We might suppose that the coarser races would be less capable of such aversions than the half-civilized, but the contrary is true. In Australia nearly every tribe is the deadly enemy of every other tribe, and according to Chapman a Bushman woman would consider herself degraded by intercourse with anyone not belonging to her tribe. "Savage nations," says Humboldt, in speaking of the Chaymas of New Andalusia,
"are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitation."
Here there is no chance for Leanders to swim across the waters to meet their Heros. Poor Cupid! Everybody and everything seems to be against him.
XIII. MULTIPLICITY OF LANGUAGES
Apart from racial prejudice there is the further obstacle of language. A man cannot court a girl and learn to love her sentimentally unless he can speak to her. Now Africa alone has 438 languages, besides a number of dialects. Dr. Finsch says (38) that on the Melanasian island of Tanua nearly every village has a dialect of its own which those of the next village cannot understand; and this is a typical case. American Indians usually communicate with each other by means of a sign language. India has countless languages and dialects, and in Canton the Chinamen from various parts of the Empire have to converse with each other in "pidjin English." The Australians, who are perhaps all of one race, nevertheless have no end of different names for even so common a thing as the omnipresent kangaroo.[136] In Brazil, says von Martins, travellers often come across a language
"used only by a few individuals connected with each other by relationship, who are thus completely isolated, and can hold no communication with any of their other countrymen far or near";
and how great was the confusion of tongues among other South American Indians may be inferred from the statement (Waitz, III., 355) that the Caribs were so much in the habit of capturing wives from different tribes and peoples that the men and women of each tribe never spoke the same language. Under such circumstances a wife might become attached to her husband as a captured, mute, and maltreated dog might to his master; but romantic love is as utterly out of the question as it is between master and dog.
XIV. SOCIAL BARRIERS
Not content with hating one another cordially, the different races, peoples, and tribes have taken special pains at all times and everywhere to erect within their own limits a number of barriers against free choice and love. In France, Germany, and other European countries there is still a strong prejudice against marriages between nobles and commoners, though the commoner may be much nobler than the aristocrat in everything except the genealogical table. Civilization is gradually destroying this obstacle to love, which has done so much to promote immorality and has led to so many tragedies involving a number of kings and princes, victims to the illusion that accident of birth is nobler than brains or refinement. But among the ancient civilized and mediaeval peoples the social barrier was as rigidly held up as the racial prejudices. Milman remarks, in his History of Latin Christianity (I., 499, 528), that among the ancient Romans
"there could be no marriages with slaves [though slaves, being captives, were not necessarily of a lower rank, but might be princesses]…. The Emperor Valentinian further defined low and abject persons who might not aspire to lawful union with freemen—actresses, daughters of actresses, tavern-keepers, the daughters of tavern-keepers, procurers (leones) or gladiators, or those who had kept a public shop…. Till Roman citizenship had been imparted to the whole Roman Empire, it would not acknowledge marriage with barbarians to be more than a concubinage. Cleopatra was called only in scorn the wife of Antony. Berenice might not presume to be more than the mistress of Titus. The Christian world closed marriages again within still more and more jealous limits. Interdictory statutes declared marriages with Jews and heathens not only invalid but adulterous."