In Bengal and Assam alone, which form but a small corner of this vast country, the aborigines are divided into nearly sixty distinct races, differing from each other in various ways, as American tribes do.  They have not been described by as many and as careful observers as our American Indians have, but the writings of Lewin, Galton, Rowney, Man, Shortt, Watson and Kaye, and others supply sufficient data to enable us to understand the nature of their amorous feelings.

“WHOLE TRACTS OF FEELING UNKNOWN TO THEM”

Lewin gives us the interesting information (345-47) that with the Chittagong hill-tribes

“women enjoy perfect freedom of action; they go unveiled, they would seem to have equal rights of heritage with men, while their power of selecting their own husband is to the full as free as that of our own English maidens.”

Moreover, “in these hills the crime of infidelity among wives is almost unknown; so also harlots and courtesans are held in abhorrence amongst them.”

On reading these lines our hopes are raised that at last we may have come upon a soil favorable to the growth of true love.  But Lewin’s further remarks dispel that illusion: 

“In marriage, with us, a perfect world springs up at the word, of tenderness, of fellowship, trust, and self-devotion.  With them it is a mere animal and convenient connection for procreating their species and getting their dinner cooked.  They have no idea of tenderness, nor of the chivalrous devotion that prompted the old Galilean fisherman when he said ’Give ye honor unto the woman as to the weaker vessel,’ ...  The best of them will refuse to carry a burden if there be a wife, mother, or sister near at hand to perform the task.” “There are whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling, which are unknown to them.”

PRACTICAL PROMISCUITY

One of the most important details of my theory is that while there can be no romantic love without opportunity for genuine courtship and free choice, nevertheless the existence of such opportunity and choice does not guarantee the presence of love unless the other conditions for its growth—­general refinement and altruistic impulses—­coexist with them.  Among the Chittagong hill-tribes these conditions—­constituting “whole tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling”—­do not coexist with the liberty of choice, hence it is useless to look for love in our sense of the word.  Moreover, when we further read in Lewin that the reason why there are no harlots is that they “are rendered unnecessary by the freedom of intercourse indulged in and allowed to both sexes before marriage,” we see that what at first seemed a virtue is really a mark of lower degradation.  Some of the oldest legislators, like Zoroaster and Solon, already recognized the truth that it was far better to sacrifice a few women to the demon of immorality than to expose them