CHAPTER IV.
SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION.
I. Primitive Sexual Immorality.—Origin of modesty—Absence of modesty in the savage—Loan of wives in Melanesia and among the Bochimans—Absence of modesty in the Esquimaux, the Redskins, and Polynesians—Right of the husband in Polynesia—Loan or barter of wives—Erotic training of little girls in Polynesia—Society of the Areoïs—Man in a state of nature—Unnatural love in New Caledonia, in the two Americas, among Asiatic peoples, and in Greco-Roman antiquity—The erastes of Crete. II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage.—Coarseness of primitive marriage—Horror of incest artificially created—Incest among various peoples—Artificial defloration—Experimental marriages among the Redskins, the Otomies, the Sonthals, the Tartars, and in Ceylon—Temporary marriages among the Jews of Morocco and the Tapyres—Free unions—Partial marriages and marriages for a term among the Arabs—Marriage and the right of the strongest in savage countries—Savage coarseness and civilised depravity. I. Primitive Sexual Immorality.
In a former work[1] I have attempted to trace the genesis of a sentiment peculiar to humanity—the sentiment of modesty. It would be inexpedient here to treat the subject afresh in detail, but I will recall the conclusions arrived at by that investigation. Modesty is par excellence a human sentiment, and is totally unknown to the animals, although the procreative need inspires them with desires and passions essentially identical with what in man we call love; it is therefore certainly an artificial sentiment, and comparative ethnology proves that it must have resulted from the
- ↑ L'Évolution de la Morale.
