Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/577



The so-called savage has always been a plaything to civilized man—in practice a convenient instrument of exploitation, in theory a provider of sensational thrills. Savagery has been, for the reading public of the last three centuries, a reservoir of unexpected possibilities in human nature; and the savage has had to adorn this or that a priori hypothesis by becoming cruel or noble, licentious or chaste, cannibalistic or humane according to what suited the observer or the theory.

As a matter of fact, the savage with whom we became acquainted in Melanesia does not conform to any picture in black and white, in deep shadow or vivid light. His life is socially hedged round on all sides, his morality more or less on a level with that of the average European—that is if the customs of the latter were as frankly described as those of the Trobriander. The institutions which allow of some prenuptial intercourse and even favour it, show little to suggest any previous conditions of unbridled promiscuity or of an institution such as "group-marriage," so difficult to conceive in terms of any known social facts.

Such forms of licence as we find in the Trobriands fit so well into the scheme of individual marriage, the family, the clan, and the local group—and they fulfil certain Rh