Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/76

 The women were not less bestial than their males. They often engaged, says Peltier, in furious combats, fighting with spears, for the possession of a man. This is a peculiar case, and is an entirely human instance of that law of battle of which I have spoken in regard to animals. Like the females of animals also the Australian women adored strength, and when the men of their own horde were beaten in battle they sometimes went over to the camp of the conquerors of their own accord (Mitchell). In these facts there is nothing exceptional, and we may change the country without changing the customs. Thus the Bochimans treat their wives as simple domestic animals, and offer them willingly to strangers, as do also the Australians.

In the Andaman Islands and elsewhere the women give themselves up before marriage—that is, before becoming the property of one man—to the most unbridled prostitution, and yet the most innocent, according to the morality of the country.

Among the Esquimaux the laxity of sexual customs, both for men and women, is extreme. The husbands feel no shame in selling, or rather hiring out, their wives; and the latter, as soon as their proprietors are gone to the chase or to fish, abandon themselves to an uncontrolled debauch, taking care to post their children outside the hut to warn them in case of the unexpected return of the master. Sexual morality does not yet exist among the Esquimaux, and an Aleout said quite simply to the missionary Langsdorff, "When my people couple they do it like the sea-otters." In fact, if the cold permitted, the Esquimaux would not be any more clothed than the sea-otters. In their common houses, where two or three hundred people are crowded together, and a high degree of temperature is maintained, they throw off their clothing without distinction of age or sex. They go further still, and, like many savages, practise what is called Socratic love openly and without shame. Thus, among the Inoits, well-favoured boys