capacities of male servants and female
servants in Britain--who do all his work and ask no wages."

We need not assume a problematic affection to explain why such a man
marries.

But the savage's principal marriage motive is, of course, sensualism.
If he wants to own a particular girl he must take care of her. If he
tires of her it is easy enough to get rid of her or to make her a
drudge pure and simple, while her successor enjoys his caresses.
Speaking of Pennsylvania Indians, Buchanan remarks naïvely (II., 95)
that "the wives are the true servants of their husbands; otherwise the
men are very affectionate to them." On another page (102) he
inadvertently explains what he means by this paradox: "the ancient
women are used for cooks, barbers, and other services, the younger for
dalliance." In other words, Buchanan makes the common mistake of
applying the altruistic word affection to what is nothing more than
selfish indulgence of the sensual appetite. So does Pajeken when he
tells us in the _Ausland_ about the "touching tenderness" of a Crow
chief toward a fourteen-year-old girl whom he had just added to the
number of his wives.

"While he was in the wigwam he did not leave her a
moment. With his own hands he adorned her with chains,
and strings of teeth and pearls, and he found a special
pleasure in combing her black, soft, silken hair. He
gambolled with her like a child and rocked her on his
knees, telling her stories. Of his other wives he
demanded the utmost respect in their treatment of his
little one."

This reference to the other wives ought to have opened Pajeken's eyes
as to the silliness of speaking of the "touching" tenderness of the
Crow chief to his latest favorite. In a few years she was doomed to be
discarded, like the others, in favor of a new victim of his carnal
appetite. Affection is entirely out of the question in such cases.

The Malayans of Sumatra have, as Carl Bock tells us (314), a local
custom allowing a wife to marry again if her faithless spouse has
deserted her for three months:

"The early age at which marriage is contracted is an
obstacle to any real affection between couples; for
girls to be wives at fourteen is a common occurrence;
indeed, that age may be put down as the average age of
first marriage. The girls are then frequently
good-looking, but hard work and the cares of maternity
soon stamp their faces with the marks of age, and spoil
their figures, and then the Malay husband forsakes his
wife, if, indeed, he keeps her so long."

Marriage with these people is, as Bock adds, a mere matter of pounds,
shillings, and pence. His servant had married a "grass-widow" of three
months' desertion. But

"before she had enjoyed her new title six weeks, a coolness
sprang up between her and her husband. I inquired the
reason, and she naïvely confessed that her husband had no
more rupees to give her, and so she did not care for him any
longer."

Concerning Damara women Galton writes (197):

"They were extremely patient, though not feminine,
according to our ideas: they had no strong affections
either for spouse or children; in fact, the spouse was
changed almost weekly, and I seldom knew without
inquiry who the _pro tempore_ husband of each lady was
at any particular time."

Among the Singhalese, if a wife is sick and can no longer minister to
her husband's comforts and pleasure he repudiates her. Bailey
says[123] that this heartless desertion of a sick wife is "the worst
trait in the Kandyan character, and the cool and unconcerned manner in
which they themselves allude to it shows that it is as common as it is
cruel."

"How can a man be contented with one wife," exclaimed an Arab sheik to
Sir Samuel Baker (_N.T.A._, 263). "It is ridiculous, absurd." And then
he proceeded to explain why, in his opinion, monogamy is such an
absurdity:

"What is he to do when she becomes old? When she is
young, if very lovely, perhaps, he might be satisfied
with her, but even the young must some day grow old,
and the beautiful must fade. The man does not fade like
a woman; therefore, as he remains the same for many
years, Nature has arranged that the man shall have
young wives to replace the old; does not the prophet
allow it?"

He then pointed out what further advantage there was in having several
wives:

"This one carries water, that one grinds corn; this
makes the bread; the last does not do much, as she is
the youngest and my favorite; and if they neglect their
work they get a taste of this!"

shaking a long and tolerably thick stick.

There you have the typical male polygamist with his reasons frankly
stated--sensual gratification and utilitarianism.


MOURNING TO ORDER

One of the most gossipy and least critical of all writers on primitive
man, Bonwick, declares (97), in describing Tasmanian funerals, that

"the affectionate nature of women appeared on such
melancholy occasions.... The women not only wept, but
lacerated their bodies with sharp shells and stones, even
burning their thighs with fire-sticks.... The hair cut off
in grief was thrown upon the mound."

Descriptions of the howling and tortures to which savages subject
themselves as part of their funeral rites abound in works of travel,
and although every school-boy knows that the deepest waters are
silent, it is usually assumed that these howling antics betray the
deep grief and affection of the mourners. Now I do not deny that the
lower races do feel grief at the loss of a relative or friend; it is
one of the earliest emotions to develop in mankind. What I object to
in particular is the notion that the penances to which widows submit
on the death of their husbands indicate deep and genuine conjugal
affection. As a matter of fact, these penances are not voluntary but
prescribed, each widow in a tribe being expected to indulge in the
same howlings and mutilations, so that this circumstance alone would
make it impossible to say whether her lamentations over her late
spouse came under the head of affection, fondness, liking, or
attachment, or whether they are associated with indifference or
hatred. It is instructive to note that, in descriptions of mourning
widows, the words "must" or "obliged to" nearly always occur. Among
the Mandans, we read in Catlin (I., 95), "in mourning, like the Crows
and most other tribes, the women _are obliged_ to crop their hair all
off; and the usual term of that condolence is until the hair has grown
again to its former length." The locks of the men (who make them do
this), "are of much greater importance," and only one or two can be
spared. According to Schomburgk, on the death of her husband, an
Arawak wife _must_ cut her hair; and until this has again grown to a
certain length she _cannot_ remarry. (Spencer, _D.S._, 20.) Among the
Patagonians, "the widow, or widows, of the dead, are _obliged_ to
mourn and fast for a whole year after the death of their husbands."
They _must_ abstain from certain kinds of food, and _must not_ wash
their faces and hands for a whole year; while "during the year of
mourning they are _forbidden_ to marry." (Falkner, 119.) The grief is
all prescribed and regulated according to tribal fancy. The Brazilians
"repeat the lamentation for the dead twice a day." (Spix and Martins,
II., 250.) The Comanches

"mourn for the dead _systematically and periodically_ with
great noise and vehemence; at which time the _female_
relatives of the deceased scarify their arms and legs with
sharp flints until the blood trickles from a thousand pores.
The duration of these lamentations depends on the quality
and estimation of the deceased; varying from three to five
or seven days."

(Schoolcraft, I., 237.) James Adair says in his _History of the
American Indians_ (188), "They _compel_ the widow to act the part of
the disconsolate dove, for the irreparable loss of her mate."

In Dahomey, during mourning "the weeping relatives _must_ fast and
refrain from bathing," etc. (Burton, II., 164.) In the Transvaal,
writes the missionary Posselt,

"there are a number of heathenish customs which the widows
are _obliged_ to observe. There is, first, the terrible
lamentation for the dead. Secondly, the widows _must_ allow
themselves to be fumigated," etc.

Concerning the Asiatic Turks Vambéry writes that the women are not
allowed to attend the funeral, but "are _obliged_ meanwhile to remain
in their tent, and, while lamenting incessantly, scratch their cheeks
with their nails, _i.e._, mar their beauty." The widow _must_ lament
or sing dirges for a whole year, etc. Chippewa widows are _obliged_ to
fast and must not comb their hair for a year or wear any ornament. A
Shushwap widow _must not_ allow her shadow to fall on any one, and
must bed her head on thorns. Bancroft notes (I., 731) that among the
Mosquito Indians

"the widow was _bound_ to supply the grave of her husband
with provisions for a year, after which she took up the
bones and carried them with her for another year, at last
placing them upon the roof of her house, and then only was
she _allowed_ to marry again."

The widows of the Tolkotin Indians in Oregon were subjected to such
maltreatment that some of them committed suicide to escape their
sufferings. For nine days they were obliged to sleep beside the corpse
and follow certain rules in regard to dressing and eating. If a widow
neglected any of these, she was on the tenth day thrown on the funeral
pile with the corpse and tossed about and scorched till she lost
consciousness. Afterward she was obliged to perform the function of a
slave to all the other women and children of the tribe.[124]

So far as I am aware, no previous writer on the subject has emphasized
the obligatory character of all these performances by widows. To me
that seems by far the most important aspect of the question, as it
shows that the widows were not prompted to these actions by
affectionate grief or self-sacrificing impulses, but by the command of
the men; and if we bear in mind the superlative selfishness of these
men we have no difficulty in comprehending that what makes them compel
the women to do these penances is the desire to make them eager to
care for the comfort and welfare of their husbands lest the latter die
and they thus bring upon themselves the discomforts arid terrors of
widowhood.

Martius justly remarks that the great dependance of savage women makes
them eager to please their husbands (121); and this eagerness would
naturally be doubled by making widowhood forbidding. Bruhier wrote, in
1743, that in Corsica it was customary, in case a man died, for the
women to fall upon his widow and give her a sound drubbing. This
custom, he adds significantly, "prompted the women to take good care
of their husbands."

It is true that the widowers also in some cases subjected themselves
to penance; but usually they made it very much easier for themselves
than for the widows. In his _Lettres sur le Congo_ (152) Edouard
Dupont relates that a man who has lost his wife and wants to show
grief shaves his head, blackens himself, _stops work_, and sits in
front of his chimbeque several days. His neighbors meanwhile feed him
[no fasting for _him_!], and at last a friend brings him a calabash of
malofar and tells him "stop mourning or you will die of starvation."
"It does not happen often," Dupont adds, "that the advice is not
promptly followed."

Selfish utilitarianism does not desert the savage even at the grave of
his wife. An amusing illustration of the shallowness of aboriginal
grief where it seems "truly touching" may be found in an article by
the Rev. F. McFarlane on British New Guinea.[125] Scene: "A woman is