[163] Westermarck overlooks these vital facts when he calmly assumes (64, 65) that the guarding of girls, or punishment of intruders, argues a regard for chastity. His entire ignoring of the superabundant and unimpeachable testimony proving the contrary is extraordinary, to put it mildly. Dawson's assertion (33) that "illegitimacy is rare" and the mother severely punished, which Westermarck cites (65), is as foolish as most of the gossip printed by that utterly untrustworthy writer. As the details given in these pages regarding licentiousness before marriage and wife-lending after it show, there is no possible way of proving illegitimacy unless the child has a white father. In that case it is killed; but that is nothing remarkable, as the Australians kill most of their children anyway. That a regard for chastity or fidelity has nothing to do with these actions is proved by the fact cited from Curr (I., 110) by Westermarck himself (on another page—131—of course!) that "husbands display much less jealousy of white men than of those of their own color," and that they will more commonly prostitute their wives to strangers visiting the tribe than to their own people. I have no doubt that the simple reason of this is that the whites are better able to pay, in rum and trinkets.
[164] South Australia, Adelaide, 1804, p. 403. The part author, part editor of this valuable book is not to be confounded with J.S. Wood, the compiler of the Natural History of Man.
[165] See also the account he gives (I., 180) of the report as to aboriginal morals made in the early days of Victoria by a commission of fourteen settlers, missionaries, and protectors of the aborigines. The explorer Sturt (I., 316) even found that the natives became indignant if the whites rejected their addresses.
[166] See also a very important paper on this subject by Howitt in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. XX., 1890, demonstrating that "in Australia at the present day group marriage does exist in a well-marked form, which is evidently only the modified survival of a still more complete social communism" (104). Regarding the manner in which group marriage gradually passed into individual proprietorship, a suggestive hint may be found in this sentence from Brough Smyth (II., 316): When women are carried off from another tribe, "they are common property till they are gradually annexed by the best warriors of the tribe."
[167] In my mind the strongest argument against Westermarck's views as regards promiscuity is that all his tributary theories, so to speak, which I have had occasion to examine in this volume have proved so utterly inconsistent with facts. The question of promiscuity itself I cannot examine in detail here, as it hardly comes within the scope of this book. In view of the confusion Westermarck has already created in recent scientific literature by his specious pleading, I need not apologize for the frequency of my polemics against him. His imposing erudition and his cleverness in juggling with facts by ignoring those that do not please him (as e.g., in case of the morality of the Kaffirs and Australians, and the "liberty of choice" of their women) make him a serious obstacle to the investigation of the truth regarding man's sexual history, wherefore it is necessary to expose his errors promptly and thoroughly.
[168] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1890, 53.
[169] Would our friend Stephens be fearless enough to claim that this custom also was taught the natives by the degraded whites? Apart from the diabolical cruelty to a woman of which no white man except a maniac would ever be individually guilty—whereas this is a tribal custom—note the unutterable masculine selfishness of this "jealousy," which, while indifferent to chastity and fidelity, per se, punishes by proxy, leaving the real culprit untouched and happy at having not only had his intrigue but a chance to get rid of an undesired wife!
[170] Jour. Anthr. Inst., XII., 282.
[171] Grey might have made a valuable contribution to the comparative psychology of passion by noting down the chant of the rivals in their own words. Instead of that, for literary effect, he cast them into European metre and rhyme, with various expressions, like "bless" and "caress," which of course are utterly beyond an Australian's mental horizon. This absurd procedure, which has made so many documents of travellers valueless for scientific purposes, is like filling an ethnological museum with pictures of Australians, Africans, etc., all clothed in swallow-tail coats and silk hats. Cf. Grosse (B.A., 236), and Semon (224). Real Australian "poems" are like the following:
"The peas the white man eats—
I wish I had some,
I wish I had some."