In his essay on The Pleasures of Home, Sir John Lubbock makes the following statement (494. 102):—
"In the Origin of Civilization, I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no word for 'to love,' so that when the missionaries translated the Bible into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language, without love!"
How unfortunately inaccurate, how entirely unjustifiable, such a declaration is, may be seen from the study of the words for love in two of the Algonkian dialects,—Cree and Chippeway,—which Dr. Brinton has made in one of his essays, The Conception of Love in some American Languages. Let us quote the ipsissima verba (411. 415):—
(1) "In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man."
(2) "The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love, and to that which the gods have for men."
(3) "In the Chippeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin amare from the Sanscrit sam."
(4) "The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek [Greek: agapæ], we find expressed in both the dialects by derivatives from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms kis, keche, or kiji, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy. Concretely, it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity."
Surely this people cannot be charged with a lack of words for love, whose language enables them so well to express its every shade of meaning. Nay, they have even seen from afar that "God is Love," as their concept of Michabo tells us they had already perceived that He was "Light."
Motherhood and Fatherhood.
The nobility and the sanctity of motherhood have found recognition among the most primitive of human races. A Mussulman legend of Adam and Eve represents the angel Gabriel as saying to the mother of mankind after the expulsion from Paradise: "Thou shalt be rewarded for all the pains of motherhood, and the death of a woman in child-bed shall be accounted as martyrdom" (547. 38). The natives of the Highlands of Borneo hold that to a special hereafter, known as "Long Julan," go those who have suffered a violent death (been killed in battle, or by the falling of a tree, or some like accident), and women who die in child-birth; which latter become the wives of those who have died in battle. In this Paradise everybody is rich, with no need for labour, as all wants are supplied without work (475. 199).