“of admiring emotion, produced by the contemplation of beauty, these people seem incapable; while they remain unmoved by the wondrous loveliness with which they are everywhere surrounded....  The mind of the Fijian has hitherto seemed utterly unconscious of any inspiration of beauty, and his imagination has grovelled in the most vulgar earthliness.”

Sentimentalists have therefore erred in ascribing to the Fijian cannibals cleanliness as a virtue.  They have erred also in regard to several other alleged refinements they discovered among these tribes.  One of these is the custom prohibiting a father from cohabiting with his wife until the child is weaned.  This has been supposed to indicate a kind regard for the welfare and health of mother and child.  But when we examine the facts we find that far from being a proof of superior morality, this custom reveals the immorality of the husband, and makes an assassin of the wife.  Read what Williams has to say (154): 

“Nandi, one of whose wives was pregnant, left her to dwell with a second.  The forsaken one awaited his return some months, and at last the child disappeared.  This practice seemed to be universal on Vanua Levu—­quite a matter of course—­so that few women could be found who had not in some way been murderers.  The extent of infanticide in some parts of this island reaches nearer to two-thirds than half.”

Williams further informs us (117) that “husbands are as frequently away from their wives as they are with them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly at home.”  He does not comment on this, but Seeman (191) and Westermarck (151) interpret the custom as indicating Fijian “ideas of delicacy in married life,” which, after what has just been said, is decidedly amusing.  If Fijians really were capable of considering it indelicate to spend the night under the same roof with their wives, it would indicate their indelicacy, not their delicacy.  The utterly unprincipled men doubtless had their reasons for preferring to stay away from home, and probably their great contempt for women also had something to do with the custom.

HOW CANNIBALS TREAT WOMEN

In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from participation in worship.  “Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all.”  In many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,

“as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor, and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has finished.  In youth she is the victim of lust, and in old age, of brutality.”

Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their choice.  “I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both under fifteen years of age.”  Such of the young women as are acquainted with foreign ways envy the