eat are taboo to them; and the cruel contempt of the men pursues them
even after death. The men are buried with ceremony (Curr, I., 89), but
"as the women and children are held to be very inferior to the men
whilst alive, and their spirits are but little feared after death,
they are interred with but scant ceremony... the women alone wailing."
Thus they show their contempt even for the ghosts of women, though
they are so afraid of other ghosts that they never leave camp in the
dark or have a nocturnal dance except by moonlight or with big fires!


WERE SAVAGES CORRUPTED BY WHITES?

Such is the Australian's treatment of woman--a treatment so selfish,
so inconsistent with the altruistic traits and impulses of romantic
love--sympathy, gallantry, and self-sacrificing affection, not to
speak of adoration--that it alone proves him incapable of so refined a
sentiment. If any doubt remained, it would be removed by his utter
inability to rise above the sensual sphere. The Australian is
absolutely immoral and incredibly licentious. Here, however, we are
confronted by a spectre with which the sentimentalists try to frighten
the searchers for truth, and which must therefore be exorcised first.
They grant the wantonness of savages, but declare that it is "due
chiefly to the influence of civilization." This is one of the favorite
subterfuges of Westermarck, who resorts to it again and again. In
reference to the Australians he cites what Edward Stephens wrote
regarding the former inhabitants of the Adelaide Plains:

"Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded
race, either do not speak from experience, or they
judge them by what they have become when the abuse of
intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the
white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule to
which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is
found away from the white settlement, the more vicious
of the white men are most anxious to make the
acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for
purposes of immorality. ... I saw the natives and was
much with them before those dreadful immoralities were
well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all
their evils they owed to the white man's immorality and
to the white man's drink."

Now the first question a conscientious truth-seeker feels inclined to
ask regarding this "fearless" Stephens who thus boldly accuses of
ignorance all those who hold that the Australian race was degraded
before it came in contact with whites, is, "Who is he and what are his
qualifications for serving as a witness in this matter?" He is, or
was, a simple-minded settler, kindly no doubt, who for some
inscrutable reason was allowed to contribute a paper to the _Journal
of the Royal Society of New South Wales_ (Vol. XXXIII.). His
qualifications for appearing as an expert in Australian anthropology
may be inferred from various remarks in his paper. He naïvely tells a
story about a native who killed an opossum, and after eating the meat,
threw the intestines to his wife. "Ten years before that," he adds,
"that same man would have treated his wife as himself." Yet we have
just seen that all the explorers, in all parts of the country, found
that the natives who had never seen a white man treated their women
like slaves and dogs.


ABORIGINAL HORRORS

If the savage learned his wantonness from the whites, did he get all
his other vicious habits from the same source? We know on the best
authorities that the disgusting practice of cannibalism prevailed
extensively among the natives. "They eat the young men when they die,
and the young women if they are fat" (Curr, III., 147). Lumholtz
entitled his book on Australia _Among Cannibals_. The Rev. G. Taplin
says (XV.):

"Among the Dieyerie tribe cannibalism is the universal
practice, and all who die are indiscriminately devoured
... the mother eats the flesh of her children, and the
children that of their mother," etc.

"If a man had a fat wife," says the same writer (2), "he was always
particularly careful not to leave her unprotected, lest she might be
seized by prowling cannibals." Among the wilder tribes few women are
allowed to die a natural death, "they being generally despatched ere
they become old and emaciated, that so much good food may not be
lost."[154] Would the "fearless" Stephens say that the natives learned
these practices from the whites? Would he say they learned from the
whites the "universal custom ... to slay every unprotected male
stranger met with" (Curr, I., 133)?

"Infanticide is very common, and appears to be practised solely to get
rid of the trouble of rearing children," wrote Eyre (II., 324). Curr
(I., 70) heard that "some tribes within the area of the Central
Division cut off the nipples of the females' breasts, in some
instances, for the purpose of rendering their rearing of children
impossible." On the Mitchell River, "children were killed for the most
trivial offences, such as for accidentally breaking a weapon as they
trotted about the camp" (Curr, II., 403). Twins are destroyed in South
Australia, says Leigh (159), and if the mother dies "they throw the
living infant into the grave, while infanticide is an every-day
occurrence." Curr (I., 70) believes that the average number of
children borne by each woman was six, the maximum ten; but of all
these only two boys and one girl as a rule were kept, "the rest were
destroyed immediately after birth," as we destroy litters of puppies.
Sometimes the infants were smothered over a fire (Waitz, VI., 779),
and deformed children were always killed. Taplin (13) writes that
before his colony was established among them infanticide was very
prevalent among the natives. "One intelligent woman said she thought
that if the Europeans had waited a few more years they would have
found the country without inhabitants." Strangulation, a blow of the
waddy, or filling the ears with red-hot embers, were the favorite ways
of killing their own babies.

Did the whites teach the angelic savages all these diabolical customs?
If so, they must have taught them customs invented for the occasion,
since they are not practised by whites in any part of the world. But
perhaps Stephens would have been willing to waive this point.
Sentimentalists are usually more or less willing to concede that
savages are devils in most things if we will only admit in return that
they are angels in their sexual relations. For instance, if we may
believe Stephens, no nun was ever more modest than the native
Australian woman. Once, he says, he was asked to visit a poor old
black woman in the last stages of consumption:

"Her case was hopeless, and when she was in almost the
last agony of mortal dissolution I was astounded at her
efforts at concealment, indicative of extreme modesty.
As I drew her opossum rug over her poor emaciated body
the look of gratitude which came from her dying eyes
told me in language more eloquent than words that
beneath that dark and dying exterior there was a soul
which in a few hours angels would delight to honor."

The poor woman was probably cold and glad to be covered; if she had
any modesty regarding exposure of the body she could have learned it
from no one but the dreadful, degraded whites, for the Australian
himself is an utter stranger to such a feeling. On this point the
explorers and students of the natives are unanimous. Both men and
women went absolutely naked except in those regions where the climate
was cold.


NAKED AND NOT ASHAMED

"They are as innocent of shame as the animals of the forest," says E.
Palmer; and J. Bonwick writes: "Nakedness is no shame with them. As a
French writer once remarked to a lady, 'With a pair of gloves you
could clothe six men.'" Even ornaments are worn by the men only:
"females are content with their natural charms." W.E. Roth, in his
standard work on the Queensland natives, says that "with both sexes
the privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when in
close proximity to white settlements." With the Warburton River tribe
(Curr, II, 18) "the women go quite naked, and the men have only a belt
made of human hair round the waist from which a fringe spun of hair of
rats hangs in front." Sturt wrote (I., 106): "The men are much better
looking than the women; both go perfectly naked."

At the dances a covering of feathers or leaves is sometimes worn by
the women, but is removed as soon as the dance is over. Narrinyeri
girls, says Taplin (15), "wear a sort of apron of fringe, called
Kaininggi, until they bear their first child. If they have no children
it is taken from them and burned by their husbands while they are
asleep." Meyer (189) says the same of the Encounter Bay tribe, and
similar customs prevailed at Port Jackson and many other places.
Summing up the observations of Cook, Turnbull, Cunningham, Tench,
Hunter, and others, Waitz remarks (VI., 737):

"In the region of Sydney, too, the natives used to be
entirely nude, and as late as 1816 men would go about
the streets of Paramatta and Sydney naked, despite many
prohibitions and attempts to clothe them, which always
failed"

--so ingrained was the absence of shame in the native mind.

Jackman, the "Australian Captive," an Englishman who spent seventeen
months among the natives, describes them as being "as nude as Adam and
Eve" (99). "The Australians' utter lack of modesty is remarkable,"
writes F. Müller (207):

"it reveals itself in the way in which their clothes
are worn. While an attempt is made to cover the upper,
especially the back part of the body, the private parts
are often left uncovered."

One early explorer, Sturt (II., 126), found the natives of the
interior, without exception, "in a complete state of nudity."

The still earlier Governor Philipps (1787) found that the inhabitants
of New South Wales had no idea that one part of the body ought to be
covered more than any other. Captain Flinders, who saw much of
Australia in 1795, speaks in one place (I., 66) of "the short skin
cloak which is of kangaroo, and worn over the shoulders, leaving the
rest of the body naked." This was in New South Wales. At Keppel Bay
(II., 30) he writes: "These people ... go entirely naked;" and so on
at other points of the continent touched on his voyage. In Dawson (61)
we read: "They were perfectly naked, as they always are." Nor has the
Australian in his native state changed in the century or more since
whites have known him. In the latest book on Central Australia (1899)
by Spencer and Gillen we read (17) that to this day a native woman
"with nothing on except an ancient straw hat and an old pair of boots
is perfectly happy."


IS CIVILIZATION DEMORALIZING?

The reader is now in a position to judge of the reliability of the
"fearless" Stephens as a witness, and of the blind bias of the
anthropologist who uses him as such. It surely ought not to be
necessary to prove that races among whom cannibalism, infanticide,
wife enslavement and murder, and other hideous crimes are rampant as
unreproved national customs, could not possibly be refined and moral
in their sexual relations, which offer the greatest of all temptations
to unrestrained selfishness. Yet Stephens tells us in his article that
before the advent of the whites these people were chaste, and
"conjugal infidelity was almost if not entirely unknown;" while
Westermarck (61, 64, 65) classes the Australians with those savages
"among whom sexual intercourse out of wedlock is of rare occurrence."
On page 70 he declares that "in a savage condition of life ... there
is comparatively little reason for illegitimate relations;" and on
page 539, in summing up his doctrines, he asserts that "we have some
reason to believe that irregular connections between the sexes have,
on the whole, exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress
of civilization." The refutation of this libel on civilization--which
is widely believed--is one of the main objects of the following
pages--is, in fact, one of the main objects of this whole volume.

There are a few cities in Southern Europe where the rate of
illegitimacy equals, and in one or two cases slightly exceeds, the
legitimate births; but that is owing to the fact that betrayed girls
from the country nearly always go to the cities to find a refuge and
hide their shame. Taking the countries as a whole we find that even
Scotland, which has always had a somewhat unsavory reputation in this
respect, had, in 1897, only 6.98 per cent of illegitimate births--say
seven in a hundred; the highest rate since 1855 having been 10.2.
There are, of course, besides this, cases of uncertain paternity, but
their number is comparatively small, and it certainly is much larger
in the _less_ civilized countries of Europe than in the more
civilized. Taking the five or six most advanced countries of Europe
and America, it is safe to say that the paternity is certain in ninety
cases out of a hundred. If we now look at the Australians as described
by eye-witnesses since the earliest exploring tours, we find a state
of affairs which makes paternity uncertain _in all cases without
exception_, and also a complete indifference on the subject.


ABORIGINAL WANTONNESS

One of the first explorers of the desert interior was Eyre (1839). His
experiences--covering ten years--led him to speak (378) of "the
illicit and almost unlimited intercourse between the sexes." "Marriage
is not looked upon as any pledge of chastity; indeed, no such virtue
is recognized" (319). "Many of the native dances are of a grossly
licentious character." Men rarely get married before they are
twenty-five, but that does not mean that they are continent. From
their thirteenth year they have promiscuous intercourse with girls who
abandon themselves at the age of ten, though they rarely become
mothers before they are sixteen.[155]

Another early explorer of the interior (1839), T.L. Mitchell, gives
this glimpse of aboriginal morality (I., 133):

"The natives ... in return for our former disinterested
kindness, persisted in their endeavors to introduce us
very particularly to their women. They ordered them to
come up, divested of their cloaks and bags, and placed
them before us. Most of the men appeared to possess
two, the pair in general consisting of a fat plump gin
and one much younger. Each man placed himself before
his gins, and bowing forward with a shrug, the hands
and arms being thrown back pointing to each gin, as if
to say, Take which you please. The females, on their
part, evinced no apprehension, but seemed to regard us
as beings of a race so different, without the slightest
indication of either fear, aversion, or surprise. Their
looks were rather expressive of a ready acquiescence in
the proffered kindness of the men, and when at length
they brought a sable nymph _vis-a-vis_ to Mr. White, I
could preserve my gravity no longer, and throwing the
spears aside, I ordered the bullock-drivers to
proceed."

George Grey, who, during his two exploring expeditions into
Northwestern and Western Australia, likewise came in contact with the
"uncontaminated" natives, found that, though "a spear through the calf
of the leg is the least punishment that awaits" a faithless wife if
detected, and sometimes the death-penalty is inflicted, yet "the
younger women were much addicted to intrigue" (I., 231, 253), as
indeed they appear to be throughout the continent, as we shall see
presently.

Of all Australian institutions none is more characteristic than the
corrobborees or nocturnal dances which are held at intervals by the
various tribes all over the continent, and were of course held
centuries before a white man was ever seen on the continent; and no
white man in his wildest nightmare ever dreamt of such scenes as are
enacted at them. They are given preferably by moonlight, are apt to
last all night, and are often attended by the most obscene and
licentious practices. The corrobboree, says Curr (I., 92), was
undoubtedly "often an occasion of licentiousness and atrocity";
fights, even wars, ensue, "and almost invariably as the result of
outrages on women." The songs heard at these revels are sometimes
harmless and the dances not indecent, says the Rev. G. Taplin (37),

"but at other times the songs will consist of the vilest
obscenity. I have seen dances which were the most disgusting
displays of obscene gesture possible to be imagined, and
although I stood in the dark alone, and nobody knew I was
there, I felt ashamed to look upon such abominations.... The
dances of the women are very immodest and lewd."
John Mathew (in Curr, III., 168) testifies regarding the corrobborees
of the Mary Eiver tribes that

"the representations were rarely free from obscenity,
and on some occasions indecent gestures were the main
parts of the action. I have seen a structure formed of
huge forked sticks placed upright in the ground, the
forks upward, with saplings reaching from fork to fork,
and boughs laid over all. This building was part of the
machinery for a corrobboree, at a certain stage of
which the males, who were located on the roof, rushed
down among the females, who were underneath and handled
them licentiously."[156]


LOWER THAN BRUTES

The lowest depth of aboriginal degradation remains to be sounded. Like
most of the Africans, Australians are lower than animals inasmuch as
they often do not wait till girls have reached the age of puberty.
Meyer (190) says of the Narrinyeri: "They are given in marriage at a
very early age (ten or twelve years)." Lindsay Cranford[157] testifies
regarding five South Australian tribes that "at puberty no girl,
without exception, is a virgin." With the Paroo River tribes "the
girls became wives whilst mere children, and mothers at fourteen"
(Curr, II., 182). Of other tribes Curr's correspondents write (107):

"Girls become wives at from eight to fourteen years." "One
often sees a child of eight the wife of a man of fifty."
"Girls are promised to men in infancy, become wives at about
ten years of age, and mothers at fourteen or fifteen" (342).

The Birria tribe waits a few years longer, but atones for this by a
resort to another crime: "Males and females are married at from
fourteen to sixteen, but are not allowed to rear children until they
get to be about thirty years of age; hence infanticide is general."
The missionary O.W. Schürmann says of the Port Lincoln tribe (223):
"Notwithstanding the early marriage of females, I have not observed
that they have children at an earlier age than is common among
Europeans." Of York district tribes we are told (I., 343) that "girls
are betrothed shortly after birth, and brutalities are practised on
them while mere children." Of the Kojonub tribe (348): "Girls are
promised in marriage soon after birth, and given over to their
husbands at about nine years of age." Of the Natingero tribe (380):
"The girls go to live with their husbands at from seven to ten years,
and suffer dreadfully from intercourse." Of the Yircla Meening tribe
(402):

"Females become wives at ten and mothers at twelve
years of age." "Mr. J.M. Davis and others of repute
declare, as a result of long acquaintance with
Australian savages, that the girls were made use of for
promiscuous intercourse when they were only nine or ten
years old." (Sutherland, I., 113.)

It is needless to continue this painful catalogue.


INDIFFERENCE TO CHASTITY

Eyre's assertion regarding chastity, that "no such virtue is
recognized," has already been quoted, and is borne out by testimony of
many other writers. In the Dieyerie tribe "each married woman is
permitted a paramour." (Curr, II., 46.) Taplin says of the Narrinyeri
(16, 18) that boys are not allowed to marry until their beard has
grown a certain length; "but they are allowed the abominable privilege
of promiscuous intercourse with the younger portion of the other sex."
A.W. Howitt describes[158] a strange kind of group marriage prevalent
among the Dieri and kindred tribes, the various couples being allotted
to each other by the council of elder men without themselves being
consulted as to their preferences. During the ensuing festivities,
however, "there is for about four hours a general license in camp as
regards" the couples thus "married." Meyer (191) says of the Encounter
Bay tribes that if a man from another tribe arrives having anything
which a native desires to purchase, "he perhaps makes a bargain to pay
by letting him have one of his wives for a longer or shorter period."
Angas (I., 93) refers to the custom of lending wives. In Victoria the
natives have a special name for the custom of lending one of their
wives to young men who have none. Sometimes they are thus lent for a
month at a time.[159] As we shall presently see, one reason why
Australian men marry is to have the means of making friends by lending
their wives to others. The custom of allowing friends to share the
husband's privileges was also widely prevalent.

In New South Wales and about Riverina, says Brough Smyth (II., 316),

"in any instance where the abduction [of a woman] has taken
place by a party of men for the benefit of some one
individual, each of the members of the party claims, as a
right, a privilege which the intended husband has no power
to refuse."

Curr informs us (I., 128) that if a woman resist her husband's orders
to give herself up to another man she is "either speared or cruelly
beaten." Fison (303) believes that the lending of wives to visitors
was looked on not as a favor but a duty--a right which the visitor
could claim; and Howitt showed that in the native gesture language
there was a special sign for this custom--"a peculiar folding of the
hands," indicating "either a request or an offer, according as it is
used by the guest or the host."[160] Concerning Queensland tribes Roth
says (182):

"If an aboriginal requires a woman temporarily for
venery he either borrows a wife from her husband for a
night or two in exchange for boomerangs, a shield,
food, etc., or else violates the female when
unprotected, when away from the camp out in the bush.
In the former case the husband looks upon the matter as
a point of honor to oblige his friend, the greatest
compliment that can be paid him, provided that
permission is previously asked. On the other hand, were
he to refuse he has the fear hanging over him that the
petitioner might get a death-bone pointed at him--and
so, after all, his apparent courtesy may be only
Hobson's choice. In the latter case, if a married
woman, and she tells her husband, she gets a hammering,
and should she disclose the delinquent, there will
probably be a fight, and hence she usually keeps her
mouth shut; if a single woman, or of any paedomatronym
other than his own, no one troubles himself about the
matter. On the other hand, death by the spear or club
is the punishment invariably inflicted by the camp
council collectively for criminally assaulting any
blood relative, group-sister (_i.e._, a female member
of the same paedomatronym) or young woman that has not
yet been initiated into the first degree."

The last sentence would indicate that these tribes are not so
indifferent to chastity as the other natives; but the information
given by Roth (who for three years was surgeon-general to the Boulia,
Cloncurry and Normanton hospitals) dispels such an illusion most
radically.[161]


USELESS PRECAUTIONS

In Central Australia, says H. Kempe,[162] "there is no separation of
the sexes in social life; in the daily camp routine as well as at
festivals all the natives mingle as they choose." Curr asserts (I.,
109) that

"in most tribes a woman is not allowed to converse or
have any relations whatever with any adult male, save
her husband. Even with a grown-up brother she is almost
forbidden to exchange a word."

Grey (II., 255) found that at dances the females sat in groups apart
and the young men were never allowed to approach them and not
permitted to hold converse with any one except their mother or
sisters. "On no occasion," he adds,

"is a strange native allowed to approach the fire of the
married." "The young men and boys of ten years of age and
upward are obliged to sleep in their portion of the
encampment."

From such testimony one might infer that female chastity is
successfully guarded; but the writers quoted themselves take care to
dispel that illusion. Grey tells us that (in spite of these
arrangements) "the young females are much addicted to intrigue;" and
again (248):

"Should a female be possessed of considerable personal
attractions, the first years of her life must
necessarily be very unhappy. In her early infancy she
is betrothed to some man, even at this period advanced
in years, and by whom, as she approaches the age of
puberty, she is watched with a degree of vigilance and
care, which increases in proportion to the disparity of
years between them; it is probably from this
circumstance that so many of them are addicted to
intrigues, in which if they are detected by their
husbands, death or a spear through some portion of the
body is their certain fate."

And Curr shows in the following (109) how far the attempts at
seclusion are from succeeding in enforcing chastity:

"Notwithstanding the savage jealousy, _varied by
occasional degrading complaisance on the part of the
husband,_ there is more or less intrigue in every camp;
and the husband usually assumes that his wife has been
unfaithful to him whenever there has been an
opportunity for criminality.... In some tribes the
husband will frequently prostitute his wife to his
brother; otherwise more commonly to strangers visiting
his tribe than to his own people, and in this way our
exploring parties have been troubled with proposals of
the sort."

Apart from the other facts here given, the words I have italicized
above would alone show that what makes an Australian in some instances
guard his females is not a regard for chastity, or jealousy in our
sense of the word, but simply a desire to preserve his movable
property--a slave and concubine who, if young or fat, is very liable
to be stolen or, on account of the bad treatment she receives from her
old master, to run away with a younger man.[163]

If any further evidence were needed on this head it would be supplied
by the authoritative statement of J.D. Wood[164] that

"In fact, chastity as a virtue is absolutely unknown
amongst all the tribes of which there are records. The
buying, taking, or stealing of a wife is not at all
influenced by considerations of antecedent purity on
the part of the woman. A man wants a wife and he
obtains one somehow. She is his slave and there the
matter ends."


SURVIVALS OF PROMISCUITY

Since this chapter was written a new book on Australia has appeared
which bears out the views here taken so admirably that I must insert a
brief reference to its contents. It is Spencer and Gillen's _The
Native Tribes of Central Australia_ (1899), and relates to nine tribes
over whom Baldwin Spencer had been placed as special magistrate and
sub-protector for some years, during which he had excellent
opportunities to study their customs. The authors tell us (62, 63)
that

"In the Urabunna tribe every woman is the special
_Nupa_ of one particular man, but at the same time he
has no exclusive right to her, as she is the
_Piraungaru_ of certain other men who also have the
right of access to her.... There is no such thing as
one man having the exclusive right to one woman....
Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in
practice in the Urabunna tribe."

"Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man
attempts to prevent his wife's _Piraungaru_ from having
access to her, but this leads to a fight, and the
husband is looked upon as churlish. When visiting
distant groups where, in all likelihood, the husband
has no _Piraungaru_, it is customary for other men of
his own class to offer him the loan of one or more of
their _Nupa_ women, and a man, besides lending a woman
over whom he has the first right, will also lend his
_Piraungaru_."

In the Arunta tribe there is a restriction of a particular woman to a
particular man, "or rather, a man has an exclusive right to one
special woman, though he may of his own free will lend her to other
men," provided they stand in a certain artificial relation to her
(74). However (92):

"Whilst under ordinary circumstances in the Arunta and
other tribes one man is only allowed to have marital
relations with women of a particular class, there are
customs which allow at certain times of a man having
such relations with women to whom at other times he
would not on any account be allowed to have access. We
find, indeed, that this holds true in the case of all
the nine different tribes with the marriage customs of
which we are acquainted, and in which a woman becomes
the private property of one man."

In the southern Arunta, after a certain ceremony has been performed,
the bride is brought back to camp and given to her special _Unawa_.
"That night he lends her to one or two men who are _unawa_ to her, and
afterward she belongs to him exclusively." At this time when a woman
is being, so to speak, handed over to one particular individual,
special individuals with whom at ordinary times she may have no
intercourse, have the right of access to her. Such customs our authors
interpret plausibly as partial promiscuity pointing to a time when
still greater laxity prevailed--suggesting rudimentary organs in
animals (96).

Among some tribes at corrobboree time, every day two or three women
are told off and become the property of all the men on the corrobboree
grounds, excepting fathers, brothers, or sons. Thus there are three
stages of individual ownership in women: In the first, whilst the man
has exclusive right to a woman, he can and does lend her to certain
other men; in the second there is a wider relation in regard to
particular men at the time of marriage; and in the third a still wider
relation to all men except the nearest relatives, at corrobboree time.
Only in the first of these cases can we properly speak of wife
"lending"; in the other cases the individuals have no choice and
cannot withhold their consent, the matter being of a public or tribal
nature. As regards the corrobborees, it is supposed to be the duty of
every man at different times to send his wife to the ground, and the
most striking feature in regard to it is that the first man who has
access to her is the very one to whom, under normal conditions, she is
most strictly taboo, her _Mura_. [All women whose daughters are
eligible as wives are _mura_ to a man.]
Old and young men alike must give up their wives on these occasions.
"It is a custom of ancient date which is sanctioned by public opinion,
and to the performance of which neither men nor women concerned offer
any opposition" (98).


ABORIGINAL DEPRAVITY

These revelations of Spencer and Gillen, taken in connection with the
abundant evidence I have cited from the works of early explorers as to
the utter depravity of the aboriginal Australian when first seen by
white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose
reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was
the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally
shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or
obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of
Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but
thousands of years to assume their present extraordinarily complex
aspect; customs which form part and parcel of the very life of
Australians and which represent the lowest depths of sexual depravity,
since they are utterly incompatible with chastity, fidelity,
legitimacy, or anything else we understand by sexual morality. In some
cases, no doubt, contact with the low whites and their liquor
aggravated these evils by fostering professional prostitution and
making men even more ready than before to treat their wives as
merchandise. Lumholtz, who lived several years among these savages,
makes this admission (345), but at the same time he is obliged to join
all the other witnesses in declaring that apart from this "there is
not much to be said of the morals of the blacks, for I am sorry to say
they have none." On a previous page (42) I cited Sutherland's summary
of a report of the House of Commons (1844, 350 pages), which shows
that the Australian native, as found by the first white visitors,
manifested "an absolute incapacity to form even a rudimentary notion
of chastity." The same writer, who was born and brought up in
Australia, says (I., 121):

"In almost every case the father or husband will
dispose of the girl's virtue for a small price. When
white men came they found these habits prevailing. The
overwhelming testimony proves it absurd to say that
they demoralized the unsophisticated savages."

And again (I., 186),

"It is untrue that in sexual license the savage has
ever anything to learn. In almost every tribe there are
pollutions deeper than any I have thought it necessary
to mention, and all that the lower fringe of civilized
men can do to harm the uncivilized is to stoop to the
level of the latter, instead of teaching them a better
way."[165]


THE QUESTION OF PROMISCUITY

As regards the promiscuity question, Spencer and Gillen's observations
go far to confirm some of the seemingly fantastic speculations
regarding "a thousand miles of wives," and so on, contained in the
volume of Fison and Howitt[166] and to make it probable that
unregulated intercourse was the state of primitive man at a stage of
evolution earlier than any known to us now. Since the appearance of
Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ it has become the fashion to
regard the theory of promiscuity as disproved. Alfred Russell Wallace,
in his preface to this book, expresses his opinion that "independent
thinkers" will agree with its author on most of the points wherein he
takes issue with his famous predecessors, including Spencer, Morgan,
Lubbock, and others. Ernst Grosse, in a volume which the president of
the German Anthropological Society pronounced "epoch-making"--_Die
Formen der Familie_--refers (43) to Westermarck's "very thorough
refutation" of this theory, which he stigmatizes as one of the
blunders of the unfledged science of sociology which it will be best
to forget as soon as possible; adding that "Westermarck's best weapons
were, however, forged by Starcke."

In a question like this, however, two independent observers are worth
more than two hundred "independent thinkers." Spencer and Gillen are
eye-witnesses, and they inform us repeatedly (100, 105, 108, 111) that
Westermarck's objections to the theory of promiscuity do not stand the
test of facts and that none of his hypotheses explains away the
customs which point to a former prevalence of promiscuity. They have
absolutely disproved his assertion (539) that "it is certainly not
among the lowest peoples that sexual relations most nearly approach
promiscuity." Cunow, who, as Grosse admits (50), has written the most
thorough and authentic monograph on the complicated family
relationship of Australia, devotes two pages (122-23) to exposing some
of Westermarck's arguments, which, as he shows, "border on the comic."
I myself have in this chapter, as well as in those on Africans,
American Indians, South Sea Islanders, etc., revealed the comicality
of the assertion that there is in a savage condition of life
"comparatively little reason for illegitimate relations," which forms
one of the main props of Westermarck's anti-promiscuity theory; and I
have also reduced _ad absurdum_ his systematic overrating of savages
in the matter of liberty of choice, esthetic taste and capacity for
affection which resulted from his pet theory and marred his whole
book.[167]

It is interesting to note that Darwin (_D.M._, Ch. XX.) concluded from
the facts known to him that "_almost_ promiscuous intercourse or very
loose intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world:" and
the only thing that seemed to deter him from believing in _absolutely_
promiscuous intercourse was the "strength of the feeling of jealousy."
Had he lived to understand the true nature of savage jealousy
explained in this volume and to read the revelations of Spencer and
Gillen, that difficulty would have vanished. On this point, too, their
remarks are of great importance, fully bearing out the view set forth
in my chapter on jealousy. They declare (99) that they did not find
sexual jealousy specially developed:

"For a man to have unlawful intercourse with any woman
arouses a feeling which is due not so much to jealousy
as to the fact that the delinquent has infringed a
tribal custom. If the intercourse has been with a woman
who belongs to the class from which his wife comes,
then he is called _atna nylkna_ (which, literally
translated, is vulva thief); if with one with whom it
is unlawful for him to have intercourse, then he is
called _iturka_, the most opprobrious term in the
Arunta language. In the one case he has merely stolen
property, in the other he has offended against tribal
law."

Jealousy, they sum up, "is indeed a factor which need not be taken