The other point I wish to make clear is that our emotions change with our ideas.  Obviously it would be absurd to suppose that a man whose ideas in regard to the nature of his gods do not prevent him from flogging them angrily in case they refuse his requests are the same as those of a pious Christian, who, if his prayers are not answered, says to his revered Creator:  “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven,” and humbly prostrates himself.  And if emotions in the religious sphere are thus metamorphosed with ideas, why is it so unlikely that the sexual passion, too, should “suffer a sea change into something rich and strange?”

The existence of the wide-spread prejudice against the notion that love is subject to the laws of development, is owing to the fact that the comparative psychology of the emotions and sentiments has been strangely neglected.  Anthropology, the Klondike of the comparative psychologist, reveals things seemingly much more incredible than the absence of romantic love among barbarians and partly civilized nations who had not yet discovered the nobler super-sensual fascinations which women are capable of exerting.  The nuggets of truth found in that science show that every virtue known to man grew up slowly into its present exalted form.  I will illustrate this assertion with reference to one general feeling, the horror of murder, and then add a few pages regarding virtues relating to the sexual sphere and directly connected with the subject of this book.

MURDER AS A VIRTUE

The committing of wilful murder is looked on with unutterable horror in modern civilized communities, yet it took eons of time and the co-operation of many religious, social, and moral agencies before the idea of the sanctity of human life became what it is now when it might be taken for an instinct inherent in human nature itself.  How far it is from being such an instinct we shall see by looking at the facts.  Among the lowest races and even some of the higher barbarians, murder, far from being regarded as a crime, is honored as a virtue and a source of glory.

An American Indian’s chief pride and claim to tribal honor lies in the number of scalps he has torn from the heads of men he has killed.  Of the Fijian, Williams says (97): 

“Shedding of blood is to him no crime, but a glory.  Whoever may be the victim—­whether noble or vulgar, old or young, man, woman, or child—­whether slain in war or butchered by treachery, to be somehow an acknowledged murderer, is the object of a Fijian’s restless ambition.”

The Australian feels the same irresistible impulse to kill every stranger he comes across as many of our comparatively civilized gentlemen feel toward every bird or wild animal they see.  Lumholtz, while he lived among these savages, took good care to follow the advice “never have a black fellow behind you;” and he relates a story of a squatter who was walking in the bush with his black boy hunting brush monkeys, when the boy touched him on the shoulder from behind and said, “Let me go ahead.”  When the squatter asked why he wished to go before him, the native answered, “Because I feel such an inclination to kill you.”