Romantic Love and Personal Beauty - Henry T. Finck

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make its appearance till we come to less pugnacious tribes, such as the Dyacks, whose children “have the freedom implied by regular courtship,” or the Samoans, whose children “have the degree of independence implied by elopements when they cannot obtain parental assent to their marriage” (Spencer).

      In general, however, among the lower races, Sexual or æsthetic Selection leads to sorry results, owing to the bad taste of the selectors. The standard of primitive taste is not harmonious proportion and capacity for expression, but Exaggeration. The negro woman has naturally thicker lips, more prominent cheek-bones, and a flatter nose than a white woman; and in selecting a mate, preference is commonly given to the one whose lips are thickest, nose most flattened, and cheek-bones most prominent: thus producing gradually that monster of ugliness—the average negro woman. What right we have to set ourselves up as judges, and claim that our taste is superior to the negro’s, is a question which will be discussed in a subsequent section of this treatise.

      One other point, however, may be referred to here, namely, that although the æsthetic overtone of Love—the Admiration of Personal Beauty—may enter into a savage’s amorous feelings, it is only the sensuous aspect of it that affects him, the intellectual and moral sides being unknown to him. His admiration is purely physical. He marries his chosen bride when she is a mere child, and before the slightest spark of mental charm can illumine her features and impart to them a superior beauty; and subsequently, when experience has somewhat sharpened her intellectual powers, hard labour has already destroyed all traces of her physical beauty so that the combination of physical and mental charms which alone can inspire the highest form of Love is never to be found in primitive woman.

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      The moral mission of Jealousy, as stated on a preceding page, is, by means of watchfulness and the inspiring of fear, to ensure fidelity and chastity. Darwin says that from the strength of the feeling of jealousy all through the animal kingdom, as well as from the analogy of the lower animals, especially those which come nearest to man, he “cannot believe that absolutely promiscuous intercourse prevailed in times past, shortly before man attained to his present rank in the zoological scale.” This may be true, yet it is astonishing to find how many of the lower tribes are utterly unconcerned regarding the morals both of married and unmarried women. A vast number of cases illustrating this absence of jealousy are collected in Waitz’s Anthropology, Spencer’s Sociology, the works of Lubbock, and especially in Ploss’s Das Weib, i. 205–214. In some cases girls are allowed to do as they please until after marriage, when they are jealously guarded; in other cases the reverse is true. In some parts of Africa a breach of faith on the wife’s part is regarded as an attack not on the husband’s honour but on his property; hence a pecuniary compensation is all that is required. Lubbock enumerates a large number of races among whom the lending of a wife or daughter is a common and obligatory form of hospitality. And the Chibchas of South America went so far in their indifference to virginity that they considered a virgin bride to be unfortunate, “as she had not inspired affection in men.”

      Jealousy for the possession of a woman, however, was much sooner developed than jealous regard for her conduct. The statement of Sir John Lubbock about the men of an Indian tribe, that they “fight for the possession of the women, just like stags,” and similar statements regarding other savages, imply that, just like stags, these men feel the pangs of primitive Jealousy.

      Among polygamous nations the women, too, often fight for the men, whose favourites in their absence are apt to suffer much at the hands of jealous rivals. It is among the polygamous semi-civilised nations in general that Jealousy asserts itself in the most shrill and dissonant manner. It is not that bitter-sweet romantic Jealousy which by its constant fluctuations between hope and doubt fans a modern lover’s passion into brighter flames; it is a more vicious kind of conjugal Jealousy which destroys domestic peace and plots the ruin of rivals. In Madagascar, Mr. Spencer tells us, “the name for Polygyny—‘fampovafesana’—signifies ‘the means of causing enmity’ ”enmity’ ”; and that kindred names are commonly applicable to it we are shown by their use among the Hebrews: in the Mishna a man’s several wives are called ‘tzârot,’ that is, troubles, adversaries, or rivals. In modern Persia, where polygamy prevails, the same state of affairs is encountered. Says Ploss: “If there are several women in the house, each one inhabits a separate division; in the houses of the wealthy each wife, moreover, has her own servants. Constantly apprehending evil intentions, no woman touches the dishes of a rival.”

      It is among the polygamous nations of the East, too, that history records such a profusion of bloody wars of succession waged by half-brothers; for how could fraternal or any other kind of domestic affection flourish in families where the mothers are constantly goaded by Jealousy into deadly hatred of one another?

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      The United States being a “free country,” its government has sometimes been blamed by “freethinkers” for attempting to repress Mormon Polygamy. But a free country is not one in which social experiments injurious to public welfare are to be necessarily allowed. Readers of history and anthropology know that polygamy is an experiment which has been tried so often with disastrous social results, that it may be looked upon safely as criminal and treated accordingly. Even the forcible argument of that spiteful old pessimist, Schopenhauer, that polygamy should be introduced because it would rid the world of old maids, does not save the institution; since it is well—for the prospects of Beauty, at any rate—that some women should be “eliminated” in the form of old maids.

      Among the causes which tended to make polygamy the commonest form of marriage among savages, four may be briefly enumerated: (1) The constant wars among the tribes decimated the men, leaving a larger proportion of women than men, although this was to some extent neutralised by the habit of female infanticide, which the women indulged in to make themselves more cherished through scarcity and, possibly, to preserve their beauty; (2) The women being commonly secured as booty in war, it was naturally looked on as an honour and a sign of valour to have more than one wife; (3) Women being regarded and treated as slaves, the more a man had of them the more they could, by their combined labour, increase his wealth and influence in the tribe; (4) The rapid decay of the youthful beauty of primitive woman, naturally inclined her husband, whose affection was solely based on those physical charms, to add a second or third, younger woman to his harem.

      As woman’s position improved with advancing civilisation, these influences favouring polygamy were gradually weakened; and as in treating of Love among Animals, we found the most remarkable instances of affection—conjugal and romantic—among birds, who are mostly monogamous; so, among the lower races of man, monogamy is commonly a sign of superior culture and higher development of the affections. And this might have been foreseen a priori, inasmuch as monogamymonogamy is the only marital relation compatible with that Monopoly of affection which is one of the conditions of Romantic Love. How could a man feel an exclusive amorous interest in his bride, knowing that in a few months or years another would come to claim half his interest? or how could the bride concentrate all her Love on a man of whom she knew that he could give her only half or a smaller fraction of his affection?

      A similar view is taken by Mr. Spencer. Monogamic unions, he says, “tend in no small degree indirectly to raise the quality of adult life, by giving a permanent and deep source of æsthetic interest. On recalling the many and keen pleasures derived from music, poetry, fiction, the drama, etc.; and on remembering that their predominant theme is the passion of love, we shall see that to monogamy, which has developed this passion, we owe a large part of the gratifications which fill our leisure hours.”

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