Primitive Love and Love-Stories

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  PRIMITIVE LOVE AND LOVE-STORIES

  BY HENRY T. FINCK

  1899

  _DEDICATED TO ONE WHO TAUGHT THE AUTHOR THAT CONJUGAL AFFECTION IS NOTINFERIOR TO ROMANTIC LOVE_

  PREFACE

  On page 654 of the present volume reference is made to a customprevalent in northern India of employing the family barber to selectthe boys and girls to be married, it being considered too trivial andhumiliating an act for the parents to attend to. In pronouncing such acustom ludicrous and outrageous we must not forget that not much morethan a century ago an English thinker, Samuel Johnson, expressed theopinion that marriages might as well be arranged by the LordChancellor without consulting the parties concerned. Schopenhauer had,indeed, reason to claim that it had remained for him to discover thesignificance and importance of love. His ideas on the relationsbetween love, youth, health, and beauty opened up a new vista ofthought; yet it was limited, because the question of heredity was onlyjust beginning to be understood, and the theory of evolution, whichhas revolutionized all science, had not yet appeared on the horizon.

  The new science of anthropology, with its various branches, includingsociology, ethnology, and comparative psychology, has within the lasttwo or three decades brought together and discussed an immense numberof facts relating to man in his various stages ofdevelopment--savagery, barbarism, semi-civilization, and civilization.Monographs have appeared in great numbers on various customs andinstitutions, including marriage, which has been discussed in severalexhaustive volumes. Love alone has remained to be specially consideredfrom an evolutionary point of view. My own book, _Romantic Love andPersonal Beauty_, which appeared in 1887, did indeed touch upon thisquestion, but very briefly, inasmuch as its subject, as the titleindicates, was modern romantic love. A book on such a subject wasnaturally and easily written _virginibus puerisque_; whereas thepresent volume, being concerned chiefly with the love-affairs ofsavages and barbarians, could not possibly have been subjected to thesame restrictions. Care has been taken, however, to exclude anythingthat might offend a healthy taste.

  If it has been necessary in some chapters to multiply unpleasantfacts, the reader must blame the sentimentalists who have sopersistently whitewashed the savages that it has become necessary, inthe interest of truth, to show them in their real colors. I haveindeed been tempted to give my book the sub-title "A Vindication ofCivilization" against the misrepresentations of these sentimentalistswho try to create the impression that savages owe all their depravityto contact with whites, having been originally spotless angels. If mypictures of the unadulterated savage may in some cases produce thesame painful impression as the sights in a museum's "chamber ofhorrors," they serve, on the other hand, to show us that, bad as wemay be, collectively, we are infinitely superior in love-affairs, asin everything else, to those primitive peoples; and thus we areencouraged to hope for further progress in the future in the directionof purity and altruism.

  Although I have been obliged under the circumstances to indulge in aconsiderable amount of controversy, I have taken great pains to statethe views of my opponents fairly, and to be strictly impartial inpresenting facts with accuracy. Nothing could be more foolish than theostrich policy, so often indulged in, of hiding facts in the hope thatopponents will not see them. Had I found any data inconsistent with mytheory I should have modified it in accordance with them. I have alsobeen very careful in regard to my authorities. The chief cause of thegreat confusion reigning in anthropological literature is that, as arule, evidence is piled up with a pitchfork. Anyone who has beenanywhere and expressed a globe-trotter's opinion is cited as awitness, with deplorable results. I have not only taken most of mymultitudinous facts from the original sources, but I have criticallyexamined the witnesses to see what right they have to parade asexperts; as in the cases, for instance, of Catlin, Schoolcraft,Chapman, and Stephens, who are responsible for many "false facts" thathave misled philosophers.

  In writing a book like this the author's function is comparable tothat of an architect who gets his materials from various parts of theworld and fashions them into a building of more or less artisticmerit. The anthropologist has to gather his facts from a greatervariety of sources than any other writer, and from the very nature ofhis subject he is obliged to quote incessantly. The following pagesembody the results of more than twelve years' research in thelibraries of America and Europe. In weaving my quotations into acontinuous fabric I have adopted a plan which I believe to beingenious, and which certainly saves space and annoyance. Instead ofciting the full titles of books every time they are referred to eitherin the text or in footnotes, I merely give the author's name and thepage number, if only one of his books is referred to; and if there areseveral books, I give the initials--say Brinton, _M.N.W_., 130; whichmeans Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, page 130. The key to theabbreviations will be found at the end of the volume in thebibliography, which also includes an author's index, separate from theindex of subjects. This avoids the repetition of titles or of thecustomary useless "_loc. cit_.," and spares the reader the annoyanceof constant interruption of his reading to glance at the bottom of thepage.

  Not a few of the critics of my first book, ignoring the differencebetween a romantic love-story and a story of romantic love, fanciedthey could refute me by simply referring to some ancient romanticstory. To prevent a repetition of that procedure I have adorned thesepages with a number of love-stories, adding critical comments wherevercalled for. These stories, I believe, augment, not only the interestbut the scientific value of the monograph. In gathering them I haveoften wondered why no one anticipated me, though, to be sure, it wasnot an easy task, as they are scattered in hundreds of books, and inscientific periodicals where few would look for them. At the same timeI confess that to me the tracing of the plot of the evolution of love,with its diverse obstacles, is more fascinating than the plot of anindividual love-story. At any rate, since we have thousands of suchlove-stories, I am perhaps not mistaken in assuming that _the story oflove itself_ will be welcomed as a pleasant change. H.T.F.

  NEW YORK, October 27, 1899.