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_ In the chapter on Personal Beauty I endeavored to show that if savages who live near the sea or river are clean, it is not owing to their love of cleanliness, but to an accident, bathing being resorted to by them as an antidote to heat, or as a sport. This applies particularly to the Melanesian and Polynesian inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, whose chief pastimes are swimming and surf riding. Thomas Williams, in his authoritative work on Fiji and the Fijians, makes some remarks which entirely bear out my views:
"Too much has been said about the cleanliness of the
natives. The lower classes are often very dirty.... They ...
seldom hesitate to sink both cleanliness and dignity in what
they call comfort".
We are therefore not surprised to read on another page (97) that
"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:
"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 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 and Westermarck 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. _
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