The list includes Australians, many Indians, from the low Brazilians to the advanced Iroquois, Aleuts, Eskimos, Fijians, Samoans, Caroline Islanders, natives of New Caledonia, New Guinea, New Britain, New Hebrides, the Malay Archipelago, Wild tribes of India, Kamchadales, Ostiaks, Kirghiz, Mongolians in general, Arabs, Egyptians, Hebrews, natives of Madagascar, many Kaffir tribes, negroes of the Gold Coast, Senegambians, Bechuanas, and a great many other Africans, etc.

Twelve pages of Westermarck’s chapter on the Liberty of Choice are devoted to peoples among whom not even a son is, or was, allowed to marry without the father’s consent.  The list includes Mexicans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Hindoos, Germans, Celts, Russians, etc.  In all these cases the daughters, of course, enjoyed still less liberty of disposing of their hand.  In short, the argument against Darwin and Westermarck is simply overwhelming—­all the more when we look at the numbers of the races who do not permit women their choice—­the 400,000,000 Chinese, 300,000,000 Hindoos, the Mohammedan millions, the whole continent of Australia, nearly all of aboriginal America and Africa, etc.

A drowning man clings to a straw.  “In Indian and Scandinavian tales,” Westermarck informs us,

“virgins are represented as having the power to dispose of themselves freely.  Thus it was agreed that Skade should choose for herself a husband among the Asas, but she was to make her choice by the feet, the only part of their persons she was allowed to see.”

Obviously the author of this tale from the Younger Edda had more sense of humor than some modern anthropologists have.  No less topsy-turvy is the Hindoo Svayamvara or “Maiden’s Choice,” to which Westermarck alludes (162).  This is an incident often referred to in epics and dramas.  “It was a custom in royal circles,” writes Samuelson, “when a princess became marriageable, for a tournament to be held, and the victor was chosen by the princess as her husband.”  If the sarcasm of the expression “Maiden’s Choice” is unconscious, it is all the more amusing.  How far Hindoo women of all classes were and are from enjoying the liberty of choice, we shall see in the chapter on India.

X. SEPARATION OF THE SEXES

I have given so much space to the question of choice because it is one of exceptional importance.  Where there is no choice there can he no real courtship, and where there is no courtship there is no opportunity for the development of those imaginative and sentimental traits which constitute the essence of romantic love.  It by no means follows, however, that where choice is permitted to girls, as with the Dyaks, real love follows as a matter of course; for it may be prevented, as it is in the case of these Dyaks, by their sensuality,