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Fear aittd- 
 Conventionality 
 
 By 
 Elsie Clews Parsons, Ph.D. 
 
 Author of 
 "The Family," "The Old-Fashioned Woman," etc. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York and London 
 
 Zbc Iknlckctbockex pxcee 
 
 1914 
 
Copyright, 1914 
 
 BY 
 
 ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS 
 
 Ube Itnfcfterboclter |>rc8a, "ftcw Bort 
 
ALL WHO say: 
 
 \ "human nature is the same the world over 
 
PREFACE 
 
 J" • 
 QO wont are we by way of disclaimer to call a d 
 
 ^ man in a fit of temper or lust a beast or a >-^ 
 
 savage that likenesses of another kind between us j 
 
 and other creatures, essential likenesses, too, we "§ 
 
 overlook. Like other expressions of racial pride, 'S 
 
 this particular trick of castigation dulls our obser- .J 
 
 vation, and even leads us astray ; for is it not in our 
 
 reputed virtues rather than in our crying vices ^ y 
 
 that we most resemble our so-called inferiors, o 
 
 beast or savage, in our orderly habits rather than (> 
 
 in our lapses? Are not we all of us extremely "^ 
 
 conservative and usually far more staid than 
 
 passionate? To all of us, to the animal, to the 
 
 savage, and to the civilized being few experiences ;^1 ^- ^ 
 
 are as imcomfortable or painful, as disquieting or " ^'^ 
 
 fearful, as the call to innovatel Adaptations we all 
 
 of us dislike or hate. We dodge or shirk them as ^^' 
 
 best we may. And we have protected ourselves .vV\^;^ 
 
 against having to make them as well as we could. . 
 
 Our safeguards are variously known as "instincts," -4^.^ 
 
VI Preface 
 
 "personal habits," techniques, economies, cus- 
 toms, conventionalities. 
 
 In all of these activities — ^among men at least — 
 
 of animals we know too little to speak — there has 
 
 been of course from time to time some conscious 
 
 ^^^■" adaptation; but as systems of conduct they are 
 
 nJ^-if' for the most part, I think, unconscious* activities, 
 
 ^'^-\ , the outcome of what is perhaps vaguely but most 
 
 ^L generally called instinct.- Moreover the average 
 
 TfT*/ man shifts the effort of making the more or less 
 
 inevitable adaptation upon the expert, taking to 
 
 himself the r61e of imitation, a r61e of instinct. 
 
 /^ ^.i.'i Into an analysis of instinct I may not go. In this 
 
 '/'^y study I have to indicate some of the ways in which 
 
 *../•' dread of novelty, of the unlike or the unusual, has 
 
 entered into social hfe; how much our fear of 
 
 having to change our habits has affected them. 
 
 . ^j' I To the intolerance or conflict bom of this fear or 
 
 ^^ ^ dread I shall but incidentally refer. 
 
 j?"^.,.) Thi^jiread or apprehensiveness is both intensi- 
 
 V'c^*^ fied and rendered conspicuous thanks to another 
 
 7^^ instinctive feeling, our instinct of gregariousness. 
 
 i*»Y-~ Our longing for the habitual is continually im- 
 
 i.Ut>A' " perilled by our longing for one another. For what 
 
 . , is as likely to interfere with our habits as the 
 
 ^^i^i^^i * Cp. Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man^ pp. 221, 228, 
 
 ,r /,/.^/, -New York, 1911. 
 
Preface 
 
 vu 
 
 habits of others? Moreover it is personality 
 which most influences personality, a fact curiously 
 more apparent in savage philosophy than in ours.* 
 But the evasiveness induced throughout society 
 by this feature of personality even the modem 
 philosopher has noted. "Does it not seem as if 
 man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded 
 nothing so much as a full rencontre front to 
 front with his fellow?'* queries the great transcen- 
 dentalist. ' 
 
 That we may gratify both our desire for_ com- . ^ 
 panionship and our desire to be let alone or rather 
 to go our own gait it is of paramount importance ^^^^ 
 that the personality and habits of others should be ^Jniy 
 like ours. Inevitably different, truly or supposi- 
 titiously, because of differences of age or sex or 
 environment, the best we can do, we feel,t is to set 
 up barriers between us/ 
 
 If these social barriers are to remain effectual, it 
 is necessary that the habits they safeguard remain 
 steadfast. For the sake of uniformity the re- 
 
 * Fear of personal contacts is undisguised in the savage. He 
 is afraid of them because they suggest the unknown of which he is j 
 
 ever afraid, because they offer opportunities to work magic 
 against him, because through them he may "catch" the un- 
 desirable qualities of others. 
 
 t Is it necessary for me to state that throughout this analysis 
 collective feeling or action is never assumed to be purposeful or 
 dehberative? ^/ . - Q G /^ . . ' « 
 
viii Preface 
 
 striction of personality within the bounds of these 
 habits is also urgent. Hence our insistence that 
 the individual act invariably in conformity with 
 his or her sex, age, class, caste, or nationality, with 
 his or her set part in society. Hence our intoler- 
 ance of effeminacy or mannishness, of precocious- 
 ness or immaturity, of the unladylike or the 
 boorish, of inhospitality, of a lack of esprit de 
 corps'^OT patriotism. Hence our suspicion of a 
 vagabond and in part our contempt for a derelict ; 
 hence the bitterness of our persecution of rebels or 
 minorities, so much more dangerous to our peace of 
 mind than the outlander, however hostile, or than 
 nature, however catastrophic. "Certain forms 
 which all people comply with, and certain arts 
 which all people aim at, hide in some degree the 
 truth* and give a general exterior resemblance to 
 almost everybody."^ Lord Chesterfield is prob- 
 ably referring to the usages peculiar to the "polite 
 society" of his day,t but is it not along the same 
 lines of conformity or in view of them that many 
 of our wider social forms are drawn, such so-called 
 institutions as the "laws" of hospitality, caste, 
 marriage, the club, the family? 
 
 * Or personality, let us say. 
 
 t That it was closer in essentials to savage society than is our 
 own contemporaneous society our study, I trust, will suggest. 
 
Preface 
 
 IX 
 
 The principle of these institutions is one of 
 grouping or classification. They bring together 
 the like and separate the unHke. Or when for 
 utilitarian or other reasons separation is imprac- 
 ticable, by consistently treating the unlike as re- 
 presentatives of a class and nothing else, by giving 
 them a status, the status of sex, of guest or host, of 
 superior or inferior rank, of wife or husband, of 
 member of a group, a family group, an age group, 
 an occupation group, a local group, etc., in other 
 words by strictly classifying them, they hold them 
 aloof or raise up barriers against them. Applied 
 to the more homogeneous, this classificatory 
 method has also the advantage of precluding any 
 encroachment of personality. It is only as one 
 of the group that you meet its other members, 
 concealing from them whatever in you is not 
 characteristic of the group,* whatever is erratic, 
 changeable, changing, not open to classification, 
 in short whatever is personal. 
 
 And so classificatory institutions plan for rela- 
 tionships which will satisfy naturally incompatible 
 tendencies, our gregariousness, and our bent to 
 routine. They do their best too to preclude inter- 
 
 * It must be because of this concealment that the curious charge 
 of insincerity is so often made against conventionality. It is 
 indeed an extraordinary charge to bring against what is intrinsi- 
 cally so primitive, deep-rooted, and unassumed. 
 
X Preface 
 
 ferences with either tendency. With the nature 
 itself of the interference they preclude, they are 
 primarily not concerned, if concerned at all. 
 That is outside their task. Whatever is indi- 
 vidualistic or whatever is likely to blur or break 
 down habit or custom the institutionaHzed accoimt 
 a social violation — a crime, an immorality, an 
 indignity, an act of selfishness or rudeness, a lack 
 of consideration or respect, bad manners. It is a 
 crime to marry your cousin if your group is ex- 
 ogamous ; endogamous, it is immoral not to marry 
 her. Not to be a polygynist in a polygynous 
 society may be a piece of selfishness to your wife; 
 but to be one under monogamy is treating her, 
 she thinks, with indignity. In very many places 
 not to turn your back on your mother-in-law is the 
 height of disrespect; in other places paying no 
 attention to her is a lack of consideration. To pay 
 attention to any woman, even to look at a lady, is 
 conduct imbecoming a gentleman wherever the 
 sexes keep much apart. Generally to treat a 
 woman as if she were a man, a "social superior" 
 as if an equal, a senior as if a contemporary, a 
 guest as if a member of the family, are all seri- 
 ous enough confusions of social distinctions to be 
 called at least bad manners. 
 
 Calling tmusual behaviour immannerly is, we 
 
Preface 
 
 XI 
 
 
 all know, a peculiarly effective way of snubbing the 
 social rebel. No one wants to be considered a 
 boor.y^But it is by calling names, by opprobrium, 
 at any rate, that we often try to preclude an attack /\* 
 upon our institutions or to justify our dread of 
 such an outrage.]) It is one of the ways in which we 
 are ever rationalizing our customs, rationalizing 
 them, it would appear, in order to preserve them. 
 But when in spite of preservatives they show 
 signs, as many of them do to-day, of disintegrating, 
 does it not behoove us to view them historically, 
 to appreciate their origins and their underlying 
 meanings? Whether conservative or iconoclastic, 
 should we not know at least what we are about? 
 
 To this end study of existing institutions or 
 customs should not be carried on, it seems to me, 
 exclusively on the current scientific theory that 
 they are merely rationalized relics of the past, but 
 far more on the popular theory that human nature 
 has changed little if at all and that characteristic 
 feelings and ideas are for ever finding re-expression. 
 The survival theory has had great vogue of late in 
 cultivated circles, but it is apt like any new key to 
 be tried on locks it does not quite fit. 
 
 To the sophisticated individualist the survival 
 theory is ever a comfort, an entirely satisfactory 
 pass-key. It enables him to conform or to appear 
 
xii Preface 
 
 to conform to the conventionalities he fails to ad- 
 mire without losing his self-respect. Because he 
 sees through them, he feels unbound by them. 
 Realities in the past to all perhaps, realities in the 
 present to the undisceming, to him they are a mere 
 convenience, often, he says, a protection. They 
 smooth his path. **Mere forms," are you not 
 exaggerating their import, denying your sense of 
 humour perhaps, or your class, in taking them so 
 seriously? he is more than likely to prick into you. 
 ** Isn't ease under their conventionalities charac - 
 teristic of truly cultivated persons? As for the 
 others aren't they well enough off, knowing no 
 better?" Shall we meet his query with a figure 
 suggested by his own? To motorists trolley cars 
 are of course a protection. The people who use 
 them leave the roads comparatively imimpeded. 
 Any special joy or sense of adventure in travelling 
 by trolley, to be sure, is rare, and the chances for 
 enjoyment and for seeing the world are better on 
 the whole in a motor car. And yet were the 
 question to arise of making the pleasanter or more 
 adventuresome mode of locomotion available to 
 all, it is quite possible that considerable opposition 
 would appear, opposition not only from the trolley 
 companies and the aristocrats of travel but from 
 the habitues of the trolley line themselves. Trolley- 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 ing is so much safer than motoring. These ques- 
 tions of communication or transportation are after 
 all, whether physical or social, questions of demo- 
 cracy, howbeit of a kind of democracy with 
 which the merely political democrat has no great 
 familiarity. 
 
 In the following discussions more will be said 
 about safety devices than about the dangers 
 apprehended, about conventionalities than about 
 fear. Nor will I care to press in detail the theory 
 that conventional ity o f a certain type is ever 
 prompted by fear.f Conv entionality rests upon an "Sy- 
 apprehensive state of mind,* jDut it would be 
 grotesque to try to trace particular conventional- 
 ities to particular fears and it would lead one into 
 endless absurdities. I do not take a man's arm to 
 go out to dinner, for example, because I am afraid 
 of tripping over the threshold or falling down 
 stairs, or even, in acknowledgment of weakness, as 
 a gesture of propitiation. But by taking his arm '^ f^ch 
 I do raise up an imperceptible kind of barrier be- 
 tween us, a barrier covertly soothing to the sense ^, 
 of disquiet, extremely slight in this circumstance ^/'''2' 
 of course, the difference in sex arouses. As a .•'*«4^w*^ 
 gesture of sex, taking a man's arm'-^is a kind of ^"^^ ^ 
 
 * That is in society. Conventional ways in an individual do >6^ 4^ 
 not necessarily betoken, need I say, an apprehensive nature. s^J ^^ 
 
^^V IS »v^ \-'\ » ',4 Preface 
 
 inoculation against sex. It divorces sex from 
 
 personality, and to render sex impersonal is, at 
 
 '^' times at least, to render it unalarmingf- 
 
 ' T^t \ ^ ' Into all the conventionalities of sex I shall not go, 
 
 ■^^ choosing for discussion certain of the more marked 
 
 M**<- conventionalities between the sexes due to sex 
 apprehensiveness. And in general the conven- 
 tionalities dwelt upon will be those based upon 
 fear, the fear of unlike for unlike. Nor shall I 
 
 YK'tftv 
 
 I 
 
 ^^rf/. ^ consider all the customs arising out of such fears, 
 limiting myself to customs which modern society* 
 has begun to question and which in one stage of 
 that questioning it is pleased to call, sometimes 
 in justification, sometimes in condemnation, con- 
 ventionalities. 
 
 ^^Customs once generally questioned are apt to 
 ^ change or decay, in other words, conventionalities 
 are naturally short-lived .\ We might almost de- 
 fine them as customs in decomposition, more or 
 less conscious of their own decay. In fact, many 
 of the conventionalities we are to consider are 
 fast disappearing. For some of my readers there- 
 fore a certain amount of detailed description 
 
 * In this definition savage society is too much identified with its 
 customs to be conventional. Conventionalities are to the life of 
 custom what myths are, it has been argued, to the religious life. 
 Both myths and conventionalities indicate a breaking down in 
 the sense of participation. Cp. L6vy-Bruhl, L., Les Fonctions 
 MenkUes dans les Societes InferieureSf pp. 434 sq. Paris, 1910. 
 
Preface 
 
 XV 
 
 seemed necessary. For their sake I hope to beu£ '^. 
 forgiven if to the more conventionally minded ll "^"^^f 
 seem at times too expository or too explicitr '^^ .^w ■ 
 
 " Why in view of their imminent disappearance oi^Zui 
 bestow so much attention upon them?" I may be '^SxWc 
 asked. "Why not take their decease for granted 
 and pass on?" It is a query implying too great a 
 doubt of the value of ethnology in general, or let 
 us say of science, to be met here. But to the 
 reader of ethnological bias may I say that I trust 
 this study will be a contribution, however humble, 
 to his understanding of society. 
 CTFear of change is a part of the state of fear man 
 has ever Uved in but out of which he has begun to 
 escape. Civilization mig ht be defined indeed as 
 "the steps in his escapeT\ What he now calls con- 
 ventionality is that "part of his system of pro- 
 tection against change he has begun to examine 
 and, his fear lessening, even to forego. If the fol- 
 lowing discussions are found to substantiate this 
 sociological theory they will serve their purpose — 
 or a part of it. 
 
 E, C. P^. 
 
 New York, 
 November, 1914. 
 
 ^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface .... 
 
 vicJUfcl-H"ON NOT Taking to Strangers 
 
 "^ L 
 
 II. — Travelers .... 
 
 III. — Hospitality: The Guest 
 
 IV. — Hospitality: The Host . 
 
 V. — Introductions and Disinfectant 
 Rites .... 
 
 VI.— Caste 
 
 VII. — A Postscript on Chivalry 
 
 VIII. — Acquaintances 
 
 IX. — Presents .... 
 
 X. — Calling 
 
 XI. — Entertaining .... 
 
 XII. — Between the Sexes 
 
 XIII. — Marriage .... 
 
 xvii 
 
 PAGB 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 19 
 
 34 
 
 44 
 55 
 72 
 78 
 91 
 97 
 107 
 
 119 
 136 
 
xviii Contents 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIV. — In the Family 
 
 155 
 
 XV. — Age-Classes .... 
 
 176 
 
 XVI. — Concerning Ghosts and Gods 
 
 197 
 
 K:VII. — An Unconventional Society . 
 
 205 
 
 References .... 
 
 . 219 
 
 Index 
 
 235 
 
Fear and Conventionality 
 
Fear and Conventionality 
 
 ON NOT TAKING TO STRANGERS 
 
 /^UR ways are always more or less endangered, 
 ^^ we think, by the Stranger, for his habits 
 or customs differ, we suspect, from ours; probably 
 he has, as it is said in a restricted sense in civiliza- 
 tion, different standards of living. Against him 
 we are therefore apt to safeguard ourselves. When 
 we can, we avoid him. We stay away or we run 
 away from him or we keep him away from us. 
 
 "I don't want to go there," demurs a son or a 
 daughter. "I don't know any of those fellows," 
 — ^'I don't know the other girls; I won't have a 
 good time." '*A Fijian cannot be comfortable," 
 we are told, "with a stranger at his heels"*; and 
 will not an acquaintance sometimes tell us that 
 
 ♦Williams, Th., Fiji and the Fijians, i, 133. London, 1858. 
 Because he lives ever in fear of his life, writes Williams; but his 
 fear of the stranger may be, I surmise, more general. 
 
 I 
 
2 /. : : ^ :5'^fkt:' )Atid C^nfventionality 
 
 he or she takes not easily to strangers or does 
 not like to meet them? Have we not all known 
 persons too shy their life long to go with pleasure 
 "into society '7 To feel at ease in any society 
 is a mark of the caste of whom gallantry is de- 
 manded. But even a gentleman, if he actually 
 knows something against a stranger, perhaps 
 that he is an abolitionist or an ex-convict, an 
 I. W. W. or a militant suffragist, may "refuse to 
 meet" him. He would not be seen with him or 
 shake his hand or sit down to table with him. 
 He gives him a wide berth. When he passes, a 
 gentleman or at any rate a lady will look the 
 other way. 
 
 "Our immediate impulse may be to look the 
 other way when any person at whom we have 
 been looking becomes aware of us," remarks Wil- 
 liam James' of a common experience. Staring, 
 we say, is impolite. And, unless we are actresses 
 or social leaders, for no reason we can express^ we 
 resent being stared at. Even the tourist minds 
 it. Looking at a person's face, says a Chinaman* 
 shows pride. Not even the Son of Heaven loc%s 
 at a person "above his collar." "The ruler of 
 a state looks at him a little lower, a great officer, 
 on a line with his heart," and five paces away an 
 ordinary officer does not look at him at all. * 
 
On Not XaKin^ to Strangers 3 
 
 On the other hand, to look a stranger in the 
 eye is sometimes taken to be a test of character 
 or of gentle breeding — when it is not black 
 magic* John Trott, the typical English boor, 
 is described by Lord Chesterfield as never look- 
 ing people in the face, and many a child besides 
 Lord Chesterfield's little godson ^ has to be taught 
 to look at the person he shakes hands with or 
 addresses. 
 
 "Who spekithe to the in any maner place, 
 Rudely, cast not thyn ye adowne. 
 But with a sadde chiere loke hym in the face."* 
 
 Nor is it only English children who cast down their 
 eyes or look askance at the stranger. The Aki- 
 kuyus, a vigorous tribe immigrant in British East 
 Africa, call the tribe of timid dwarfs they dis- 
 possessed Mai tho ma chi-d-na, "the people that 
 look at you as a child would." ^ On Dr. Felkin's 
 first appearance in the Court of Uganda, so fright- 
 ened were the royal children by his white face that 
 they rushed away. 
 
 Even less than a black face causes our children 
 sometimes to rush away and hide from the new- 
 
 * Simple people, as we know, often carry charms against the 
 evil eye. Natives of Borneo have been known to fear that 
 Europeans by looking at them would make them ill. (Crawley, 
 E., The Mystic Rose, p. 114. London and New York, 1902.) 
 
4 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 comer. When Byron was a boy he used to jump 
 out of the drawing-room window to escape callers. ^ 
 We know grown-ups "whose first impulse when 
 the doorbell rings, or a visitor is suddenly an- 
 nounced, is to scuttle out of the room so as not to 
 be *caught.*"7 So fearful of strangers are some 
 of the timid jungle tribes of India that the mere 
 sight of one puts to flight a whole community.* 
 When the Regent of Java paid a visit with Dutch 
 officials to the capital of the Baduwis in the 
 almost inaccessible mountains of the island, all 
 the people fled the place never to return. ' While 
 digging up a prehistoric community house in New 
 Mexico, I one day asked the Pueblo Indian at 
 work with me why his ancestors had moved 
 away from the place. "Because they knew the 
 White Men were coming,** he naively answered, 
 betraying his own point of view in being so 
 well satisfied that his answer was adequate. 
 The very primitive Vedda of Ceylon once* traded 
 with the Sinhalese on a strictly credit basis. 
 Putting down his share in the deal somewhere on 
 the edge of his tribal land, the Vedda trader 
 would return in a few days to get the axes and 
 
 * The "silent trade" is no longer practised, although the Veddas 
 still avoid strangers for everything but barter. (Seligmann, 
 C. G. and B. J., The Veddas, pp. 93-4. Cambridge, 191 1.) 
 
On Not TaKing to Strangers 5 
 
 arrow-points the unknown Sinhalese had left in 
 payment. '° 
 
 The Veddas elude not only their fellow island- 
 ers; they run away from their own ghosts, desert- 
 ing their cave homes whenever anyone in them 
 dies." Australian Blackfellows show their fear 
 of the dead in the same way, and so does many 
 another savage horde. Obviously, through their 
 new experiences, the dead have become alien .^' 
 to the living and formidable. Is it not mostly 
 for this reason that anyone, anywhere, is afraid 
 of ghosts, and does his best to avoid meeting 
 them? 
 
 Reassuring as running away from ghosts or 
 "total foreigners" or unexpected callers may be, ^ 
 
 flight in itself breaks down habits and^requires "n k 
 ne w adapta tions- — unless people are at any rate 
 nomadic or semi-nomadic. And even nomads 
 may return to once deserted spots — after the 
 danger is past, when the Stranger, living or dead, 
 is supposed to have departed.* 
 
 With a more settled way of living it is naturally 
 more convenient to keep the Stranger at a dis- 
 tance than to run away from him. On the theory 
 
 ♦But he is apt to remain. The fact that primitive nomads 
 (hunters and fishers in distinction to stockraisers) live in inacces- 
 sible places, in mountains or on islands, is evidence that he comes 
 to stay. 
 
6 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 that the intrusion of a White Man would cause 
 the death of their king, the Malagasy of Mahafly 
 closed the whole of their country to Europeans. ' * 
 When Speke was travelling in Central Africa, 
 the natives of one of the villages he wished to stop 
 at shut their doors against him, never before having 
 seen a White Man or such tin boxes as he carried. ' ^ 
 Recently on a stormy walk in Long Island a 
 "foreign bom American'* shut her door in my 
 face when I asked for shelter, a not uncommon 
 experience for the "Dago" tramp at the mercy 
 :i -L^fu of the New England housewife. In 1840 China 
 oJ* ^*^ excluded the British — forever. To-day the 
 '^'^''^ United States excludes the Chinese; Russia ex- 
 eludes Hebrews; Hayti, Syrians; Canada, Hindus. 
 And almost every society exorcises its ghosts — 
 after allowing them a reasonable time to depart 
 in, perhaps a few days, perhaps months or years.* 
 Sometimes ghosts are allowed to stay on inde- 
 finitely if they keep to the quarters assigned them, 
 but if they walk unscrupulously they are sure to 
 be laid. The live Stranger may be similarly 
 treated. To Calais early in the seventeenth 
 
 *The living are not always treated with equal consideration. 
 A year or two ago in enforcing its exclusion act retroactively, 
 Hayti refused to allow a Syrian resident who had been away 
 on business to land merely to close his house and wind up his 
 affairs. 
 
On Not TaKing to Strangers 7 
 
 century outsiders were admitted, but any 
 stranger *'of what Nation so-ever" who was 
 "taken walking by himself about the greene of 
 the towne'* was imprisoned until he paid a fine.'< 
 In the medieval city of Europe the Jew was segre- 
 gated in a pale; in Russia the ghetto is still extant 
 and the right of domicile is withheld from Jews 
 in more than three-fourths of the coimtry. Until 
 1858 they were kept from qualifying for the House 
 of Commons; in the United States clubs or hotels 
 may be closed to them or under the management 
 of a fashionable opera-house they may be kept off 
 the list of box-holders. Europeans and Americans 
 in the Chinese Treaty Ports have had to live in the 
 Foreign Concessions. In Uganda no European 
 was allowed to live anywhere in the country out- 
 side of the capital. ^^ In parts of the United 
 States negroes are still kept out of schools, tene- 
 ments, cars, voting booths, playhouses, and beach 
 pavilions. 
 
n 
 
 TRAVELLERS 
 
 TO go out among strangers, to be a man of the 
 world, to travel, has always taken more or 
 less courage and considerable inducements — wives, 
 treasure, slaves, foreign-made goods, foreign alli- 
 ances, the favours of the gods, lands to be claimed 
 or seas charted, a Golden Fleece, a Sacred Tomb, 
 a North-west Passage. Of couijse if, like raider or 
 sailor or crusader, or like the modem tourist, you 
 seek out only compatriots when you travel,* you 
 feel comparatively secure, a feeling they whose 
 business it is to exploit the tourist fully appreciate; 
 but a solitary stranger in a strange landf has 
 
 *"Most of the English who travel converse only with each 
 other," writes Lord Chesterfield. (Letter VIII.) Travelling 
 North Americans also flock together, except when one suspects 
 the other of being "common." But even this suspicion is not 
 entertained by the hypergregarious Cook's tourist. 
 
 t Particularly a woman. In primitive groups women rarely 
 if ever travel alone. Even in the United States there is a pre- 
 judice against employing women as commercial travellers, and 
 not long ago in New York City certain hotels declined to take 
 in women travelling alone. On the other hand, savage women 
 
 8 
 
Travellers 9 
 
 ever had to have an adventurous spirit. Realiza- 
 tion of the perils he faces is apt to find ceremonial 
 expression. In his behalf sacrifices are offered 
 to the gods or prayers said or he is himself the 
 recipient of farewell gifts. He is provided with 
 amulets or letters of introduction or wished a 
 ''bon voyage'' or "good luck." As he sets off he 
 is on the lookout for omens, and often an unfavour- 
 able omen checks his start. There are days too, 
 he learns, when he had better not start at all — 
 Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday in the Soudan,' 
 Friday among us, and Friday, too, in Persia, 
 if western bound.* In Persia a kinsman holds a 
 Koran over a traveller's head as he crosses the 
 threshold.^ Elsewhere too he is "seen off." In 
 Northern Albania he is accompanied for a mile 
 or two on his journey by his relatives, returning 
 to them, on leave-taking, the gold and silver 
 
 are sometimes sent on dangerous ambassadorial missions on the 
 ground that they nm less risk of attack than men. It is fear of 
 the unusual, a fear greater in women I surmise than in men, 
 that has deterred women from travel rather than any definite 
 fear of attack. 
 
 **'0n Saturday and Monday, my brother, it is best not 
 to proceed towards the East. From the West, danger impends 
 on Sunday and Friday. On Tuesday and Wednesday beware 
 lest thy destiny leads thee towards the North. And when 
 Thursday's sun hath risen, never direct thy course to the South." 
 (Binning, R. B. M., A Journal of Ywo Years' Travel in Persia^ 
 Ceylon, etc., ii, 246. London, 1857.) 
 
lO Fear and Conventionality 
 
 earrings he has had to take from a jar of magic 
 water. ^ On setting out to the East Coast the 
 Wanyamwesi of the Soudan smear their cheeks 
 with a kind of meal porridge^ or else have their 
 medicine-men spit it over them, ^ just as before 
 going to Europe we might have our hair cut or 
 buy a "travelling suit.** No Moslem ever travels 
 without taking with him his grave clothes.* 
 "Does not travel itself e put in minde of the 
 slippemes, imcertainty and shortnesse of this 
 life?'* queries a Christian exponent of wayfaring 
 advantages. ^ 
 
 While the traveller is away, prayers are said 
 for his "safe return'* or charms performed. The 
 family of an Aeneze Arab may vow to place ostrich 
 feathers, on his return, on one of the poles of the 
 tent.'' "Guard him," prays the Christian, "from 
 the dangers of the sea, from sickness, from the vio- 
 lence of enemies, and from every evil to which he 
 may be exposed.** The Catholic friends of the 
 aeroplanist make their supplications for his safety 
 to Saint Anthony, richest of saints in the ex-voti 
 of grateful travellers. To the Goddess of Fire 
 and the Sacred Skulls the old men of the Ainu 
 
 * Wilson and Felkin, ii, 308. No doubt an exaggeration. 
 Cp. Burckhardt, J. L., Notes on the Bedouins and Wahdbys^ p. 160. 
 London, 1830. 
 
Travellers II 
 
 make libations of sake and renew their offerings 
 of willow shavings. "Oh, ye Gods," they pray, 
 "our sons have gone away ... we think of 
 them much, oh do ye watch over them and prosper 
 them . . . and bring them safely home." ^ 
 
 Back "safe and sound," the traveller is "met." 
 When a Blackfellow of some importance approaches 
 a camp, "the inmates close in with raised arms, 
 as if in defence; then the person of note rushes 
 at them, making a faint blow as if to strike them, 
 they warding it off with their shields ; immediately 
 after they embrace him and lead him into the 
 camp, where the women bring him food." ^ Some- 
 what like scenes of mock scrimmage m?.y be wit- 
 nessed among us at the landing of a Transatlantic 
 liner or on the arrival of trains from Albany, 
 let us say, or Washington. But even less distin- 
 guished travellers than English militants or French 
 actresses or American politicians are "met" to 
 be welcomed or congratulated. "I am glad you 
 got back safely," says the polite American to his 
 acquaintance returned from a trip abroad.* * ' Have 
 you journeyed in safety?" ask the Awemba, ex- 
 pecting the stereotyped answer: "Yes, God has 
 
 ♦"After a return from Europe," I read in an American book 
 on etiquette, "it is proper to call in person, or to leave a card." 
 {Manners and Social Usages, p. 7. New York and London, 1907.) 
 
12 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 spoken to us on the way."'° ''Kulika lutalo'^ *^I 
 congratulate you on your safe return," says one 
 M'ganda to another. '' AwOy' ** Thank you." 
 '' Kulika nyoy' "I congrattilate you very much." 
 
 To those who have been solicitous the returned 
 traveller makes presents — to the prayerful elders 
 in Japan among the Ainu, to his yutchin* among 
 the Dieri" of Australia, to friends and kindred 
 among us. Among us, although these souvenirs 
 of travel are still provided for in our customs regu- 
 lations, they are no longer a matter of course ; but 
 I remember the time when no one ever thought 
 of returning from abroad without a present for 
 every member of his family or household. One of 
 my acquaintances on her first " trip-to-Europe " 
 brought back a French hat to her cook. 
 
 Th e retu rned traveller has prestige. He is 
 given a public reception or feted in private. The 
 neighbours want to hear his yams — even if they do 
 not always believe them. His friends — if they 
 are sufficiently devoted — take an interest in the 
 photographs he has made or bought, or if they are 
 
 * A friend who collects presents for him while he is away. To 
 remember his promise to bring presents to his yutchin, a Dieri 
 traveller has a string of flax or human hair tied around his neck, 
 having no handkerchief to knot or ring to change to another 
 finger. 
 
Travellers 13 
 
 Ainu listen by the hour to the stories he chants 
 to them.'^ Among the Dieri after his news is 
 whispered to the relatives and friends sitting 
 around, it is repeated in a loud voice to the whole 
 camp.^^ Among us he is interviewed by news- 
 paper reporters and the public reads his travel 
 book. He is noted thereafter as a man who has 
 been around the world or who has visited its 
 remote or wild or holy places. 
 
 The traveller to holy places, the pilgrim , ac« 
 _£utesj£ecial^£restig^^jp^^ The Moslem who 
 has been to Mecca is entitled to wear a green 
 turban and tunic for the rest of his life'^ — has he 
 not compelled the gods by his pilgrimage to for- 
 give his sins and grant his requests? For like 
 reasons the medieval Christian who had reached 
 Jerusalem was venerated; — in those days to dis- 
 count the advantages of a pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Land one had to be as arrogant of soul as Frederick 
 the Second. To other lords of the earth pilgrimage 
 and even travel for secular ambitions have brought 
 prestige. Did not India add to Alexander's re- 
 putation, Gaul and England to Caesar's, Rome to 
 Alaric's, Africa and South America to Roosevelt's? 
 
 To the chief's forerunner, the medicine-man or 
 priest, travel is also one of the sources of prestige 
 he usually avails himself of. In savage tribes he 
 
14 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 is the foremost or only traveller; as a Buddhist 
 monk he was among the first to journey from India 
 to Alexandria, from China to India, or as a Catho- 
 lic friar from Europe to Tibet, to Japan, to the 
 New World. In Africa the Christian missionary 
 is still the first to shoulder the White Man*s bur- 
 den, and a year or so ago the Bab himself visited 
 the United States. 
 
 But the medicine-man goes even beyond the 
 ends of the earth. One of his greatest professional 
 assets is his story of his trip to Ghost-land, to the 
 Other World, to the Home of the Gods, or to the 
 Throne of God. And medicine-men almost al- 
 ways claim to have the power to travel away from 
 their own body and incarnate themselves in other 
 persons or in animals. Moreover they have only 
 to predict with assurance about their own exist- 
 ence after death, the boundary line of the Un- 
 known Country, to found a cult, sometimes tran- 
 sient, sometimes, as in Christianity, abiding. 
 
 To many peoples Ghost-land is a fixed place. 
 Ghosts are supposed either to linger about their 
 old haunts or to travel to a locality more or less 
 well mapped-out. Their life goes on with as 
 little break as possible.* Death is but a journey, 
 
 * This continuity theory of life after death probably accounts 
 in part for the comparative indifference to death of the peoples 
 
Travell 
 
 ers 15 
 
 and so like other wayfarers the dying expect to 
 have ceremonies performed for them to lessen 
 the embarrassments or dangers botmd to beset 
 them. A whale's tooth was put in the hand of a 
 Fijian to throw at a pandanus tree and thereby 
 assure the dispatch to him of his wife.'^ The 
 Greek was given a gold piece as a tip to 
 his ghostly ferryman. A pillow of soil from 
 Jerusalem is put under the encoffined head of a 
 Jew dying in Eastern Europe to save him from 
 rolling underground, afflicted by the angels, all 
 the way to Jerusalem, a journey taking forty 
 years. ' ^ In the coffin of a Yezidi Kurd are placed 
 silver and a stick wherewith to bribe or beat his 
 postmortem catechists into letting him into 
 Heaven.*^ Entombed with a Chinaman are a 
 miniature sedan chair of bamboo or paper, paper 
 models of chairmen, and paper money to pay them 
 with; and to furnish LH-in or a "passport for 
 travelling from this life to the next"* is a specialty 
 of Chinese priests. ' ' A viaticum is provided for the 
 
 who hold it. But even a believer in a religion preaching reward 
 and punishment after death can urge us to "prepare our life 
 ... to that last and heavenly pilgrimage by the custom of . . . 
 travels here on earth." (Coryat, i, 148.) 
 
 * Such a passport the Greek Church, it is said, once furnished 
 a deceased Russian grand duchess. (Parsons, Elsie Clews, The 
 Old- Fashioned Woman, p. 317. New York, 1913.) 
 
i6 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Catholic, and in Italy in the seventeenth century 
 it was his privilege to be buried in the cowl of a 
 Franciscan friar, it having the virtue, it was be- 
 lieved, of remitting a third part of his sins.*° 
 Masses are still said by Catholics to expedite the 
 journey of their beloved dead from Purgatory 
 to Paradise. Except in the most modem cults, 
 enough food and drink are almost always provided 
 at a funeral to last the departing spirit through 
 the beginning at least of his journey. 
 
 The way in which the dying set off is considered 
 almost everywhere important. In New Guinea 
 a dying man has to be propped up in a squatting 
 position, his hands lying in his lap.*' **I want 
 for nothing but to die in the correct way," said 
 Confucius.** Making a pious ending, dying 
 placidly, serene to the last, meeting death with a 
 smile, are auspicious and notable circumstances 
 to most Christian biographers. The fact that 
 indifference or apathy is the characteristic mood 
 at death they persistently overlook. Death- 
 bed scenes are essential, they think, to their 
 story. But in real life the dying are sup- 
 posed to be "seen off" too.* Neighbours and 
 
 * Except when the fear their departure excites has overwhelmed 
 other feelings. Then they are taken ceremonially out-of-doors 
 or borne away from home and sometimes left to die alone. Much 
 of corpse taboo is amply explained by dread of the unusual. 
 
Travellers 17 
 
 relatives* are sent for to gather around them 
 in prayer or for a last word, and great signifi- 
 cance attaches to their farewells or blessings. By 
 the Jews of the Near East they are given mes- 
 sages to carry to the patriarchs and the pro- 
 phets, and distinguished Rabbis are entrusted 
 with letters in their coffins to deceased friends. "^ 
 African potentates have had the habit of de- 
 spatching slaves to carry messages to their dead 
 forebears or to give them the latest mundane 
 news. 
 
 Like other travellers the dead have prestige. 
 Sometimes more attention is paid to them than 
 they ever received in life, and they arouse 
 deeper feelings of fear or affection or pity. 
 Their wishes are considered, their failings over- 
 looked or even respected. Particularly impressive 
 is he who sets off on the long journey of his 
 own will, because he merely wants a change. 
 To some communities a suicide appears so 
 potent a ghost that his coffin is nailed down or 
 stakes are driven through his corpse or he is de- 
 nied burial in consecrated ground. His act is 
 stirring or shocking — to those in the habit of liv- 
 
 * A Vedda who was not summoned to the death-bed of his 
 father-in-law would be as much put out at being overlooked as 
 one of us under like circumstances. (Seligmann, The Veddas, 
 P- 115.) 
 
1 8 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 ing — and he becomes the recipient of virulent 
 abuse or, more rarely, of unmeasured praise. The 
 lack of fear shown in his voluntary departure 
 may inspire admiration, a wondering, pitying, un- 
 certain kind of admiration. And yet has he not 
 shirked every conventionality of dying, alike in 
 theory and in practice? Has he not been incon- 
 siderate of those he leaves behind, sometimes to the 
 extent of not even taking leave of them? Js he 
 not taking a journey imcompelled-^byLxirxjum- 
 stance and without any very definite purpose, not 
 even giving the wonted assurance that he will be 
 back soon? — unless he has killed himself, as the 
 Chinaman sometimes does, the better to qualify 
 himself to take a revenge. 
 
 The feeling aroused in us by suicide, whether 
 admiration or antagonism, betrays the,attitude 
 of iear we take towards the Last Journey.^ 
 Only more intense, it is the same attitude adopted 
 in the past towards all journeying. It is because 
 of our apprehensiveness of the unknown besetting 
 travel and of the changes incident to it, that we 
 are so scrupulous to say good-bye and see people 
 off, that we are anxious until we see them again, and 
 that we congratulate them or perform ceremonies 
 of welcome on their return — on their return to the 
 certainties and stabilities of home. 
 
Ill 
 
 HOSPITALITY : THE GUEST 
 
 \\TELL aware of the attitude towards him of the 
 ^ * man who does not know him, an under- 
 standing traveller, a man of parts, will be adapt- 
 able. "When you are in Rome, do as the Romans 
 do," is a coimsel of protective colouration, as it 
 were. "A man of the world must, like the chame- 
 leon, be able to take every different hue," writes 
 Lord Chesterfield.* "To avoyde envye and to 
 keepe companye pleasauntlye with every man, 
 let him do whatsoever other men do,"^ is the 
 advice given to the ideal courtier. In courts 
 and out of them much of the etiquette of hos- 
 pitality is based indeed on the theory of a new- 
 comer's conformity. When Dr. Felkin appeared 
 one day in the royal court of Uganda with his 
 hair cut, King Mutesa was so flattered, f a shaven 
 
 * Letter XXX. None understood better the value of conform- 
 ity in the art of self -protection. 
 
 t On another occasion Felkin was less happy. That his guest 
 might be properly served the King ofiFered him the sum of eighteen 
 wives, Felkin declined the present. "Why not take them?" 
 
 19 
 
20 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 crown being a court fashion, that he sent his guest 
 a goat.'* It was quite natural for Batchelor's 
 Ainu hosts to ask him to seal his brotherhood 
 with them by having his ears pierced like theirs 
 for a piece of red flannel. ^ It was natural too 
 for the new-found friends of Zeyneb Hanoum, 
 the desenchanVee who escaped from Constantinople 
 to Paris, to send her hats. "Hardly a day passes 
 but someone sends us a hat/* she writes.-* She 
 had twenty. 
 
 A guest is expected not to boast of his own gods, 
 or at least not to decry his host's — a breach oi 
 hospitality sometimes greatly to the discredit oi 
 the missionary. Were he more mannerly he 
 would be more reticent and might even, like othei 
 guests, go to church with the family* and join in 
 family prayersf and in saying whatever grace 
 
 asked the King. "Haven't you any women in your country?* 
 "Yes, but we allow only one wife, and \fre do not make present' 
 of women wholesale." Then the King fell into a rage. "Yot 
 come here and say all men are brothers," he cried, "and thai 
 your God loves us as well as you, and yet you think yourselvei 
 too good to live as we do. Ugh!" (Wilson and Felkin, ii, 17.] 
 
 * "A mannerly guest will cheerfully accompany the family tc 
 their church, even tho' it be of a different faith from her own 
 and she will listen respectfully to the sermon, and refrain fron 
 ungracious criticism of the choir or the minister." (Morton 
 A. H., Etiquette, pp. 123-4. Philadelphia, 191 1.) . 
 
 t If the hour of family worship "is mentioned to guests, theii 
 presence is obligatory." {The Complete Hostess f p. 284. Nev 
 York, 1906.) 
 
Hospitality t TKe Gxiest 21 
 
 was usual among those he was visiting. Even his 
 colleague in civilization waits to be asked to say 
 grace when he is dining out.* And as a rule he is 
 careful not to introduce religious topics at the 
 dinner table. In fact, to be quite safe, no man- 
 nerly guest will mention religion at all.f Use 
 "no freedom with others about their religious 
 sentiments," wrote Dr. Gregory to his daughters.* 
 Politics we know is also at times an eschewed 
 topic of conversation. These rules of polite inter- 
 course are becoming somewhat out of date in the 
 United States, perhaps because in this country 
 neither church nor state excites enough interest 
 as a rule to provoke heated discussion and to be, 
 therefore, a dangerous subject of conversation. 
 Still their critics are apt to show enough consid- 
 eration for an interlocutor to preface criticism 
 with: "You are not a Catholic, are you?" — "I 
 don't know what your politics are, but," etc. 
 The Chinese rule on the whole seems safer, ^f^ 
 the host have not put some question, the visitor 
 should not begin the conversation." ^ 
 
 A well-behaved guest should be very careful 
 
 * Asking an ecclesiastical guest to say grace is nowadays a 
 striking instance, by the way, of how hard a host will try to make 
 a guest feel at home. 
 
 t Nor uninvited attend family prayers. His presence "would 
 be an intrusion." {The Complete Hostess, p. 284.) 
 
22 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 in making known his wants or tastes. They may 
 be unlike those of his host, and his host may 
 therefore be disconcerted by not being able to 
 provide for them. It is a little hard on your 
 hostess to tell her you never can sleep in a light 
 room when her house is neither built nor fur- 
 nished to shut out the sun. Greatly mortified 
 must have been the hostess of the guest who 
 exclaimed when the roast was offered to her: 
 "My grandmother Jones never could eat lamb, 
 and I never can."^ No guest should run the 
 risk of letting her hostess think that partiality 
 for a darkened bedroom or for French chops 
 or partridge is evidence on her part of a 
 superior taste. However tacit, _£on^)arisons_to 
 
 Jh^ -/iisad van ta gp nf a^ hoRt. s|inii1rl nfivPT hg_ 
 indulged in. 
 
 Obviously the considerate guest will eat or 
 drink whatever is set before him. **A guest 
 should not rinse his mouth with spirits till the 
 host has gone over all the dishes," prescribes 
 one of the Chinese classics.^ Whether hungry 
 or not, the Iroquois guest was boimd to taste 
 of every dish presented to him and say, ''Hz- 
 ne-d'-wehy'" "I thank you."^ In many other 
 circles in the United States a guest is expected 
 to taste at least of every dish served, par- 
 
Hospitality t THe Guest 23 
 
 ticularly the soup;* and dishes are pressed upon 
 him or as something " special*' called to his at- 
 tention. Having in self-preservation to decline 
 them, he will at least make elaborate excuses for 
 his failure of appetite. Scrupulous to avoid the 
 merest suggestion of criticism, he will take the 
 entire blame upon himself. To pointed ques- 
 tions, he says that he likes dark meat as well as 
 white, the well cooked as well as the underdonef; 
 he drinks his tea or coffee "just as it comes"; as 
 for his breakfast, "whatever you have will do for 
 me/' he genially responds. 
 
 "Bet prayse thi fare, wer-so-ever thou be, 
 Fore be it gode or be it badde, 
 Yu gud worth it muste be had."*° 
 
 Not to eat what is given to him may be impolitic 
 or even imprudent in a guest. Among the Steins, 
 a Shan tribe of Siam, unless a visitor eats all that 
 is set before him and drinks through his bamboo 
 tube out of the common cup, he is liable to be 
 knifed." There was a time when "challenged*' 
 
 * "If soup is helped first, take some, whether you like it or 
 not; ... sip a few spoonfuls, if you 'do no more." (Farrar, 
 Mrs. John, The Young Lady's Friend, p. 343. New York, 
 1841.) 
 
 t And yet it may be more polite "to make a choice, whether 
 you have a preference or not; because it is most agreeable to the 
 carver, to have the matter decided by you." (76., p. 344') 
 
24 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 at table to take wine no American guest would 
 dare decline. Even a lady was supposed to "ac- 
 cept the challenge graciously." "Choose one of 
 the wines named to you," she was told, "look full 
 at the gentleman you are to drink with, then drop 
 your eyes as you bow your head to him, and lift 
 the glass to your lips, whether you drink a drop 
 or not. If challenged a second time, accept, and 
 have a drop added to your glass, and bow as 
 before."" 
 
 In particulars tmrelated to the table a guest will 
 endeavour too not to disturb the family habits or 
 the household routine. He will "interfere as little 
 as possible with the regular avocations of the 
 family. " ' ^ He must * ' never be in the way. " ' ^ A 
 New Guinea guest is expected not to hang around 
 the circle of stones where his host lounges to gos- 
 sip. '^ Although an American guest "should aim 
 to feel and act as though the interests and pleasures 
 of the family were his own,"^^ he must not treat 
 the servants, he is told, or any of his host's things, 
 as if they belonged to him. ' ^ 
 
 Nor is a guest expected to ask questions as a 
 rule about the household machinery. It is sup- 
 posed in fact to be more or less invisible to him — 
 or shall we change the sex for a moment and say, to 
 her? Parts of the house she may never enter, and 
 
Hospitality's THe Guest 25 
 
 in general she must make her approach with care. 
 If possible she will inform her hostess in advance 
 of the hour of her arrival, knowing that her hostess 
 wishes not only to pay her the compliment of 
 meeting her but that no hostess likes to be taken 
 unexpectedly. Should she fail "to make the 
 train or boat by which she is expected, she should 
 at once wire or long-distance 'phone her hostess, 
 explaining the mishap, and suggesting that no 
 trouble be taken about hitching up to meet her, 
 but that she will endeavour to get to her friend's 
 house in a depot hack or hired conveyance."'* 
 But even where there are no postal or telegraph 
 or long-distance telephone facilities in the coun- 
 try, visitors are careful not to take their hosts 
 unaware. A Blackfellow would not think of 
 suddenly breaking in upon the privacy of the 
 horde he is about to visit. He warns it of his ar- 
 rival by building a fire or even a series of little 
 fires some distance off.''' Within sight of the 
 camp, he sits down waiting to be invited in.*** 
 Throughout the Orient, it is good manners to 
 send on your servant to annoimce your coming. 
 Among grandees heralds have ever been important 
 functionaries. 
 
 On entering a man's house or room a visitor 
 should also announce himself or let himself be an- 
 
26 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 nounced. We knock on the door or send in our 
 visiting card. As he approaches a M'ganda calls 
 out, "Abemuno mwemulit?'' **You of the place, 
 are you there P"^'' A quarter of a mile away from 
 an encampment a Vedda stops and shouts and 
 does not go on until an answering shout is heard. ^^ 
 Nearing a house an Ainu makes a prolonged 
 guttural sound — " he-he-he-he-hem. "^^ A China- 
 man raises his voice. ^^^ Nor would a Chinaman 
 go directly up the steps to his host. "I, so- 
 and-so," he says to the " officer of communication," 
 " earnestly wish to see him."^^ Even within the 
 house when about to enter the door, he knows 
 *'he must keep his eyes cast down," nor, having 
 to look up or down, should he turn his head.*** 
 
 A guest has to be careful in general about his 
 movements through the house. With us he is 
 expected to go through a doorway first, his host 
 holding back and sometimes saying, "After you" 
 or *'You first." In China he is invited to go 
 first, but he is expected to refuse firmly, and then 
 to enter together with his host. Having entered, 
 the host moves to the right to the steps on the 
 east and the guest to the left to the steps on the 
 west. "They then offer to each other the prece- 
 dence in going up, but the host commences first. 
 They bring their feet together on every step," 
 
Hospitality: THe G\iest 27 
 
 the host moving his right foot first, the guest his 
 left.*' A Comanche host is as offended if his 
 guest* does not pass through his lodge and take 
 the seat pointed out to him*^ as would be a China- 
 man if his guest did not sit facing the south'' 
 or a New England housewife if her visitor did not 
 come in at the front door and sit down in the 
 rocking-chair in the "parlor.'* 
 
 Of course guests are not expected to stray about 
 or explore. Visiting Blackfellows are required al- 
 ways to reach the place assigned them in the camp 
 by going behind the huts and not in front. 3** In 
 Santal houses the "stranger's seat" is outside the 
 door.^' Strangers are not allowed on one of the 
 verandahs of the Kakhyen tribesman's house,t 
 and when Parker was travelling in the Kakhyen 
 country with the British inspectors of the Burma- 
 Chinese boundary he was never invited into the 
 back region of the Kakhyen house and to his 
 chagrin he could get no idea of what went on 
 there. Mrs. Farrar advised young ladies to save 
 the domestics of their hostess unnecessary steps by 
 
 *The Eskimo guest is similarly conducted by his host to the 
 place set for him. (Egede, Hans, A Description of Greenland, p. 
 126. London, 1818.) 
 
 t For a stranger to enter by the back door would be not only 
 very impolite, but an outrage upon the tutelary spirit of the 
 house. (Colquhoun, ii, 348.) 
 
38 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 waiting on themselves providing their hostess had 
 "no objection" to guests entering her kitchen.^* 
 I have seen American housewives of a later 
 period show much annoyance at guests ** pok- 
 ing about" in their pantries — even when intro- 
 duced into them by younger members of the 
 family. 
 
 A modern nursery a guest enters only on invi- 
 tation, and very young members of the family 
 are apt at any rate to be secluded from guests. 
 I have been on week-end parties near New York 
 without learning even the number of the child- 
 ren in the family. Elsewhere a guest may be 
 kept in ignorance not only of the offspring of the 
 host but of his wife or wives. In Uganda, for 
 example, wives as well as children eat in private 
 when the head of the household is entertaining a 
 guest. ^^ The family life is in fact usually kept 
 away or protected from a guest — sometimes on 
 the plea, a valid plea too, that he is protected 
 from it. "Before an honored visitor we should 
 not shout even at a dog," reads the Li Ki. Nor 
 when declining food, the Chinese teaching on 
 hospitality continues, should one spit.^^ When 
 Blackfellows are hosts to a visiting hprde si- 
 lence reigns at night in the camp, for it would 
 be a breach of etiquette to indulge in the 
 
Hospitality s THe G\sest 29 
 
 usual night squabbles." "Company manners" 
 are "put on" for a guest. 
 
 Then he, or more particularly she, is "enter- 
 tained.*'* People are asked to "meet" herf — 
 perhaps the easiest of methods of keeping a 
 guest occupied and rendering her innocuous. 
 
 On the other hand a guest must be very 
 particular about bringing outsiders into the 
 family, particularly, I am told, if the hostess 
 is a woman of fashion.} At any rate for a 
 girl "to take the liberty of receiving a man with- 
 out asking permission of her hostess would be 
 tmpardonable."^^ Having given her permission, 
 a hostess will welcome her guest's caller, "but 
 after a little withdraw, on some pretext or other, 
 to an adjoining room, returning to take leave of 
 
 •"If the guest be a young girl, she [the hostess] will arrange 
 for a girls' luncheon, a small dance, or card party, the latter 
 being an easy way of entertaining either old or young, but not 
 to be considered, of course, if her visitor has no knowledge of, 
 or even liking for, that form of amusement, to say nothing of 
 religious scruples against it. " {The Complete Hostess ^ p. 280.) 
 
 The Eskimos spend whole da3rs and nights in singing and 
 dancing to entertain their guests from abroad. (Egede, p. 163.) 
 
 t"The hostess will naturally desire her friends to show her 
 some attention. " {The Complete Hostess, p. 280.) 
 
 t "If the hostess be a very fashionable woman and the visitor 
 decidedly not so, it is . . . vulgar to make one's friend who may 
 be a guest in the house a sort of entering wedge for an acquaint- 
 ance; a card should be left, but unaccompanied by any request 
 to see the lady of the house." {Manners and Social Usages, p. 
 16.) 
 
30 Fear and Conventionalitx 
 
 the visitor ere he departs."^' This ceremony is 
 prompted in part at least by the theory that a 
 kind of indivisibility exists between hostess and 
 guest. It is rude, for example, not to leave a 
 card on a guest when you are calling on her 
 hostess or vice versa on the hostess when your 
 call is for the guest, ^^ or, again, to invite to 
 a party a guest without her hostess or a hostess 
 without her guest. ^^ Nor, "iinless the guest be a 
 frequent visitor, or a sensible one who insists 
 upon it," will any hostess "leave her for an entire 
 evening" — at least "without providing something 
 for her amusement or entertainment." "^^ 
 
 If by chance company manners break down 
 during a visit — there may be sickness in the family 
 or some crisis in family affairs may occur — the 
 least a guest can do is to send a message to him- 
 self calling him away on important business. A 
 letter or telegram is necessary for two reasons — 
 it enables him to continue ignoring the family 
 crisis, and it keeps him from violating the general 
 rule of hospitality of not leaving before the ap- 
 pointed time — at least without an acceptable 
 excuse and a ready response to the customary 
 query — "Must you really go?" With the best 
 of intentions or manoeuvres it may be imposs- 
 ible for a guest to be blind to what is going 
 
Hospitality t THe Guest 31 
 
 on. Besides he may by the merest accident 
 open the door of the family skeleton's closet. In 
 such case he is expected of course after he leaves 
 not to "violate the privacy of the family." He 
 is at any rate expected not to talk much about 
 his hosts, and certainly not to criticise them. 
 Gossip about their "peculiarities" or about the 
 "family imperfections" is in very bad taste. ■♦' 
 "Whatever you may have remarked to the dis- 
 advantage of your friends, whilst sharing their 
 hospitality, should never transpire through your 
 means." "** 
 
 In fact, once you have broken bread with a man 
 or taken a drink with him, you are in many places 
 under an obligation not to give him away as well 
 as not to kill him. Hence not to accept a drink 
 from a man may be highly significant. It may 
 mean that you have designs against him.* On 
 the other hand it may also mean that you be- 
 lieve he has designs against you.f The prac- 
 tice of "treating" has deeper roots than at first 
 appears, and that anti-treat reform which origi- 
 
 * This notion may account for the excess expected of guests at 
 table. 
 
 t The Papuans of Humboldt Bay would not touch the water 
 offered them by their European visitors. (Crawley, p. 157.) 
 A little boy I know refuses to eat from another's plate or drink 
 from his glass. "I'd get his taste," says he. 
 
3t Fear and Conventionality 
 
 nated some time ago in New York, a harder road 
 to travel. Indeed to realize the ambitiousness of 
 his campaign, the anti-treat New Yorker should be 
 familiar with an incident alleged to have occurred 
 at the original landing of the Dutch on his island. 
 It is said that the Manhattan Indians were drawn 
 up in a circle to receive the Dutch captain, to 
 their awe-struck eyes a great red-habited Manitou, 
 and that the first act of the Dutchman was to 
 take a drink from a cup of rum and then to offer 
 the cup to the chief standing next to him. The 
 chief smells it and passes it on, and so it passes 
 from hand to hand without being tasted, until 
 it reaches a brave who is not only a great 
 warrior but a man of ideas. He at once warns 
 the company of the impropriety of returning 
 the cup full. To follow the example of the 
 Manitou and take a drink will please him, not to 
 drink will annoy him, perhaps enrage him. He 
 himself will drink whatever the consequences. 
 Better for one to die than for an entire tribe to be 
 destroyed. So speaking he bids the assembly 
 farewell and gulps down the whole contents* of 
 the cup.^^ — Here was one who needed no books 
 
 * Needless to say the act of devotion temporarily incapacitates 
 the brave. Notwithstanding, he is soon able to ask for another 
 drink and to encourage his friends to drink with him. 
 
Hospitality t TKe Guest 33 
 
 on manners to teach him the proper relation be- 
 tween host and guest! Is it because we have 
 forgotten the reasoning of the savage that we 
 ourselves have to depend on these publications? 
 
IV 
 
 hospitality: the host 
 
 T^HE ill-will of a guest is everywhere dreaded, 
 partly because as a stranger he has, like tht 
 Dutch captain, a quasi-supernatural character 
 or, in the words of the Daghestan highlanders 
 he is **a man from God,"' and partly because 
 despite barriers his contact with his host^ hat 
 been close enough to allow the fear of contagious 
 magic to be entertained. It becomes very im 
 portant, therefore, not only to please a guest, bu 
 to arouse and strengthen in him a sense of obliga 
 tion. And so a host offers a guest his best.* I 
 he is an Anglo-Saxon he opens a bottle of hi 
 best old wine. If he is a M'ganda he gives him i 
 pinch of salt, a rarity in Uganda. ^ No matte 
 how indifferent a Mattoal Indian may be t< 
 
 * Or in rare instances declines to offer him anything. At Pi 
 lulaa in the Solomon Islands, guests have to bring their food wit 
 them; it is always a "Dutch treat" because of the belief that 
 guest could work mysteriously upon a host through a morsel ( 
 his food. (Crawley, p. 127.) 
 
 34 
 
Hospitalitxt TKe Host 35 
 
 the wants of his family, with his guest he will 
 share his last crust — or shred of dried salmon.'* 
 A rich Afghan chief is satisfied with nothing less 
 than the slaying of a sheep when he receives a 
 distinguished guest — as Pennell, the medical mis- 
 sionary, once appreciated to his cost. Having 
 arrived at a village late one evening, he was well 
 entertained by the chief*s son, the chief being 
 away, and given a good supper of fowl. After 
 a wearisome day, he was soon fast asleep, 
 only to be aroused at one A.M., to partake of 
 the sheep the returning chief had had killed 
 when he learned that only a fowl had been 
 offered to his guest. Such a lack of hospitality, 
 protested the chief, would be everlastingly to his 
 discredit. ^ 
 
 Women as well as food and drink are not un- 
 commonly at the command of a guest. Marco 
 Polo tells us that to preclude this form of hospital- 
 ity an enlightened ruler of the Chinese province of 
 Camul ordered the people to provide public hostel- 
 ries. They provided them for three years, a pe- 
 riod, as it turned out for them, of poor harvests and 
 general misfortune. So they sent a grand present 
 to their ruler, begging him to let them return to 
 their good old custom, by reason of which alone 
 their gods bestowed upon them all the good things 
 
36 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 they were possessed of. ^ Whatever the motives, 
 Eskimos, Blackfellows, and several other peoples 
 lend their wives to their guests. Even where this 
 so-called sexual hospitality is not in vogue, a man 
 sometimes feels it incumbent upon him not to join 
 the circle of his wife's callers at tea-time, and gen- 
 erally not to monopolise her attention when other 
 men are present. 
 
 Guests are served first — except to the extent 
 a host feels called upon to prove himself innocent 
 of murderous or of magical intent. In the Banks* 
 Islands the host takes the first bite to take any 
 risk upon himself. ^ With us a well-trained butler 
 always pours a little of the wine into the host's 
 glass before serving it to the guests, just as among 
 the Krumen^ or the Makololo' at a palm -wine or 
 beer drinking-party the housewife takes the first 
 drink — to take off the "fetish" or to prove the 
 beverage unpoisoned.* 
 
 Guests are given the most honotirable or com- 
 fortable seat, — the east or sacred end of the hearth 
 among the Ainu," the sadr or floor space opposite 
 the door end of the room in Persia," the camels* 
 pack-saddles piled at the back of the tent or in 
 
 * The Fors of the Soudan give their guest another form of 
 assurance by offering him his first drink in a cup of rhinoceros 
 horn, such cups having the virtue of betraying whatever may be 
 poisoning their contents. (Wilson and Felkin, ii, 275.) 
 
Hospitalitxt THe Host 37 
 
 the middle* among the Aenezes,'^ the sofa or 
 rocking-chair with us. 
 
 To be quite safe, no matter how hospitable he 
 intends to be, a host may receive his guest with 
 an immunity-giving rite. As soon as a stranger 
 appears in some of the Arab villages of Morocco, 
 he is given water or, if he is an important person, 
 milk to drink. If he subsequently misbehaves 
 himself, this drink, he knows, will make his knees 
 swell up and keep him from running away. Other 
 Arabs welcome a guest by pouring on his head a 
 cup of melted butter'^; the South African Hereros 
 give him a cup of milk, '^ the Awemba of Rhodesia 
 a gourd of beer, ^ ^ his American host or hostess a 
 cocktail or a cup of tea. 
 
 When a Wemba knows the path his guest is 
 taking he always sends his children out to meet 
 him.'^ A careful American host always "meets** 
 his guest too,t and even the comparatively casual 
 English send to meet their guests. 
 
 A true host will of course take no compensation 
 from his guest. He "feels hurt" by any offer to 
 
 * It is impolite to put them near the side post. 
 
 t "No hostess possessing the true spirit of hospitality will fail 
 to meet her guests at the station or landing; or, if through any 
 reason she cannot, a member of the family will be delegated to 
 do so for her, she conducting them upon their arrival to their 
 chambers, the host doing likewise for his male guests." {The 
 Complete Hostess, p. 277.) 
 
38 Fear and Convexitionality 
 
 pay, having no intention of letting a guest cancel 
 his debt in any such way.* When Dr. Felkin was 
 in Uganda he went hungry at times, he tells us, 
 because no M'ganda was allowed to sell anything 
 to the King's visitors. ^^ The "paying guest** is 
 an entirely English innovation. In the United 
 States even feeing the servants has to be done on 
 the sly,t behind the back of one*s host. Officially 
 he knows nothing about it, and he is embarrassed 
 if he catches his guest in flagrante delicto. 
 
 The least a host expects from an ex-guest is a 
 return of hospitality. So well aware of this ex- 
 pectation are many persons that they will not ac- 
 cept hospitalities they cannot return. They know 
 too well why they have been asked. 
 
 "Retayne a straunger after his estate and degree 
 Another tyme may happen he may doe as much for 
 thee."'« 
 
 More exacting hosts feel that they have been 
 entertaining angels t unaware, — and angels al- 
 
 * Still apprehensive of the stranger, he may be afraid to take a 
 gift from him, Westermarck suggests, gift-taking often involving 
 a risk. {The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, i, 593.) 
 
 t Moreover a self-respecting servant will often refuse a fee, we 
 are told, "especially if he or she be American born" [and so 
 unwilling to recognise a class distinction ?] . ( The Complete Hostess, 
 p. 286.) 
 
 I According to the Hitopadesa, "a guest consists of all the 
 
Hospitalit;yt TKe Host 39 
 
 ways express their gratitude in practical ways, — 
 or that hospitality is per se a means of acquiring 
 spiritual merit, magically or because of the reli- 
 gious sanction attaching to it. "The hospitable 
 reception of guests procures wealth, fame, long 
 life, and heavenly bliss,** declares Manu,'' the 
 famous Hindu code maker. Hospitality is indeed 
 a sacred duty. 
 
 The ceremonial character of hospitality is con- 
 spicuous at leave-taking in other particulars be- 
 sides tipping. Set speeches are usually in order 
 between host and guest at that time. ^'Kafikeni- 
 pOf'' '' May you arrive safely,** is said to the depart- 
 ing Wemba guest, a godspeed to which he makes 
 answer: '' Syaleni-po,'' **May you remain here in 
 safety. '**" ''Maze kubalaba ngenze,'" says a polite 
 M*ganda guest, "I have completed my visit and 
 am going. * ' ' ' Kale genda, ' * answers his host, ' * All 
 right, you may go.**^' After tying up his things 
 the Masai guest says: "Well, I am about to go.'* 
 The owners of the kraal reply: "All right, good- 
 bye. Pray to God, accost only the things which 
 are safe, and meet nobody but blind people.** 
 To this wish for a safe journey the guest responds: 
 
 deities." "Do not treat strangers slightingly," says the Ainu, 
 "for you never know whom you are entertaining." (Wester- 
 marck, Moral Ideas ^ i, 583.) 
 
40 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 *'Lie down with honey- wine and milk." "So be 
 it,** says the host, and then at last the guest is 
 free to depart.*^ In the Andaman Islands the 
 departing guest blows on his host's hand and says: 
 "Here indeed I.** His host answers: "Very well, 
 go; when will you come again?'* Guest: "I will 
 bring away something for you one of these days.'* 
 Host : * ' May no snake bite you ! ' ' Guest : " I will 
 be watchful." Then each blowing on the hands 
 of the other, they part, shouting invitations and 
 promises for a future date until beyond earshot. ^^ 
 "Well, I must be going," says the departing Amer- 
 ican guest, declaring what a good time she has had 
 and how grateful she feels. In return her hostess 
 makes "some little civil speech" to show that she 
 is sorry her guest must go so soon,^^ and that she 
 hopes she will repeat her visit. She will underrate 
 what she has done in the matter of hospitality, 
 adding that at some future date she will indeed be 
 able to do something for her guest. Then Maria 
 will be home or the new wing will be finished or 
 the strawberries will be ripe. 
 
 Other than verbal ceremonies are customary. 
 A Persian accompanies his guest to the door, a 
 ceremony called mushaiyat.^^ An American or 
 English guest is apt to be solicited to write his 
 name in a "guest book," a kind of pledge of him- 
 
Hospitality t TKe Host 41 
 
 self, if one considers the magical connotation of 
 names. Greek host and guest broke a die, each 
 keeping a half as a souvenir. Quite often the 
 host makes his guest a gift at parting, gift-making 
 being a common way in primitive culture of cere- 
 monially binding together two persons. " Because 
 he had sat on it,** the Awemba sent Livingstone 
 the elephant's tusk which had served him in 
 court as a chair. *^ Desirous of paying his host a 
 compliment an Andaman Islander will ask to be 
 given one of the children of the family to bring up 
 as his own.*^ Among us, it is the guest rather 
 than the host who makes a gift — to the lady of the 
 house, "a new book, a deck of cards in a hand- 
 some case, a bit of handwork if you embroider, 
 some new music"; if you are a girl, flowers; 
 a "box of choice confections", if a man.* 
 ''Though it be only a pincushion or a guard chain 
 of your own making,! it will have a certain value 
 as an expression of the gratitude which it becomes 
 you to feel.**^^ To express his gratitude for the 
 hospitality he had received from the royal family 
 
 * Dame Curtsey's Book of Etiquette, p. 108. Chicago, 1910. 
 A man guest will often make a gift too on arrival, in this case 
 "the excellence or variety of the article only excusing the gift." 
 (The Complete Hostess, p. 285.) 
 
 t Obviously a gift made by oneself is more of a pledge. Hence 
 in the ceremonial of gift-making this feature is always empha- 
 sized. (See The Complete Hostess, p. 285.) 
 
42 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 of Loango, on his return home a prince of Congo 
 is said to have dedicated one of his wives to the 
 tutelary god of his host. ^^ Unable to vie with an 
 African potentate in graciousness, the least an 
 American guest can do, we are told, is to write 
 host or hostess a *' bread-and-butter letter.'* In 
 fact not to do so would be extremely rude, a re- 
 missness not easily overlooked by a hostess. A 
 hostess expects to receive this letter a day or two 
 after her guest has reached home. The letter 
 should "express in a few graceful words her thanks 
 for the pleasure experienced and assure her hostess 
 of her safe arrival."^** I transcribe the following 
 *' bread-and-butter" letter as sufficiently charac- 
 teristic: 
 
 My dear Mrs. : 
 
 I shall not let another moment pass without 
 telling you how much I enjoyed my visit to you, 
 and how truly I appreciate all that you did to 
 make my visit a delightful one. I shall keep in 
 mind charming thoughts of the drives, walks, and 
 happy days and evenings at Chestnut Hill. 
 
 Remember me most kindly to Mr. and 
 
 believe me 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 3x 
 
Hcspitalityt TKe Host 43 
 
 In circles where flexibility of expression if not of 
 mind is more marked than at Chestnut Hill, the 
 bread-and-butter letter admits, I am aware, of 
 considerable variation. Not long ago I saw one 
 written by a Harvard graduate who, like all the 
 graduates of his period, had had the advantage 
 of being brought up on *' Alice." His letter was 
 of one Hne and read: "It was the Best Butter." 
 
 Having surveyed the practice of hospitality 
 along the lines of those who follow its rules and 
 even of those who codify them, let us now define 
 it from our general point of view. It appears to >^ 
 be a systematic attempt to overcome the suspicions 
 and apprehensions always excited by the stranger. 
 Its duties and obligations, its graces, together 
 form a system for rendering him innocuous. He 
 knows that as a guest it behooves him by his 
 conformity and compliance to allay distrust or 
 fear. A mannerly guest will be considerate of his 
 host and lend himself to the devices taken to dis- 
 arm him, devices sometimes of quarantine, some- 
 times of propitiation. 
 
AND DISINFECTANT RITES 
 
 A HOST is usually more or less responsible for 
 ''^ his guest, whether he is his sponsor in the 
 law courts as he was among the Romans, or takes- 
 his side in a quarrel as among the Akiktiyu,' or 
 as among us puts him up at the club or merely 
 invites people to meet him at home. In England 
 the mere presence of a guest is his guaranty. 
 But in the United States, except in comparatively 
 small circles, a guest requires an introduction. I 
 have known persons sitting next to each other at 
 a "dinner-party" unwilling to speak to each other 
 until introduced by an acquaintance, one who 
 had himself only been introduced perhaps before 
 
 * This subject I have considered important enough for a separate 
 discussion, not only because of the example set me in this respect 
 in all proper books on les convenances, but because the custom of 
 introducing discovers the anxieties and timidities incident to 
 enlarging one's circle of acquaintances as well as the precautions 
 taken by society when it lets down barriers to raise up others. 
 And I have been at the greater pains to particularize because 
 many of the observances I mention are fast becoming obsolete. 
 
Introdvictions 45 
 
 going in to dinner. Sir Thomas Mitchell relates 
 that once in Australia on encountering a strange 
 native he asked his own native retainer to put a 
 question to him. But neither Blackfellow would 
 speak for awhile to the other. They stood apart, 
 neither looking at the other, and only after a 
 quarter of an hour or so would they enter into 
 conversation.^ In the absence of an introduction 
 an awkward pause of this kind is in fact usual in 
 every primitive society. About to meet, certain 
 American Indian tribesmen would stop within 
 twenty yards or so of each other, writes one of 
 their observers, and sit or lie down for some min- 
 utes without speaking. 3 Except of necessity an 
 Ainu, it is said, is never the first to speak to a 
 stranger. 4 The other day the King of Spain was 
 precluded by native etiquette from speaking to an 
 ex-President of the United States who was travel- 
 ling in the same train because the American had 
 not yet been presented at court by his ambassa- 
 dor.* Royalty is ever conservative. 
 An introduction is a short cut to conversation. 
 
 *In America the King might have been advised that "an ac- 
 quaintance of either sex formed in travelling need never be retained 
 afterward, though sometimes valuable and valued friends are 
 thus secured." (Duffey, Mrs. E. B. The Ladies and GenUeme^i's 
 Etiquette: A Complete Manual of the Manners and Dress of American 
 Society f p. 95, Philadelphia, 1887.) 
 
46 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 It inspires confidence.* In more ways than one 
 it is a voucher for the stranger. First there are 
 the effects of naming. In primitive culture a 
 man's name is an integral part of his personality. 
 Knowledge of it, he believes, gives you power over 
 him. Hence he often keeps his name a secret. 
 In civilization too people sometimes refuse to be 
 introduced, and in punctilious circles permission 
 to make an introduction is usually sought. 
 
 Some name to go by one must have, however, 
 and so a savage, no matter how secretive, finds it 
 convenient to have a public as well as a secret 
 name. Nor among us on making introductions is 
 the Christian name or pet name or nickname used 
 — even by an *'old friend" or in certain circles 
 by a member of the family. "There is nothing so 
 awkward to a stranger as to be introduced to ' My 
 brother Tom* or *My sister Carrie.'"^ I have 
 heard mothers introduce their daughter as Miss 
 So-and-So and in the United States husband and 
 wife invariably introduce each other by their 
 surname. Not to do so, it is felt, would be "un- 
 dignified" or "lacking in respect," the terms we 
 commonly use to express taboo. 
 
 *Por we recall that "most friendships which have a legitimate 
 beginning come through an acquaintanceship which opens by 
 means of an introduction." {lb., p. 21.) 
 
Introdxictions 47 
 
 In several other particulars of good form in 
 introducing the originally grave meaning of nam- 
 ing may be surmised. The order of naming, we 
 may notice, is important. The less distinguished 
 or the one to be less complimented is named fir^t, 
 the younger, the immarried, the less notorious, 
 the native, the man to the woman. Theirs must 
 be the disadvantage, brief though it be, of having 
 one*s own name known to the other person with- 
 out knowing his name or hers. But the disadvan- 
 tage, it is generally felt, is not to be incurred 
 unnecessarily. Told to speak the names of those 
 he introduces "as low as possible . . . that all 
 the world may not hear them, "^ it sometimes hap- 
 pens that the introducer slurs over the name. He 
 may feel that it is an awkward moment to be 
 over with as quickly as possible — a sense of em- 
 barrassment of itself significant of the importance 
 attached to introducing. Under these circum- 
 stances one of the two strangers is likely to say: 
 *'I beg your pardon, but I didn't catch your 
 name. * 
 
 Although to forget a man's name is felt to create 
 a very awkward situation, yet it is a common 
 practice to open a conversation with, "You don't 
 
 *0r, "Pardon me, but I failed to hear your name." {The 
 Complete Hostess, p. 320.) 
 
48 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 remember my name." It is a challenge which 
 undoubtedly puts the other person at a disad- 
 vantage, a disadvantage he is apt to admit and 
 to attempt to overcome by answering, "Oh yes, 
 I do," whether he recalls the name or not. His 
 parry is feeble, for by a mere admission of forget- 
 fulness would he not put his opponent to the dis- 
 advantage of having to tell his name? Telling 
 your name is generally an "embarrassment," if 
 not as among the Arabs a risk,* and most of us 
 would sympathize with that Sir Frederick of 
 Urbino who confessed to the assembled court that 
 it troubled him to be asked who he was and what 
 was his name. ^ 
 
 To directly ask a person his name is almost 
 everywhere, we may notice, a rudeness, one seldom 
 perpetrated except upon the very young.f But 
 an introducer failing, the magnanimous or, among 
 the Hindus, the respectful} will volunteer their 
 
 *An Arab child is taught to conceal his family name from 
 strangers lest he fall a victim to an intertribal blood feud. Nor 
 does any Arab ever mention his family name to a stranger, what- 
 ever his tribe. (Burckhardt, p. 56.) 
 
 t Asking a child his age is one of the commonest ways in which 
 an adult expresses his sense of superiority. A "natural" child 
 will usually ignore the question. 
 
 t "A Brahmana who greets an elder must pronounce his name, 
 saying, 'I am N. N.' . . . To his maternal and paternal uncles, 
 fathers-in-law, officiating priests, and other venerable persons, 
 he must say, *I am N. N.' . . . even though they be younger 
 
Introd\2ctioxis 49 
 
 name, feeling it an essential preliminary to con- 
 versation. "My name is Smith," you graciously 
 say; ''Mine is Jones," says he. Without such 
 an expression of mutual confidence, one of the 
 two ** chance acquaintances," particularly a lady, 
 is quite liable to say in an emergency: "But I 
 don't know you. I don't even know your 
 name." Often after two persons have talked 
 together without an introduction, and a mu- 
 tual acquaintance arrives on the scene, an in- 
 troduction is offered or even called for — a very 
 striking instance of the significance attached to 
 the ceremony. In closing a conversation in order 
 to give it retrospectively a more satisfactory 
 character, strangers will often tell each other 
 their name, sometimes exchanging visiting-cards.* 
 
 than himself " [and apparently even though they already know 
 his name quite well]. ( The Laws of Manu, ii, 122, 130. The Sacred 
 Books of the Eastf xxv.) 
 
 * Considerable importance attaches to the form of visiting- 
 cards. With us they are invariably of white unglazed pasteboard 
 engraved in black. "Plain script is never out of order, though 
 other styles of engraving come and go." (The Complete Hostess, 
 p. 306.) The fashionable size and shape vary, but a man's card 
 is always smaller and narrower than a woman's. {lb., pp. 306, 
 309.) Chinese cards are printed in black on vermilion paper — 
 except in mourning, when the paper is white with the name in 
 blue. (Colquhoun, A. R. Across ChrysS,i,ig. London, 1883.) The 
 formulas on Chinese visiting-cards are somewhat more ornate 
 too than ours. They contain not only the name of the visitor 
 but an address of respect to the host. For example, "The 
 tender and sincere friend of your Lordship, and the perpetual 
 4 
 
50 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 To many travellers a well-filled card-case is an 
 indispensable part of their equipment. 
 
 Part of the idea in the exchange of visiting- 
 cards by travellers may of course be utilitarian, 
 based on a wish to continue an acquaintance.* 
 There is too, in starting a conversation with a 
 name, a practical feature. It may help to * ' place ** 
 a person. The edge is taken off a stranger, so 
 to speak, if you know where he comes from or 
 anything about his family or his own history. A 
 Queensland Blackfellow who, away from home, 
 does not tell the people he meets his name, who his 
 father is, or where his mother comes from, is almost 
 sure to be killed.^ "What is your bird?" i. e, 
 totem, is one of the first questions commonly put 
 to a stranger by the Massim of New Guinea.' 
 "What is the form of marriage of your people?*' 
 *'Do you believe in anarchy?" "How old are 
 
 disciple of your doctrine, presents himself in this quality to pay 
 his duty and make his reverence even to the earth." (Astley, 
 iv, 80.) 
 
 * This can hardly be the reason for certain uses visiting-cards 
 are put to, why, f c ■ example, Juliet's tomb at Verona is always filled 
 with the visiting-cards of tourists, or why on the grave of a genius 
 one sometimes sees a visiting-card, or why as we once drove 
 through the streets of Tokyo as guests of the nation our car- 
 riages were filled with visiting-cards by the Japanese who packed 
 the avenue to the railway-station. In such instances a visiting- 
 card would seem to gratify a wish analogous to the wish to write 
 your name in a notorious place, a wish, I take it, like the wishes 
 prompting other forms of introduction, of participation. 
 
Introductions 51 
 
 you?" are questions put to the stranger at the 
 ports of the United States. Obviously, once class- 
 ified, once related to familiar facts, the stranger 
 anywhere is less unfamiliar and alarming. An 
 introduction is soothing, tranquillizing. Even a 
 public assemblage likes to have introduced to it 
 its speakers, and a public speaker himself is quite 
 willing to submit to the slight embarrassment of 
 being introduced, knowing the easing and thereby 
 disarming effect of it upon his audience.* 
 
 But the chief immimity-giving character of an 
 introduction lies in the introducer himself. He 
 vouches for the man he introduces. His sense of 
 responsibility varies of course and the degree to 
 which he is held responsible. As a rule he cannot 
 be too careful. He has a number of rules to 
 guide him. He must not introduce a gentleman 
 to a lady without first asking her permission, a 
 permission not to be refused, however, without 
 **very good and strong reasons." ^° A gentleman 
 does not introduce one lady to another and even 
 a lady should be careful about introducing two 
 women living in the same place." Gentlemen 
 
 *The presiding officer who is called upon to introduce a celebrity 
 is also aware of the propitiatory nature of the introduction. Feel- 
 ing that it is indispensable, but at the same time struck by the 
 superficial absurdity of it, he compromises with some such for- 
 mula as, "I don't need to introduce to you, etc." 
 
52 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 do not ask for an introduction to each other, nor 
 should they be introduced to each other at a club, 
 in the street, or, some think, even in a drawing- 
 room. Is this rule held to because, as one writer 
 on etiquette says, "gentlemen do not generally 
 wish to become acquainted,*' ^^ or because less 
 timorous than the ladies they do not feel the need 
 of protecting themselves with an introduction?* 
 
 There are certain times and places too where 
 one is cautioned not to be hasty in introducing — 
 at the theatre, for example, in travelling, in the 
 street. "If one gentleman joined me in the street 
 while I was walking with another, I should cer- 
 /tainly not introduce the former to the latter," 
 writes the author of Social Customs ^^^ "because," 
 she adds, "he would have no business to join me 
 unless he knew the gentleman with whom I was 
 walking."! Introductions made on the street, 
 under ordinary circumstances at least, are not at 
 any rate consequential. None needs to "be 
 bound by a casual introduction of this sort given 
 as a matter of form, and where no real acquain- 
 tanceship! has been made between the parties."'^ 
 
 * Such would appear to be the view of another writer on eti- 
 quette who says that men "are supposed to be at liberty to speak 
 to each other in society without formal presentation. ' ' (Learned, 
 p. 96.) 
 
 fls this taboo a trifling by-product of male proprietorship? 
 
 J From the point of view of making an acquaintance a ball- 
 
Introductions 53 
 
 Introductions may, as we know, be written. 
 Perhaps because of the impressiveness character- 
 istic of writing, a written introduction is more 
 weighty than an oral introduction and its author 
 incurs greater responsibihty. "It is rash to give 
 letters unless to people whom one knows well,* or 
 at least knows all about." '^ Of course one can- 
 not set forth all this knowledge in the letter of 
 introduction — if for no other reason than that it 
 is left unsealed or should be; but as in the oral 
 introduction, some clue to the person introduced 
 should be given. Passports f or international 
 letters of introduction give such information in 
 considerable detail, even to the colour of the eyes. 
 
 Public or private letters of introduction and 
 their precursors before the art of writing, rings, 
 seals, scarfs, message sticks, etc., imply a com- 
 mon acquaintance. Under circumstances where 
 common acquaintances are not available, where 
 there is none to assume responsibility for the 
 
 room seems to be classified, at times, with a street. "In England 
 an introduction given for dancing purposes does not constitute 
 acquaintanceship." (Ward, p. 218.) But there appear to be 
 circles in this country too where "a ball-room acquaintance 
 does not extend beyond the evening in which it is formed." 
 (Duffey, p. 79.) 
 
 *"It is especially rash to give letters to foreigners," adds our 
 authority. 
 
 t " Body-protecting charms" they were once called in China. 
 (Colquhoun, Across Chrysi, i, 95.) 
 
54 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 stranger, there is nothing to do but disinfect him 
 — once you decide to admit him — or to admit him 
 with precautions. A Victorian tribe approaching 
 another unknown to it carry burning sticks to 
 purify, they say, the air. ' ^ When Captain Moresby 
 landed on New Guinea, a medicine-man exorcised 
 the evil spirit in him by magical jugglery with 
 palm leaves and by playing a kind of leapfrog.'^ 
 At Ushuri, one of the villages of the Soudan, when 
 visitors are at the gate they are asked to step 
 over a live fowl held over the threshold. The 
 fowl is then killed, and all "to bring good luck."'^ 
 In Benin the feet of strangers were ceremonially 
 washed,* and sentinels at the gates of Yoruba 
 towns often oblige European travellers to wait till 
 nightfall before admitting them, fearing that in 
 the daytime the devil would tag on behind them. ' ' 
 The descendants of the Yorubans in Hayti, I 
 once learned to my cost, allow no strange craft 
 to cast anchor in their harbours after sundown. 
 
 *Frazer, p. io8. Frazer seems to hold that the stranger is 
 disliked because he is suspected of magic. Is he not rather 
 suspected of magic because he is disliked? You dislike him 
 because he discomfits you and so you "spot" magic, magic, if 
 you are a savage, being your usual explanation of discomfiture. 
 
VI 
 
 CASTE 
 
 \ A/ITH the utmost precaution introductions 
 ^ ' are not always in order. You do not 
 introduce your butler to your guest, nor are shop 
 girls presented at the court of St. James. Royalty 
 is at any rate apt to be confined to a limited circle 
 of acquaintances. The Emperor of China seldom 
 left his palace. When he did go out, none looked 
 at him*; even the guards who lined his route 
 turned their backs. The Kings of Corea did not 
 leave their palaces at all. The King of Fernando 
 Po lives in a crater into which no White Man may 
 ever descend. The ruler of the Baduwis of Java 
 never quits his capital and subjects who live out- 
 side of it may not see him. ' People from all over 
 the United States may at stated times enter the 
 
 * A cat may not everywhere look at a king, nor does a person 
 of position always look at a person of none. I was once a 
 party to a practical joke, the point of which was to see whether 
 a certain lady would recognize her own son were he to attend 
 us, her guests, as a valet. She did not, as she never looked at 
 his face. 
 
 55 
 
56 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 White House to see the President and even shake 
 hands with him, but it would be impossible for a 
 President to live in Washington outside of the 
 White House, no President has ever left the 
 country during his term of office,* and many 
 Americans consider it "undignified'* for a Presi- 
 dent to travel much even within its boundaries. 
 
 Even when royalties are more migratory, they 
 do not mix much with the world. To see the 
 King of Dahomi or the Muata Jamwo of the 
 Congo at their meals is a capital offence. When 
 the King of Cazembe raised his glass to drink 
 or when the King of Tonga ate, all present pro- 
 strated themselves, looking away, or all turned 
 their backs.* The King of the Awemba has 
 probably always to eat at home for only flour 
 prepared by his wives may be served to him.^ 
 In Washington the President of the United States 
 dines out openly only with the members of his 
 cabinet. He is free, however, to invite people — 
 all kinds of people saving negroes and anarchists 
 — to dine with him at the White House. 
 
 When the King of Persia gave dinner parties 
 he himself sat at a separate table in a separate 
 
 * Were he to cross the boundary, I suspect the outcry would 
 equal that of Islam when Sultan Abdul Aziz made his unprece- 
 dented visits to Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, and the Emperor 
 of Austria. 
 
Cast< 
 
 57 
 
 room where he could see his guests, unseen by 
 them.-* Many another ruler has had to eat 
 entirely in private without the sight of a guest 
 or even a wife for company. In other particulars 
 the ways of royalty may also have to be screened 
 from the public. At several courts it does not 
 do for the sovereign merely to raise his hand to his 
 mouth when he sneezes, a cloth has to be held up 
 by a courtier in front of his face. Not only when 
 he sneezed but when he coughed, spat, or took 
 snuff, a cloth was similarly held up before the 
 face of the King of Jebu, a Slave Coast king. 
 The Sultan of Wadai always speaks from behind 
 a curtain. 5 Graham Bell has told me that in an 
 audience he once had with Queen Victoria to tell 
 her about the new telephone, she asked him ques- 
 tions through a third person, keeping him at a 
 distance quite as effectually as if she were talking 
 over his telephone.* When King Mutesa was 
 being physically examined by Dr. Felkin, all the 
 courtiers in attendance had to turn away, ^ and it 
 is customary in Uganda to call a King's illness, 
 whatever it may be, senyiga^ a severe cold^ — a 
 device not unparalleled in European courts. In 
 
 ♦The rulers of Uganda and Dahomi also communicated 
 through a third person. (Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of 
 Sociology, ii, 28-9. New York, 1900.) 
 
58 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 the court of Edward IV even the Queen's laun- 
 dresses had "to bee swome to keepe the chambre 
 counsaylle."^ 
 
 The seclusive habits of royalty are peculiarly 
 conspicuous, but throughout society there are many 
 other seclusive or exclusive groups. Imitation 
 being the truest flattery as well as an instinct, 
 court circles are naturally exclusive. The courtier 
 of Urbino is advised "not to renn, wrastle, leape, 
 nor cast the stone or barr with men of the Coun- 
 trey, except to be sure to gete the victorie — ^f or it is 
 to ill a sight and to foule a matter and with- 
 out estimation to see a Gentilman overcome by 
 a Cartar and especially in wrastling." Even 
 "dancing in the Sun" with the country people 
 is open to the question at the court of Urbino of 
 "what a man shal gaine by it.'*^ I once heard 
 one of our ambassadors to Berlin sharply criticized 
 because his wife not only did her own marketing 
 but went to market on a bicycle; and a Washington 
 observer has lately told us that the present Secre- 
 tary of the Interior is being criticized for riding 
 on trolley cars and standing on the rear platform 
 at that — "that doesn^t go in Washington." 
 
 Familiarities between persons of different social 
 position are discountenanced elsewhere. "Fancy 
 the moral condition of that society in which a 
 
Caste 59 
 
 lady of fashion joked with a footman," exclaimed 
 Thackeray, horror struck by the ways of his people 
 in the days of Queen Anne. No Ashantee of con- 
 sequence drinks before his inferiors without hiding 
 his face from them.* A New Zealand slave does 
 not eat of his master's food nor cook at the same 
 fire.^° 
 
 "Vche Exstate syngulerly in halle shalle sit adowne 
 That none of hem se othure at mete tyme in feld nor 
 in town."" 
 
 And the English upper servant still refuses to 
 eat with the other servants. There are houses 
 too in New England where the choreman is no 
 longer expected to eat with the family. Nor may 
 inferiors and superiors in the Tonga Islands eat 
 together.'* Most Hindus would not eat with 
 persons of another caste. Many other caste 
 separations occur in India. A Puliah has to keep 
 a distance of one hundred paces away from per- 
 sons of other castes. A Pariah may put only one 
 foot inside the house of his master, and through 
 a village street lived in by Brahmans he may not 
 even pass. Nor, firmly believing that it would 
 lead to ruin, will he let a Brahman pass through 
 his own quarter.'^ No labourer in his working 
 
 * Were he to drink more publicly, would he be charged, I 
 wonder, with playing to the gallery? 
 
6o Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 clothes would walk down Fifth Avenue with i 
 "lady." "I'd like to show you the town," sai( 
 my Wyoming driver to me an afternoon I spen 
 in Cody, "though I'm not used to walking witl 
 a lady."* 
 
 "I won't get drunk anyhow," he added. Am 
 as we walked down the street where acquaintance 
 grinned at him from the door of every saloon, ; 
 appreciated the assurance. Being a gentleman 
 whatever he called himself, it was natural for hin 
 to wish to reassure me, once he had put me into i 
 caste not his own. Apprehensiveness, he was wel 
 aware, is felt by a member of one caste concerning 
 a member of another. An English booby "i 
 >* frightened out of his wits when people of fashioi 
 speak to him," writes Lord Chesterfield.'* Con 
 tact with royalty or with royal things is oftei 
 accounted dangerous. The Nubas of Eas 
 Africa believed they would die if they enterec 
 the house of their priestly king of sat on th< 
 stone he used for a seat. A Cazemba of Angok 
 believes that he who touches the King dies unles; 
 
 * Nevertheless, fortunately for me, it had not occurred to hie 
 that civilities "ought not to be extended to persons who belon; 
 to either a higher or a lower class of society. " The former, add 
 Mrs. Ward, are "warranted in looking upon you as pushing; th 
 latter are apt to consider you as patronizing." (Sensible EH 
 quelle, p. 394. Philadelphia, 1878.) 
 
Caste 6i 
 
 he is thoroughly disinfected. The garments of a 
 New Zealand chief, it is held, will kill anyone 
 wearing them. The lost tinder-box of one of 
 these Maori chiefs was indeed once the means of 
 killing several persons. The men who found it 
 and imwittingly used it to light their pipes died 
 of fright on learning to whom it belonged. '* 
 "How many men have I seen,*' writes Lord 
 Chesterfield, "when they have been presented to 
 the King did not know whether they stood on 
 their heads or their heels! When the King spoke 
 to them they trembled."'^ Stand near the 
 "receiving party'* at a public reception at the 
 White House and you cannot fail to notice in many 
 of the guests a more or less painful constraint, 
 not to say timidity, as they approach to shake 
 hands with the President. A President recently 
 declared in receiving a woman suffrage delegation 
 that he felt bound not to expose the public to his 
 private opinions. 
 
 Seclusiveness of itself inspires apprehension, 
 making of the secluded a stranger, and strangers, 
 we know, are ever under suspicion. They are 
 always suspected of having ways different from 
 our own and so disquieting. In many cases of 
 caste seclusiveness suspicion becomes certainty; 
 the seclusive caste is known to have its own pecu- 
 
62 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 liar ways. ^ Once realized, whatever their origins, 
 caste characteristics tend to become arbitrary oi 
 compulsory. Rarely does anyone want his caste 
 habits interfered with or imitated. Rarely does 
 anyone want to interfere with or imitate the caste 
 habits of others. Each caste wants its members 
 to conform to its regulations and the members 
 of other castes to conform to theirs. Hence caste 
 distinctions are enforced by taboos or laws, by an 
 endless miscellany of restrictions. For example, 
 kings, unlike commoners, may not go a-courting. 
 Sometimes they are not allowed to marry at all. 
 Sometimes they may marry only women with 
 peculiar characteristics or of a given lineage. Ie 
 Aracan, India, for the girls selected every year as 
 the most eligible for the King's harem, odour was 
 the criterion. ' ^ In ancient Egypt and in the Peru 
 of the Incas the rulers had to marry their owr 
 sisters. Once the King of Loango is crowned, th€ 
 one wife allowed him must be a Cabinda princess. *' 
 Recently the British government jailed a man foi 
 saying that the King had made an ordinary 
 marriage. More recently a German princess u 
 said to have killed herself because she was not 
 allowed to make one. In other particulars, too 
 royal habits are strictly regulated. A king ma> 
 be limited in his choice of colour. The Sumatrac 
 
Caste 63 
 
 Sultan of Menancabow had constantly to wear 
 yellow.^' Black may not be worn ordinarily in 
 the court of Japan. Kukulu, a divine king in 
 West Africa, was never allowed to lie down.* 
 Among the Ewes the king neither ate nor slept, "** 
 at least it was criminal not to think so. Mutesa 
 of Uganda never smoked, although outside of the 
 court every man and woman in his country was a 
 steady smoker. ^^ The President of the United 
 States is allowed to smoke, but I doubt if smoking 
 would be tolerated in his wife, for she — and he too 
 in other respects — is expected to set an example 
 to the people, an expectation that must entail, 
 if lived up to, a number of peculiar habits, f 
 
 Of sumptuary law or custom we may cite a few 
 instances. Among the Sioux only medicine-men 
 
 * Lest he should thereby cause the wind to drop unduly. (Bas- 
 tian, A., Die Deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Kiiste, i, 288. 
 Jena, 1874.) 
 
 t Whether royalties are held responsible for the blowing of the 
 winds or for the morals of their people, royal taboos are obviously 
 onerous. No wonder that rulers have sometimes abdicated or that 
 thrones sometimes stand vacant. Bastian found at the time of his 
 visit to Angoy that the throne had been vacant ten years, so 
 exacting were the Angoy taboos on royalty. {Expedition an der 
 Loango-Kiiste, i, 368.) In the United States there are already 
 many high offices difficult to fill and some day the highest of 
 them may go begging, the task of being the public preceptor 
 par excellence having become intolerably burdensome. Even 
 to-day representing the President abroad entails obligations many 
 men have been unwilling to assume. 
 
64 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 may wear a necklace of bear's claws whenever 
 they like. *^ For a time in Uganda nobody outside 
 of the royal family was allowed to wear European 
 cloth. =*^ In Corea the lower classes may wear 
 neither silk nor purple.^'' Under Philip Augustus 
 the length of French shoe points was determined 
 by social position, ranging from six to twelve 
 inches. In the sixteenth century French women 
 were jailed by scores for wearing clothes like those 
 of their superiors. ^^ "Even in a Republican 
 country like our own," once wrote an American 
 woman, "I conceive it would be impracticable 
 and impolitic ... to abolish entirely* . . . the 
 distinctions ... in the different classes of society 
 in respect to dress." ^^ In the United States and 
 in Uganda the upper classes and only the upper 
 classes carry a walking-stick. ^^ 'Yhe origin of it 
 in Uganda I do not know ; with us we always hear 
 that it is a relic of the day when a gentleman 
 and only a gentleman carried a sword. To-day 
 
 * Since this was written they have been abolished — in theory. 
 And yet perhaps the older theory does float about in some 
 backwaters. "Your cook wouldn't wear that dress," you may 
 be told by a senior in your family when you are dressed worse 
 than usual. The maid who dresses like her mistress is still a 
 source of humour on the stage. An editorial in The Times of 
 June 10, 1914, ridicules a workman who had testified that his 
 wages were not ample to dress on. "What next!" exclaims the 
 editor. "Won't he be wanting to wear evening clothes to the 
 play?" 
 
Oaste 65 
 
 in Uganda only gentlemen are allowed to cany 
 copper spears. 
 
 Uganda gentlemen when they meet offer each 
 other coffee berries — ^instead of cigarettes. The 
 offer of either is a habit peculiar to the gentleman. 
 In the United States cigarette smoking by 
 women is a habit even more confined to the 
 upper class. Only "society ladies" are supposed 
 to smoke.* A Brahman who drinks arrack loses 
 caste. *^ In Fiji the common people were not 
 allowed to eat human flesh, nor in San Salvador 
 to drink chocolate.^' With us the servant who 
 drinks his master's champagne or eats his game 
 not only wastes his master's substance, but out- 
 rages his sense of caste propriety. 
 
 Games as well as weapons, narcotics, or foods 
 are apt to be a caste taboo or, according to your 
 point of view, a caste monopoly. In England in 
 the sixteenth century playing "at the Tables, 
 Tennis, Dice, Cards, Bowls, Clash, Coyting, 
 Logating" were forbidden, on penalty of a fine 
 of twenty shillings, to artisans, husbandmen, 
 labourers, servants, sailors, or fishermen, except at 
 Christmas, and even at Christmas none was to 
 play in his master's house or presence. ^^ Are 
 
 *In many respects indeed the manners of these ladies are said 
 to be quite different from those not "in society. " 
 
 5 
 
66 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 there not to-day Anglo-Saxon masters or at least 
 mistresses who would feel outraged or at least 
 annoyed to see their servants playing on the 
 tennis court or on the drawing-room piano? At 
 any rate they would not think of playing duets 
 with them or challenging them to a set of tennis. 
 Not so unscrupulously would they offend against 
 the old maxim : 
 
 " Pley thou not but with thy pares. "^^ 
 
 Occupations are everywhere an affair of caste 
 restrictions. The Wahuma are the recognized 
 herdsmen of Uganda, and it would be even more 
 difficult to induce a Uganda tribesman to tend 
 cattle ^^ than in the United States to get a white 
 man to become a parlotir-car porter or the native- 
 born to work with the "Dago'* in the ditch. In 
 India the great fourfold division of Hindu society 
 is based on occupation, on the business of being a 
 priest or a king, a householder or a menial, and 
 within these main divisions there is an endless 
 number of sub-castes characterized by occupation 
 — fishermen, basket weavers, dancers, blacksmiths, 
 etc. Manual labour or labour of any kind is in 
 many places a caste privilege. The Niang-pariy 
 the two classes of nobility of Corea, the civil and 
 military, would not dream of working, nor would it 
 
Caste 67 
 
 be allowed them. ^ 3 There was a time in England 
 when a lord might have found it impossible to get a 
 job as a cashier, let us say, or a stoker, and there 
 are business houses in this country averse to em- 
 ploying youths who have been through college 
 or whose fathers are rich men. As for the daugh- 
 ters of the rich or of any claimant of social posi- 
 tion, they are generally told that they owe it to 
 their family not to go to work. "People would 
 say I can't afford to support you," exclaims an 
 indignant and remonstrant parent. Outside of the 
 family the young woman is told she ought not take 
 the bread out of the mouth of girls having to earn 
 their living. 
 
 The "advantages" of education are very com- 
 monly a caste monopoly. In Greece it was for- 
 bidden to teach the art of painting to servants 
 and slaves. A statute of Richard II decreed that 
 no child who had laboured in husbandry until 
 twelve should be "put to any Mystery or Handi- 
 craft," nor, according to a statute of Henry IV, 
 should the son or daughter of any person whose in- 
 come was not at the least twenty shillings a year. ^^ 
 Modem trade unions set a limit to the number of 
 their apprentices. As late as the middle of the 
 nineteenth century in one English village the squire 
 would allow only reading to be taught in school; in 
 
68 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 another village arithmetic was taboo — "the boys 
 would be getting to know too much about wages." ^^ 
 The schooling of peasants is discouraged in Russia. 
 It was at one time illegal in our South to teach 
 negroes to read and write. To teach the " working 
 classes" anything but the three R's is sure to make 
 them dissatisfied, we are told by critics of the 
 curriculum of the public schools. "It only unfits 
 them for their station in life. " The privilege of a 
 college education is still more or less dependent 
 upon the parental income, and quite properly so, 
 said to me only last year a president of one of our 
 great universities. 
 
 Caste is observed in the proprieties of address 
 and of language. Before addressing his king a 
 Wemba lies on his back and claps his hands. ^^ 
 A Fiji Islander crouches down, rubbing the upper 
 part of the left arm with the right hand.^' In 
 Washington none may sit while the President 
 stands. Throughout the country gentlemen nod 
 to quite a number of classes who take their hats off 
 in return. A gentleman will nod too to persons he 
 passes on the road if they do not look like gentle- 
 men. With one another the gentry have to be 
 more formal — a, bow would not necessarily be an 
 act of condescension. It might indeed be a piece 
 of presumption. "It is not the correct thing to 
 
Caste 69 
 
 bow first to a person of higher social position and 
 exclusive views, where only a slight acquaintance 
 exists. "3« 
 
 In Fiji all references to the person of a chief or 
 to his acts are sufficiently hyperbolized to consti- 
 tute a chiefly dialect. ^^ In Samoa there are many 
 terms not to be used in the presence of a chief, at 
 least without the apologetic phrase vaeane, "saving 
 your presence. ' ' There are, for example, ' * polite ' * 
 terms for "come," "sit," "eat," "die," "sick," 
 "anger," "sleep," "the chief's house." ^^ Then, 
 too, in Samoa and elsewhere, if the name of any 
 object is taken by the chief as his own, the object 
 has to be renamed,* no matter how common a 
 word its name may be.f Every caste in Japan 
 has its own peculiar " I, " a pronoun no other caste 
 may use.'»^ Formerly in Germany every superior 
 was addressed indirectly as er, "he," just as to-day 
 
 * Analogous renaming occurs in connection with the dead. 
 This taboo, and the still more common taboo on their own name 
 are, I believe, barriers against them. If such name taboos were 
 but tokens of "respect," why would it be the outrage it is 
 usually held to be, or at any rate the lack of tact, for the outsider 
 to mention the name of the deceased? 
 
 t Obviously it is easy enough for an inconsiderate chief to upset 
 the language. We may deem ourselves fortunate that our Presi- 
 dent is more restricted in introducing verbal novelties and is 
 even criticized for expressing ideas on modified spelling. Our 
 use of titles of respect — Mister, Captain, Doctor, etc. — is a more 
 comfortable caste provision too than grammatical differentiations. 
 
70 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 to be polite the Italian addresses you in the third 
 person feminine. Among Anglo-Saxons it is still 
 considered good form to refer to yourself in writing 
 to inferiors in the third person — unless you are a 
 king or a newspaper editor, when the first person 
 plural is proper. Among the Abipones of the 
 upper class the names of men end in m, the names 
 of women in en, and these syllables you must add 
 to noims and verbs in talking to them. ''^ The Abi- 
 pone nobles moreover use words quite peculiar to 
 their own caste. '♦^ The vocabulary of our own 
 upper classes is materially different from that of 
 our lower, and many words or phrases are taboo 
 as unbecoming a lady or a gentleman. No person 
 of any social pretensions can afford to talk like a 
 fishwife or a groom. Billingsgate and Cockney- 
 isms are not tolerated. To speak correct English 
 is a passport into good society. To be treated like 
 a gentleman one must talk like one — even to the 
 forgoing of puns according to certain authorities,* 
 or of proverbs according to Lord Chesterfield. 
 If "you should let off a proverb, and say, That 
 what is one man*s meat is another man's poison; 
 or else, Everyone as they like, as the good man said 
 
 *A gentleman never condescends to be a punster, says Mrs. 
 Abell. {Woman in her Various Relations, p. 121. New York, 
 1853. Cp. Hall, p. 244.) 
 
Caste 71 
 
 when he kissed his cow, — everybody would be 
 persuaded that you had never kept company with 
 anybody above footmen and housemaids," 44 — 
 unless you lived in Fiji or on the West Coast of 
 Africa or in many another tribal society where 
 proverbs and adages seem to be in vogue even 
 among the *' smartest" people. 
 
 At these caste differences of speech, as in fact at 
 all the other caste differences I have mentioned, 
 we have taken but the most cursory glance. The 
 history of caste is unwritten; analysis of political, 
 economic, and cultural classes is extremely scant, 
 even description of them as they exist in given 
 groups is fragmentary or wholly lacking. In this 
 discussion therefore I could but present illustra- 
 tions of some types of caste barriers and of certain 
 caste peculiarities which must serve of themselves 
 as interclass barriers, and of the existence in cer- 
 tain cases of interclass fear, inferring that a rela- 
 tion of cause and effect exists between caste barrier 
 and caste fear, the barrier being raised because of 
 fear, and once raised becoming the source of further 
 apprehension. 
 
VII 
 
 A POSTSCRIPT ON CHIVALRY 
 
 A FTER an afternoon spent dancing in a popular 
 '**' cabaret a certain lady of high society, the 
 story comes to us from Paris, looking at her watch 
 remarked hastily that she must hurry off. She 
 had an early dinner. *'I too must be going, Ma- 
 dame, I too have an early dinner,*' rejoined her 
 accomplished partner. And lo, that evening at 
 dinner Madame perceived that her new acquaint- 
 ance was as accomplished in serving a dinner as 
 in dancing the tango. In Cody, Wyoming, our 
 ways were still more "democratic." We danced 
 of an evening with our chambermaid quite well 
 aware of her role by day, and after complimenting 
 our cook upon one of his dishes, we engaged in an 
 argument with him which was settled only by an 
 appeal to the dictionary. Here in New York, 
 however, there is less of such fraternity than in 
 Cody or in Paris. Your Continental cook would be 
 amazed if you asked her the meaning of any word 
 
 72 
 
A Postscript on CKivalry 73 
 
 off the menu and she would undoubtedly be greatly 
 embarrassed if you even asked her to eat with you. 
 Like Sancho Panza under similar circumstances 
 she would probably decline your invitation.* 
 Nor would she like you to give up yoiu: seat to her 
 in the street car. You do, of course, if you are 
 truly chivalrous.f 
 
 In chivalry more emphasis has ever been placed 
 upon the inferiority of sex than upon the inferiority 
 of caste. Knighthood was a caste like any other, 
 with many of the typical caste marks, a matter of 
 birth, education, initiation, equipment. But in 
 chivalry, its code, it made a new psychological 
 contribution to caste distinctions, one endowing 
 it with imusual endurance. Borrowing from Chris- 
 tianity, chivalry emphasized the subjective sense 
 of superiority at the expense of the objective. 
 Whatever outward marks of caste a knight, or a 
 gentleman to use the more modem term, has had 
 
 * "Gramercy for your favour!" cried Sancho; "but I may tell 
 your worship that, provided I had plenty to eat, I could eat it as 
 well, and better, standing, and by myself, than if I were seated on 
 a level with an Emperor; and, indeed, if I must speak the truth, 
 I reUsh much more what I eat in my comer without niceties or 
 ceremonies." {Don Quixote, pt. i, eh. xi.) "Kutte nouhte 
 youre mete eke as it were Felde men" (Fumivall, p. 7. About 
 1475). or, as we say, "don't eat like a boor. " Table manners are, 
 I suppose, one of our most marked class distinctions. 
 
 fin the privacy of home you may be more willing to consider 
 her prejudices. 
 
74 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 to forego, thanks to political revolution * or bour- 
 geois or plutocratic invasion, in his heart he is 
 always a gentleman. Nor can any vicissitude of 
 fortune ever keep a lady from being a lady. How- 
 ever she is dressed, you can always "tell'* a ladyf; 
 whatever his company, a gentleman. 
 
 Whatever his company, too, at home in it a 
 gentleman is bound to be. "A real well-bred man 
 would speak to all the kings in the world with as 
 little concern and as much ease as he would speak 
 to you,*'' writes a great gentleman. But Lord 
 Chesterfield was far from implying that a gentle- 
 
 * A democracy like the United States is the very stronghold of 
 chivalry. Where else is there as much talk of being a " thorough 
 gentleman " or a "perfect lady " or of acting like a gentleman or a 
 lady, and where else is the charge of being "common" or a par- 
 venu or a nouveau riche so much resented? Does not some of the 
 intolerance bestowed in certain Eastern circles upon the vulgar- 
 ities of the plutocrat betray dislike of the idea that wealth can 
 overcome caste barriers? / And does not the American cherish 
 chivalry because it gives him a sense of superiority and leaves him 
 innocent of any sense of being undemocratic? 
 
 t An expertness in which we are superior to the Kakhyen. 
 All the tribesmen looking the same, half-naked, unkempt, and 
 grimy, they have to ascertain verbally each other's class. So the 
 first question one Kakhyen puts to another is: "Are you a noble 
 or a commoner? " (Parker, E. H., " The Burmo-Chinese Frontier 
 and the Kakhyen Tribes. ' ' Fortnightly Review, p. 94, July, 1897.) 
 Now with us a lady, no matter how shabbily or how scantily 
 attired, wears her clothes, one always hears, "like a lady." 
 Lately to be sure she has been reproached by certain news- 
 paper editors for dressing like a demi-mondainey inconsiderately 
 denying her caste. 
 
A Postscript on CHivalry 75 
 
 man*s manners should always be the same. "For 
 my own part, I am more upon my guard as to my 
 behaviour to my servants and others who are 
 called my inferiors, than I am towards my equals.** 
 Undoubtedly the noble lord never argued with 
 them or lost his temper. He believed in having two 
 sets of manners. So did some centuries before 
 him one Hugh Rhodes of the King's Chapel. 
 
 "If thou play, game, or sporte, with thy inferyour by 
 byrth, 
 Use gentle pastyme, men will then commend you in 
 yourmyrth."^ 
 
 Evidently the prejudice against having more than 
 one set of manners is fairly modem. Is it the out- 
 come of an homogeneity-exacting democracy or is it 
 the last refinement of arrogance on the part of the 
 gentry, their final assertion of caste? For, if, 
 thanks to his inner sense of superiority, a gentle- 
 man may be at ease with royalty, he is even more 
 likely to feel secure with his acknowledged inferiors 
 and to forgo many outward measures of defence, 
 even the barrier of a special set of manners.* 
 
 ♦The barrier of "manners" is neatly touched off by Mrs. 
 Abell. If an acquaintance "is found to be undesirable an in- 
 creased observance of ceremony is the most delicate way of 
 showing it, and a person would be very obtuse who would not 
 take such a hint. " {Woman in Her Various Relations ^ p. 140.) 
 
76 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 "The best manner is no manner" is a favour- 
 ite saying of a gentleman of my acquaintance, 
 and a very fine gentleman he is. 
 
 Chivalry has been based indeed on the feeling 
 that because the stranger, women, children, the 
 old, the "inferior" from status or personal weak- 
 ness, could not encroach upon you, you might 
 dispense with some of the usual barriers against 
 them quite safely. The very protection you afford 
 them is a barrier in itself against them. It 
 keeps them most rigorously and most subtly in their 
 place. Since the place given them is exalted, it is 
 plainly ungrateful and unreasonable in them to 
 wish to leave it. Stay in it they must, if they are 
 to get the benefits offered them. If ever they show 
 any signs of leaving it, they not only risk losing 
 their advantages, but they act inconsiderately 
 towards their protectors. As soon as there is any 
 self-assertion, no matter how unconvincing, by 
 the "weaker," the "stronger" becomes demoral- 
 ized, panic-struck. The one barrier he has counted 
 on is threatened, he realizes, and threatened in the 
 only way he fears — by implications of its super- 
 fluity. The merest hint that chivalry is not 
 needed causes chivalry to fall to pieces, prompt- 
 ing the sometime chivalrous to resort to older 
 and cruder means of self-defence, to insistence 
 
A Postscript on CKivalry 77 
 
 upon the prerogatives of seniority or upon 
 privileges of caste other than chivahous or up- 
 on sex exclusiveness in forms more direct and 
 more substantial. 
 
VIII 
 
 ACQUAINTANCES 
 
 A N introduction once over and assurances 
 ^* given,* an attempt to "place" an acquaint- 
 ance is generally made. His name, we noted, may- 
 be a help. A "tactful" introducer is still more 
 helpful. She will mention the place the nominee 
 comes from — Mr. C. of Washington let us say — or 
 she will make some remark to start conversation, 
 such as, "Mr. C. has just returned from a trip to 
 Colorado"' or "recently returned from Europe." f 
 If Mr. C. is a celebrity, that fact, we are told, 
 should also be brought out. For example: Mr. C. 
 "the artist, whose pictures you have frequently 
 
 *."I am much pleased, I am much rejoiced," says the Snake 
 Indian. (Spencer, ii, 151.) "I am glad to meet you," or "I am 
 happy to make your acquaintance," we usually say. At any 
 rate some remark should be made at once. (Learned, p. 94.) 
 
 t In the Soudan travellers do not have to depend upon the 
 form of their introduction — or upon the hotel labels on their 
 valises — to show they have been abroad. After they have been 
 down to the coast the Wanyamwezi of the interior change their 
 names. (Wilson and Felkin, i, 43.) 
 
 78 
 
Acquaintances 79 
 
 seen,** or Mr. C, "author of The World After the 
 Deluge, which you so greatly admired.**' 
 
 Mutual acquaintances, attendance at the same 
 school or church, the opera or the circus, any cele- 
 bration attracting public attention,* are other con- 
 versational openings. Common experiences in the 
 professions or in trade, in child-bearing, in house- 
 keeping, as tourists t are also favourite topics 
 of conversation, reassuring aids past the perils of 
 first acquaintance. { For common experiences of 
 this kind imply common reactions, i. e. that your 
 new acquaintance is like yourself, hence "a safe 
 acquaintance.** 
 
 Herein lies the social value of slang, of proverbs 
 and aphorisms, of "funny stories,*' of common- 
 places, and of catchwords. All are pledges, so to 
 speak, that your companion thinks and feels as 
 you do — ^if you are a "sociable** man. In other 
 
 *For example in New Guinea the Barium or great initiation 
 ceremony. When it is on it is said the men talk of nothing else. 
 (Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies, p. 31. New York, 
 1908.) 
 
 t But you are advised, if you wish to please, not to boast of 
 your travels (Ward, p. 392), travelling, we recall, being an asset. 
 
 t But even with "old" acquaintances you are advised "if you 
 really wish to be thought . . . amiable and unselfish " to lead the 
 way "for sportsmen to talk of their shooting, a mother to talk 
 of her children, a traveller of his journeys and the countries he has 
 seen, a young lady of her last ball and the prospective ones, an 
 artist of his picture, and an author of any book that he has 
 written." {lb., p. 401.) 
 
8o Fear and Conventionality' 
 
 , words, belonging to the same group, you and he 
 have the same ways. You are likely to find each 
 other companionable. In speech at least you are 
 unlikely to disconcert each other since you make 
 no personal demand on each other. Proverbs and 
 aphorisms require no response. Rather they check 
 response, closing the subject. The only way to 
 meet an aphorism is with another. Similarly a 
 ftmny story prompts a return in kind. The laugh- 
 ter it evokes implies a group point of view, a 
 common sense of humour.* Even more than 
 fimny stories commonplaces imply a group point 
 of view, calling for merely an impersonal, tradi- 
 tional response. 
 
 Of a like social value are familiar forms or for- 
 mulas of salutation, of polite enquiry or concern, of 
 farewell, of congratulation or condolence, in short 
 of all ** expressions of sympathy." 
 
 "Passing the time of day" is in many places an 
 acceptable formula of greeting, safely impersonal. 
 "You have come with the dew on you," says one 
 Samoan to another in the early morning, changing 
 later to, "You have come in the heat of the sun," 
 
 ♦The experienced orator is apt to open with a "good story"; 
 he knows how reassuring it is to his audience. To meet fully the 
 demand for this particular kind of satisfaction, communities may 
 produce a special functionary, the court jester or the professional 
 humourist. 
 
Acquaintances 8l 
 
 "You have come in the darkness. "^ "May your 
 day be white/* says one Arab in Cairo to another. 
 "May yours be like milk,** his acquaintance has 
 to rejoin. 4 "Good day,** say we, "the top of the 
 morning to you,'* ''bonsoir,'' "gw/ewac/r/,** and often 
 we go on to talk about the weather in more detail, 
 and even less personally than with a good wish 
 implicit. A good wish in a greeting may extend 
 over the day. The Brahman who has been polite 
 enough to tell his name* should be saluted in 
 return with: " Mayst thou be long-lived, f O gentle 
 one!**s 
 
 It is important for salutations in particular to be 
 reassuring. " It is well, '* was the salutation of the 
 Hebrews, and the Shunamite woman gives it even 
 when she is about to announce the death of her 
 son.^ "All is well," says the messenger to David, 
 regardless of the death of Absalom. ^ But even 
 under less trying circumstances salutations should 
 inspire confidence. Besides it is always possible 
 that your acquaintance has changed since you 
 
 * See p. 48. 
 
 t "And the word 'a' must be added at the end of the name, the 
 syllable preceding it being drawn out the length of three moras " — 
 no trifle was a salutation to the high-caste Hindu. "To those 
 persons who, when a name is pronounced, do not ^understand 
 the meaning of the salutation a wise man should say, *It is I'; 
 and he should address in the same manner all women. " {Manu, 
 ii, 12.-^.) 
 6 
 
82 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 last met, making all the more imperative some 
 familiarity upon meeting. "You haven't changed 
 a bit," "You are as young as ever," "You are 
 just the same as when we last met," are some of 
 the compliments* we pay after an absence. Merely 
 noticing the separation has a good effect. "La 
 nauichi?** "Now are you come?" says the Abi- 
 pone.^ "You have come quickly," says the 
 Japanese regardless of the time the coming has 
 really taken. ^ Almost as regardless we say, 
 "You have been long in coming" or "I haven't 
 seen you for such a long time" or "It is an age 
 since we met." The awkwardness of meeting 
 may also be lessened by saying: "What have you 
 been doing with yourself?" "Have you been 
 working hard?" may be said to a man; to a girl, 
 "I suppose you have been having a gay time." 
 Even when the need of noticing an absence or in 
 some cases of ignoring itf is not felt, a salutation 
 should not be abrupt or startling. Better even 
 than a question about what the other has been 
 doing is a reference to what he is engaged upon. 
 " SayadrCy'* " You are awake,*' says one Fijian early 
 in the day to another. ' ° " Z7a mapu maty'' " You are 
 rested," is the civil Samoan salutation to a man 
 
 * Let us note the implication in these compliments that any 
 change is to the bad. f See p. 150. 
 
i\cqviaintances 83 
 
 returning from fishing ; '' Ua matu^'' " You are dry/' 
 or * ' Faemalu*' " You are cool," to one who has just 
 had his bath. ' ' Among the Pueblo Indians I have 
 noticed similar amenities. A man stops to speak 
 to a woman laundering her clothes in the creek. 
 *' You are washing," he says, just as we in passing 
 a man with a gun would say, "You are going 
 hunting, " or a girl sitting under a tree with a book, 
 "You are reading." 
 
 The form of salutation is necessarily stable, but 
 in different groups it varies considerably. Baring 
 the shoulder on the Gold Coast, as Burton points 
 out, is like unhatting in England.'^ In New Ire- 
 land when one man says to another, *' I am glad to 
 see you," he pats him on the head'^; with us 
 he slaps his shoulder. In continental Europe the 
 slap is rather an embrace, and men as well as 
 women kiss. The Samoan or Fijian kiss is a sniff ' ^ ; 
 the Burmese, a sniff with a pressure of lips and 
 nose to cheek. 's To greet another the Balonda 
 claps his hands and digs himself in the ribs'^; the 
 Ainu rubs the palms of his hands together and 
 strokes his beard.'' There are several variations 
 in handshaking. In the Banks Islands a man locks 
 the middle finger of his right hand with his friend's 
 fingers and then pulls it away with a crack,'* a 
 manoeuvre, I have been told, something like the 
 
84 Fear and Conventionality^ 
 
 greeting between members of our Greek letter 
 secret societies. A M'kikuyu spits on his hand 
 before giving it to you to shake. ^^ The handshake 
 of the Arab seems to be a scuffle in which each 
 tries to raise to his lips the hand of the other.* 
 
 While the Arab is shaking your hand or, like 
 the Chinaman, kissing his own hand for you, he 
 repeats, "How art thou?"t — an inquiry he may 
 renew several times if he is well-bred, during the 
 course of your conversation. ^** The inquiry about 
 yotu* health or condition in general, — " How do you 
 do ? ' * " Comment vous portez-vous ?'' " Mwapoleni? ' ' 
 " Are your wounds healed? "J " How do you per- 
 spire?**! "How have the mosquitoes used you?"|| 
 — is extended to inquiry about your family, their 
 health, occupations, whereabouts, particularly their 
 whereabouts . ' ' Otyano? " " How are you ? * ' asks 
 the M'ganda, taking your right hand, or if he likes 
 you and has not seen you for some time, putting his 
 head on your shoulder. "^A, ahy otyano?'* "No, 
 no [i.e. there is nothing wrong]; how^re you?'* you 
 answer. ''Ahy'' says the other. ''Ahy' you say. 
 
 ♦Herein Herbert Spencer sees the origin of our own hand- 
 shaking. {The Principles of Sociology, ii, 139.) 
 
 \'*Allek toy,'" "I hope you are well," says the Bedouin. 
 (Burckhardt, p. 107.) 
 
 X Wemba. (Gouldsburg and Sheane, p. 256.) 
 
 § Cairo. (Mallery, p. 208.) || Orinoco. (76., p. 209.) 
 
Acquaintances 85 
 
 And so you keep it up until one says ''Agafayo?'' 
 "How is it where you come from?" *'Nungi,'* 
 '' Well/' **Agafayo? " " How is it where you come 
 from?** **Nungi. Atewamwe hatya?'' "Well. 
 How are your relations?"^' An American, and 
 married, you are asked about your husband or 
 wife: "Where is John?" "What's he doing now?" 
 "Is Maria here?" "Is she better than she was?" 
 A parent, you are unfailingly asked about the 
 children just as the children, as they grow older, 
 will be asked about you. " I suppose you don't see 
 much of him, now he is away in school?" "Isn't 
 it nice to have her with you? " With us, as among 
 the Ainu, ^^ such inquiries may be kept up for a few 
 moments or for several minutes. Indeed I have 
 been to "parties" where I was kept the entire time 
 answering questions about persons with whom the 
 other guests had associated me.* 
 
 The Ainu accompanies his inquiries with wishes 
 of good fortune to his interlocutor, to his wife and 
 family and relatives, to his native place. We also 
 wish well. "I hope you are in good health," we 
 
 * At one time in one resort inquiry always fell upon my saddle 
 horse. Any pronounced fad or pastime is a boon to your com- 
 munity, giving them something to talk to you about. My mare 
 is dead and the best substitute I can offer for her, I find, is a pro- 
 spective "trip," "Where are you going now?" or "I hear you 
 are off again," is an easy conversational opening. 
 
86 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 say, "I trust your mother has been better this 
 winter/* 
 
 Observations on personal comfort may be as 
 effective in precluding intimacy as addressing a 
 person as one of a family group. * ' Don't stand — "* 
 — *' Do rest yourself "—" Don't trouble "—'' Don't 
 rise" — "I hope you haven't taken cold" — "You 
 aren't getting tired, are you?" or bored? — *'Za- 
 gono? ' ' (Wagogo for ' * How have you slept ? " ) ^ ^ — 
 all are formulas of barricade as well as expressions 
 of solicitude. Perhaps in these cases humanity 
 as a whole is the buffer group. Formulas about 
 minding smoking or riding backwards or being in 
 the way are similarly based on a sense of humanity 
 and an obliviousness of the individual. Petits 
 soinSj little attentions, small courtesies, have some- 
 thing of the same character. To offer a woman 
 a chair or a man a match or a cigar or, if you are 
 a M'kikdyu*^ or lived a century ago, snuff, or, if a 
 M'ganda, some of your coffee-berries to chew,^^ jg 
 a politeness that may help to make further personal 
 attention unnecessary. Courtly manners are the 
 readiest of guaranties against having to make 
 unwonted social effort. "I am always polite 
 
 * " Don't sit, " it may be in Samoa or in Zululand where sitting 
 or squatting is the posture of respect. (Brown, p. 412; Leslie, 
 David, Among the Zulus and Amatongas^ p. 205. Glasgow, 1875.) 
 
A.cquaintaxices 87 
 
 because it is so much trouble to be rude," writes a 
 gentleman of the old school. ^^ 
 
 Easy as "conversational openings,** "small 
 talk,** and "good manners'* may have rendered a 
 meeting, freeing it of the dangers of personality, 
 breaking it off is apt to be difficult. How many 
 persons do not know when to say good-bye. Leave- 
 taking seems to involve a sudden disquieting access 
 of consciousness of the other personality. Hence 
 leave-taking is very apt to be ceremonious. To 
 say good-bye Papuans put on a mat or smear 
 themselves with river mud and set to wailing.* 
 Before leaving, a group of Abipones will say each in 
 turn: "ikfa chik kla leyci?'' "Have we not talked 
 enough? '* ^'Kla leyci,'' says the last one to speak and 
 then they all rise up together. ^^ "You stay and 
 watch,** says a Fijian on leaving. "Yes, and you 
 voyage. **^^ "So glad to have had this glimpse of 
 you, ** we say, or we elaborate excuses for leaving or 
 resort to various subterfuges about meeting again. 
 '*rawtom,**t ''roaroa,''X ''au revoir,'' or "aw/ 
 
 * Wollaston tells how, on the departure of their party, a New 
 Guinea native friend caught looking for tins in the vacated camp 
 burst into tears and heartrending sobs "which changed in a 
 moment, when he caught my eye, into a shout of laughter." 
 (Wollaston, A. F. R., Pygmies and Papuans, p. 247. New York, 
 1912.) 
 
 t Abipone for " I shall see you again." (Dobrizhoffer, ii, 138.) 
 X Fijian for "the morning of to-morrow." (Williams, i, 152). 
 
88 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 wiedersehen,'' are shorter formulas. To keep from 
 asking, ''When shall I see you again?" or from 
 planning for a reunion betokens unusual intimacy. 
 In all the crises of life intimacy between ac- 
 quaintances is peculiarly guarded against, — per- 
 haps because under emotional stress personality 
 tends to assert itself. Hence the critical event is 
 either ceremonially ignored as in the case of divorce 
 or death, sometimes of birth, or formal announce- 
 ments of it are made or notices sent out, and set 
 expressions of interest or sympathy or formulas 
 of acknowledgment are considered appropriate. 
 Births and deaths, betrothals and marriages are 
 annotmced in the United States by card or news- 
 paper, by toasts, by crepe on the door-knob, or by 
 flags at half-mast. In other places there are other 
 methods of notification. In Switzerland a birth 
 is announced by flowers worn by a girl of the 
 family, a bouquet at her breast for a girl, another 
 in her hand for a boy.^^ In the royal families 
 of Europe cannon are fired as a birth notice or 
 holidays or pardons proclaimed. To announce 
 a death the Sinhalese send out a lock of hair cut 
 from the head of the dead and twisted round a 
 small stick, all wrapped in a leaf or a bit of cloth. ^^ 
 In Uganda both birth and death notices are given 
 by drum-beats. ^^ Ceremonial notices usually 
 
^cq-uaintaxices 89 
 
 require an acknowledgment. To the friend who 
 has become "engaged" or a "happy parent,'* 
 a letter of congratulation has to be written*; to 
 one "bereaved by death," a letter of condolence. 
 We wish a bridal couple joy. We send to "inquire 
 for" the sick. We pass resolutions in honour of 
 the dead or pay them "tributes" at memorial 
 meetings or in the newspapers. 
 
 During crises the usual impersonal devices of 
 companionship are also resorted to — presents, 
 calls, entertainments. There are wedding presents 
 and birth and birthday presents, initiation or 
 graduation or first communion presents, presents 
 to mourners, presents to the dead. There are be- 
 trothal and wedding visits, visits to women after 
 childbirth, to the dying, to the grave. There are 
 betrothal and wedding festivities, pregnancy 
 parties, naming or christening parties, death or 
 memorial feasts. But present-giving, "calling," 
 and "entertaining" are by no means limited to the 
 crises of life. On endless occasions we are called 
 upon to perform these "social duties." Whether 
 or not they express, as this term implies, a sense 
 of social obligation, they undoubtedly manifest our 
 
 * Writing is always to the fore in crises, for many barriers to 
 intimacy have been formulated for writing, more even than for 
 speech. Compare any "guide to correspondence" or "complete 
 letter writer" with our published guides to conversation. 
 
90 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 instinct of gregariousness. In varying measure 
 they betray apprehension too on the part of their 
 performers of personal relationships and they may 
 usually be suspected of being designed to preclude 
 intimacy or to substitute for it. From this point 
 of view it may be well to particularize a little 
 under separate headings in regard to these much 
 used parts of the social machinery, parts which in 
 all social codes from the Confucian classics to 
 contemporaneous books on etiquette receive con- 
 siderable attention. 
 
IX 
 
 PRESENTS 
 
 PERHAPS the most iconoclastic organization 
 ' formed in our day has been a New York 
 society called the "Spugs/* "The Society for the 
 Prevention of Useless Giving." Its very organi- 
 zation indicates how grave the revolt against 
 making presents is felt to be. Presents are so 
 much a manifestation of sociability that the risk 
 in not making them of being thought imsocial can 
 only be lessened or offset by taking it with others. 
 Unsociable together, declare the Spugs, we become 
 sociable, as it were. It is plain enough that no 
 Spug is willing to be considered unsocial. But to 
 what extent is he or she consciously revolutionary? 
 What presents do they really account useless? 
 Birthday presents? Christmas presents? Engage- 
 ment presents? Wedding presents? Presents 
 made by guests, by the homing traveller, by 
 seekers of political favour? Funeral presents? 
 Votive offerings? Is it that the present has become 
 to them an inadequate expression for the occasion 
 
 91 
 
92 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 or is it that the occasion itself has lost for them it{ 
 significance? Or perhaps the Spugs are merel} 
 poor ethnologists, failing to realize the true useful 
 ness of presents. 
 
 Whenever people think in terms of crises anc 
 act up to them presents have an important socia 
 function. For the chief participants they take th( 
 edge off the crisis and to outsiders they permi 
 participation in the situation by enabHng them t( 
 take part in the only way they care to — imper 
 sonally. They depersonalize what might otherwise 
 be a trying moment. Like ceremonial of all kinds 
 ceremonial giving gratifies our instinct for gre 
 gariousness without the risk of intimacy. Present; 
 may say even less than words. The chief wh( 
 contributes a woman to the spirit harem of hi; 
 deceased colleague is under no obligation to mak( 
 any further expression of condolence. The kins 
 man who contributes to the raising of the bride 
 price or the friend of the family who sends th' 
 bride a wedding present is thereby relieved of evei 
 wishing the couple joy. 
 
 Grumbling over having to make such a presen 
 is, I surmise, merely a piece of modern discontent 
 In one of the Latin comedies there is, to be sure, i 
 rather slurring reference to present-making. Bu 
 it is not Geta who complains over having to mak 
 
Presents 93 
 
 a wedding present to the bride of his master's son, 
 not to speak of the prospect of being hit again for 
 other presents when she bears a child or when the 
 time comes for the child to be initiated. It is 
 Davus, the man from whom Geta is engaged in 
 collecting a bad debt,^ and Davus may be sus- 
 pected, like other malcontents, of taxing social con- 
 ditions with his personal grievance.* In societies 
 that are neither Roman nor modem we really 
 never hear of such complaints. Take the Todas for 
 example. Who ever heard of a Toda complaining 
 over the buffaloes he must contribute to the fimeral 
 services of certain relatives or over the tinkanik 
 paum tltpimi, "we give a piece of money to the 
 purse," the rupee given by the family of a be- 
 trothed boy at the death of any member of the 
 family of his fiancee ? ^ Take our colonial forebears. 
 The family of the deceased appears to have 
 lavished fimeral gloves and scarfs and rings upon 
 attendant mourners and yet I find in the letters or 
 memoirs of the period no evidence of regret over 
 such displays of generosity. 
 
 Presents are useful not only in formal crises. 
 
 * Nevertheless there may have been some genuine Spug senti- 
 ment in Rome. Otherwise how are we to explain that provision 
 in the XII Tables against burying gold with the dead, quite as 
 remarkable a proscription as that of not sending flowers to 
 fvmerals. 
 
94 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 They serve as buffers in emergencies. When a 
 rupture of customary relations is imminent they 
 may be depended upon to placate or appease — an 
 irascible god, a jealous wife, an acquaintance quick 
 to feel aggrieved. Peace offerings are a favourite 
 way out too after the jar has occurred. They 
 smooth past the jolt, they mend the break. Again 
 and again the disturbance caused by social 
 *' breaks" is righted by a present. During his 
 initiation a New Britain youth is expected to 
 avoid most carefully his kinswomen; but if he have 
 the bad luck to meet one of them in the bush he 
 must hand over to her anything he happens to 
 have with him. This forfeit his friends have sub- 
 sequently to redeem for him, he being in disgrace 
 until in this way they compensate the woman "for 
 the shame of having met him. " ^ In the Islands of 
 Torres Straits to call relatives by marriage by 
 name is taboo. The man who inadvertently does 
 so feels ashamed and his relative feels insulted; 
 but the feelings of both may be relieved by a 
 present of "some good thing."* If a Blackfoot 
 
 * R. C. A.E. T. S., V, 143; vi, 99. The taboo is on women as 
 well as men; but although the women break it frequently, the 
 conciliatory present is not expected of them. It would mean uttei 
 impoverishment. As an illustration of the double standard 
 the instance is not rare; but as an illustration of a greater laci 
 of conventionality in women than in men it is rare indeed. 
 
Presents 95 
 
 Indian appeared, however unintentionally, in the 
 presence of his mother-in-law, it placed her in 
 such an embarrassing position that he had to 
 make amends by giving her a horse. ^ 
 
 When the jar in intercourse is due not to a social 
 faux pas, but to absence, present-making is also of 
 service. When Andamanese meet after prolonged 
 absence they exchange whatever they happen to 
 have in their hands* — bows, arrows, nautilus 
 shells, s We recall how presents are made else- 
 where by the homecoming traveller. Perhaps the 
 present sent a host by his departed guest is also 
 prompted in part by the desire to ease off the break 
 in their relationship, ceremonial though it be. An- 
 alogously, in times of crisis, the present, I have no 
 doubt, is a kind of shock absorber, diverting atten- 
 tion from the event itself, from death, let us say, or 
 from growing up or from getting married. 
 
 That a present may be a bond as well as a buffer 
 I am well aware. A present may establish a tie 
 between giver and recipient, conveying in a kind 
 of magical way something of the one to the other. f 
 
 ♦The rest of their behaviour is of interest. Without going 
 through any other fonn of greeting, they gaze speechless at each 
 other for some time, as much as half an hour; then the younger 
 of the two, making some commonplace remark "to break the ice," 
 says the ethnographer, they proceed to exchange the latest news. 
 
 t This may be the reason why present-making between the 
 sexes is restricted. We read, for example, that "unmarried ladies 
 
9^ Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Betrothal or marriage presents exchanged be- 
 tween bride and groom may have this meaning and 
 perhaps presents between host and guest and 
 presents to the dead. But in all these instances the 
 present is suggested by the feeling that there is 
 a gap to be bridged over, the gap between the 
 sexes, between members of different families or 
 tribes or countries, between the living and the 
 dead. What else is the present itself but an at- 
 tempt to bridge the gap, a timid little approach to 
 a personal relationship, pathetic enough at times, 
 by those who know not the ways to intimacy? 
 
 ought not to accept presents from gentlemen who are neither 
 related nor engaged to them." (Ward, p. 392.) Again, that 
 "presents made by a married lady to a gentleman should be in 
 the name of both herself and her husband." (Duffey, p. 150.) 
 — To be sure the restriction appears at times to be economic. 
 A lady is told, for example, that she "should not be under obliga- 
 tion to a man for presents that plainly represent a considerable 
 money value" (Morton, p. 206), the idea being, I suppose, that 
 her favours are purchasable. But this idea may be secondary, 
 superimposed upon the original idea of sympathetic magic. 
 
X 
 
 CALLING 
 
 PRESENTS are a natural appanage to another 
 * conspicuous expression of the gregarious 
 instinct, the visit. Visits to the dwellings of the 
 gods or of their human representatives, priests or 
 chiefs, are almost always accompanied by presents. 
 Among us, although turkeys are sent once a year 
 to the White House and miscellaneous presents 
 are received there from time to time, presents to 
 statesmen are now as a rule discountenanced and 
 sometimes even penalized as bribes. But in the 
 churches votive offerings are still made or to the 
 beggar at the portal alms are given, and even in 
 Protestant churches the plate is passed.* ^ 
 In less important or less conservative circles 
 
 * Why this difference between church and state? Perhaps it 
 turns on the question of the return gift. A government official 
 cannot make a return gift without injury to the commonwealth; 
 but it seems to be held that the gods are not quite as restricted, 
 although likely as not their favours to one may be at the cost of 
 others. Then, too, unlike the gods, government officials are 
 supposed to be on their job without the need of propitiation. 
 7 97 
 
98 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 visits are independent of presents. They have, 
 however, other ceremonial features. Describing 
 them I shall have in mind merely the so-called ** so- 
 cial cair' in distinction to the wedding call, the call 
 of inquiry, the call of condolence, etc., calls natur- 
 ally partaking of the ceremonial of the occasion on 
 which they are paid. — The "social call'* has to be 
 made during ''calling hours," nowadays from 
 half-past three to half -past six. A few years ago 
 the hours were from two to four, as that interval 
 interfered with "neither hmch nor the afternoon 
 drive." In small towns, however, calling began 
 as early as twelve o'clock.* In calling, the day of 
 the week as well as the hour is of importance. A 
 call should be paid on "the day at home" of the 
 hostess,t or if a man is calling on a woman, on 
 Sunday, after church or in the afternoon.' Ex- 
 ceptions to these rules I shall refer to later. A call 
 must not last less than five or more than fifteen 
 minutes. For paying it one's "best" or at least 
 "second best" clothes must be worn, "a calling 
 dress or costume more elegant than that worn for 
 walking or for shopping." Gentlemen wear "a 
 black cut-away, or a frock-coat, dark trousers, 
 
 * Ward, p. 67. The ' ' social call * ' was once called the ' ' morning 
 call." 
 
 t A call upon any other day "seems to denote no wish to see 
 her. " {lb., p. 62.) But cp. Manners and Social Usage, p. 7. 
 
Calling 99 
 
 silk necktie (black is in the best taste), and a 
 medium or neutral shade of gloves."' A man 
 calling in his "business suit" at least apologizes 
 for it. However they are dressed, "gentlemen 
 leave their umbrellas, overcoats, and overshoes in 
 the hall; but take their hats and sticks with them 
 into the drawing-room, unless they are calling on 
 old friends. "3 Except possibly with old friends 
 too, the call is characterized by certain formulas 
 of speech as well as by certain clothes, and a more 
 or less restricted set of topics of conversation is 
 employed. Conversational openings and polite 
 inquiries appear to special advantage in calling. 
 A call has to be "returned" and returned within a 
 given period. In returning it "the exact etiquette 
 of the person who has left the first card " should be 
 observed. 4 Calling is held to be a preliminary, 
 and in this we see its most marked ceremonial 
 aspect, indispensable to further social intercourse. 
 "You can hardly invite people to your house until 
 you have called and have left a card. To stop an 
 acquaintance, one has but to stop leaving cards. 
 It is thus done quietly but securely. "^ 
 
 Calling, like present-making, is subject to 
 careful regulation between the sexes, and between 
 those of different ages or of different castes. 
 Women do not pay calls on men, "no lady leaves 
 
lOO Pear and Conventionality 
 
 her own card upon a gentleman."^ And yet 
 calling appears to be more obligatory for women 
 than for men. "In case a man is legitimately 
 prevented, by business cares, from paying calls 
 or leaving his cards in person, it is proper for his 
 wife or mother or sister, or other near relative,* to 
 leave or send his card with her own. " ^ Sometimes 
 a man wishes to call in person. He may not "call 
 upon a lady," however, "unless he has first received 
 permission to do so. "* Nor does he ask in calling 
 for the young ladies only. It is indeed incorrect 
 for a very young lady to invite a gentleman to 
 call. 9 
 
 Younger women are not only restricted in the 
 matter of calls by men, but also in connection with 
 calls by elder women. In that annual exchange of 
 calls certain authorities consider necessary to the 
 continuance of an acquaintance, it is the junior 
 who has to pay the first call. Under other cir- 
 cumstances any doubt arising as to who should call 
 first is determined by seniority. It is always the 
 
 * "Only the women of his own household, or a relative with 
 whom he habitually pays visits, can thus represent a man by 
 proxy." (Morton, p. 32.) His proxies are sometimes neglectful 
 according to this authority. * ' ' Solid men ' would go * into society ' 
 far more frequently and with greater alacrity if they felt assured 
 that the way had been paved with their own visiting cards, well 
 laid in place by the deft fingers of their skilful women folk, who 
 have left no flaw in the mosaic of social proprieties. " {lb., p. 35.) 
 
Calling' ■ ; , , : : \ ,: [ \ipi ] 
 
 privilege of the senior to wait to be called upon. 
 She has the privilege too under certain circum- 
 stances of leaving cards upon her junior without 
 asking to see her, a performance in the younger 
 woman nothing less than a gross affront. Then 
 the truly aged may cease from calling altogether. ' ° 
 
 Caste affects calling. An "inferior" does not 
 call upon his or her "superior, " at least without a 
 special invitation.* "It is not the correct thing 
 to call first upon people in a higher social position 
 than one's own."" Even where the difference in 
 position is slight, it is the lady higher in rank or 
 more "prominent in fashion" who pays the first 
 caU.'^ 
 
 Into the ceremonial of the "first call" enter 
 many nice distinctions besides those of rank or 
 age. "At places of summer resort, those who own 
 their cottages call first upon friends who rent them ; 
 and those who rent, in turn, call upon each other 
 according to the priority of arrival; while both 
 those who own and those who rent call first upon 
 friends arriving at the hotels. "'^ But supposing 
 
 •Unless we consider, as perhaps we should, ecclesiastical or 
 political "audiences," church ^hours, or public receptions in the 
 light of calls. 
 
 Herbert Spencer considers that calling originated as an act of 
 homage. It was a form of propitiation by the "inferior" of the 
 "superior." 
 
jpz '['',: 'Fi^ir '.axiid JConventionality 
 
 both ladies arrived at the same time to occupy 
 both of them rented villas? Then "the lady whose 
 house is in the city nearest to the watering place 
 would assuredly feel herself at liberty to make the 
 first call if she desired to make the acquaintance of 
 her neighbour, provided they had both rented the 
 villas for the first time that season. If not, the 
 one who has been the longest occupant calls first, 
 without reference to the distance of their respec- 
 tive cities. "'4 In the autumn, home from the 
 summer resort, those who return first call first. '^ 
 
 Calling plays an important part in the practice 
 of hospitality. It may be that the stranger is not 
 invited to an "entertainment" until he has called 
 "to pay his respects." (I know one woman who 
 says she never asks a man to dinner unless he has 
 first called, and I have read of hostesses who make 
 in this connection a seasonal demand.*) Then 
 unless the guest callsf after the entertainment, he 
 may not be invited to another. He must call 
 promptly, too, certainly within three days. To this 
 dinner call, as it is known among us, a very special 
 
 *" Gentlemen should not expect to receive invitations from 
 ladies with whom they are only on terms of formal visiting, until 
 the yearly or autumnal call has been made, or until their card3 
 have been made to represent themselves. " (Ward, p. 79.) 
 
 t In China and in some places in the United States he may send 
 or leave cards. 
 
Calling 103 
 
 value appears to attach. It continues to be paid 
 by persons who pay calls of no other kind. Im- 
 portant, however, as it is, the late hostess is 
 expected not to be "at home" when it is paid. 
 "For this reason persons who wish to leave cards 
 only, call within the prescribed three days, as they 
 are then sure of not being admitted where the 
 customs of society are understood."'^ 
 
 With us "tea" is the only "refreshment" 
 offered to a caller; elsewhere the refection or, as in 
 Japan, the manner of serving it, is more elaborate. 
 In Hayti I once had to drink champagne during an 
 early morning call and once in Sicily an after- 
 dinner liqueur on an empty stomach. In Manila 
 certain native fruits were always offered to me 
 when I called. During the pinon nut season in New 
 Mexico I have noticed that both Indians and 
 Mexicans take for granted in their callers an ex- 
 haustless capacity for piiion nuts, frequently a 
 not unpleasant assiimption. And just so any 
 traveller, I suspect, is sure to have stories of what 
 he has had set before him during his calls upon the 
 natives. Even among us a sojourner would find 
 that when the day at home had been magnified 
 into an afternoon reception it was the correct 
 thing "to have several varieties of delicate and 
 pretty cakes, and several kinds of sandwiches and 
 
I04 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 bread and butter, also salted almonds, candies, 
 
 litchi nuts, or other dainty trifles on the afternoon 
 tea-table. "^7 
 
 Entertainment other than food or drink may 
 also be offered to callers. " It is the correct thing: 
 To darken the windows and light the rooms by ar- 
 tificial light at a large and handsome reception, 
 also to decorate the house with flowers and to hire 
 a band of musicians, if the hostess wish to do so." 
 Also: "To have a small informal dance succeed an 
 afternoon tea or reception, notifying beforehand 
 the guests who are to remain and take part in it 
 and perhaps asking others to remain, on the spur 
 of the moment."'^ In India too dancing is a 
 feature in calling. A distinguished man about to 
 call upon another engages to accompany him a 
 troupe of quasi temple dancers. 
 
 Calling, like so many of the customs we have 
 been noting, is becoming obsolete; but I have had 
 the good fortune to observe it in one of the few 
 places where its practice is still vigorous, in Wash- 
 ington. Washington has not yet entered upon the 
 decadent stage of calling, the stage of leaving 
 cards or even mailing them. The Washington call 
 must be made in person. Cards must be left, 
 however, whether the hostess is seen or not. They 
 are deposited on the hall table or, in hotels or 
 
Calling 105 
 
 apartment houses, in the letter box in the ofiSce.* 
 A row of baskets is sometimes provided for these 
 cards outside the door of the hotel parlour within 
 which a row of ladies stand to "receive." Ladies 
 who receive together in this way may be covered 
 rapidly, but even calls in private houses may be 
 "done" without much loss of time. From thirty 
 to fifty calls may be made of an afternoon by the 
 expert providing, as she puts it, she has luck, i. e, 
 she does not find everyone in. She has of course 
 drawn up her list with forethought and she is 
 punctilious in timing each call. She keeps within 
 a safe range of conversation in order not to be 
 beguiled into exceeding her allotted time or into 
 overdrawing upon the energy she needs for accom- 
 plishing her round. The fund of energy she starts 
 with seems, however, at times to increase rather 
 than lessen; each call done gives her, I take it, a 
 stimulating sense of having acquired merit. At 
 any rate at the end of the three hours, however 
 tired she may be, her sense of accomplishment is 
 vastly satisfying. And so for several months 
 during the year the Washington resident pays her 
 daily round of calls, returning to the top of her 
 
 * "Should the lady of the house open the door herself, the card 
 must by no means be handed to her; it should be left as unob- 
 trusively as possible on the hall table or elsewhere." {Manners 
 and Social U sages ^ p. 13.) 
 
I06 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 list when she reaches the bottom of it,* a being 
 more gregarious or more impersonal it were hard 
 to find. 
 
 In Washington those who called most, I noticed, 
 went ''out** least, and there seemed to be little 
 or no relation at any rate between calling and 
 "going out"; but according to those books on 
 American etiquette I have had to cite, my oppor- 
 tunities for observation at first hand ha-ving been 
 locally limited, the relations between calls and 
 entertainments in the country at large are close. 
 Not only does the call and the call alone qualify 
 you to be invited to entertainments, but "after 
 an interchange of cards, the acquaintance drops, 
 unless followed by an invitation upon one side or 
 the other. "'9 In other words calHng without the 
 adjunct of entertaining does not firmly establish 
 an acquaintance, calls being only "in part the 
 bases upon which that great structure, society, 
 mainly rests."" 
 
 * For in Washington the rule does not hold that "once an 
 acquaintance is established, it is kept up by calling once a year." 
 {The Complete Hostess, p. 311.) In Washington "one's card left 
 on the hall table at a reception or tea establishes the acquaint- 
 ance for a year" only if the call is not meanwhile returned. Re- 
 turned, it must be in turn returned. Also it is a question in 
 Washington whether attending a tea counts as a call. Among the 
 most scrupulous, i.e. in Congressional circles, it does not count. 
 
XI 
 
 ENTERTAINING 
 
 "npHERE'S no use in coming to your party," 
 "■■ one sometimes hears from the social rebel, 
 "1 shan't see anything of you. One never does of 
 one's hostess, or of anyone else, that's the worst 
 of parties. " True, but why make any point of it.^ 
 Why suggest that entertainments should be for 
 the sake of personal relationships? They bring 
 people together, but it is their very nature to keep 
 personalities apart. They are essentially devices 
 for gregariousness and for gregariousness only, for 
 gregariousness safeguarded against personal re- 
 lationship. To expect them to yield opportunities 
 for intimacy is peculiarly modem and, if I may say 
 so, ignorant and rather silly. A brief survey of the 
 leading forms of entertaining may show how irra- 
 tional is the grievance of those who, disappointed 
 on this score, "don't like society." 
 
 Perhaps the simplest form of "society" is the 
 procession or the review. It prevails in royal and 
 in ecclesiastical circles. Sir Richard Burton, that 
 
 107 
 
lo8 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 inimitable traveller, gives a graphic account of a 
 procession he witnessed at the court of Dahomi. 
 "The Caboceers [head men) were followed by the 
 companies, of which the first was that of the 
 Ahaujito or singers and of the Hunto or drummers. 
 • . . The distinguishing mark was the large-tail 
 'chauri,* with a man's jawbone above the handle. 
 They were preceded by nine 'fancy flags,' 
 adorned with all manner of figures, animate and 
 inanimate, cut out of coloured cloth and sewn 
 upon the plain ground. These were followed by 
 . . . eight human crania dished up on small 
 wooden bowls like bread-plates, at the top of very 
 tall poles. . . . The Achi, or bayoneteers, were 
 headed by their commander in a man-o'-war's 
 cap, about twenty in number. . . . Followed a 
 few carbineers, whose half-shaven heads showed 
 them to be slaves of the palace : they are known as 
 Zo-hu-nun — 'Fire at the foe's front.' A white 
 flag with a blue anchor at the end of a waving red 
 stripe denoted the Gan'u'nlan Company, the 
 'Conquerors of all animals,' so called from the 
 size of their guns, which are expected to kill, not 
 to wound: forming part of the artillery with the 
 Agbarya, or blunderbuss men, they are chosen for 
 size and strength, and much prefer themselves 
 to the commonalty of the army. They followed 
 
Entertaining 109 
 
 a tattered Jack and a fancy flag, and their chiefs 
 bowed to us, whilst the men, resting the butt upon 
 the ground, fired resonant charges."' 
 
 A review is a favourite way not only with African 
 monarchy but with government everywhere of 
 entertaining distinguished guests. A religious pro- 
 cession on a Saint's day may be accounted an 
 analogous form of hospitality, a form that Church 
 and State, even if at other times they go separate 
 ways, usually unite in celebrating.* But political 
 or ecclesiastical parades are not limited to enter- 
 taining distinguished travellers or saints; they 
 occur on a great variety of occasions. Nor is the 
 parade or procession itself as a form of sociability 
 confined to State or Church. There are university 
 or school processions, guild or labour processions, 
 funeral and wedding and ^'coming out'* marches, 
 the walk in to dinner, woman suffrage processions, 
 and, most recent of all, peace parades. — Parade 
 ceremonial consists of marching together, usually 
 with music to facilitate keeping step or to inspire 
 in the marchers the same emotion at the same 
 moment, and the carrying of banners, standards, 
 or insignia, and of the elimination, more or less 
 compulsory, of verbal communication. 
 
 * Mgr. Lavelle and Mayor Mitchell, for example, head together 
 the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City. 
 
no Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Almost as perfect an expression of gregarious- 
 ness as marching is dancing, or at least certain 
 forms of dancing. Dancing figures in fact in pro- 
 cessions. In the parade during the So-sin Custom 
 held in honor of deceased Dahoman royalty, 
 "seven troubadour women, holding horse-tails and 
 twirling flags in their left hands,*' assisted by 
 another band of fifty women, *' danced long and 
 violently before the King."* In the Abipone 
 funeral parade, the women were said to "go leap- 
 ing like frogs. "3 After the engulfing of the 
 Egyptians, when Miriam led forth the Jewish 
 women, she danced before them. The military 
 "goose step'* may be called, I suppose, a dance 
 step. Even detached from the parade, dancing 
 has traits in common with it — movement to 
 rhythm and more or less of a taboo on speech, 
 particularly in primitive dancing. Dances are 
 even more widespread than parades, occurring on 
 an even greater variety of occasions and at 
 assemblies of all kinds.* When their husbands 
 were campaigning it was incumbent upon the Tshi 
 tribeswomen to dance. "* Debutante dances* and 
 dances at tribal initiations and at weddings are 
 very common. The modem ballet was given its 
 
 * In rare instances dancing seems to be spontaneous. The 
 Veddas are said to dance for pleasure like a child. 
 
Entertaining III 
 
 impulse, it is said, in Italy at an entertainment 
 to celebrate the marriage of Isabella of Aragon 
 and Galeazzo, Duke of Milan. ^ Many peoples 
 besides the Abipones dance at funerals. Burton 
 saw fifty of the queens of Dahomi dancing before 
 the shrine of their royal father-in-law during the 
 memorial services in his honour. '^ Outside of Italy 
 and Dahomi dancing has ever been a popular 
 court entertainment. At religious gatherings too 
 dancing is apt to be a feature. Among some of the 
 Moslem sects and some of the early Christian, 
 in Shinto, in the cults of the Hindu gods, among 
 the Shakers, with the priesthoods of the Ewes 
 and Tshis, of the Awemba, and in fact of in- 
 numerable tribes, dancing is a condition of 
 "possession."* 
 
 Chanting or singing often accompanies dancing; 
 but it is often too a separate form of entertainment. 
 The funeral dirge is universal. The serenade of 
 courtship and the wedding song are common. 
 The gods have their holy singers and in almost all 
 churches ritual is intoned or sung. There are also 
 court singers. The conteur once kept by every 
 Turkish Pasha told his story in rhythm.^ At 
 Benin it was a chief's wives who sang in his 
 
 * May we not consider possession gregariousness at its 
 intensest? 
 
112 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 honour, each lady being famous for some particular 
 song. ^ I have often heard of an American singer 
 asking permission to sing at the musicales given 
 periodically at the White House. 
 Y Singing has ever been considered a social accom- 
 plishment. The Ainu returned from abroad chants 
 the account he gives his friends of his travels.'" 
 The Akikuyu welcome strangers with a song." 
 Every evening the Bororo chief sings his orders 
 for the following day.'* The Euahlayi of New 
 South Wales '3 sings his riddles.* To be socially 
 qualified the early Victorian damsel was taught 
 to sing, and in many an old-time novel her friends 
 are assumed to be pleased to listen to her. She 
 was a successor, so to speak, of the mediaeval 
 minstrel, singing after instead of during dinner. 
 Minstrelsy at feasts is very common. At a party 
 given to the Routledges by the chief of the Aki- 
 kuyu, two young warriors each sang a solo, all 
 joining in the chorus and the ladies at the close 
 applauding.'^ There was singing at Chinese 
 *' drinking entertainments " — commonly a few lines 
 from one of the pieces of the Shih King expressing 
 a sentiment appropriate to the occasion. 's A few 
 
 * Telling riddles is in itself a form of entertainment. No longer 
 very popular among us except in childhood, it is a favourite pas- 
 time of savages and of peasants. Like proverbs or aphorisms or 
 quotations, riddles enable a conversation to be quite impersonal. 
 
£ntertainin|( 1 13 
 
 years ago at a luncheon given to us, a party of 
 visiting American politicians, by the Japanese 
 Minister of War, the Marquis Ito, famous among 
 statesmen, sang to us verses of his own written in 
 our honour.* On another occasion, after dinner 
 in Japanese style,t our hosts entertained us with a 
 Japanese play acted by the leading geisha company 
 of Tokio. We too take our dinner guests to play 
 or opera. Elsewhere the feast itself has been 
 enlivened by the drama. 
 
 Into the religious origins of the drama we need 
 not go. The last trace of its ecclesiastical charac- 
 ter disappeared when women and children were no 
 longer excluded from it. But it persists without 
 
 *The charm of this naive performance was all the greater 
 because other native ways had been so carefully hidden from us 
 by our hosts; but on some of us the charm, I fear, was lost, on 
 those of us not familiar, even ethnographically, with minstrelsy at 
 meals. 
 
 t We sat on cushions on the floor, women and men in different 
 rooms. The elderly Kentuckian next to me had rheumatism and 
 suffered considerably from her bent knees. There were other 
 incongruities about the dinner. A Virginian put her chop-sticks 
 in her hair. On the other side of me sat a charming Japanese girl. 
 Japanese girls do not dine out and she was the only one we had 
 met. Her mother was a lady of high position and with very ad- 
 vanced ideas. Because of them she had been subject to much 
 criticism by her countrymen. When her critics heard of the 
 unwonted presence of her daughter at our dinner party together 
 with the indecent feat of one of the guests, did they not exclaim, 
 I wonder, "This shows what will happen if we let girls go out in 
 the American fashion ; they will begin to put their hashi in their 
 hair!" 
 
 8 
 
n4 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 the backing of the Church or even at times in the 
 face of the Church because it is such an adequate 
 satisfaction of the gregarious instinct, a satisfac- 
 tion both ample and safe. Without any personal 
 communication the audience has endless oppor- 
 tunities to feel the same emotion and in its laughter 
 or applause, in its hissing or cat-calling, to express 
 it unanimously. 
 
 In games we find the gregarious instinct again 
 expressing itself, notably and directly in games 
 based on co-operation, but also in games of com- 
 petition. In both its types the game encourages 
 association and diverts attention away from the 
 personalities engaged in it to itself. 
 
 But of all forms of gregariousness, eating or 
 drinking together is by far the commonest and 
 most ubiquitous. Few entertainments are com- 
 plete without "refreshments," and very often the 
 refection constitutes the whole entertainment. 
 During the feast or drinking bout no distractions 
 are provided; even conversation maj^- be bad form. 
 The Japanese and other Orientals eat in silence. 
 When silence is not expected of diners-out, the 
 talk itself may be subject to restrictions. *' No- 
 thing should be said which can hurt any one's 
 feelings, " states the writer of Manners and Social 
 Usages, adding that "politics, religion, and the 
 
Entertaining 115 
 
 stock market" are generally ruled out.**^ The 
 proscription of these particular topics of conversa- 
 tion is not common enough, perhaps, for reasons 
 already noted, to warrant this observation ; but it is 
 quite true .that the range of conversation is nar- 
 rower at the dinner table than elsewhere. On the 
 other hand conversation of some kind there must 
 be. A silence is felt to be very embarrassing, and 
 the success of a dinner is judged of ''by the manner 
 in which conversation has been sustained. If it 
 has flagged often, it is considered a proof that the 
 guests have not been congenial; but if a steady 
 stream of talk has been kept up, it shows that 
 they have smoothly amalgamated as a whole. "^^ 
 Many details of conduct besides sustaining 
 conversation or conversing on appropriate topics 
 go to make up table manners. Given the close 
 contacts a common meal involves, an elaborate 
 ceremonial is to be expected. For much of its 
 detail as well as for the great stress laid upon its 
 observance I m.ust refer the reader to more sys- 
 tematic books on etiquette — unless he is enterpris- 
 ing enough to analyse his own experiences. As to 
 the ceremonial of feasting in general we may 
 observe that as in other forms of gregariousness 
 caste, age, and sex receive much consideration. 
 Kings, we have noted, do not eat with commoners, 
 
Ii6 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 nor servants with their masters. But even slighter 
 distinctions in social position are recognized at 
 dinners. In this country they are recognized 
 most obviously, perhaps, in Washington. Here a 
 Cabinet Minister walks out to dinner before a 
 Senator; a Justice of the Supreme Court sits on 
 the right of the hostess unless the presence of an 
 Ambassador has compelled a move to the left; 
 it is the wife of the Representative who has served 
 longest who has to make the " first move to go " after 
 dinner. Outside of the Capital these particular 
 distinctions are comparatively ignored and pluto- 
 cratic distinctions are more to the fore, not con- 
 spicuously, however, for the simple reason that in 
 many circles hostesses are inclined not to "mix" 
 people at dinner. Dinner guests, they hold, 
 * ' should be of the same standing. " ' * " They need 
 not necessarily be friends, or even acquaintances; 
 but, as at a dinner people come into closer contact 
 than at any other kind of a party, those only 
 should be invited to meet one another who move 
 in the same class or circles." ''^ Within my memory 
 in New York City the fashionable and unfashion- 
 able were rarely if ever invited to dine together. 
 
 Nor at one time were the young and the old.* 
 When debutantes and "married people" did begin 
 
 * See Chapter XV. for the grouping at table by age-class. 
 
Entertaining 117 
 
 to dine together, age took precedence. "In pro- 
 ceeding from the drawing-room to the dining-room, 
 the younger fall back until the older have ad- 
 vanced. "^° Dinner announced, "stand back for 
 all the married dames to pass out before you,** 
 writes the Young Lady's Friend, "and if a gentle- 
 man, wishing to escort you, at tempts to lead you 
 out before them, draw back, and do not let 
 him.**** At table, the Friend continues, "try to 
 seat yourself among the least important portion 
 of the company."" As for the seating of seniors 
 at table, "a host waits upon the oldest lady,"* 
 and the hostess is escorted by the eldest gentle- 
 man. ^^ 
 
 The relations between the sexes are carefully 
 regulated at dinners, when they dine together at 
 all. In many communities the principle under- 
 lying "stag** dinners and ladies' luncheons is 
 unbroken, men and women either eating in dif- 
 ferent places or the women eating after the men. 
 A Uripivf Islander who eats with a woman runs 
 the risk of a mysterious death.*'* A New York 
 man I know tells me that in a "business men*s 
 restaurant*' he always avoids a table where women 
 are sitting, and yet this same man is not at all 
 
 ♦ Or, let us note, upon "the greatest stranger." 
 t New Hebrides. 
 
Il8 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 averse, in the evening, to commensality. Is it 
 because at mixed dinners he has little or no option 
 about his relations to the sex? At mixed dinners 
 men have to take the women out and the sexes 
 alternate at the table,* unless a hostess wishes to 
 display the fact that she has at command more 
 than enough men to go round. But men do not like 
 to sit next to men at dinner, even to gratify the van- 
 ity of their hostess. Women are even more averse 
 to sitting next to women. It is only after dinner 
 that such an alignment of the sexes is acceptable, 
 and then only for a short period. Not to have a 
 man come up to talk to her after the men have 
 come in from the smoking-room is embarrassing to 
 a lady. 
 
 *That they are expected to talk first on one side and then the 
 other, as the table "turns," we may note as another provision 
 of the ceremonial conversation of the feast. 
 
XII 
 
 BETWEEN THE SEXES 
 
 SEX is one of the two* greatest sources of dif- 
 ference between its members society has to 
 apprehend. It deals with the disturbing factor in 
 its characteristicall}'- simple, unconscious way. It 
 separates men and women as much as possible, or 
 when because of passion or of economic necessity 
 or convenience actual separation is impossible or 
 difficult, it raises barriers between them. 
 
 In every society the separation of the sexes is 
 more or less thoroughly marked. No Vedda may 
 come in contact with any women of his own age ex- 
 cept his wife, ' a restriction observed in many savage 
 tribes, t ** Male and female should not sit together 
 
 * Age, of course, is the other. See pp. 176 flf. 
 
 t The proprieties of the haremUk may be observed even in a 
 communal cave. In a Vedda cave dwelUng "the woman may 
 always be seen at exactly the same spot, and when the men come 
 in they sit or lie beside their wives, keeping to that part of the 
 cave floor that belongs to them as carefully as though there 
 was a partition dividing it from that of their neighbours." 
 (Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 86.) 
 
 119 
 
I20 Fear and Conventionalit>* 
 
 in the same apartment, nor have the same stand 
 or rack for their clothes, nor use the same towel or 
 comb, nor let their hands touch in giving and re- 
 ceiving,*' prescribes the Li Kt. * In Corea the mere 
 touch of a strange man has caused a father, it is 
 said, to kill his daughter, or a wife to kill herself. ^ 
 Out-of-doors a Miridite girl of Albania speaks to a 
 man unrelated to her at the risk of losing her 
 reputation, -* a calamity few girls care to survive. 
 Dobrizhoffer relates that one day after his arrival 
 in Paraguay he played in the road on the flute. 
 The girls gathered to listen; but as soon as the 
 youths came up the girls, every one, disappeared, s 
 The English girl of the fifteenth century was put 
 on her guard in rhyme : 
 
 ** Aqweynte thee not with eche man that gooth bi the 
 strata ; 
 Though ony man spake to thee, Swiftli thou him 
 
 grata 
 Lata him go bi the way : bi him that thou ne stonde. "^ 
 
 In the United States to-day a mother sometimes 
 tells her daughter not to speak to any strange man 
 in the street — except a policeman ; and it was once 
 thought bad form for a girl to go "buggy-nding** 
 with a man or in town to be seen with one in a cab. 
 Only a few years ago a New York girl told me that 
 having to drive home late in the evening in a 
 
Bet-ween tHe Sexes 12 1 
 
 "strange*' cab and without, a chaperone, she re- 
 quired her escort to sit on the box with the driver. 
 There are in most communities certain places 
 assigned to one sex into which the other may not 
 venture, or venture only at their peril. No Aeneze 
 of good reputation would sit down in that comer 
 of the women's part of the tent called the roffe, 
 *'Your sitting place is the rofe,'' is said to a man 
 you despise. "^ Corean boys were taught that it was 
 shameful to set foot at all in the women's part of 
 the house, and in Seoul men breaking the law 
 requiring them to leave the streets to the women 
 from eight p.m. to one a.m. were severely pun- 
 ished.* A New Guinea woman found anywhere 
 near the place where the feast of the sacred bull- 
 roarer is being celebrated is taken and put at the 
 disposition of the assembled men. ' New Hebrides 
 men also violate women who eavesdrop around 
 the club house of their secret society.'** London 
 or New York clubmen are likely to make "insult- 
 ing remarks," I am told, about women who even 
 look into their club windows. A man who ad- 
 dresses a girls' school or joins a ladies' sewing circle 
 is expected to feel discomposed. "How do you 
 like being the only man?" he is asked. 
 
 i^The sexes are apt to be separated in their 
 economic pursuits, in their pastimes, and in their 
 
122 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 social interests and activities in general. In 
 North-western Siam iron is worked only by the 
 women and they only pole the boats." Nagas 
 who touch women's weaving or pottery tools are 
 pimished.'* Among the Akikuyu only the men 
 herd the goats. The long distance carries of fire- 
 wood are made only by the women and of a big 
 load men say, "This is a very heavy load, it is fit 
 to be carried by a woman, not by a man."'^ In 
 Uganda hunting is an activity improper for a 
 woman, more improper here even than in other 
 countries. A woman who kills any animal or 
 catches them for others to kill is considered unfit 
 for society. ' '* Reading as well as hunting has been 
 taboo to women. "Some Stoicks indeed there are 
 who will not allow any Books to Womankind," 
 writes a sixteenth-century EngHshman. ' ^ Coryat, 
 the seventeenth-century English traveller, records 
 that until he went to Venice he had never seen 
 women on the stage, and even in Venice there were 
 no women in the audience except courtesans, and 
 they sat apart and wore masks. '^ "It is not 
 coml^^e for a woman to practise feates of armes, 
 ridinge, playing at tenise,* wrasthng, and manye 
 
 * Fashions at least change. Not long ago I heard that great 
 evangelist of our day, Billy Sunday, declare that tennis was not 
 to his liking, it was "too girlified." To that description one of 
 
Bet-ween tHe Sexes 123 
 
 other thynges that beelonge to men, '* asserted one 
 of the sixteenth-century coiirtiers of Urbino.'^ 
 *'I beleve musicke," he also says, "together with 
 many other Vanities is mete for women, . . . but 
 not for men that be men in dede.'*'* In Central 
 Australia a man is not allowed to attend the 
 memorial death service of a woman. '* A Massim 
 woman may not enter or even approach the 
 bolabola or circle of stones where the men sit to 
 talk.'** In the fifteenth century the English youth 
 was cautioned to be reticent in the presence of 
 ladies. 
 
 " In chambur among ladyes bryghth 
 Kepe thy tonge and spende thy syghth.'*'* 
 
 "Outside affairs should not be talked of mside the 
 threshold of the women's apartments, nor inside or 
 women's affairs outside it, "^* prescribes the Lt Kt. 
 Furthermore, "Male and female, without the in- 
 tervention of the matchmaker, do not know each 
 other's name."*^ 
 
 Separation of the sexes is also assured through 
 other forms of social separation. Social barriers 
 based on differences in age, in culture and religion, 
 in economic or political class, in kinship and race, 
 
 his followers, a tennis devotee, audibly demurred. "I know," 
 said the preacher, "Rody plays tennis and he's no sissie." 
 
124 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 all figure in exaggerated form the moment sex 
 itself figures. The merest glance at marriage 
 restrictions shows this condition. Even when 
 marriage within one's own age-class is not required 
 by law or custom, how misled is the girl who 
 marries an old man,* how ludicrous the young man 
 who falls in love with an old woman. With any 
 married woman who is his junior, an Andaman- 
 ese is forbidden direct communication.^'' Unless 
 a woman unrelated to him is **very much his 
 senior," an American is advised by at least one 
 writer on etiquette not to offer her valuable 
 presents.*^ In fact so efficient a barrier between 
 the sexes does a difference in age appear that 
 among simple people it is sometimes simulated as 
 a device for separation. Masai warriors have to 
 salute married women with ^^ Endakwenya,^^ " O old 
 ladies!"*^ As soon as one of our girls marries, do 
 not her male contemporaries think of her as much 
 "older" and has one not heard persons describe 
 themselves as "an old married man," or "an old 
 married woman"? 
 
 In parts of Europe in the Middle Ages marriage 
 
 * Gerontocracy and marriage by purchase (whether the bride 
 is bought or whether she marries for money) are factors tending 
 to legitimatize or conventionalize this type of misalliance. The 
 monopoly of giris by the Elders may also force juniors into 
 marriage with older women, aging widows. 
 
BetTxreen tKe Sexes 125 
 
 with a Jew was punishable by death, nor did Jew- 
 ish law recognize marriage with an unbeliever. 
 The Moslem has been forbidden to marry the 
 Christian ; the Catholic, the Protestant ; the Angli- 
 can, the Dissenter. Caste may be as set against 
 mixed marriages as religion. In China actors, 
 policemen, and boatmen must marry within their 
 class.* 7 An Aeneze never marries his daughter to 
 a szonay i. e., a blacksmith or a saddler,* or to a 
 descendant of a szona family.** Everywhere a 
 non-celibate priesthood tends to be endogamous. 
 Marriage between slaves and free women is al- 
 ways forbidden and other sex relations between 
 them are apt to be more severely penalized than 
 illegitimate relations between others. A Teutonic 
 woman who had intercourse with a slave was Hkely 
 to be killed. A Guatemalan who married a slave 
 became one. Among the Hovas of Madagascar 
 even the three classes of slaves do not intermarry. 
 Roman plebeians and patricians could not inter- 
 marry until 455 B.C. Such misalliances were pun- 
 ished in Sweden until the seventeenth century.*' 
 Again and again European royalties have had to 
 forgo rank or position through marrying out of 
 their class, and in every civilized coimtry marrying 
 
 * These workmen are always of another tribe, their occupation 
 being accounted degrading to an Aeneze. 
 
126 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 beneath you involves in varying degree social dis- 
 approval or ostracism. There are few American 
 girls, I surmise, who would at no time feel ashamed 
 of having a man of an inferior social position make 
 love to them. 
 
 Shame, a sense of disgrace, of blight, is also felt 
 over the violation of endogamous rules of kinship 
 or of race. Were a Padam girl to demean herself 
 by marrying out of her clan, sun and moon would 
 refuse to shine, Dalton was once assured, and all 
 labour would have to cease until by sacrifice and 
 oblation the stain was washed away. A Bushman 
 woman considers intercourse with any man not of 
 her tribe degrading. The Baralongs, a Bechuana 
 tribe, killed any of their women intimate with 
 a European. 3 « In sections of the United States 
 marriage between whites and blacks has been 
 prohibited. On the steamer on which I once 
 travelled with a Congressional party to the Philip- 
 pines were a bride and groom, she a New Eng- 
 lander and he a Filipino, a graduate of Harvard 
 University and the son of a prominent Mestizo 
 Judge in Manila. This bridal pair the members of 
 our party, with but few exceptions, were not will- 
 ing to meet, and later in Manila I learned that the 
 members of the American Army and Navy Club 
 were resolved to ostracize the young woman. 
 
Bet-ween tKe Sexes 127 
 
 "We'll teach her," they said, **an American girl 
 can't marry a Filipino. " 
 
 Marriage aside, racial shyness or distrust is 
 notably exaggerated by a difference of sex. In 
 those parts of Borneo where it was believed that 
 the sight of a white man caused illness, the men 
 warned their wives not to approach the European 
 traveller.^* The headman of a New Guinea 
 pygmy village resisted a bribe of three shining 
 axes, writes Wollaston, to let his English visitors 
 have merely a sight of the village women, hidden 
 away in the jungle. ^"^ The Veddas do not allow 
 visitors of any race to see their women. Even 
 pedlars may not approach nearer than a quarter 
 of a mile of their caves. ^^ During a British in- 
 spection trip on the Burmese Chinese boundary, a 
 Kakhyen chief was told that the officials were 
 going to sleep in his house. Although resentful of 
 the intrusion, all the chief asked for was time to 
 get the women out of the way.^'* Burckhardt 
 relates that the Bedouin women he met on the 
 road would often ask him for flour or biscuit, 
 but that they would never take it out of his 
 hands. He had to set it down on the ground, 
 behind their backs, and then withdraw from 
 them a few paces. ^^ In the South and South- 
 West I have foimd American women afraid to 
 
128 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 go walking alone on the chance of meeting a negro 
 or a Mexican. 
 
 But in addition to taboos of physical separation 
 or of exclusiveness, taboos of the imagination are 
 relied upon in separating the sexes, — conceptions 
 of the psychic or magical dangers of infidelity, 
 of the magical nature of chastity and its irre- 
 trievability, of the impurity of sexual intimacy, 
 and of the evil intrinsic in passion. An Aleut 
 woman believes that were she unfaithful to her 
 husband when he went hunting he would get no 
 game. ^^ The wife of the Kayan camphor collector 
 believes that her infidelity would cause the trees 
 to be empty of camphor. ^^ Elsewhere wives be- 
 lieve too that infidelity brings a husband disaster 
 of a magical kind called dishonour. An unchaste 
 sister as well as a faithless wife can spoil an Aleut's 
 hunt. Chastity in many another tribe has magical 
 potentialities. In the historical religions it is a 
 factor in the working of miracles. ^^ Complemen- 
 tary to this view of chastity as an instrument for 
 magic is the notion that like any other instrument 
 it can be lost and lost once and for all, particularly 
 in the case of women. "In women honestye once 
 stained dothe never retoume again to the former 
 estate"^'— not even through marriage. To Paul, 
 to Buddha, and to many another religious devotee 
 
Beti^een tKe Sexes 129 
 
 passion even in marriage is more than question- 
 able. "Let none imagine that we approve of sex- 
 ual intercourse except for procreation!" exclaims 
 Father Jerome. ^° After conception, give to mar- 
 riage "the sanctity of virginity," exhorts Mother 
 Eddy. 4^ 
 
 The belief that feminine weakness or inferiority 
 is infectious* seems to be back of some of these 
 conceptions. This belief also accounts for the very 
 widespread taboos against women imposed upon 
 huntsmen and fishermen, upon magicians and 
 priests, upon warriors on the eve of professional 
 expeditions or enterprises. From time to time one 
 finds too that special precautions are taken against 
 catching femininity. Were a youth of Fraser's 
 Island to sit down on the stool a girl was sitting on 
 or had sat on, he believes he would sicken and die. '♦* 
 Were a Maryborough Blackfellow woman to step 
 over anything belonging to a man, he would throw 
 it away. 4 3 In South Africa a man sleeping with 
 his wife must be careful not to touch her with 
 his right hand. Otherwise his strength as a war- 
 rior goes from him, he believes, and he will surely 
 be killed. 44 Among its editorial New Year wishes 
 
 * Male traits may be catching too. If an Australian girl ties 
 on a man's waist band, she becomes sterile. (Spencer & Gillen, 
 Native Tribes, p. 52, n. i.) 
 9 
 
I30 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 this year one of the New York daily papers 
 wished for manhood for an editor of a review 
 of feminist bias. This editorial was shown to 
 me by a man who frankly and solemnly said 
 he felt his own manhood would be imperilled 
 by any considerable interest in the affairs of 
 women. 
 
 The conception of feminine weakness is but one 
 of the many generalizations about women every 
 society makes. "The tongues of women cannot 
 be governed, ** 4 5 gay the Makololo. "The love of 
 possessions is a woman's trait and not a brave's, " 
 said his grandmother to the Sioux boy, Hakadah, 
 when she called upon him to offer up his pet dog in 
 sacrifice. "* ^ Deprecating to her husband her failure 
 to obey him and expose their infant daughter, a wife 
 in one of the plays of Terence refers to her way- 
 wardness as characterized by "a woman's usual 
 folly and miserable superstition. "''^ In another 
 play a testy husband exclaims: "What a thing it is 
 that all women are set on the same thing and set 
 against the same thing, and not one of them can 
 you find an inch different from the bent of the 
 rest."4« 
 
 As barriers to personal relations these sex gen- 
 eralities are most efficient. Hence they are apt 
 to be to the fore in the beginning of an acquain- 
 
Bet-ween tKe Sexes 131 
 
 tanceship,* always a more or less formidable time, 
 or whenever a personal relation becomes displeas- 
 ing. "Just like a woman!" ** How like a man!" 
 exclaims the irritated man or woman. And the 
 interpretation of motive or conduct in terms of sex 
 is often a justification for slackness, an excuse for 
 carelessness. Because women are all the same, it is 
 not worth while to pay close attention to a given 
 woman. Because a given man is like other men, 
 much is not to be expected of him, — imless one is 
 speaking in terms of chivalry, when too much 
 cannot be expected of him. 
 V Chivalry, based, as we have noted, on a general- 
 ization, that of inborn and ineradicable superiority, 
 serves like other generalizations as a barrier be- 
 tween the sexes, a particularly strong barrier too. 
 Good manners between the sexes are analogous 
 barriers. They too are efficient, almost as efficient 
 as avoidance practices. But often too they reqiiire 
 avoidance. Ainu women are always taught to get 
 out of the way of men on a path. If Tasmanians 
 met a party of women on the trail, it was only 
 polite of them to turn and go another way. ■♦' With 
 us a man merely turns out for a woman. In 
 
 * And is not the beginning of intimacy between a man and a 
 woman apt to be characterized by each conceiving that the other 
 is an exception to his or her sex? 
 
132 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Uganda a woman may not hand a man anything 
 without first wrapping it in a bit of plantain leaf.s® 
 It is good Ainu manners for women to wait to be 
 spoken to by men,^^ just as under certain circum- 
 stances it is polite among us for a man not to speak 
 first to a woman. 
 
 Individuals upon whom these taboos lie heavy, 
 the womanly woman, the man's man, are attrac- 
 tive to the opposite sex, not only for elemental 
 reasons, but because they are felt to be safe. Ob- 
 viously they have no wish for assimilation, no 
 tendency to cross the self-protecting barriers of sex. 
 They will let the habits of the other sex alone.* 
 
 Fear of not being let alone accounts for the 
 otherwise strange brutality shown from time to 
 time by men towards intrusive women. We have 
 already noted how women trespassers may be 
 treated. Women pioneers in law or medicine or 
 politicsf have also in case after case been subject 
 to injury or "insults." These "insults" | have 
 
 * To be let alone is, I suggest, more desirable to simple people 
 than any "complementary difiference of character," the efifect 
 no doubt of sex taboos but,'Crawley notwithstanding, never their 
 motive. 
 
 t Is it not therefore a prime tactical error for suffragists to 
 suggest in any way that woman suffrage will compel any change 
 in masculine habits or, for that matter, in feminine? 
 
 t Women, more conservative than men, are more open to 
 *' insult. " An insult is an outrage against one's habits and is not 
 
Det-ween tHe Seas 133 
 
 been for the most part of an obscene nature, for 
 men feel, more or less unconsciously, that women 
 are vulnerable in questions of sex, because in 
 their habits of chastity they in their turn are most 
 loath to be disturbed. But in their other habits, 
 too, women, like men, wish to be protected, and 
 so they have been ever ready to be cut off from 
 experiences unsettling to habits — ^from intercourse 
 with the stranger or with the gods, from learning, 
 from travel, from nature. To almost any demand 
 that they live at second hand they have been 
 compliant.* 
 
 Is not this desire to be unaffected by the opposite 
 sex back of the insistent demand to safeguard the 
 mystery of sex? You will destroy the mystery and 
 so the charm of sex, it is urged, if you let women 
 do all the things men do. Men will treat women 
 like men; they will forget they are women. Cupid 
 unblindfolded will cease to be Cupid and penitence 
 will be the only lot for Psyche. This plea for sex 
 taboos is, I surmise, the modem stand of those 
 
 the sense of "insult" based on resentment against the ruthless 
 breaking down of one's social barriers? It may also be based, I 
 suggest, on a still more primitive sense of defilement. The injury 
 is actually conveyed through a kind of contagious magic. 
 
 * The tendency to live at second hand, through another, is a 
 profound expression of sex, we are told, an impulse of passion. 
 Accepting this analysis, is not the problem created for feminists 
 far more baffling than any they have hitherto faced? 
 
134 Fear and Conventionality^ 
 
 unwilling to forgo the protection of sex barriers. 
 Far from wishing to let the natural differences 
 of sex count in life, they seek to prescribe differ- 
 ences which may or may not correspond to fact, 
 but which because they are arbitrary may be 
 collectively and so comfortably encountered. In 
 their great fear of sex they endeavour to make it a 
 matter of collective habits, of dress, of manners, of 
 occupations, of pastimes, particulars all subject to 
 endless regulation. Is not so much regulation of a 
 "mystery'* suspicious? Were we less afraid of the 
 real heterogeneities of sex, would we not be less 
 insistent upon the differences we have provoked, 
 those differences which are but blinds for the real 
 differences? "This thing you may not think or 
 do at all," says man to woman or woman to man, 
 "because being different from me, your thought 
 of it or your performance would be different and 
 so disturbing. Take something else to think about 
 or pursue, something not in my line. Keep out 
 of my way as much as you can and I will keep out 
 of yours. Whatever happens, let us not interfere 
 with each other. Nothing else is quite as impor- 
 tant to our comfort.'*/ Until comparatively lately 
 this principle of non-interference has worked out 
 well enough in economy* ; in matters of passion it 
 * Perhaps because the economic differentiation of the sexes 
 
Beti^een tHe Seas 135 
 
 has always been less of a success. Hence sex in its 
 passionate manifestations has been subjected to 
 endless regulation, regulation made rigid by the 
 great fear of sex itself and complicated by all the 
 other fears of unlike for unlike. Of this system of 
 regulation we shall get the most comprehensive 
 view through a consideration of marriage, ever 
 society's mainstay in controlling the wayward- 
 ness of sex, its vagrant and vehement impulses, 
 its untoward and violent outbreaks, its blindness 
 to the interests of others, its arrogances unsur- 
 passed. 
 
 sets in at an early age, at a non-questioning, imitative time of 
 life. When it starts later in life, as it tends to nowadays with us, 
 it is more likely to be challenged. Similarly it is more likely to be 
 questioned in business or in the professions than in more imitative 
 pursuits like farming or housework. 
 
XIII 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 IV/lAKING a manage de convenances its em- 
 "^ " ^ barrassments, and the distress incident to 
 it are ever favotirite themes of the playwrights. 
 One of the plays of Terence, for example, opens 
 with an account of a young man torn between love 
 and duty, love for his mistress and duty towards 
 the father bent on getting him married. "Pam- 
 philus was in love with Bacchis here every bit as 
 much as ever," narrates his slave, "when his 
 father set about entreating him to marry, talking 
 just the strain of all fathers."' Pamphilus duti- 
 fully marries his father's choice, but in another 
 comedy of Terence the hero succeeds in disen- 
 gaging himself from the lady chosen for him and 
 in marrying, quite to his father's satisfaction how- 
 ever, his own true love. In this play, The Lady of 
 Andros, it is the slave again who points out to you 
 the situation. "So long as his years suited it,'* 
 says Davus of his young master, another Pam- 
 
 ' 136 
 
Marriage 137 
 
 philus, "he had a love-affair. . . . Now it's time 
 he took a wife, and to a wife he has turned his 
 thoughts."^ Or, as we might say, having sown 
 his wild oats, the time had come for him to settle 
 down. Well it is if, like Pamphilus, a man can 
 marry his love, the Romans seemed to think, 
 and perhaps a marriage for love is a more secure 
 kind of marriage; but marry at any rate a man 
 should. To us this point of view is not unfamiliar, 
 but to many other peoples part of it at least is 
 entirely foreign. By them is made little or no 
 concession of personal choice in marriage. Mar- 
 riages are planned arbitrarily by parents or kindred, 
 by the elders, by an overlord. It is their profit 
 or interest which is the determining factor, and in 
 making the match economic or political matters 
 or matters of family convenience or congeniality 
 are in question — girl-barter or bride-price or dowry, 
 alliance with other groups, the qualifications of 
 bride or bridegroom for fitting into the joint house- 
 hold or family connexion or for rendering it 
 personal services. Given such objects in marriage, 
 courtship naturally plays a minor part or no part 
 at all as a preliminary to mating. Matrimonial 
 go-betweens or marriage brokers or amateur 
 matchmakers negotiate its details; and in many 
 communities bride and bridegroom do not meet 
 
138 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 before the wedding or even see each other. Al- 
 lowed to meet, they may court each other only in 
 set ways — by formal messages or declarations of 
 regard, by exchange of prescribed presents, by 
 stated visits, or by "keeping company" at ap- 
 pointed times or places. 
 
 Elopement is discountenanced and more or less 
 penalized. So of course are misalliances, i. e. all 
 marriages which violate the group rules of marriage 
 or disregard the wishes of kindred. Breaking the 
 ties of marriage is also penalized or made difficult. 
 Divorce is upsetting to those who have arranged 
 the marriage or to those who have come to as- 
 sociate two persons together in thought and in 
 practice. It is because of the distress caused by 
 disassociating persons presumed to be settled to- 
 gether once and for all, that opposition to divorce 
 is even greater than opposition to marriage for 
 love, and that freedom to marry is apt to be con- 
 ceded long before freedom to divorce. A society's 
 apprehensiveness about divorce is an expression 
 of its fear of change and of its resulting desire that 
 personality remain unvarying. 
 
 The better to preclude divorce and preserve the 
 marriage ties, certain concessions, not to the de- 
 mands of personality but to mere sex impulse, are 
 wont to be made. Professional prostitution may 
 
Marriage 139 
 
 be tolerated or encouraged as a protection to 
 marriage, and even adultery at large, if it is 
 covert, may be glossed over. A mistress is the 
 more or less acknowledged complement to a wife, 
 more rarely a cicisheo to a husband. 
 
 Rebels against this double system of marriage 
 and adultery there have been, — youths in New 
 Britain who have escaped from under the coils of 
 shell-money, thrown over their heads by relatives 
 anxious to lassoo them, as it were, into an estab- 
 lishment,^ Gotama and Jesus and their numerous 
 imitators, Harold Godwin at the close of the 
 eighteenth century, and no doubt many men and 
 women of our own generation. But as a rule 
 conjugality (with or without adultery) has been 
 an acceptable system to the marrying as well as 
 to their matchmakers. For the marrying too it 
 has such obvious advantages — "some one now 
 and then to yawn with, "* "the solace of a home, " 
 secure from "the torturing passions of intrigue. '*t 
 
 *As Byron, his mind on matrimony, wrote one day in his 
 journal. (Mayne, i, 302.) 
 
 t In these terms Disraeli refers to the motives which prompted 
 him to woo her who was to be Lady Beaconsfield. Besides, he 
 adds, in words highly reminiscent of a Latin comedy, "my father 
 had long wished me to marry; my settling in life was the implied 
 . . . condition of a disposition of his property, which would have 
 been convenient to me." (Moneypenny, W. F. The Life of 
 Benjamin Disraeli^ ii, 52. New York, 1912.) 
 
I40 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Indeed conjugality may preclude the stress of 
 courtship altogether, risks and strains due not 
 only to group exactions or regulations, but to the 
 nature of the relationship itself, subject as it is to 
 doubts and uncertainties, indefinite, ever fluctuat- 
 ing. This unstable relationship is eliminated alto- 
 gether, we noted, as a preliminary to marriage or 
 so prescribed as to become, if desired, impersonal. 
 Then courtship in marriage is of course rare — out- 
 side of certain very modem writers,* writers, too, 
 who by their very suggestions seem to misunder- 
 stand the purport of marriage. For is not ease in 
 satisfying the impulses of sex ever an essential to 
 marriage? It is a provision at any rate most forms 
 of marriage have in common. Exceptions are for 
 the most part temporary. It is only on the night 
 of his wedding that a Tipperah bridegroom has to 
 steal into his bride's house and slip away before 
 dawn. 4 Among the Albanian mountaineers a 
 bridegroom takes his bride to his father's house, 
 but he has to meet her in secret until she has a 
 child, s Then again among many peoples con- 
 jugal intercourse during pregnancy, or the latter 
 part of it, or during the period of lactation is taboo. 
 But even this taboo is apt to be relieved for hus- 
 bands through polygyny. Similarly polygyny 
 * Havelock ElHs, Ellen Key. 
 
Marriage 141 
 
 removes the restrictions upon conjugality profes- 
 sional travellers might suffer — traders, porters, 
 sailors, brigands. 
 
 To matrimonial ease privacy is a requisite, and 
 privacy — in physical relations — is ever guaranteed 
 the married. The doors of their apartments need 
 no bolts. Even lovers respect conjugal arrange- 
 ments. The ami de la famille vows not to kiss 
 his mistress in her husband*s house. Nor is a 
 mistress ever expected to be jealous of a wife. 
 The furtiveness of adultery is prompted not merely 
 by fear of punishment. It may be an expression 
 of conjugal consideration, quite sincere, however 
 at times unconvincing. 
 
 Unconvincing, unfortunately, for if the married 
 could really feel assured that their convenience 
 would never suffer, would there not be a great 
 diminution of matrimonial jealousy? Polygyny is 
 rarely complained of among frankly polygynous 
 peoples. A wife will often ask her husband to take 
 another, — a companion to lighten her burdens, — 
 or like Sarah or Leah she will herself give him a 
 handmaid. Similarly the polyandrous Thibetans 
 or the natives of Malabar do not mind sharing 
 their wife with a brother by blood or with a 
 brother Brahman. Nor do we hear anything of 
 complaining husbands among the Hassinyeh Arabs 
 
142 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 who marry only for a stated part of the week,* 
 or among those ancient polyandrous Arabs who 
 visited their wives from time to time in the home 
 of their father-in-law. The Massim or Blackfellow 
 who refused his wife to her eriam or piraungaru and 
 among many races the host who did not offer his 
 to his guest would be considered a very churlish 
 fellow indeed, one quite lacking in moral sense. 
 But in polygamy the times and places of conjugal 
 intercourse are apt to be regulated with care. The 
 Caribs who married several sisters at one time 
 lived a month with each in her separate hut. A 
 Samoan gives each of his wives a round of three 
 days. 7 A Moslem must visit each of his four legal 
 wives in turn. So scrupulous was the native of 
 Futa, a Senegal kingdom, that when one of his 
 wives lay in he spent the night appropriated to her 
 alone in her apartment.* On marrying the same 
 woman two Aleutian Islanders agreed together in 
 advance upon the conditions on which to share 
 her.' When an Arab left his staff outside his 
 wife's door, a fellow-husband would not enter the 
 room,^** an effect less definitely produced by a 
 cane in an Anglo-Saxon hall. 
 
 In Arabia a staff significantly placed is quite a 
 sufficient guaranty of freedom from disturbance. 
 Elsewhere marital monopoly has to be protected 
 
Marriage 143 
 
 by measures more drastic or less symbolic, by harsh 
 penalties for adultery, by the seclusion of wives, or 
 where the extreme convenience of veil or zenana 
 is unknown, by the imremitted or bellicose adver- 
 tisement of marital proprietorship. Distinctive 
 costuming, a distinctive headdress or haircut, a 
 finger-ring or nose-ring, blackened teeth, a tat- 
 tooed mouth, a title — wife of so-and-so or "the 
 hissing * missus' of too familiar husbands" — are 
 all notices to intruders to keep away. 
 
 Men as well as women are advertised or adver- 
 tise themselves directly or incidentally as married 
 or immarried — a fact still to be pointed out by the 
 "hominist." Married Coreans wear a long outer 
 robe which it is forbidden to wear before mar- 
 riage. ' ' They also put up the hair they had worn 
 as bachelors in a queue into a conical mass upon 
 their heads. ' ^ In Timor-laut a married man may 
 never cut * his hair. ' ^ Masai bachelors have to be 
 greeted by married women with ** Endakwenya,'* 
 "O children!'*''* With us married men no longer 
 wear wedding rings and to be indicated as the hus- 
 band of your wife is a sign of derision, but if a man 
 is married he is expected to let his acquaintances 
 know it. Otherwise he is suspected of sinister 
 purposes and in some covert way people feel 
 
 ♦ Else his wife will die. 
 
144 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 defrauded. Last summer I heard one of my Berk- 
 shire neighbours complaining that his coachman, 
 a married man, had spent several months with him 
 in the r61e of a bachelor, and about the same time 
 I learned that I was myself a target of criticism 
 because I had introduced to other neighbours an 
 acquaintance who had failed to at once proclaim 
 himself the divorce he was. How he was to have 
 made known the fact, lacking a visible token, 
 whether it was deplored as in itself lessening his 
 matrimonial eligibility or whether the ground for 
 his divorce was merely disapproved of I did not 
 learn. He was divorced, the neighbours ascer- 
 tained, in New York, "and you know what that 
 means, " they remarked. 
 
 We have already noted how well conjugal 
 monopoly may be guaranteed by magical or super- 
 natural sanctions. That "infidelity" in'husbands 
 is a ground for divorce in New York or in other 
 parts of the United States is usually acclaimed as 
 an outcome of Christianity — a little too confidently 
 maybe, in view of the lack of a like law in such a 
 Christian country as England. Then, too, mono- 
 gamy is required of men— and far more strictly than 
 among us — among savages unmoved by Christian 
 doctrine, among the Andaman Islanders, the Ved- 
 das, the Igorot of Luzon, the Hill Dyaks of Borneo. 
 
Marriage 145 
 
 The existence of thoroughgoing monogamy 
 among these peoples suggests, too, that just as the 
 rehgious theory of marriage may have been exag- 
 gerated by the theologians, the proprietary theory 
 may have been overworked by the ethnologists. 
 I for one plead guilty. In discussions of pro- 
 longed widowhood and of widow immolation ' s, so 
 much was I impressed by the customs as expres- 
 sions of property rights in women,* that I quite 
 overlooked the very tenable theory that the cus- 
 toms were due to the feeling that the habits of a 
 lifetime should not be broken up even by death. 
 Prolonged widowerhood and husband immolation, 
 infrequent as they are, must be explained on this 
 theory. t Celibacy after an unsuccessful love affair 
 
 * The economic theory of widow immolation has been modified, 
 if not transformed, by L^vy-Bruhl in accordance with his general 
 theory of "participation." The widow together with the other 
 property of the deceased are dispatched to him because they 
 partake of him. They are a part of him. {Les Fonctions Mentales 
 dans les Societes Inferieures, pp. 389-94.) Such an association, 
 let me add, is too painful to the survivors to break up. The par- 
 ticipation theory is a link between the property theory and the 
 habit theory of widow immolation. 
 
 t Cp. Religious Chastity, pp. 4 n. 20, 22 n. 15, 74-5. Some of 
 the practices characteristic of the weddings of the remarrying 
 and much of the sentiment about them are also, I venture to 
 suggest, an expression of perturbation caused by upsetting the 
 "associations" of the living rather than of fear of encroaching 
 upon the proprietary rights of the deceased. The pat marriages 
 of India which take place at night, the widow-bride leaving her 
 parents* house by the back door {Jb., p. 289); Roman widow 
 
 zo 
 
146 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 is open to a like explanation, although there are 
 more popular ways of explaining inability to fall in 
 love again. 
 
 The economic analysis of marriage has im- 
 doubtedly obscured the psychological. To modem 
 critics of marriage, marriage as a form of property 
 holding was too enticingly open to attack for its 
 proprietary features to escape exaggeration. Then 
 too one is led astray by the proprietary terms of 
 conjugal phraseology,* terms which on closer 
 analysis are seen to express a man's dependence 
 
 marriages to which it was held indecent to invite many guests^ 
 and our own "quiet" weddings for widows are all no doubt in 
 propitiation of the living rather than of the dead. In Albania and 
 in the New Britain Islands we find indisputable evidence of the 
 sensibilities of the living. If an Albanian widower remarries 
 in what the relatives of the dead wife may consider indecent 
 haste, they revenge themselves upon him by pouring water upon 
 her grave in the belief that this libation will cause the second 
 wife to be childless. (Gamett, The Women of Turkey: The Jewish 
 and Moslem Women, p. 286.) At the wedding of a New Britain 
 widower the kinswomen of his deceased wife go "on the loose," 
 appropriating the weapons and dress of the men, painting red any 
 man they can catch, and at a given signal falling upon the bride- 
 groom's house and grounds and destroying everything in sight, 
 their right to this so-called practice of varagut passing unchallenged. 
 "The women are angry on account of the first wife," it is said. 
 (Danks, p. 292.) 
 
 * In reading recently the semi-autobiographical histories of a 
 class of Yale graduates, I was much struck by these seemingly 
 proprietary terms. Wives are referred to as " good " or " the best 
 a man ever had." "I couldn't get on without her," writes one 
 man; "she puts up with all my ways, " writes another. 
 
Marriage 147 
 
 on his wife for his psychical as well as for his 
 strictly material comfort and well-being. After 
 all is it not in love of the habitual rather than in 
 love of property that marriage is rooted? "The 
 selection of a particular hole to live in, of a parti- 
 cular mate, ... a particular anything, in short, 
 out of a possible multitude, is a very wide-spread 
 tendency among animals, " writes William James. ' ^ 
 "But each of these preferences carries with it an 
 insensibility to other opportimities and occasions — 
 an insensibility which can only be described phy- 
 siologically as an inhibition of new impulses by the 
 habit of old ones already formed. The possession 
 of homes and wives of our own makes us strangely 
 insensible to the charms of other people. . . . 
 The original impulse which got us homes, wives, 
 . . . seems to exhaust itself in its first achievements 
 and to leave no surplus energy for reacting on 
 new cases." Marriage is the indulgence of a 
 habit.* 
 
 The conception of woman as property greatly 
 facilitates of course this indulgence. Proprietor- 
 ship enables you to have things just as you want 
 them, and to know where to find them. Proprie- 
 tary marriage offers analogous conveniences. Be- 
 
 ♦ "People have to get into the habit of being married. " {How 
 to be Happy though Married, p. 104. New York, 1886.) 
 
14B Fear and Conventionality 
 
 sides it thwarts intruders, classifying them, even 
 with conviction to themselves, as purloiners, and 
 it gets for marital proprietors the backing of other 
 ideas on the sanctity of property. It may also re- 
 inforce the sex feeling of subjection believed to be 
 natural to woman. Then too it is tempting to 
 treat a woman — or a man — as a chattel* rather 
 than as a personality; it disposes of her — or him — 
 with so little effort. It serves as a comfortable 
 stop-gap for a more exacting relationship. For 
 such reasons even relations outside of marriage are 
 apt to take on a proprietary character. Pericles 
 is said'^ to have kissed Aspasia as habitually as 
 the American husband who even kisses his wife 
 in the railway station. What fiercer demonstra- 
 tions of conjugal proprietorship have ever been 
 seen than those sometimes incident to the "free 
 unions" of European cities, in such a union for 
 example as that described in Les Hannetons? 
 ''You must not look at anybody's wife except your 
 neighbour's, — if you go to the next door but one, 
 you are scolded, and presumed to be perfidious," 
 writes Lord Byron, weary of his r61e of cicisheo, 
 "And then a relazione . . . seems to be a regular 
 
 * Or as a business partner. Economic reciprocity is as impor- 
 tant an economic factor in marriage, let its critics admit, as 
 proprietorship. 
 
Marriage 149 
 
 affair of from five to fifteen years, at which period, 
 if there occur a widowhood, it finishes by a 
 sposalizio; and in the meantime it has so many 
 rules of its own, that it is not much better. A man 
 actually becomes a piece of female property."'* 
 Since proprietorship is so effectual a barrier to 
 a personal relationship, the very form of it in 
 marriage is sometimes cherished assiduously, in 
 the United States for example, even after the 
 substance of it has passed away. Hence the 
 representative character attaching to husbands in 
 the old common law still figures in anti-suffrage 
 argument. Hence, although the one flesh theory 
 of Paulean theology is no longer preached upon 
 seriously from the pulpit, the sentiment that a 
 wife's place is by her husband's side is still effective 
 in certain circles, the circle in which Mrs. Smith 
 refers with pride to the fact that she has been 
 never a night away from Mr. Smith since their 
 marriage, or if from no choice of her own away, a 
 day never passes without a letter to him, a spirit 
 Mr. Smith may or may not thoroughly enjoy, al- 
 though he usually shares in it through his own 
 jocose references to his "better-half."* 
 
 * Is it because in one flesh no adaptations are necessary that 
 this type of conjugal joke continues to be so reassuring and 
 comforting? In general the conjugal joke owes its popularity, I 
 
150 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 As mere conjugal barriers, these relics of the 
 early church and of the English common law are 
 not readily forgone. There are of course alterna- 
 tives. A conjugal absence, for example, may be 
 ignored. If a Fijian husband address the morning 
 salutation he makes to others to his wife, she is 
 likely to take it for a divorce. '' No matter how 
 long the Ainu husband has been away from home, 
 he does not greet his wife on his return. ^° It is the 
 practice of the Albanian wife to hide ceremonially 
 when her travelsome husband goes and comes.*' 
 ''After a long absence I have seen natives," writes 
 Eyre of the Blackfellows, "never take the least 
 notice of their wives, but sit down, and act, and 
 look, as if they had never been out of the en- 
 campment; in fact, if anything, they are more 
 taciturn and reserved than usual, and some little 
 time elapses before they enter into conversation 
 with freedom, or in their ordinary manner. " ** 
 
 Taking notice of a spouse at any time is apt to 
 be discountenanced. Among the Andamanese 
 remarks on his or her personal appearance or 
 peculiarities are resented as indelicate.*^ A Mos- 
 
 fancy, to the satisfaction of feeling that your relation is imper- 
 sonal, a relation of status, just as, if less humorous, you exclaim, 
 "Isn't that just like a husband!" in order to indulge in the 
 soothing feeling of being one of many. 
 
Marriage 151 
 
 quito Indian woman considers it improper to dis- 
 play emotion under any circumstances about her 
 husband.^" An Anglo-Saxon woman is supposed 
 not to laugh at her husband's jokes or publicly 
 applaud his speech, A Mandingo of Senegambia 
 never jokes with his wives, deeming it incompati- 
 ble with marital authority. If he laughed with 
 them, a tribesman once explained, they would 
 laugh at him.=*5 
 
 Then too intimate conjugal relations may be 
 confined to set times and places. Spontaneity may 
 go from them to such an extent that outside of a 
 given room or a given forest, at a given hour, they 
 are unthought of. In Fiji husbands and wives have 
 to meet '*from motives of delicacy" in the forest, 
 a rendezvous kept in West Africa at the risk of 
 slavery. There anyone discovering a couple 
 making love out of doors could enslave them.^^ 
 Among the Massim connexion never takes place in- 
 doors or at night but in the gardens and by day.*^ 
 At Santa Marta, Colombia, the married also keep 
 apart from each other at night,** — in the belief 
 that a child conceived at night will be bom blind.* 
 In civilization too intimacy is apt to be localized 
 
 •Obviously an expression of sympathetic magic. Such an 
 idea may suggest a habit or be itself suggested by habit. The 
 outcome is the same — the stereotyping of a relationship. 
 
152 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 or concentrated, as strictly perhaps in marriage 
 as in prostitution. 
 
 By this concentration all the psychical activities 
 of sex are naturally affected. Uncalled for, they 
 flag and dwindle, and the relation between husband 
 and wife becomes as imthrilled by the radiations of 
 sex as if both were of the same sex. Under these 
 circumstances they may have in fact less in com- 
 mon than if they were of the same sex, for the 
 usual sex barriers may assert themselves, leaving 
 each indifferent to many of the feelings or ideas 
 of the other, arousing in both a reluctance or shy- 
 ness about referring to certain topics* or a dis- 
 inclination to listen to each other or even look 
 at each other — a. kind of conjugal deafness or 
 myopia.f 
 
 Complete mutual obliviousness in getting used 
 to each other is impracticable. Marriage like 
 other set forms of social intercourse is expected 
 to satisfy the instinct for companionship. Hence 
 
 *" Should a wife talk familiarly with her husband about 
 religious matters?" asks Mrs. Graves in one of her Twenty-five 
 Letters to a Young Lady (pp. 31-2. Chicago & New York, 1884), 
 She should, answers the author quite positively, adding, "true, 
 if he is an unbeliever, it may be distasteful." 
 
 t Such shortsightedness appears not to set in for three years of 
 marriage among the Filta, for not until that time has elapsed 
 do wives permit their husbands to see them unveiled. (Astley, 
 ii, 240.) 
 
Marriage 153 
 
 common interests in marriage are said to be most 
 desirable — children, common acquaintances, a 
 more or less common material equipment, the 
 same household appointments, and, sometimes, 
 even the same pursuits or pastimes. On the other 
 hand childlessness, different friends, different 
 tastes in expenditure, different "pleasures," ab- 
 sence, are all well recognized drawbacks to con- 
 jugality. To have nothing in common is a popular 
 justification, if not a legal cause, for divorce. 
 Whereas if you do things together, if you are 
 interested in the same things, the need for divorce 
 is not at all likely to arise, we are told. 
 
 But whether divorce occur or not, marriage 
 appears to accomplish what is expected of it, 
 only in some cases it is for a season, in others for a 
 lifetime. Like other important social institutions 
 it provides companionship immune to the in- 
 fluences of personality. Moreover it eliminates 
 the extraordinary fears with which passionate con- 
 tact with another personality is beset. It gives 
 safety to passion, formalizing and limiting its de- 
 mands. Then too it serves as a barrier not only 
 against one person of the opposite sex but against 
 a whole sex. By advertising the need of restrict- 
 ing the impulses of sex to a minimum it helps 
 actually to restrict them. Moreover by fully 
 
154 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 satisfying those impulses of sex which most readily 
 become a habit, the physical imptilses, it curbs and 
 dwarfs the impulses which are erratic and which 
 are prone to upset habits, the habits of self and of 
 others. Truly marriage is all its most ardent 
 supporters believe. It is an incomparable pro- 
 tection to society — as society has been constituted. 
 
XIV 
 
 IN THE FAMILY 
 
 AS the closest of relations between unlike per- 
 sons and therefore the most to be appre- 
 hended, matrimony is of them all the most 
 carefully regulated. But other relations between the 
 unUke are also close enough in family life to arouse 
 apprehension and suggest regulation. Perhaps the 
 most general expression of this apprehension along 
 the line of sex consists of incest rules. The for- 
 bidden degrees vary, covering, sometimes, as we 
 have noted, a clan or a tribe; but the aversion to 
 marriage with housemates is generally so marked, 
 even when housemates belong to different clans, 
 that it has been held that clan exogamy itself 
 originated in this aversion.* The supporters of 
 this housemate theory of exogamy generally point 
 
 * Westermarck, Human Marriage, pp. 324-31. Cp. Smith, p. 
 170. The division of the group into two exogamous moities and 
 the subdivisions of these moities were provisions against the 
 mating of brothers and sisters, parents and offspring, simple 
 . . . incest rules. (Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, i, 165.) The 
 origin of the aversion to incest, Frazer adds, is a mystery. 
 
 155 
 
156 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 1 
 
 out that novelty is a necessary sex stimulant. 
 **The newcomer fiUeth the eye.*' 
 
 It may be; but their exogamy theory rests, I 
 think, on an even deeper foundation. Is not 
 aversion to mating within both the clan and the 
 household due to the fact that novelty in cus- 
 tomary relations is extremely disquieting, disquiet- 
 ing not only to the persons directly concerned,* 
 but to the groups to which they belong? 
 
 Incest, whatever its definition, is always a 
 matter of group concern and always subject to 
 punishment, heavy punishment too. If a New 
 Britain woman married within her class — as else- 
 where in Melanesia the islanders are divided into 
 two marriage classes — her nearest kinsman would 
 seek her out and kill her the moment he found her.f 
 "The relatives of the woman would be so ashamed 
 that only her death could satisfy them. "^ In 
 Sumatra, Batak first cousins, a brother's son and 
 a sister's daughter, married each other at the risk 
 
 * ** Disgust is associated with the idea of sexual intercourse 
 between persons who have Hved in a long continued intimate 
 relationship from a period of life at which the action of desire is 
 naturally out of the question. This association cannot be 
 explained by the mere liking of novelty." (Westermarck, 
 Human Marriage, p. 353.) 
 
 fHer mate would be killed too. Twins of opposite sex are 
 killed. Belonging to the same marriage class, their embryonic 
 intimacy is improper. (Danks, p. 292.) 
 
In tKe Family 157 
 
 of being killed and eaten. * If persons of the same 
 name married in Yucatan they were ostracized, 
 in China, they were given sixty blows. ^ 
 
 On the other hand marriage outside of the 
 kinship group may also be opposed or penalized. 
 In south-east Australia, although the elders of 
 two tribes may sometimes for reasons of state plan 
 an intertribal marriage, there is always hot oppo- 
 sition within the tribe out of which the girl is to 
 marry. 4 An Athenian man or woman married 
 to an alien might be sold as a slave. ^ Did not 
 Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses because 
 of the Ethiopian woman he had married and were 
 not the Hittite wives of Esau "a grief of mind" to 
 Isaac and Rebekah? A proper young Hebrew 
 married his cousin. "Is there never a woman 
 of thy brethren, or among all thy people that thou 
 goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philis- 
 tines?" grumble Samson's parents and, subse- 
 quently Samson was thought no doubt by others, 
 if not by them, to deserve his fate. 
 
 Is not endogamy to be explained as an ex- 
 pression of the same aversion which is back of 
 exogamy* — aversion to a break in customary re- 
 
 * Westermarck holds that endogamous and exogamous in- 
 stincts are alike {Human Marriage, p. 353), but in what way 
 alike he fails to state. 
 
158 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 la tions,* taking in endogamy the form of hostility 
 to the stranger? And may not the wide-spread 
 practice of avoidance among kindred be explained 
 on a like groimd — dislike of a disturbance of habit- 
 ual relations? "Avoidance" is most commonly 
 practised, as we might expect from our hypothesis, 
 by relatives by marriage. In some Victorian 
 tribes, for example, a woman's mother and aunts 
 may never in their lives speak to her suitor or 
 husband or even look at him. Nor may a man 
 mention his mother-in-law's name. ^ If a Wemba 
 see his mother-in-law coming along the path, he 
 must at once retreat into the bush. If he meet 
 her face to face he must keep his eyes fixed on the 
 ground^ — a perfect picture for the modem car- 
 toonist, f A Zulu woman may have nothing to do 
 with her father-in-law or with any of her husband's 
 male relations in the ascending line. She may not 
 even name them to herself. She must to a certain 
 extent also hlonipa, to use the native term, her 
 mother-in-law.^ A Beni-Amer woman is also 
 shimned, ceremonially, by her daughter-in-law.' 
 
 *The sporadic cases of uncle-niece, brother-sister marriage 
 have been explained and, properly I think, as due to economic or 
 dynastic reasons, to the desire to keep property or position in the 
 family. 
 
 fThe mother-in-law joke is even staler than we sometimes 
 think. 
 
In tKe Familx 159 
 
 On the TuUy in Queensland a woman believes that 
 her teeth would rot out were she to converse with 
 her mother-in-law.'^" Among the North American 
 Indians a man "avoids" his father-in-law as well 
 as his mother-in-law." So does a Fijian. Nor 
 may a Fijian woman speak to her mother-in-law or 
 her brother-in-law." According to the Li Kt a 
 Chinese sister-in-law and brother-in-law "do not 
 interchange inquiries about each other,'* *^ a degree 
 of avoidance we ourselves may practise almost as 
 fvdly by the opposite method of "asking about" 
 him or her as a form of respect. 
 
 The popular explanation of avoidance as an 
 expression of respect comes nearer the truth, I 
 fancy, than the orthodox scientific explanation of 
 it as an incest rule.* For respectful conduct is 
 merely treating a person in a way which puts him 
 at his ease, which does not disturb his settled 
 habits or rub him up the wrong way. Whereas to 
 
 * Parsons, Elsie Clews, "Avoidance," The American Journal 
 of Sociology, January, 1914. 
 
 Tyler suggested that avoidance results from the intrusion 
 of a person into a house in which he or she has no right and is 
 therefore cut. ('* On a Method of Investigating the Development 
 of Institutions: Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent,'* 
 /. A. /., xviii (1888-9), 247-8.) I dififer with him merely on the 
 point that avoidance is first a natural and then a ceremonious me- 
 thod of shirking an adjustment in a personal relationship, rather 
 than a method of deliberately making a difference between the 
 stranger and the family he or she marries into. 
 
l6o Fear and Conventionality 
 
 require any one to make a sudden personal ad- 
 justment is never good manners. Now it is 
 noticeable that although avoidance may itself 
 become a steadfast habit, in some cases after a 
 lapse of time, after people have had a chance to 
 accustom themselves to their new relation, shall 
 we say, avoidance ceases. A Wemba may talk to 
 his mother-in-law as soon as he is a father.''* So 
 may a Basuto and a Cree Indian, each after his 
 marriage having had to be reticent. (A Cree's 
 parents-in-law, we note incidentally, call him after 
 his child, i. e. Father of so-and-so.*) Although 
 an Armenian bride has to wear a veil of crimson 
 wool over her face and is not allowed to address 
 any senior member of her husband's household, 
 in course of time the house-father, well assured of 
 her behaviour, does remove her veilf and imloosen 
 her tongue. '5 
 
 * In accordance with his theory of avoidance, Tylor thought 
 that teknonymy was a recognition of parenthood by relations by 
 affinity. (/. A. I., xviii, 248-50.) The birth of a child gave its 
 parent a right in the house of its grandparents, maternal or 
 paternal as might be. It does to be sure make him or her less of a 
 stranger, but it also gives him or her a status, always easier to 
 deal with than a personaUty. The Cree undoubtedly finds it less 
 irksome to call his son-in-law by his status rather than by his 
 personal name. 
 
 t He may not remove it for years and seldom does he remove 
 it until the birth of a son. "A wife shows her character at the 
 cradle," is an Armenian aphorism. Does it not express the 
 feeling, howbeit rationalizing it, that a woman loses herself in her 
 
In tKe Familx l6l 
 
 But avoidance is practised not only between 
 relatives by marriage. In the belief that the 
 slightest contact will be followed by serious ill- 
 ness, at a certain stage in the Kumai initiation 
 the youths and the women are mutually taboo, '^ 
 and what might be called avoidance symbolism 
 figures in the initiation rites of several Australian 
 tribes. In the Elema district, New Guinea, initi- 
 ates leaving their eravo must not go near home to 
 preclude all possibility of being recognized by 
 their kinswomen. A mother who brings her son 
 food must by some noise signal her approach to 
 give him time to run back into the eravo. ^"^ We 
 recall how the New Britain initiate has to hide 
 away from his kinswomen at the risk of putting 
 them to shame and forfeiting the property of his 
 friends. Although a Hottentot boy was so tied to 
 his mother's apron strings until his initiation that 
 he was not allowed to talk with men at all, not 
 even with his own father, after initiation — at 
 eighteen — he had to avoid his mother altogether 
 at the risk, if even he spoke to her, of being 
 called a baby,'^ a trying experience to any boy. 
 
 child? Her baby diverts the attention of the family from herself 
 and so makes her personality less fearsome. See Parsons, Elsie 
 Clews, " Teknonymy," The American Journal of Sociology. March, 
 1914. 
 
l62 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 It seems to me that such furtiveness on the part 
 of initiates is an expression of the sense of awk- 
 wardness felt on both sides, by boys and kins- 
 women alike, through the break in their habitual 
 relations. It is also an expression of reluctance 
 to enter into new relations with those one has 
 associated with on other terms. In this case as in 
 others the demand for an adjustment of personal 
 relations is most easily met or dodged by the 
 raising of fresh barriers. 
 
 Such barriers are put up quite often between 
 brothers and sisters, sometimes between mothers 
 and daughters, or between fathers and daughters. 
 Fiji brothers and sisters may not speak together. '' 
 "You Whites show no respect to your sisters. 
 You talk to them, " a Crow Indian once said to Dr. 
 Lowie.^** In Queensland once a sister is grown 
 up, her brother will not even mention her name.*' 
 Were a New Caledonian girl to run across her 
 brother, she would have to throw herself on the 
 ground face downward.** Were a Vedda girl to 
 fall and hurt herself it is said that her brother 
 could not give her a helping hand.*^ Among the 
 Veddas a woman does not speak to her adult 
 daughter, nor does a girl's father.*^ It would 
 shock a Toda girl to be touched by her father. *s 
 I once asked an American father if he felt entirely 
 
In tHe Familx 163 
 
 at ease with his family of daughters. "We are 
 on excellent terms, " he rejoined. "They are very 
 companionable; but of course there are things a 
 man can't do with a daughter or talk over as he 
 would with a son. " 
 
 The Vedda taboo between mother and daughter 
 betrays a desire for separation between those 
 unlike in age. The difference in age between the 
 members of a family is the second great source of 
 unlikeness between them which has to be appre- 
 hended and regulated. It is dealt with in various 
 ways. Children may live out. Among the Bon toe 
 Igorot a child of two ceases to sleep at home. 
 Boys go to the pa-ha-fd-nan or men's clubhouse, 
 girls to the olag.^^ Bororo boys of Brazil go to the 
 men's house as soon as they are weaned. "^ In 
 New Guinea they go at four.^^ An Italian ob- 
 server of England under Henry VII says that 
 boys and girls at the age of seven or nine at the 
 utmost are sent out by their parents, parents in 
 every class of life, to live and serve in the houses 
 of others, the parents in their turn taking into 
 their service the children of others. "And on in- 
 quiring their reason for this severity, they answered 
 that they did it in order that their children might 
 learn better manners. But I for my part, " adds 
 their critic, "believe that they do it because they 
 
164 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 like to enjoy all their comforts themselves, and 
 that they are better served by strangers than they 
 would be by their own children. Besides which, 
 the English being great epicures, and very avari- 
 cious by nature, indulge in the most delicate fare 
 themselves and give their household the coarsest 
 bread, and beer, and cold meat baked on Sunday, 
 for the week ... if they had their own children 
 at home they would be obliged to give them the 
 same food they made use of for themselves."*' 
 In later years in England the boarding school 
 usurped the place of this domestic apprentice 
 system. Boys were sent to school at seven or 
 eight. ''If any go at an earlier age, " writes a peda- 
 gogue in 1 61 2, ''they are rather sent to the school 
 to keepe them from troubling the house at home,* 
 and from danger, and shrewd tumes, than for 
 any great hope and desire their friends have that 
 they should learne anything in effect. "^^ Among 
 ourselves we often say that it is time for John or 
 Jim to go away to school to learn to be a gentle- 
 man, "not that he will learn much of anything 
 else." 
 
 Even when children remain at home and when 
 
 * To keep them "out of mischief," as a modern writer puts it, 
 "mischief meaning for the most part worrying the grown-ups." 
 (Shaw, Bernard. Parents and Children, p. xl. New York, 191 4.) 
 
In tKe Family 165 
 
 avoidance in its narrow meaning is not practised 
 between members of the family differing either in 
 age or in sex, reserves and constraints of various 
 kinds characterize family life. Often eating to- 
 gether "is not done." In the Society and in the 
 Sandwich Islands brothers and sisters, however 
 young, do not eat together. A son eats in company 
 with his mother only when he is at her breast.^' 
 An Aeneze boy does not presume to eat at all 
 before his father. "Look at that boy," says the 
 scandal monger, "he satisfied his appetite in the 
 presence of his father."^* Our children as a rule 
 eat their supper at least in the nursery. In 
 Kavirondo, in East Africa, father and sons never 
 eat together. Nor do brothers. The Kavirondo 
 women eat after the men,^^ a sequence common 
 in tribal or in peasant life. 
 
 When it does occur, the family meal has a 
 somewhat ceremonial character. It may be eaten 
 in silence or a need of unbroken talk may be felt. 
 The elders are usually served first. They are 
 entitled to certain portions and to the youngest 
 goes "the drumstick." The juniors may be ex- 
 pected to stand until their elders are seated. In 
 the Tonga Islands the juniors have to turn their 
 backs on the seniors. ^ 4 
 
 Shyness in the family is also expressed in the 
 
l66 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 quite common avoidance of personal names. An 
 islander of Torres Straits would be greatly morti- 
 fied* were he to make a mistake and call a relative 
 by marriage by name.^^ Many peoples beside the 
 Crees are teknonymous. I have a Pueblo Indian 
 friend and several New England friends whose 
 wives always refer to them as the children's father. 
 Even as afianceey a Zulu woman is called mother 
 of so-and-so, 3^ an anticipation which the Ameri- 
 can, however quick he is after he is a father to 
 call his wife "mother" or "mommer," might be 
 loath to make. In south-east Australia a man 
 speaks to or of his children as one counts on one's 
 fingers: Tayling or "Thumb" for the first-bom, 
 Burhi or "First Finger" for the second child, 
 Youlgo or "Second Finger" for the third, etc.^^ 
 An Andamanese addresses his son as dar o dire, 
 "He that has been begotten by me."^^ Every- 
 where offspring address their parents by their kin- 
 ship term. It is contrary to Corean etiquette ever 
 to pronoimce the name of a parent or of an uncle. ^' 
 The names of these relatives a Massim would 
 not only never think of pronouncing himself but 
 mention of them in his hearing he would resent 
 as insulting and cause enough for blows. ^^ Senior 
 collateral relatives are addressed by their kinship 
 * See p. 94. 
 
 m 
 
In tHe Family 167 
 
 name both in the classificatory and in the lineal 
 system of kinship. In the classificatory system an 
 aunt is called "mother," an uncle, "father." In 
 the lineal system personal names for aunt and 
 uncle are sometimes used but never without the 
 prefix of the kinship term.* Not long ago senior 
 brothers and sisters and cousins were addressed 
 among us with a kinship prefix. 
 
 Is it far fetched to suggest that avoidance may 
 also be traced in family conversation or the lack 
 of itf both at the dinner table and away from it? 
 It has at times with us — unfortunately this is a 
 matter little observed outside of civilization — ^it 
 has such an unresponsive character that it has 
 been denied by some the name of conversation at 
 all. It is a kind of chatter made up of more or less 
 disconnected comments upon the neighbours or 
 the neighbotirhood, upon the day's incidents or 
 accidents, upon "matters of general interest." 
 Feelings or points of view, ambitions or fancies 
 
 * " Why will you never call me * Elsie ' instead of * Aunt Elsie * ? " 
 I once asked a little nephew. ** I don't like to, " was for some time 
 his only answer. " It doesn't fit to call older people by their first 
 names, " he added later. It is disrespectful to address elders by 
 name, say the Negritoes. (Read, W. A. Negritoes of Zamhales. 
 Ethnological Survey Publications, vol. ii, pt. i, p. 56. Manila, 
 1904.) Boys are savages in more senses than one. 
 
 t "Avoid conversing in society with the members of your own 
 family." (Ward, p. 402.) 
 
i68 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 figure little if at all. Then certain subjects without 
 which talk is likely in any circle to flag are never 
 referred to in the family — religion, sometimes 
 politics, sometimes arts or letters, almost always 
 sex. 
 
 The reluctance of parents in civilization to dis- 
 cuss with their children questions of sex* has 
 recently been remarked upon — dramatically and 
 even statistically. Aware of the need of the dis- 
 cussion, an effort is being made to shift the re- 
 sponsibility from parents to school teachers. Much 
 the same kind of shifting occurs, I surmise, among 
 savages. Initiation ceremonies at which formal 
 education in sex is given are in the hands not of 
 parents but of the Elders or the medicine-men. 
 In the boarding-schools to which the youth of 
 West Africa are sent before initiation, instruction 
 in the duties of marriage and parenthood is given 
 by the old headmaster or mistress. 
 
 Among brothers and sisters too there is a ten- 
 dency — where they talk together at all — not to 
 refer to sex topics. A Blackfoot Indian has to be 
 careful in his conversation before his sisters "not 
 to offend their modesty.*'*' Among the Samoans 
 
 * Even impersonally. As to personal experience, what father 
 would ever think of telling his daughter what he has really liked 
 in women, "what son ever dreams of asking his mother about 
 her marriage?" (Shaw, p. xcvi.) 
 
In tKe Family 169 
 
 not the remotest reference to "anything, even 
 by way of a joke, that conveyed the sUghtest in- 
 delicacy in thought or word or gesture" was ever 
 made in the presence of brothers and sisters.^* 
 I am reminded of a reverend editor of the Arabian 
 Nights who wrote that he had aimed to "purify" 
 the text so that the "most innocently minded 
 maiden" might read it aloud to her brothers and 
 sisters "without scruple or compunction." Were 
 Samoan maidens ever in the habit of rejecting a 
 suitor, I wonder, by proposing to be a "sister" to 
 him — a final way of stating that all references to 
 sex were to be eliminated between them. 
 
 It must be said that with us jokes about sex 
 are not altogether taboo — as inhibitory influences. 
 Does not every prudent brother or sister conceal a 
 love affair so as not to be "teased" about it? 
 Teasing is the usual way taken by the family to 
 show its members that references to any of their 
 personal experiences except the most colourless are 
 unwelcome in the family circle. In rare cases 
 family banter or chaff may be disallowed — among 
 the Omaha,* for example, if a son-in-law and 
 mother-in-law or cousins of the opposite sex laugh 
 
 * Among the Sioux on the other hand joking with brothers- or 
 sisters-in-law was in vogue. " To complain of such jokes or resent 
 them, no matter how personal, would have been an unpardonable 
 breach of etiquette. " (Eastman, p. 268.) 
 
I70 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 at each other, the offender may be tickled or 
 scratched or bitten ^^ (without the right of re- 
 prisal) — but as a rule family ridicule is as effec- 
 tive as ridicule ever is to compel conformity and 
 reticence. 
 
 But avoidance whether of kindred or of topics of 
 conversation is not a sufficient barrier against inti- 
 macy or unwonted relations. Besides, companion- 
 ship, if not intimacy, the home loving heart craves. 
 Hence in family life as in marriage set forms of 
 intercourse are desirable. The time for them or the 
 occasion varies of course in different communities. 
 Unknown in some places, the common meal is with 
 us the most usual occasion for the family to come 
 together. Not to eat with the rest of the family 
 even when you are all away from home, travelling 
 for example, would be considered unaccountable 
 or selfish. Religious rites may bring the family 
 together, whether the cult is of itself familial or 
 merely encourages family prayers or going to 
 church together. Family retinions in honour of 
 birthdays or other anniversaries are in most 
 families indispensable occurrences. They maybe 
 the only occasions when the family "connexion*' is 
 sure to foregather; although in most communities 
 weddings and funerals are perhaps the occasions 
 it is most certain to grace. These celebrations ap- 
 
In tKe Family 171 
 
 pear to be so ceremonial and so safely impersonal 
 that even persons not on speaking terms with one 
 another join in them. Family visits are also in 
 order in connexion with all family crises, births, 
 betrothals and marriages, deaths, and in token of 
 respect from a junior to a senior member of the 
 family. **I expect you to come and see me, you 
 know I*m your aunt,*' says Aunt Sarah, or, "I'm 
 the only aunt you have, " she will add if she is, her 
 insistence sharpened perhaps by the realization 
 that with us aunts cannot absolutely count on 
 receiving visits of ceremony. 
 
 Family meetings are characterized by stereo- 
 typed greetings and farewells. In Queensland 
 when a mother and daughter have not met for a 
 long time, the mother will rub a stick into the top 
 of her head until it bleeds, crying and sobbing as 
 hard as she can. When the daughter thinks her 
 mother has sufficiently relieved her feelings, she 
 takes the stick away.''^ In the Andaman Islands, 
 relatives who meet each other after an absence 
 throw their arms around each other's neck and 
 sob as if their hearts would break until they are 
 completely worn out.'*^ If a Toda visits a village 
 in which live female relatives younger than him- 
 self, he will be met by them, and greeted by the 
 Kalmelpudithti or *'leg up he puts" salutation. 
 
172 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 Bowing down before him the kinswoman lifts to 
 her forehead first one of his feet and then the 
 other. '♦^ **Say good-bye,'* we bid Harry, as he 
 starts to escape from the notice of a senior relative. 
 "Will you not bless our children before you go?" 
 says a Wemba to the elderly kinsman who visits 
 him. The kinsman will then spit on the chest of 
 each child and say, "May you keep well, my 
 child. "^7 
 
 But even the meeting from day to day is formal- 
 ized. A Chinese son is boimd to pay his respects 
 at dawn and "express his affection by the offer of 
 pleasant delicacies." At sundown he "will pay 
 his evening visit in the same way. "''^ In the 
 seventeenth century an English youth was told 
 to crave his parents' blessing every morning and 
 every evening on his knees.'"' Two generations 
 back, writes Mrs. John Farrar in 1841, young per- 
 sons rose and courtesied every time their father 
 entered the room. 5° Nowadays, if they are man- 
 nerly they still rise at times for their mother, and 
 rare is the good nurse who does not insist upon 
 her charge kissing his mother good-morning and 
 good-night. 
 
 Such demonstrations of affection are not the 
 only impersonal expressions of family feeling. 
 "Being companionable" may also be an attitude 
 
In tHe Familx 173 
 
 of ceremony more or less preclusive, I infer, of a 
 personal relationship. I will give a few illustra- 
 tions. In the Islands of Torres Straits, it is taken 
 for granted that a man*s relative by marriage, his 
 itnit will go out with him in his canoe. In its bow 
 a special place is always assigned the imi, and it 
 is his business to hoist the sail, heave the anchor, 
 light the fire, and prepare the food.^" In China 
 "after the proper dressing at cock-crow sons and 
 daughters-in-law should go to their parents and 
 parents-in-law. On getting to where they are, 
 with bated breath and gentle voice, they should 
 ask if their clothes are too warm or too cold, whether 
 they are ill or pained, or uncomfortable in any way ; 
 and if they be so, they should proceed reverentially 
 to stroke and scratch the place. ... In bringing 
 in the basin for them to wash . . . they will beg 
 to be allowed to pour out the water, and . . . 
 they will hand the towel. They will ask whether 
 they want anything, and then respectfully bring it. 
 All this they will do with an appearance of pleasure 
 to make their parents feel at ease. ** s* With us the 
 joint family being less common than with the 
 Chinese, the ceremonial of being companionable 
 falls upon the unmarried offspring. A good son 
 will take some of his meals at home and now and 
 again spend the evening ; a devoted daughter will go 
 
174 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 driving with her father or mother or travelling or 
 shopping or calling.* American brothers and sisters 
 are less companionable; but a youth is generally 
 expected to be his sister's escort. He feels more 
 or less responsible for her, opposing in her ''the 
 slightest indecorum, "S3 and serving as a kind of 
 watch dog. It is for him to protect her honour and 
 the honour of the family. Elsewhere too this 
 special function falls to brothers. "Last Friday 
 when I came from work," said a Chukma to 
 Lewin, "my father said to me, 'Where is your 
 sister? She went out some time ago to fetch water 
 and has not returned. I suspect she has run off 
 at last with that worthless fellow Boopea, who is 
 always hanging about the house.* On this I went 
 and called two or three other young men who lived 
 close by, and we went off after my sister. We met 
 her and Boopea in the valley by the stream. Boo- 
 pea was first in the path ; my sister followed . . . 
 holding his hand. Then I was enraged, and I ran 
 at Boopea and cut at him with my dao ; he leaped 
 to one side and the blow fell on my sister. She 
 said once 'Oh, brother!* and then fell dead.'*^^ — 
 Family "differences" do not always end so dis- 
 astrously, but however distressing they may be, 
 
 * "A mother and daughter should call together." {Manners 
 and Social Usages, p. 8.) 
 
In tKe Family 175 
 
 they appear to be less apprehended and less 
 guarded against than family intimacies, precluded 
 entirely as they are by avoidance or by conven- 
 tional companionship, companionship at set times 
 and places, in set duties and responsibilities.* 
 
 * For these functions, as a whole, functions too elaborate and 
 comprehensive to be considered here, I must refer the reader to 
 general treatises on the family. 
 
XV 
 
 AGE-CLASSES 
 
 "\ A 7HERE birthdays are not celebrated or 
 ' • registration or enumeration blanks filled 
 out,* it usually happens that age labels extend 
 over comparatively long periods. Divisions of 
 life history similar to those set forth so poetically 
 by Jacques the misanthropical are followed very 
 practically in tribal life. Upon them are based 
 conditions of living, duties and obligations, re- 
 strictions and privileges. Everyone is expected 
 to conform to the ways of his contemporaries and 
 respect the different ways of his juniors or seniors. 
 By this classification everyone may be treated not 
 according to the needs of his personality, not 
 according to his individual demands, but accord- 
 ing to the prevailing conceptions about his age- 
 
 * Why is the recording of age so much insisted upon in these 
 blanks? Is it merely for the purpose of identification as the 
 rationalist asserts? And why is it bad manners in other situa- 
 tions to ask anyone his or her age? The joke about women not 
 telling their age is like many another long standing joke quite 
 worth ethnological analysis. 
 
 176 
 
A.^e-Classes 177 
 
 class, according to what as a member of that class 
 he should be like. Age-classes are extraordinarily 
 efficient barriers against personality.* 
 
 There is considerable variation in determining 
 the boundaries of age-classes. Physical changes 
 are taken into account — the signs of puberty, 
 child-bearing, decrepitude; but it is usually cere- 
 monial which definitely marks off one age-class 
 from another, particularly initiation and marriage 
 ceremonial. In spite of adolescence, where there 
 has been no initiation, the class often remains 
 unchanged. In Australia, in Fiji, in Samoa, and 
 elsewhere an uninitiated man has to stay in the 
 age-class of the boys. ' Similarly unless a person 
 is married, t he or she may have to stay in the age- 
 class of the unmarried juveniles. Every unmar- 
 ried Corean, for example, is treated as a child. 
 Whatever his capers, he is never held to accoimt, 
 for he is not supposed to take life seriously. In 
 social reunions he can take no part, and on affairs 
 of importance he must hold his tongue* — a social 
 position not very dissimilar from that at one time 
 accorded Anglo-Saxon old maids. 
 
 * Their use to the primitive in meeting the changes he finds so 
 trjdng I am analyzing in another study under the rubric of 
 ceremonial reluctance. 
 
 t Initiation often affects marriage. Women will very com- 
 monly not marry uninitiated men. 
 
lyS Fear and Conventionality 
 
 Forms of address characterize different age- 
 classes. Among the Koita of New Guinea, if an 
 erigabef sl man in his prime, were speaking, he 
 wotdd address a man older than his father as 
 wahia; a man of his father's generation as raimu; 
 a man of his own generation as vasi or hiage; a man 
 of a younger generation as roro. ^ Until a Kakhyen 
 comes of age Ma is prefixed to his name, when of 
 age, 'N; but Ma is always used in addressing a 
 junior, W in addressing a senior.^ Among the 
 Akikuyu a little girl is called ka-re'-go, a little 
 boy, ka^-he; sl big girl or boy not yet initiated 
 or circumcised, ki-re'-gu or ki'-he; a girl or boy 
 after initiation or circumcision, moi-re'-tu or mu^- 
 mo; a woman betrothed or married, but not 
 yet a mother, mu-hi'-ki; a warrior, nCwa-na'-ke; 
 a married man wa-ka-ny-u-ku; a mother of young 
 children, wa-bai; sl married man with a child, 
 mun'-du mu-ge^-ma; a mother of an initiated child, 
 mu4i-mi'-a; a man whose children are growing up, 
 ka-ra-hai'; a toothless old woman, i-he^-ti; an 
 elderly man, m'zur'-ij one old enough to need a 
 stick, rrCzur'-i a ki-a-na, one extremely aged, 
 rrCzur'-i a bou'-i,^ Compared with these appella- 
 tions, appellations no more particularized than 
 those of most savages, how meagre our own terms 
 seem — baby, master and miss, Mr. and Mrs.! 
 
A^e-Classes 179 
 
 As for our elders, they lack special terms of address 
 altogether, unless you count in the irregular 
 practice of a man's saying "sir" to his senior.* 
 
 The habits of each age-class are rigidly regu- 
 lated. Dieting according to age is very common. 
 It is believed among the Kumai that the breasts 
 of girls eating kangaroo will not develop nor the 
 beard or whiskers of boys eating quail or its eggs.* 
 In New South Wales young men were told that 
 if they ate emu they would break out in sores. f 
 Nor could they eat duck. Only the married ate 
 duck and only the old men, emu. Not until they 
 were middle-aged could the Warramunga eat 
 lizards, snakes, turkeys, bandicoot, emu, or 
 echidna.'' Kabuis youths are not allowed to eat 
 cat,^ nor Fijian initiates, river fish or eels or the 
 
 * By how many years it is rather indefinite. By fifteen, says 
 one authority. (Harvey, p. 122.) 
 
 t In Queensland and Victoria boys and girls believe that if they 
 eat forbidden food meteorites or lightning will kill them. (Jour- 
 nal Anthropological Institute, xiii, 1883-4, 294; Proc. Linncean 
 Soc. New South Wales, new ser., x, 1895, 393.) Several 
 species of wild fowl and their eggs are supposed to cause the 
 muscles of the boys of the lower Murray tribes to shrink and 
 their hair to turn grey. {Journal and Proceedings Roy. Soc. 
 New South Wales, xvii, 1883, 27.) Among the Wakelbura 
 the spirit of forbidden game is thought to enter into its youthful 
 eater, first causing him to utter its peculiar cry and then kill- 
 ing him. (Howitt, Native Tribes, p. 769.) Analogous magical 
 phenomena are alleged to occur in our own nurseries. " If you 
 eat so much cake, you won't grow up to be strong." "If you 
 drink so much water, you'll turn into a brook." 
 
i8o Fear and Conventionalitx 
 
 best of the yams or vegetables. ' Koita young 
 folk may not eat certain varieties of fish lest their 
 skin become harsh and unpleasant to the opposite 
 sex. Among the Southern Massim none until 
 past middle age may eat dog or turtle. '° When 
 an ox is killed among the Akikuyu," the N^ jdma, 
 or the younger men, take the breast, the Ktdma, 
 or men whose eldest child has been initiated, the 
 belly and saddle, the Moran'ja, or men to whom a 
 second child has been born, the back, and the 
 youths, the head, neck, and ribs.* For China- 
 men of fifty a finer grain was prepared, according 
 to the Li Ki, than for younger men. ''For 
 those of sixty, flesh was kept in store. For those 
 of seventy, there was a second service of savotiry 
 meat. For those of eighty, there was a constant 
 supply of delicacies. For those of ninety, food 
 and drink were never out of their chambers. 
 Wherever they wandered, it was required that sav- 
 oury meat and drink should follow them." ^* Beef 
 soup is reserved for the old men among the Sioux. '^ 
 A Wagogo child may not eat the liver, kidneys, 
 or heart of any animal. ^^ It is only after initia- 
 tion that a Yaunde may eat sheep or goat.'^ 
 Only after we have "grown up, " i. e, "come out, ** 
 or gone to college, may we drink wine or take 
 
 * The women are allowed the inside. 
 
-A^e-Classes l8i 
 
 after-dinner coffee. Beer we may drink sooner, 
 at least in the form of shandy-gaff, but a Masai 
 may not drink it at all until he is an elder. 
 
 While a Masai is a member of the warrior class, 
 as he is sometimes for twenty years, he is in fact 
 "in training," and he neither drinks nor smokes.'^ 
 Among us the elders often extract a promise from 
 their boys not to smoke until they are twenty-one. 
 Formerly among the Sioux a young man could not 
 use tobacco until he had achieved a record as a 
 warrior '7; in the Pueblo of Santa Clara not until 
 he had killed a coyote.*^ When snuff- taking was 
 in vogue with us, it was probably confined to 
 "grown-ups." Among the Akikuyu it is to-day 
 a habit only of the elders.'' 
 
 Ornament and dress are almost invariably 
 expected to be suitable to a given age. Among 
 most savage tribes children go clothesless until 
 adolescence. At this time our girls lengthen their 
 skirts and wear stockings in bathing. At fifteen 
 a Persian boy is given his ceremonial girdle.^" 
 Only after initiation could a Queensland youth 
 wear the grass-necklace, the human-hair waist- 
 belt, and the opossum-string phallocrypt of a 
 man."' At a corresponding age our boys pass 
 from short trousers into long, and a little later 
 acquire "evening clothes." On March i6, in his 
 
l82 Fear and Conventionality- 
 
 fifteenth or sixteenth year, a Roman boy puts on 
 the toga virilis,^' 
 
 Halamahera boys in the Moluccas may wear 
 no red * in their clothes before they are made 
 men.* 3 The head kerchief of Aeneze girls is red, 
 of their seniors, black. ^^^ In China violet and 
 black are worn only by old ladies. ^^ We ourselves 
 do not like to see a girl wearing black, and a 
 generation ago old ladies were supposed not to 
 wear anything else — except perhaps grey or at a 
 stretch pale lavender. Fond of pink, they might 
 wear it only surreptitiously. "I always run in 
 plenty of pink ribbon in my things, and I have 
 pink ribbon garters!" confesses one old lady who 
 has had to forgo her favorite colour— on the out- 
 side. ^'^ 
 
 Textures as well as colours are proper to different 
 ages. The veil of the Venetian maiden was of 
 
 * Given colours are appropriate not only to age-classes and to 
 royalty. There is white for ghosts (white is a sacred colour too 
 among the Ainu. — Batchelor, p. 20) ; black and white and mauve 
 for their mourners (yellow in China); black and red for demons; 
 blue for the Virgin Mary — ^and ultramarine at that when her 
 worshippers can afford it. There is the yellow novel, the red- 
 covered guide book, the black bound Bible. Almost every 
 group associates itself with a colour — schools, castes, nations. 
 (Once in Turkey no foreigner was allowed to wear green, Maho- 
 met's colour. — A Pepys of Mogul India, p. 5. New York, 1913.) 
 The sexes have their own colours, beginning in the nursery with 
 blue for boys, pink for girls. Then there is the taboo on many 
 colours for men, a taboo very modem and very rigid. 
 
Age-Classes 183 
 
 silk, of the Venetian matron of holland, edged 
 with bone lace.*^ Velvet is not suitable for a 
 girl, we say, nor dimity for a matron, and is not 
 a soft lace the most becoming thing an old lady 
 can wear? At seventy a Chinaman "does not 
 feel warm unless he wears silk."'^ Nor may 
 a Chinese boy wear fm*.''* Sixteenth-century 
 Italians criticised a young man who wore fur.^** 
 
 Not until a Kikuyu woman's first-bom is 
 initiated does she wear copper earrings.^' Be- 
 tween initiation and marriage Kiktiyu maidens 
 wear on their forehead a band of beads and shell 
 disks, ^* just as our own young ladies when they 
 "come out" may wear a necklace of pearls, small 
 pearls — perhaps seed or fresh- water pearls, at 
 any rate not large pearls — ^for costly jewelry is in 
 bad taste for a girl. Her first handsome piece 
 of jewelry is probably a wedding gift, although 
 our practice is not as uniform in this matter as the 
 Kikuyu. The Kikuyu bride regularly receives 
 from her father the iron collar which befits a 
 matron. ^^ 
 
 Mating is regulated according to age. In most 
 savage tribes initiation rites take place at adoles- 
 cence and as a rule marriage is prescribed at a 
 more or less set period after initiation. By 
 societies whose method of time keeping has ad- 
 
i84 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 vanced, it may be prescribed at a set age. But 
 in either case failure to mate at the customary 
 time is derided or penalized. In the Islands of 
 Torres Straits a youth whose beard begins to 
 get heavy or a maiden whose figure is maturing 
 is ridiculed into marriage.^'* In East Central 
 Africa a girl learns that unless she marries as soon 
 as she is nubile she will die.^^ At twenty the 
 Jewish youth was "numbered" and unless he 
 straightway married he was outcasted as a criminal. 
 Unmarried Romans between the ages of twenty 
 and fifty for women, of twenty and sixty for men, 
 were subject to tax, they could not become heirs 
 except to near relatives, and they could not receive 
 legacies.^* After sixty marriage evidently was 
 not to be expected among the Romans. Among 
 us the marriage of an elderly man or woman is 
 apt to be a little ridiculed.* Love making by the 
 oldf is sure to be. "It were no meete matter, 
 but an yll sight to see a man — being olde, hore- 
 
 * The birth of a child, at least of a first child, to those getting 
 on in years also seems to us a little ridiculous. In the Western 
 Islands of Torres Straits the child of such a couple was invariably 
 killed, so much did its parents dread the ridicule and talk its 
 birth occasioned. {R. C. A. E. T. S., vi, 109.) 
 
 t But "people remain much longer in the sexual arena" than 
 formerly. "A bishop's wife at fifty has more the air of a femme 
 galante than an actress had at thirty-five in her grandmother's 
 time.*' (Shaw, p. xcviii.) 
 
i\^e-Classes 185 
 
 headed and toothlesse, full of wrinckles, with a 
 lute in his armes playing upon it and singing in 
 the middes of a company of women, although he 
 coulde doe it reasonablye well. And that, because 
 suche songes conteine in them wordes of love, and 
 in olde men love is a thing to bee jested at.**^^ 
 
 About love making by their juniors, however, 
 the old have much to say. They are very apt to 
 make the match or at least to pass on it. They 
 give instruction too on sex habits in general, and 
 violation of their rules they usually penalize. 
 The code they lay down for their juniors is apt 
 to differ from their own. At the corrobborees 
 of the Narran-ga, the old men took at pleasure 
 any of the young wives of the class they had a 
 right to marry into, whereas if a young man 
 wanted such a loan he had to give his own wife 
 in exchange. ^^ Among the Dieri only the older 
 men, they who have passed through the Mindari 
 ceremony, have the right of piraru or group 
 marriage. 3 '^ It is customary for a M*kiku3ru 
 not to add to his three wives until his first-bom 
 child is taken into the tribe. ^^ Even when there 
 is no formal limitation for the younger men, the 
 Elders are often the only men rich enough to be 
 unhampered polygynists or polygynists at all. 
 Sometimes indeed the juniors cannot afford even 
 
1 86 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 one wife; they may be without enough to marry 
 on at all, having to live in poverty-stricken celi- 
 bacy, poor old bachelors. Under such circum- 
 stances the theory of not coveting your neighbour's 
 wife becomes of course very important — to the 
 peace of the Elders. To ensure it, they find that 
 it is well to separate the youths more or less from 
 the women — sometimes for months, sometimes for 
 years — ^and to impress upon them, particularly 
 at initiation, when the youths are most under 
 their thumb, the impropriety of interfering with 
 other men's women, let alone its disastrous con- 
 sequences, juridical and supernatural. 
 
 The Elders are able to attach a supernatural 
 sanction to marriage as well as to any other custom 
 they may cherish because supernaturalism has 
 ever been largely under their control. They are 
 the heads of totemic cults, of secret societies, of 
 religious hierarchies. From these organizations 
 the young are wholly excluded or admitted to a 
 membership more or less restricted. Ohiyesa, 
 alias Charles A. Eastman, a Sioux, writes that his 
 grandmother told him that were the medicine- 
 men to discover him and the other little boys 
 playing "medicine dance," they would shrivel up 
 their limbs with slow disease. ^^ The young have 
 little to do at any rate with the gods or their 
 
A.^e-Cla88es 187 
 
 proxies. Once when because of his wrong diag- 
 nosis a Wagogo medicine-man was ridiculed by 
 the friends of his patient, an adult woman, he 
 told them that they were too young to have con- 
 sulted him.-** If a Caff re child have an ominous 
 dream, he tells his mother and she intercedes for 
 him with the appropriate spirits. ^^ "Suffer little 
 children to come unto me" is far from being a 
 wide-spread dictate among the gods. 
 
 In all ancestral cults it is the oldest member 
 or members of the family who are responsible to 
 the family ghosts. Food for the ghosts of the 
 Islands of Torres Straits is collected and spread 
 out for them only by the old men.^-* "It is a 
 strange notion which prevails in the world, that 
 reHgion only belongs to the old," writes Hannah 
 More,*s more perplexed than she would have been 
 had she known more about the Islands of Torres 
 Straits. But even in her own island the clergy 
 are no longer young when they hold high office. 
 Then too preferment in the Church of England as 
 in any hierarchy is optional with the elders. It is 
 too in secret societies whose membership is selec- 
 tive. <^ Even in Australia where as a rule every 
 youth may pass through every stage of initiation, 
 among the Dieri only a certain number of youths 
 are picked, and they are picked by the Elders^ for the 
 
1 88 Fear and Conventionalitx 
 
 rite of kulpi or sub-incision which qualifies them 
 to hold the important positions of the tribe — to be 
 the tribal emissaries, the leading dancers at the 
 corrobborees, and in time members of the "great 
 council."'*' What attributes in the Dieri youths 
 influence the Elders in their selection we are not 
 told, but among them are no doubt the very traits 
 which lead older men among ourselves to give 
 positions in business or in the professions to 
 young men of promise — a modest and respectful 
 bearing, ingratiating ways with older people, con- 
 formity in general to the standards set youth by age. 
 Membership in the Dieri council is not only 
 determined by the original selection of the Eld- 
 ers; the candidates themselves have to be of an 
 advanced age. Statecraft like supematuralism 
 is ever largely in the hands of the Elders. Very 
 primitive societies like the Australian are indeed 
 absolute gerontocracies. Their only government 
 is a council of the Elders. At their meetings no 
 young man* may speak.'** Even under chief- 
 
 * Nor is their opinion ever to any extent considered. In 
 Victoria, for example, they are under no circumstances allowed 
 part in so important a matter as planning for intertribal visits. 
 (Smyth, i, 133.) 
 
 "Put not yong men in authority that are to prowde and lyght," 
 
 (Furnivall, p. 95) is a line that undoubtedly expresses the Black- 
 fellow as well as the early English point of view. 
 
^^e-Classes 189 
 
 tancy or monarchy a council of the elder statesmen 
 or senators is influential. Membership in the 
 government of a democracy may also be condi- 
 tioned by age. None is eligible to the Senate of 
 the United States under thirty or to the Supreme 
 Court or the Presidency under thirty-five. In 
 the Soudanese democracy of Wadai although 
 young men may be present at the council, they 
 have little influence and seldom speak. ^^ Like 
 well trained children they are seen but not heard. 
 But outside of council meetings speech is 
 standardized by age. According to the Li Kt 
 no well-bred Chinaman will introduce in conversa- 
 tion, "irregularly" is the word, a subject on which 
 his senior has not touched. And it is contrary 
 to his sense of propriety when his elder asks a 
 question not to answer it, although belittling at 
 the same time his ability, s" In few savage tribes 
 will a young man express an opinion before his 
 elders, if he expresses it at all, without much 
 caution and a show of diffidence. Among the 
 Sioux he does not speak at all unless he is spoken 
 to. 5' "You would not talk of your pleasures to 
 men of a certain age, " writes Lord Chesterfield, ^* a 
 "mark of deference and regard" youth still pays 
 to age, even if age has begun to question it. "Just 
 as I have weeded my talk a hundred times out of 
 
190 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 respect to the young, these dear children weed 
 their talk from respect to the old, " writes a modern 
 old lady in a vehement protest against being talked 
 at or for whenever she joins a circle of polite young 
 people." This particular old lady does not refer, 
 like most old people, to a dislike for current slang 
 — she is perhaps too young to feel it. But such 
 verbal novelties are apt to be spared the ears of 
 seniors. Children on the other hand are often 
 told not to use "grownup" words. *' You talk 
 like your grandfather," or "like a little old 
 woman," is said in ridicule to a "precocious" 
 boy or girl. "Lie" is generally held to be a word 
 unbecoming to a child's mouth; "fib" is a better 
 word for them to use. Similarly for many other 
 simple acts or objects there are nursery para- 
 phrases. 
 
 Besides the expurgation of vocabularies or of 
 topics of conversation, there are many other 
 particulars of behaviour age determines. In 
 Victoria in visiting a camp the oldest man of the 
 company walks first, the younger men following, s-* 
 The Elikuyu warrior for whom the girls stand 
 aside, himself stands aside for old women, ss A 
 Masai warrior dare not greet an elder until the 
 elder has greeted him.^^ "In meeting your 
 elderly friends in the street," counsels the Young 
 
i\£(e-Cla8ses 191 
 
 Lady's Friend y^'' "look at them enough to give 
 them the opportunity of recognizing you; and if 
 they do so, return their salutation respectfully, 
 not with the familiar nod you would give to one of 
 your own age." — ** Never lounge on a sofa or 
 rocking-chair," the early Victorian continues, 
 "whilst there are those in the room whose years 
 give them a better claim to that sort of indulgence." 
 Mabuiag lads are instructed not to stand upright 
 in the presence of the old men.^^ Among the 
 Mpongwe the young may never approach the old 
 or even pass their huts without crouching with 
 head bared. They may not sit down near them 
 nor hand them anything without dropping on one 
 knee. 5' The Chinaman has to carry a stool and 
 a staff for the use of his elder. When following 
 him he must keep his head turned in the same 
 direction the elder is looking.*^** The Hebrew 
 was taught "to rise up before the hoary head," 
 and we teach our children to stand when their 
 elders enter the room. 
 
 " Loke, my son, that thow not sytte 
 Tylle the ruler of the hous the bydde."*' 
 
 At the table our elders are always served first. 
 In China until an elder has emptied his cup, a 
 junior "does not presume to drink his."^* Under 
 
192 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 no circumstances may a Wemba ask his senior 
 for a smoke. All he can do is to sit down near 
 the older man and look wistful/^ Nor does a 
 Corean^4 or a Pueblo Indian* smoke before his 
 father. 
 
 In graver ways too "grey hairs" have to be 
 considered. They are a protection against the 
 vehemence of youth. Once during a general row 
 in a group of Blackfellows, Spencer and Gillen 
 saw one of the younger men, i.e, a man between 
 thirty-five and forty, a medicine-man too, try to 
 shake one of the older men. At once, at this 
 serious offence, his precious medicine powers left 
 him.^s Assault of an elder is hateful to the gods, 
 opines Plato in urging that vSeniors by twenty 
 years never be molested — "out of reverence to the 
 gods who preside over birth." ^^ This platonic ad- 
 monition is lived up to very practically by the 
 Bushongo of the Congo. A Bushongo elder has 
 only to put his stick across the doorway of a hut to 
 close it against intruders ^^ and protect himself, if 
 need be, against his juniors. 
 
 Classification by age serves not only as a barrier 
 between persons of different age; it provides or 
 
 * Unless his fatherhas become *' Americanized." Moreover 
 to American cigarettes the rule appears at times, I have noticed, 
 not to apply. 
 
A^e-Classes 193 
 
 enforces companionship between those of the same 
 age. Among the Koita a very close relationship 
 called henamo is formed between boys* bom on 
 the same day or, where the definition has been 
 stretched, about the same time, their fathers 
 having exchanged presents at their birth. ^* 
 Among the Kurnai all the lads who have gone 
 through the Jerail initiation rites at the same time 
 are accounted brothers. Married, each addresses 
 the wives and offspring of the others as "wife** 
 and " child.*' ^'^ In South Africa the contempora- 
 ries of the son of a chief are circumcised together 
 with him at puberty, and all become his lifelong 
 companions. Their brotherhood takes his name. 
 Members of Bechuana brotherhoods are supposed 
 never to give evidence against one another and 
 always to share their food with one another. 7** 
 With us ties between classmates are not as lasting 
 or as close, although boys are sent to school or 
 college primarily very often to learn "how to get 
 on with other boys." Periodic class reunions, 
 however, are ceremonially maintained; many men 
 are able to cherish classmate sentiment for a 
 fellow without having any other interest in him 
 
 * Girls may become henamo in the same way as boys; but the 
 relationship is by no means as serious. It is often allowed to 
 drop when one of the girls marries. Girls, it is said, are no good 
 for henamo. 
 13 
 
194 Fear and Conventionality- 
 whatsoever, and it is generally considered more 
 difficult to refuse a money loan to a classmate 
 than to another. 
 
 In Uripiv, there are ten age-classes and every 
 male has to mess with his own.''^ Among the 
 Makalaka, north of the Zambesi, the tribal elders 
 eat together. So do the young men and the boys. "" 
 Married people among the Andamanese give din- 
 ners to which girls* and young men are not in- 
 vited. '^^ At our dinner parties, even when they 
 are invited, they may be expected to keep more 
 or less to themselves. The girls have ** jokes and 
 stories in a corner by themselves, whilst the 
 matrons discourse of their own affairs. . , . 
 Presently . . . the gentlemen come dropping in, 
 the young ones first and the politicians last.'*'^ 
 At women*s lunch parties girls and matrons are 
 still more segregated. "What is the girl like?'* 
 a while ago I asked a woman who had been 
 visiting a mutual acquaintance, the mother of a 
 debutante. "I don't really know. I hardly ever 
 saw her," was the answer. **She had so many 
 engagements she did not lunch with us once 
 during my visit." 
 
 On many occasions besides feasting or the daily 
 meal age-classes keep together. The Uripiv 
 
 * See p. 113 for the Japanese custom. 
 
i\^e-Classe8 195 
 
 age-classes sleep as well as eat together. In a 
 Masai kraal the huts are grouped together ac- 
 cording to the age of their tenants, and away 
 from home a tribesman must seek for hospitality 
 among the huts of those of his own age. He is 
 never denied, because a Masai fears were he 
 churlish he would be cursed by his age-class and 
 die. 75 Among the Massim at Bartle Bay the 
 members of the same kimta* also show one 
 another hospitality. The women of the same 
 kimta go fishing together; the men hunt together 
 and co-operate in irrigation work. The old men of 
 the Massim have their own potuma or club house, ^^ 
 and in some of our club houses there are, I am 
 told, old men*s comers. "Just as I see my son 
 serving the friends of his own age and allied with 
 him in his affairs, '* remarks an elderly Roman, in 
 one of the plays of Terence, "so it's right we old 
 fellows should gratify other old fellows."'^ The 
 Zulus of Angoni go to war in companies divided 
 by age.'^^ The military conscription of Europe is 
 based on age. Dancing as well as campaigning 
 may be affected by age. Until recently f in the 
 United States at dances for young people the 
 matrons sat apart, sometimes in seats especially 
 
 * Age-class of children born in every period of about two years, 
 t Before the introduction of "turkey trotting." 
 
196 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 assigned to them, it being "undignified" at their 
 age to dance. The Kikuyu matron does not go 
 to dances even to look on. Her husband takes 
 part in them as long as he has only one child ; but 
 she gives them up as soon as she is married.'' 
 
 Is it not apparent how much well-defined age- 
 classes simplify life — at least from the primitive 
 point of view — and why any tampering with their 
 boundaries Hke that attributed to Dr. Osier, for 
 example, or like the recent changes in the age 
 limits for federal labourers and federal judges can 
 be so disturbing and arouse so much criticism? 
 Upsetting as such changes may be, they are, how- 
 ever, nothing like as distressing as doing away 
 with age-classes altogether. "All the men and 
 women in Paris are of uncertain years!" exclaims 
 Zeyneb Hanoum,^" her dismay and resentment 
 unconcealed. Although in kindly moments we 
 may describe a woman as not showing her age or 
 as being the age she looks, when we feel less 
 complimentary do we too not refer to her more or 
 less derisively as of an uncertain age? 
 
XVI 
 
 CONCERNING GHOSTS AND GODS 
 
 WE have noted primitive man's desire to run 
 away from or to exorcise his ghosts. 
 Rarely does he show any desire for intimacy with 
 them. This does not mean of course that relations 
 with them are supposed to cease. Their aid is 
 sought, their anger deplored, their malice out- 
 witted. They hang about, it is thought, to be 
 appeased, placated, flattered. But all such rela- 
 tions are readily depersonalized. Funeral and 
 mourning practices are ever highly conventional. 
 In the first place because, death being as we say a 
 shock, a round of ceremonies disguises or at least 
 postpones the necessity of readjustment both for 
 the mourners themselves and for those who would 
 otherwise be disturbed by the mourners* state of 
 mind. But in the second place because formal 
 manners are the easiest way of showing the dead 
 as well as the living their place. 
 
 Funeral and mourning practices would of them- 
 197 
 
198 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 selves keep the dead at a distance since they make 
 communication with the living difficult,* but 
 ghosts are also given to understand explicitly 
 that they may communicate with the living only 
 at set times or places and often only through 
 appointed persons. Ghosts are generally ex- 
 pected not to walk, not to wander from the locality 
 of their grave or shrine; but there to receive the 
 ceremonial visits of their friends and accept their 
 attentions. A ghost who haunts a place to which 
 he has not been invited runs the risk of being 
 shown quite pointedly that he is intruding. Then 
 a ghost may be expected to be *'at home" only at 
 set times — at midnight, on the anniversary of his 
 death or on the day of the week — the arpatztwl, 
 the Todas call it, ' — at the anthesteriay on All Soul's 
 night, at death feasts. His resurrection may even 
 be postponed to as indefinite a time as the "sound- 
 ing of the last trump." At death or memorial 
 feasts ghosts have to appear,, when they appear 
 
 * Whatever may be the reason for wearing cr^pe veils or 
 clothes of special cut or colour, the pipeclay the mourning Black- 
 fellow smears on his body or the chaplet of bones his widow 
 hangs over her face look very much like disguises from the ghost. 
 Taboos against naming the dead or unwillingness to talk about 
 them except in the past tense take their absence, to say the least, 
 for granted. When alms are given or prayers said for them to 
 shorten their stay in purgatory, their banishment from our circle 
 is certainly not left in doubt. 
 
Concerning GHosts and Oods 199 
 
 at all, in the person of appointed representatives. 
 They themselves have no choice. At other times 
 representatives, i. e, mouthpieces or mediums are 
 also selected for them, sometimes their widow, ac- 
 tual or ceremonial,* sometimes the head of their 
 family group, sometimes the priest in ordinary. 
 Gods, whether nature spirits or ghosts par- 
 ticularly distinguished or long-remembered, have 
 more freedom than the average ghost. But 
 boundaries are set for them too, sometimes a 
 lake or a mountain peak, sometimes an image 
 or a temple, sometimes a given bodily function 
 or disease, sometimes merely the boundaries of 
 science. The Haytians told Peter Martyr that 
 one of their gods was such a rover that they had 
 to chain him down in a room at the top of their 
 chief's house. ^ Omnipresence is an attribute 
 few gods indeed are possessed of. Gods too are 
 usually in charge of special persons who act as 
 their go-between with the public. The keeping 
 of private spirits is generally discouraged* — 
 sometimes mildly as in the excommunication of 
 Christian Gnostic, Pietist, or Protestant, some- 
 
 * There are of course exceptions. One of the functions of the 
 Gold Coast medicine-man is to make a personal fetish for ap- 
 plicants. The Tonga Islander has a tutelar god, the Catholic 
 a patron saint, the Jew a good angel and a bad, and the North 
 American Indian a manitou. 
 
200 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 times more violently as in the burning or drown- 
 ing of the medieval witch over-familiar with Satan 
 or one of his minions. Again like ghosts gods are 
 kept in their place through ceremonial. They 
 have to receive visits and accept presents quite 
 as formally as royalty. The compliments paid 
 to them are set too, for divine attributes and 
 powers are unchanging. Representing as they do 
 a specific quality or force, the favours asked of 
 them are naturally always of the same order. 
 Steadfast in their functions, the gods are credited 
 too with steadfast views or convictions. They 
 are invariably conservatives. They may be given 
 the privilege of an occasional change of heart or 
 of temper, but their mind they may not change. 
 Hence conformity with their unvarying opinions 
 is judged pleasing to them and they are expected 
 to feel aggrieved or dishonoured by non-conformity. 
 Their habits being fixed, they are highly suscepti- 
 ble to insult and they have a very nice sense of 
 the honour due them. 
 
 Many other himian traits besides the desire 
 to be imitated or agreed with or considered are 
 ascribed, we know, to the gods. The more they 
 resemble their worshippers, the more sjmipathetic 
 and accessible they appear. Hence even nature 
 or animal gods are likely to become anthropo- 
 
Concerning; GHosts and Gods 201 
 
 morphous, and gods of all kinds tend to be assimi- 
 lated in one way or another with their priests. 
 But because of this very humanizing of the gods 
 there is always a certain amount of danger in 
 dealing with them. They may be superhumanly 
 conservative, but their temper is human enough 
 to be uncertain. Tact and resourcefulness are re- 
 quired of their mouthpieces or managers. 
 
 In all but effete cults priestcraft is indeed an 
 exacting pursuit, and one none too safe. Priests 
 have had to take chances. There are the gods 
 themselves, fickle, if conservative, and then there 
 are their worshippers, exacting if not critical. 
 Failure to forestall events or in emergencies to turn 
 the heart of the god readily embroils a priest with 
 his people. In times of tempest or flood or drought, * 
 of famine or blight, of sickness or epidemic, of 
 war, the priest may be held responsible. It is easy 
 for him to be discredited and to fall into disrepute. 
 Then, too, whenever he is suspected of practising 
 black magic, he naturally makes bitter enemies. 
 
 It may take not only courage to be a priest, but 
 in primitive society a spirit of adventure. A medi- 
 cine-man, as we have noted, is usually an explorer 
 
 •Weather doctoring is particularly hazardous. The rain 
 makers for the tribe, Soudanese chiefs lose their position, for 
 eiample, when they lose their skill. (Wilson and Felkin, i, 82.) 
 
202 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 of more than one world, besides being an adept in 
 reincarnating himself in other creatures, animal or 
 human. But more than this, he has to have the 
 hardiness to stand alone and to be more or less 
 shunned by his fellows. In the first place, isola- 
 tion, he knows, is necessary to his prestige. In 
 the second place, he betakes too much of the 
 nature of his god, his people feel, for ordinary, 
 comfortable social intercourse, and so they will- 
 ingly '* observe the dignity of his cloth." It is 
 not to every social gathering among us a minister 
 is invited and to avoid the bad luck of meeting his 
 priest on the road a Russian peasant, it is said, 
 will go considerably out of his way. 
 
 Given a gregarious life, courage to stand being 
 left alone undoubtedly gives a priest prestige, but 
 after all it is his taking of responsibility which 
 gives him his great hold on primitive society. 
 Through his own initiative with deity he enables 
 the layman to have a sense of being on good terms 
 with the gods without having to enter into close 
 and so trying relations with them. In other 
 words the priest is an expert — the first expert 
 indeed. From him all our other social experts 
 have been differentiated.* But however diverse 
 
 * To become his rivals. The clerical hold weakens with the 
 social recognition of every new kind of secular expert. May not 
 
Concerning GKosts and Oods 203 
 
 their enterprises, their value to society is funda- 
 mentally the same as his. They all relieve the 
 average man of the necessity of thinking for him- 
 self, of being bothered, of making new adjust- 
 ments, of breaking down his habits. All he has 
 to do in a trying place is to take the advice of 
 the expert, i.e. satisfy his old instinct of imitation. 
 In the contrivances of the supernatural expert 
 much of the social character we have been study- 
 ing is seen at its plainest. Dealing only with 
 imaginary beings, priestcraft has been unchecked 
 in carrying out the collective conceptions of 
 society. In priestcraft the play of collective 
 theory has been unthwarted by iconoclastic 
 rebels and unmoved by physical conditions.* It 
 has succeeded in modelling the gods as men would, 
 if they could, model themselves. Man has not 
 made his gods in his own image but in the image 
 he would see of himself, unchanging beings, with 
 set characteristics, with set interests in a stable 
 milieUy with habits undisturbed, devoid of person- 
 ality. The appeal to such beings is simple and 
 manifest. One can always know what will inter- 
 est them and how they stand. 
 
 irreligion be defined as the following of lay leaders or as depend- 
 ence upon the pragmatic in place of the religious ecologist? 
 
 * We have here, I think, an explanation of the conservatism 
 of the churches, of the conservative nature of religion. 
 
204 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 This knowledge is doubly important about the 
 gods because, no matter how anthropomorphic 
 they are, they do differ and differ greatly from 
 men. To be of service to man, if for no other 
 reason, they must differ; supernatural powers 
 must be theirs. From this supernaturalism they 
 are inevitably fearful. Hence in fear of them as 
 supematurals, a class apart, the usual class-bar- 
 riers are resorted to, formalities of time and 
 place, of habit and posture, of speech, of generaliza- 
 tion, and, in the case of the gods most important 
 of all, the barrier of a special class of servants or 
 guardians. It is the paramount duty of this class 
 to guarantee that from the fearfulness of change- 
 ability or of personality in their gods at least men 
 may be spared. 
 
xvir^ 
 
 AN UNCONVENTIONAL SOCIETY 
 
 IT appears then that Society is the compromise 
 
 * it is always said to be, — a compromise to 
 
 gratify naturally inconsistent inclinations, the 
 
 instinct of gregariousness and the instinct for 
 
 routine.* Companionship it supplies, but only 
 
 the kind of companionship warranted not to 
 
 derange habits or influence personality. Against 
 
 the psychical changes naturally resulting from 
 
 personal contacts society sets its face. Its means 
 
 are simple. It raises up barriers between the 
 
 unlike, restricting companionship to those it ac- 
 
 coimts alike, to those of the same age or sex, 
 
 of the same calling, of the same house, tribe, caste, 
 
 or coimtry. Individual variations within the 
 
 group it ignores or persecutes. 
 
 * When the routine of the individual is just the same as his 
 group's, it is of course not incompatible with the completest 
 kind of gregariousness. It might well be held indeed that the 
 instinct for routine was an outcome in part at least of the gregar- 
 ious instinct, that of our own accord we do nothing "diflFerently" 
 because others do not, that we do as others do the better to 
 be with them. 
 
 205 
 
206 Fear and Conventionalitx 
 
 From the remotest times homogeneous groups 
 have been numerically increasing, but it was 
 only the other day, comparatively speaking, that 
 the barriers between the heterogeneous, between 
 those tmlike in status, were ever called into ques- 
 tion. The conception of personality distinct from 
 status is also recent. Conception and arraignment 
 spell social revolution on a great scale, for do they 
 not mean that dread of change is no longer the 
 controlling social factor it was? 
 
 How has this momentous change itself come 
 about? Largely, it seems to me, through the 
 passing of social control into younger hands; and 
 youth is less averse than age to change. Thanks 
 to modern economy, persons of leisure, the only 
 persons free to direct social adaptations, are no 
 longer almost certain to be old. Younger men 
 and women* recruit the leisure class. There is 
 also more leisure in the lives of all younger persons 
 and therefore more opportunity for them all for 
 self-direction in social relations. They have be- 
 gun to slip from under the yoke of their elders. 
 
 Gerontocracy has had a grave blow too in the 
 decay of supernaturalism. Ghost cults necessarily 
 
 * Outside of our culture, of course, younger women have 
 recruited the leisure class, but they have been too ignorant 
 comparatively, or too exhausted by child-bearing, or too bound 
 by caste restrictions, to count as social leaders. 
 
An Unconventional Society 207 
 
 give prestige to those on the verge of becoming 
 ghosts themselves. Then the deceased Elders, 
 bound by the sense of their age-class, or in well- 
 developed ancestor worship by their recognition 
 of family succession, are always expected to back 
 up their living contemporaries or successors. In 
 still other ways the authority of the old has 
 been affected by the passing of supematuralism. 
 Supematuralism depended much on tradition 
 — ^after as well as before the use of writing — and 
 as the memories of the old were the depositories 
 of tradition the Elders always commandeered 
 important places in all magical or religious sys- 
 tems. Through these systems eariy society is 
 largely controlled. Upon them depend, people 
 think, plant and animal reproduction, birth and 
 death and health, success in hunting, in fighting, 
 in adventuring of any kind. But the time comes 
 when supematuralism has to relinquish its claims 
 to control nature and through nature society, 
 and then the magical or religious parts once so 
 potently filled by the old become intrinsically 
 insignificant. Whenever a totemic practice is 
 discredited or a nature ctilt or one of the histori- 
 cal religions, the hold of the Elders on society is 
 weakened. 
 
 Undermining the influence of the Elders is one 
 
 
2o8 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 of the many indirect ways in which science* has 
 ever made for social change. As soon as science 
 is called upon to effect social changes directly, 
 the status of the Elders will be even more radi- 
 cally affected. Much of the routine of life will 
 still be in the hands of the old, as much of it as 
 possible in fact will be turned over to them, they 
 liking it and being fitted for it, but no prestige 
 or authority will attach to them, nor will their 
 work or functions be accounted superior. In 
 many respects the old will be better off than they 
 were, but ^'honour and respect" will no longer be 
 a due to grey hairs qua grey hairs. Then as the 
 only status the old may set up a claim to will be 
 one of inferiority, their age-class will tend to dis- 
 appear. And has it not in fact already begun to 
 disappear? 
 
 This "placing" of the Elders, their re- valuation 
 or elimination as a class, will of course in turn 
 accelerate social change. A far greater accelera- 
 tion will be due to the frank determination by 
 scientists and by mere pragmatists alike to give 
 to social facts the same consideration they give 
 to the facts of nature. The determination once 
 reached and the idea made a commonplace that 
 
 *0r, as L6vy-Bruhl would say, the increase of concepts at the 
 expense of mystical, prelogical representations. 
 
An Unconventional Society 209 
 
 society may control changes in itself through \ 
 knowledge, individual failure to change with 
 society will be accounted cowardice, clinging to 
 the habitual, immorality, and the conservative, 
 not the progressive, will be ever on the defensive.* 
 Very quickly then will the social barriers we 
 have been analyzing disintegrate. With willing- 
 ness to change a recognized virtue, a criterion in 
 fact of morality, differences in others will no longer 
 be recognized as troublesome or fearful, at least 
 openly. Nor will presumptions of superiority 
 or inferiority attach to differences per se, Ex- 
 clusiveness will cease to be a source of prestige, 
 'Blind efforts to produce types, to secure homo- 
 geneity, will be condemned. Suspicion of the 
 stranger qua stranger will disappear. Intolerance 
 will be a crime. The point in making everybody 
 alike will have been lost. Variation will be wel- 
 come. There will even be a cult of variability. 
 And to this end complete freedom of personal 
 contacts will be sought. The play of personality 
 upon personality will become indeed the recognized 
 
 ♦Professor Robinson, I find, has already put him on the 
 defensive. "At last, perhaps, the long-disputed sin against 
 the Holy Ghost has been found; it may be the refusal to co- 
 operate with the vital principle of betterment. History would 
 seem, in short, to condemn the principle of conservatism as a 
 hopeless and wicked anachronism." {The New History, p. 265. 
 New York, 19 13.) 
 14 
 
2IO Fear and Conventionality 
 
 raison d'ttre of society instead of the greatest of 
 its apprehensions. 
 
 In this society the viability of the world will be 
 taken advantage of. The habit of living in lairs 
 will die out and with it the malady of home- 
 sickness. We shall live at large, truly mobilized, 
 going where it is best for us to be, imperturbed 
 by novel experience and not safeguarded against 
 it. Nor will our going or coming be a circum- 
 stance for apprehension or for ceremonial recogni- 
 tion. Hospitality as we know it will have no 
 part to play. There will be newcomers, but no 
 guests; helpers in making the newcomers feel 
 at home, welcomers, but no hosts. Without the 
 spirit of monopoly or exclusiveness, without a 
 fear of strangers, there is no further question of 
 hospitality. There will be on earth, we may say 
 to the Christian, as in heaven, a relation merely 
 between the early arrival and the late. 
 
 In this society^ age will not bully youth nor 
 youth misprize age. Seniority having no recog- 
 nized rights, the older will have no justification in 
 being tyrannical, nor the younger in being sub- 
 missive. Growing up will appear to be not a 
 reaching out for privileges, but an attaining to 
 prowess and a taking on of responsibilities. Educa- 
 tion will cease to be a process of making the young 
 
An Unconventional Society 211 
 
 become like their elders as quickly as possible 
 and with the least possible inconvenience to the lat- 
 ter. The young will no longer be herded together 
 to get them out of the way, nor will anyone be 
 classified in any way or for any purpose by age. 
 Far surer individual tests will have been devised 
 for proving ability or competency. 
 
 In this society the impulses of sex will not be 
 restricted in their expression to conjugality, nor 
 will conjugality itself be considered as necessarily 
 a habit for a lifetime. Marriage will be open 
 to all, but it will be approved of merely for those 
 who find themselves in a period of sexual indo- 
 lence, engaged, for example, in child-bearing, or 
 in some pressing economic routine. Unsuspicious 
 of one another, unafraid of mutual influences, men 
 and women will no longer avoid one another be- 
 cause they are different ; they will seek one another 
 for the stimulus of their very differences, natural 
 differences. Assumed or artificial differences being 
 unstimulating will disappear. 
 
 In this society class feeling, the sense of caste, 
 will be accounted a handicap, a burdensome 
 limitation, not a source of distinction or propriety. 
 "Family feeling," esprit du corps, loyalty to the 
 organization, patriotism, will cease to be concepts, 
 or should we say representations, accepted in 
 
012 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 justification of group prejudice or hostility or 
 esteemed as motives for encroachment upon other 
 groups. Sets of congenial persons there will be 
 no doubt just as there are now, persons who 
 from common interests or for endless different 
 f/v^ ^ reasons choose to associate together as long as 
 their interests remain the same or their reasons 
 valid — but no longer. For them and for others 
 there will be many meeting places for social 
 intercourse; but little or no social machinery — 
 no "going into society," no "round of gaieties," 
 no "being entertained." Nor will ceremonial 
 expression be required of feeling. In those un- 
 afraid of change, emotion will not have to be dis- 
 sembled* under ceremonies or alleviated by them. 
 Wedding and funeral, birthday and other anni- 
 versary celebration, all our ceremonial boundary 
 marks, will be less and less called for. And with 
 
 * " But may not the undissembled show of emotion in others 
 still be disturbing?" I may be asked, "and for reasons other 
 than dread of change, because of envy or jealousy, because 
 emotion in another may infringe unpleasantly in all manner of 
 ways upon our own state of mind? After all, do not manners, 
 in spite of their cumbersome trappings, express consideration 
 for the state of mind of the other, a state of mind that may be 
 quite unaffected by sex or age or position, and that he is en- 
 tirely entitled to maintain?" "True," I rejoin, "and it is to 
 personal reticence I look, to a very great enhancement of it, as a 
 substitute in these ways for ceremonial or conventionalities. 
 And with an enhanced reticence will go a right to privacy in all 
 personal relationships, a right we barely conceive of to-day." 
 
An Unconventional Society 213 
 
 their passing too the ancient taboos upon refer- 
 ence to life and death will be lifted, those taboos 
 of group, not of personal, reticence which in our 
 modem society make only for the exploitation of 
 emotion. Nor will emotion be aroused, it is likely, 
 by the mere fact of change, once change is frankly 
 envisaged as a continuous condition. 
 
 And yet in this society, needless to say, the facts 
 of change and of heterogeneity, age, sex, kinship, 
 race, the characteristics arising from occupation or 
 habitat, will not be ignored. They will not singly or 
 in any combination imprison anyone in a set sphere, 
 they will not create a status; and only in so far 
 as they affect personality will they be considered; 
 but on this very basis it may be that in many 
 cases they will count even more than they count 
 now. How those who develop old age traits 
 will fare we have considered. Moreover "grow- 
 ing old" of itself may be discouraged. With the 
 realisation that it cannot happen gracefully and 
 that there is nothing superior about old age, it 
 will have to be forgone as a cover for slackness 
 or an excuse for selfishness. And staying young 
 may become more than a frivolity fit for jest. 
 Initiative and enterprise will be demanded of 
 youth, enthusiasms and joy in living will be ex- 
 pected of it, and in it indifference or apathy will 
 
214 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 be condemned and more or less indirectly pen- 
 alized. Far more will be expected of sex too, 
 I surmise, left free to express itself, than under 
 any repressive system. Sexual mistakes or vices 
 will become indefensible or wholly despicable 
 once they are clearly distinguished from crime. 
 Love making will become part of the art of 
 living, and inexpertness in it a subject for jest 
 perhaps or for lament, but never a virtue to be 
 boasted of or acclaimed. And passionate love 
 will develop its own restraints, restraints more 
 compelling than those imposed by kin or state or 
 church. Such love making is incomparably more 
 exacting than marriage in any form. More will 
 be asked of parenthood too when based on eu- 
 genic facts than of merely juridical or proprietary 
 parenthood. Similarly, eugenic ideas of mating 
 may give a new and compelling significance to 
 stock or race. Race and habitat may also play 
 new and important parts. Everyone may be 
 expected to live in the racial group where he is 
 most worth while or in the climate that agrees with 
 him and keeps him at his best. As for occu- 
 pational characteristics, once the budding theory 
 of so-called scientific management blossoms, and 
 society loses its grotesque indifference to seeing 
 round pegs in square holes and square in round, 
 
An Unconventional Society 215 
 
 the fitting of the individual to his job may become 
 imperative and obligatory. And although a man 
 or woman may have some choice in work that is 
 suitable, work they are unfit for they may be quite 
 drastically forbidden. 
 
 Indeed once society becomes impatient of mis- 
 fits, of waste, of futilities, it will become open to 
 the inroads of a new kind of intolerance, terrific 
 and appalling. Pressure upon one as an individual 
 is capable of becoming far more severe than pressure 
 upon one as a member of a class, and psychological 
 standards are ever more difficult to live up to than 
 standards of propriety. Anxious to place the indi- 
 vidual properly according to its conception of his 
 individuality or personality, insistent that he make 
 the most of himself, society might in truth become 
 a very monster of oppression. 
 
 Given a purely intellectual conception of indi- 
 viduality or personality and a purely rationalistic 
 attitude towards it, such an outcome would be 
 perhaps inevitable. But will society ever be 
 purely intellectual or rationalistic? Will it not 
 develop a feeling for personality mitigating its 
 rationalism? Not merely a feeling of toleration 
 for idiosyncrasies, a liberal attitude met quite 
 commonly even nowadays; but a far more 
 positive feeling, a feeling compounded of kindli- 
 
2i6 Pear and Conventionality 
 
 ness and gentleness, affectionate and yet more 
 akin in its fearlessness to tenderness or pity than 
 to love or rather to the love we know. That love 
 depends on sympathy, on the sense of participa- 
 tion; it emphasizes the aspects we are alike in, 
 dissembling or ignoring those in which we differ. 
 It is love despite fear. The feeling for personality 
 I am thinking of is a perfectly fearless love.* 
 It is not love casting out fear, rather is it fear- 
 lessness plus love. Acknowledging to itself the 
 existence of human differences, but unapprehen- 
 sive of them, unanxious, it is a feeling distinct 
 from the democratic spirit of fraternity or from 
 its begetter, that love of one's fellow so appeal- 
 ingly given voice on the Mount by the Sea of 
 Galilee. Fully accepting the age-old idea that 
 men are fond of their own kind only, and to them 
 only are good, Jew and Gentile alike overlaid 
 their preachment of love with a fiction of homo- 
 geneity. Egalite was to be uttered in the same 
 breath with fraternite; men were all children of the 
 same father, all equally entitled to his consid- 
 eration, equal heirs in the kingdom of heaven. 
 This Essene representation or sentim^entality 
 was bound, like any other sentimentality, to fail. 
 
 * Are you not foreseeing in this love for personality a new 
 "mystical, prelogical representation," I maybe asked. Perhaps. 
 
An Unconventional Society 217 
 
 Men and women are not alike, nor juniors and 
 their seniors, nor money changers and farmers, 
 nor Christians and Moslems, nor English and 
 Germans, nor any two human beings whatsoever, 
 and social structures based on the dogma of their 
 likeness have ever been but buildings on the 
 sands. The wind of fear has but to blow, the 
 tide of distrust to rise, and great is the fall of 
 the dogmatists. 
 
 Neither in Christianity then nor in democracy 
 has the feeling which for lack of a better term I 
 may call a love for personality found expression. 
 Expression it does find, however, in life, for it is 
 the feeling not seldom experienced for those of 
 whom we have neither distrust nor fear — imper- 
 fectly for the very young, more integrally, in mod- 
 em culture, for the dead. In the society I foresee, 
 a society from which so much of our fear of one 
 another will have disappeared, where self-preserva- 
 tion in so many of its phases will be accounted a 
 crime against nature and not its first law, may 
 not the gentleness we bestow on little children 
 outlast their infancy and the pity which wells up 
 in us for the dead spend itself on the pitiful among 
 the living? On the shy child and on all those 
 beset by the miseries of shyness; on those who 
 never grow up or feeling their age are old before 
 
2i8 Fear and Conventionality 
 
 they need be; on those who heedless of the 
 treasures of passion have settled down to a passion- 
 less routine in marriage or in celibacy; on men 
 apprehensive of women or women apprehensive 
 of men; on men and women of position or of 
 property or of cultivation, and of nothing else; 
 on all who pride themselves on birth or nationality 
 or race, on belonging to a given calling or party 
 or organization — all victims of the hydra-headed 
 obsession of group consciousness ; on all prisoners 
 of the past, bound fast by their own habits or 
 the habits of others; on all who in defence of 
 habit become the proprietors of others only to 
 live in constant dread of loss; on all who, seeking 
 mere companionship, shun the joys and sorrows 
 of intimacy; on all who stay poor, too fearful of 
 others to be enriched by them, too bewildered by 
 others to dare be themselves; and finally on all 
 sentimentalists, those timid beings who conscious 
 of change and yet resistant to it are for ever 
 dodging the facts of life and shirking its business — 
 on them and on those they drag with them behind 
 their vain defences, the empty moats and the fall- 
 ing walls of conventionality. 
 
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 PREFACE 
 
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 New York, 1902 
 
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 xxvii, xxviii 
 
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 II 
 
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220 IVeferences 
 
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 p. 51. London, 1830 
 
 8 Batchelor, John. The Ainu and their Folk-Lore, pp. 387-8. 
 
 London, 1901 
 
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 Northern Rhodesia, pp. 256-7. London, 191 1 
 
 11 Roscoe, J. "Further Notes on the Manners and Customs 
 
 of the Baganda. " Journal Anthropological Institute, 
 xxxii (1902), 69 
 
 12 Ho WITT, A. W. The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, 
 
 p. 713. London and New York, 1904 
 
 13 Batchelor, p. 270 
 
 14 Crawley, p. 146 
 
 15 Zeyneb Hanoum. A Turkish Woman* s European Impres- 
 
 sions, p. 87. Philadelphia, 1913 
 
 16 FisoN, Lorimer. Tales from Old Fiji, p. 163. London, 
 
 1904 
 
 17 Garnett, pp. 33, 35 
 
 18 76., p. 135 
 
 19 Groot, J. J. M. de. The Religious System of China, i, 25, 78- 
 
 80; ii, 717. London, 1902-10; Astley, Th. A New 
 General Collection of Voyages and Travels, iv, 210. London, 
 1747 
 
 20 CORYAT, i, 394 
 
 21 Seligmann, C. G. The Melanesians of British New Guinea, 
 
 p. 611. Cambridge, 1 910 
 
 22 Lt Kt, Bk. II, sect, i, pt. i, 18 
 
 23 Garnett, pp. 31, 33 
 
 III 
 
 1 Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier, p. 55. 
 
 London, 1900 
 
 2 Wilson and Felkin, ii, 15 
 
IVeferences 
 
 321 
 
 3 The Ainu and their Folk-Lore^ p. 156 
 
 4 A Turkish Woman's European Impressions, p. 33 
 
 5 A Father's Legacy to his Daughters, p. loi. Annexed to 
 
 Chesterfield, Principles of Politeness. Portsmouth, 
 N. H., 1786 
 
 6 LS Kt, Bk. I, sect. 1, pt. iii, 7 
 
 7 Hall, Florence Howe. Social Customs, p. 347. Boston, 
 
 191 1 
 
 8 Lt Ki, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 51 
 
 9 Morgan, Lewis H. League of the Iroquois, i, 319. New 
 
 York, 1 90 1 
 
 10 FURNIVALL, p. 23, Written about 1500 
 
 1 1 COLQUHOUN, A. R. Among the Shans, p. 163. New York, 1885 
 
 12 Farrar, pp. 343-4 
 
 13 IK p. 394 
 
 14 Hale, Mrs. Sarah J. Manners, Happy Homes, and Good 
 
 Society all the Year Round, p. 223. Boston, 1889 
 
 15 Seligmann, The Melanesians, p. 466 
 
 16 Morton, p. 125 
 
 17 Hall, p. 336; The Complete Hostess, p. 284 
 
 18 Ih., pp. 276-7 
 
 19 Smyth, R. Brough, The Aborigines of Victoria, i, 133. 
 
 Melbourne and London, 1878 
 
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 of Central Australia, p. 570. London and New York, 
 1904 
 
 21 RoscoE, p. 70 
 
 22 Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 44 
 
 23 Batchelor, p. 192 
 
 24 Lt Kt, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, 24 
 
 25 lb,, Bk. XV, I 
 
 26 lb,, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, 25 
 
 27 lb,, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, 28-30 
 
 28 Schoolcraft, H. R. Indian Tribes, pt. ii, p. 132. Phila- 
 
 delphia 
 
 29 Lt Kt, xxviii, 78 n. 2 
 
 30 Hunter, W. W. The Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 216. 
 
 London, 1868 
 
 31 Journals of Expedition of Discovery into Central Australia, 
 
 ii, 304. London, 1845 
 
222 IVeferences 
 
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 33 RoscoE, p. 53 
 
 34 Li Ki, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 18-19 
 
 35 Smyth, i, 135 
 
 35 Learned, Mrs. Frank. The Etiquette of New York To-day^ 
 p. 226. New York, 1906 
 
 37 The Complete Hostess, p. 282 
 
 38 Manners and Social Usages, pp. 14, 16 
 
 39 The Complete Hostess, pp. 282-3 
 
 40 lb., p. 283 
 
 41 Learned, p. 225 
 
 42 Farrar, p. 399 
 
 43 Buchanan, James. North American Indians, i, 23-4. New 
 
 York, 1824 
 
 IV 
 
 1 Kennan, George. "An Island in the Sea of History," 
 
 Tlie National Geographic Magazine, Oct., 1913, p. 1129 
 
 2 Westermarck, Edward. The Origin and Development oj 
 
 the Moral Ideas, i, 584. London, 1908 
 
 3 Wilson and Felkin, i, 162 
 
 4 Westermarck, i, 575 
 
 5 Pennell, T. L. Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan 
 
 Frontier, pp. 24-5. Philadelphia, 1909 
 
 6 Marco Polo, i, 189-90. Edited by Yule. London, 1871 
 
 7 Crawley, p. 153 
 
 8 lb. 
 
 9 Livingstone, David. Travels and Researches in South 
 
 Africa, p. 96. Philadelphia. 
 
 10 Batchelor, p. 200 
 
 11 Binning, i, 319 
 
 12 Burckhardt, p. 23 
 
 13 lb., p. 102 
 
 14 Westermarck, i, 590-1 
 
 15 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 257 
 
 16 lb. 
 
 17 Wilson and Felkin, ii, 17 
 
 18 FuRNivALL, p. 102. Hugh Rhodes. The Boke of Nurture. 
 
 London, 1577 
 
 19 Laws, iii, 106. Sacred Books of the East, xxv 
 
R^eferencea 223 
 
 20 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 257 
 
 21 RoscoE, p. 70 
 
 22 HoLLis, A. C. The Masai, p. 287. Oxford, 1905 
 
 23 Man, E. H. "On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Anda- 
 
 man Islands." Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ 
 xii (1882-3), 148-9 
 
 24 Hall, p. 3:7 
 
 25 Binning, i, 323 
 
 26 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 17 
 
 27 Man, p. 125 
 
 28 Farrar, p. 400 
 
 29 Dennett, R. E. Seven Years Among the Fjort, p. 56. 
 
 London, 1887 
 
 30 Dame Curtsey's Book of Etiquette^ p. 109 
 
 31 Learned, p. 227 
 
 1 Routledge, p . 24 
 
 2 Smyth, i, 135 
 
 3 Crawley, p. 146; Cp. Catlin, Geo. North American 
 
 Indians, i, 56, London, 1866 
 
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 5 Duffey, p. 23 
 
 6 76., p. 26 
 
 7 Castiglione, p. 142. cp. Reports of the Cambridge An- 
 
 thropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v, 281. Cam- 
 bridge, 1904 
 
 8 HowiTT, p. 235 
 
 9 Seligmann, The Melanesians, p. 9 
 
 10 Hall, p. 278 
 
 11 lb., p. 277 
 
 12 Jb., p. 278 
 
 13 lb., pp. 280-1 
 
 14 lb., pp. 279-80 
 
 15 lb., p. 288 
 
 16 Smyth, i, 134 
 
 17 Frazer, pp. 104-5 
 
 18 Wilson and Felkin, i, 67 
 
 19 Frazer, p. 103 
 
224 iVeferencea 
 
 VI 
 
 1 Frazer, pp. 115, 125 
 
 2 lb., p. 118 
 
 3 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 27 
 
 4 Frazer, p. 119 
 
 5 lb., pp. 1 20-1 
 
 6 Wilson and Felkin, ii, 8 
 
 7 Roscoe, p. 43 
 
 8 FuRNiVALL, p. Ixiii 
 
 9 Castiglione, pp. 115, 371 
 
 10 Crawley, pp. 151, 160 
 
 11 FuRNivALL, p. 189 
 
 12 Crawley, p. 160 
 
 13 Dubois, pp, 52 n. i, 53, 61-2 
 
 14 Letter i 
 
 15 Frazer, pp. 132, 135 
 
 16 Letter xxiii 
 
 17 Schouten, Gautier. Voyage aux Indes Orientates, 1, 296. 
 
 Rouen, 1725 
 
 18 Dennett, R. E. At the Back of the Black Man's Mind, p. 37, 
 
 London and New York, 1906 
 
 19 Marsden, Wm. The History of Sumatra, p. 275. London, 
 
 1783 
 
 20 Frazer, p. 119 
 
 21 Wilson and Felkin, ii, 23 
 
 22 Eastman, C. A. Indian Boyhood, p. 149. New York, 1902 
 
 23 Wilson and Felkin, i, 212 
 
 24 Saunderson, H. S. "Notes on Corea and its People." 
 
 Journal Anthropological Institute, xxiv (1894-5), 302 
 
 25 Spencer, H., ii, 193 
 
 26 CoxE, Margaret. Woman, i, 236 
 
 27 Wilson and Felkin, i, 180 
 
 28 Dubois, p. 20 
 
 29 Spencer, H., ii, 206 
 
 30 FuRNivALL, p. xlvii n. I 
 
 31 lb., p. 15. Urbanitas 
 
 32 Wilson and Felkin, i, 149 
 
 33 Saunderson, p. 307 
 
 34 FURNIVALL, p. Xlvi 
 
K.eferences 
 
 «25 
 
 35 Ih.f pp, xlvii-xlviii 
 
 36 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 50 
 
 37 Williams, Th. Fiji and the Fijians, i, 37. London, 1858 
 
 38 Hall, p. 251 
 
 39 Williams, i, 37 
 
 40 Brown, George. Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 330-1. 
 
 London, 1910. Cp. Skeat, W. W. Malay Magic, p. 35. 
 London, 1900 
 
 41 Spencer, H., ii, 155 
 
 42 lb., ii, 153 
 
 43 DoBRizHOFFER, M. An AccoufU of the Abipones, ii, 204-5. 
 
 London, 1822 
 
 44 Letter ii 
 
 vn 
 
 1 Letter i 
 
 2 FuRNiVALL, p. 96. The Boke of Nurture^ or School of Good 
 
 ManerSf 11. 509-12 
 
 VIII 
 
 1 Learned, p. 94 
 
 2 Duffey, pp. 23, 24 
 
 3 Brown, p. 381 
 
 4 BURCKHARDT, p. 210 
 
 5 /&., ii, 125 
 
 6 II Kings, iv, 26 
 
 7 II Samuel, xviii, 28 
 
 8 DOBRIZHOFFER, ii, 1 37 
 
 9 Mallery, Garrick. "Customs of Courtesy." The Ameri- 
 
 can Anthropologist, iii (1890), 208 
 
 10 Williams, i, 152 
 
 11 Brown, p. 381 
 
 12 Spencer, H., ii, 133 
 
 13 Brown, p. 378 
 
 14 lb., p. 409; Williams, i, 152 
 
 15 Spencer, H., ii, 16 
 
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 17 Batchelor, p. 190 
 
 18 Codrington, R. H. The Melanesians, p. 354. Oxford 
 
 1 891 
 
226 References 
 
 19 ROUTLEDGE, p. 24 
 
 20 Spencer, H., ii, 151 
 
 21 RoscoE, p. 69 
 
 22 Batchelor, p. 190 
 
 23 Cole, H. "Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa." 
 
 Journal Anthropological Institute, xxxii (1902), 322 
 
 24 Routledge, p. 24 
 
 25 Wilson and Felkin, i, 162 
 
 26 Harvey, George. Women, etc., p. 123, New York and 
 
 London, 1908 
 
 27 DoBRiZHOFFER, ii, 1 37-8 
 
 28 Williams, i, 152 
 
 29 Ploss, H. Das Kind, \, 70. Leipzig, 1884 
 
 30 Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 120 
 
 31 Roscoe, p. 29 
 
 IX 
 
 1 Terence, Phormio, Act I 
 
 2 Rivers, p. 503 
 
 3 Danks, B. " Marriage Customs of the New Britain Group. " 
 
 Journal Anthropological Institute, xviii (1889), 287 
 
 4 McClintock, Walter. The Old North Trail, p. 187. Lon- 
 
 don, 1 9 10 
 
 5 Man, J. A. I., xi, 287-8 
 
 1 Manners and Social Usages, p. 8 
 
 2 Ward, p. 81 
 
 3 lb., p. 68 
 
 4 Manners and Social Usages, p. 10 
 
 5 lb., p. 26 
 
 6 Ward, p. 55 
 
 7 Morton, p. 33 
 
 8 Hall, p. 55 
 
 9 IK pp. 53, 55 
 
 10 Ward, pp. 57, 62, 79, 82 
 
 11 Hall, p. 53 
 
 12 Ward, p. 57; Manners and Social Usages, p. 2 
 
 13 Ward, p. 57 
 
 14 /ft., pp. 58, 59 
 
IVeferences C27 
 
 15 Ward, p. 56 
 
 16 76. , pp. 66-7 
 
 17 Hall, The Correct Things p. 170 
 
 18 Ih., p. 178 
 
 19 Ward, p. 56 
 
 20 76., p. 54 
 
 XI 
 
 1 A Mission to Gelele^ King of Dahomey i, 140-3. London, 1893 
 
 2 lb., ii, 34 
 
 3 DOBRIZHOFFER, ii, 276 
 
 4 Ellis, A. B. The TsU-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of 
 
 West Africa, pp. 226-7. London, 1887 • 
 
 5 Parsons, The Old-Fashioned Woman, pp. 25-6 
 
 6 Urlin, Ethel L. Dancing, Ancient and Modern, p. 103* 
 
 New York, 1913 
 
 7 A Mission to Gelele, ii, 9 
 
 8 Zeyneb Hanoum, p. 33 
 
 9 Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind, p. 209 
 
 10 Batchelor, p. 270 
 
 11 Routledge, p. Ill 
 
 12 Fric, V. and Radin, P. " Contributions to the Study of the 
 
 Bororo Indians." Journal Anthropological Institute, xxxvi 
 (1906), 388 
 
 13 Parker, K. L. The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 132. London, 1905 
 
 14 With a Prehistoric People, p. 202 
 
 15 Lt Ki, xxviii, 80 n. 2 
 
 16 Pp. 238-9 
 
 17 Ward, p. 158 
 
 18 lb., p. 157 
 
 19 lb. 
 
 20 lb., p. 160 
 
 21 Farrar, p. 342 
 
 22 76., p. 343 
 
 23 Ward, p. 160 
 
 24 Crawley, 173 
 
 xn 
 
 1 Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 68 
 
 2 Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 31 
 
228 IVeferences 
 
 3 Griffis, W. E. Corea, p. 245. New York, 1907 
 
 4 Garnett, p. 233 
 
 5 An Account of the Abipones, ii, 139 
 
 6 FURNIVALL, p. 46 
 
 7 BURCKHARDT, p. 23 
 
 8 Griffis, pp. 244, 250 
 
 9 Holmes, J. "Initiation Ceremonies of Natives of the 
 
 Papuan Gulf." Journal Anthropological Institute, xxxii 
 (1902), 425 
 
 10 CoDRiNGTON, R. H. The Melanesians, p. 87. Oxford, 
 
 1891 
 
 1 1 CoLQUHOUN, Amongst. the Shans, p. 51 
 
 12 HoDsoN, T. C. The Ndga Tribes of Manipur, pp. 45-6, 77. 
 
 London, 191 1 
 
 13 ROUTLEDGE, p. 121 
 
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 tion Amongst Women, p. 156. London, 1664 
 
 16 Crudities, i, 368 
 
 17 Castiglione, p. 220 
 
 18 Ih., p. 89 
 
 19 Spencer, Baldwin and Gillen, F. J. The Native Tribes of 
 
 Central Australia, p. 509. London and New York, 1899 
 
 20 Seligmann, The Melanesians, pp. 459 n. i, 466 
 
 21 FuRNivALL, p. 15 
 
 22 Bk. i, sect, i, pt. iii, 33 
 
 23 lb., Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 36 
 
 24 Man, XII, 355 
 
 25 Morton, p. 206 
 
 26 HoLLis, pp. 286-7 
 
 27 Westermarck, Edward. The History of Human Marriage, 
 
 p. 373. London and New York, 1901 
 
 28 BURCKHARDT, p. 37 
 
 29 Westermarck, Marriage, pp. 370-73 
 
 30 lb., pp. 363-4, 366, 368 
 
 31 Frazer, pp. 103-4 
 
 32 Pygmies and Papuans, p. 206 
 
 33 Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 44 
 
 34 Parker, E. H., p. 97 
 
 35 BURCKHARDT, p. 200 
 
IVeferences 
 
 229 
 
 36 Steinmetz, S. R. Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwick- 
 
 lung der Strafe, ii, 351 . Leiden und Leipzig, 1894 
 
 37 FuRNESS, W. H. The Home-Life of Borneo Head-IIunters, 
 
 p. 169. Philadelphia, 1902 
 
 38 Parsons, Elsie Clews (John Main). Religious Chastity, 
 
 ch. XV. New York, 1913 
 
 39 Castiglione, p. 48 
 
 40 Parsons, Religious Chastity, p. 278 
 
 41 Science and Health, pp. 61-2. Boston, 1904 
 
 42 Crawley, p. 219 
 
 43 HowiTT, p. 402 
 
 44 Crawley, p. 188 
 
 45 Livingstone, p. 97 
 
 46 Eastman, p. 106 
 
 47 The Self-Tormentor, Act IV 
 
 48 Terence, The Mother-in-Law, Act II 
 
 49 Crawley, p. 221 
 
 50 RoscoE, pp. 70, 77 
 
 51 Batchelor, p. 255 
 
 XIII 
 
 1 The Mother-in-Law, Act I 
 
 2 Act II 
 
 3 Danks, pp. 286-7 
 
 4 Lewin, T. H. Wild Races of South-Eastern India, pp. 202-3. 
 
 London, 1870 
 
 5 Garnett, p. 257 
 
 6 Parsons, Elsie Clews. The Family, p. 141. New York 
 
 and London, 1906 
 
 7 Westermarck, Marriage, p. 450 
 
 8 AsTLEY, ii, 240 
 
 9 Westermarck, Marriage, p. 450 
 
 10 Smith, W. Robertson. Kinship and Marriage in Early 
 
 Arabia, p. 133. Cambridge, 1885 
 
 11 Saunderson, p. 303 
 
 12 Griffis, p. 247 
 
 13 Crawley, p. 394 
 
 14 HoLLis, pp. 286-7 
 
 15 Religious Chastity, chaps, iii, viii 
 
 16 The Principles of Psychology, ii, 394-5 
 
230 IVeferences 
 
 17 Donaldson, James. Woman, p. 61. London, New York, 
 
 Bombay, and Calcutta, 1907 
 
 18 Mayne, ii, 164-5 
 
 19 Williams, i, 152 
 
 20 Batchelor 
 
 21 Garnett, p. 237 
 
 22 Journals, ii, 214-5 
 
 23 Man, xii, 94 n. 2 
 
 24 Journal Anthropological Institute, xxix (i 899-1 900), 339 
 
 25 Lubbock, John. The Origin of Civilization, p. ^i. London, 
 
 1870 
 
 26 Crawley, p. 180 
 
 27 Seligmann, The Melanesians, p. 506 n. i 
 
 28 American Anthropologist, New Ser. iii (1901), 617 
 
 XIV 
 
 1 Danes, pp. 283-4 
 
 2 Westermarck, Marriage^ p. 303 
 
 3 lb., pp. 298, 305 
 
 4 HOWITT, p. 185 
 
 5 Westermarck, Marriage, p. 367 
 
 6 Crawley, p. 400 
 
 7 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 259 
 
 8 Crawley, p. 400 
 
 9 Starcke, C. N. The Primitive Family, p. 238. New York, 
 
 1889 
 
 10 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, i, 541 
 
 11 Crawley, pp. 402-3 
 
 12 Williams, i, 136 
 
 13 Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 32 
 
 14 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 259 
 
 15 Garnett, Lucy M. J. The Women of Turkey: The Christian 
 
 Women, p. 203. London, 1890 
 
 16 HowiTT, A. W. "The Jeraeil, or Initiation Ceremonies of 
 
 the Kurnai Tribe." Journal Anthropologicallnstitute, xiv 
 (1884-5), 306; Native Tribes^ p. 402 
 
 17 Holmes, pp. 421, 422 
 
 18 Webster, p. 24 
 
 19 Crawley, p. 216 
 
 20 Personal Communication 
 
IVeferences 
 
 231 
 
 21 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy ^ i, 542 
 
 22 Crawley, p. 217 
 
 23 Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 69 
 
 24 Starcke, p. 239 n. 4. But cp. Seligmann, The Veddas, p. 
 
 69 
 
 25 Crawley, p. 218 
 
 26 Jenks, a. E. The Bontoc Igorot, pp. 50-1,62. Ethnological 
 
 Survey Publications. Manila, 1905 
 
 27 Fric and Radin, p. 388 
 
 28 Hagen, B. Unter den Papua's, p. 234. Wiesbaden, 1899 
 
 29 FURNIVALL, p. xiv 
 
 30 lb., p. Ixii 
 
 31 Ellis, W. Polynesian Researches, i, 263. London, 1853 
 
 32 BURCKHARDT, pp. 201-2 
 
 33 Johnston, H. The Uganda Protectorate, ii, 7^5. New York 
 
 and London, 1902. 
 
 34 Crawley, 152 
 
 35 Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Society to Torres 
 
 Straits, vi, 281. Cambridge, 1908 
 
 36 Parsons, The Old- Fashioned Woman, pp. 177-8 
 
 37 HowiTT, Native Tribes, p. 748 
 
 38 Man, xii, 126 
 
 39 Griffis, p. 261 
 
 40 Seligmann, The Melanesians, pp. 484-5 
 
 41 McClintock, p. 187 
 
 42 Westermarck, Marriage, p. 317 
 
 43 DoRSEY, J. Owen. "Teton Folk-Lore." The American 
 
 Anthropologist, ii (1889), 157 
 
 44 Roth, Walter E. Ethnological Studies among the North- 
 
 West Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 134. Brisbane and 
 London, 1897 
 
 45 Man, E. H. "On Andamanese and Nicobarese Objects." 
 
 Journal Anthropological Institute, xi (1881-2), 288 
 
 46 Rivers, pp. 33-4 
 
 47 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 257 
 
 48 Lt Ki, Bk. X, sect, i, 7 
 
 49 The Second Part of Youths' Behavior, p. 17 
 
 50 The Young Lady's Friend, p. 203 
 
 51 R. C.A. E. T. S., V. 148 
 
 52 Lt Ktf Bk. X, sect, i, 4 
 
232 K.eference8 
 
 53 Farrar, p. 222 
 
 54 Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. i8i 
 
 XV 
 
 1 LivY-BRUHL, pp. 410-11 
 
 2 Griffis, p. 246 
 
 3 Seligmann, The Melanesians, p. 60 
 
 4 Parker, E. H., p. 94 
 
 5 ROUTLEDGE, pp. 25, I4I 
 
 6 HowiTT, Native Tribes, p. 769. 
 
 7 Webster, p. 67 
 
 8 HoDSON, p. 183 
 
 9 Webster, p. 69 
 
 10 Seligmann, The Melanesians, pp. 139, 454 
 
 1 1 RoUTLEDGE, p. 202 
 
 12 Bk. Ill, sect. V, 3 
 
 13 Eastman, p. 52 
 
 14 Cole, p. 317 
 
 15 Webster, p. 70 
 
 16 lb., p. 87 
 
 17 Eastman, p. 59 
 
 18 Personal Observation 
 
 19 Routledge, p. 24 
 
 20 Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence, ii, 252. New York, 
 
 1905 
 
 21 Webster, p. 40 
 
 22 Ploss, ii, 447-8 
 
 23 Webster, p. 54 
 
 24 BURCKHARDT, p. 28 
 
 25 Astley, iv, 77 
 
 26 Autobiography of an Elderly Woman, p. 69. Boston and 
 
 New York, 19 11 
 
 27 CORYAT, i, 399 
 
 28 Lt Kt, Bk. Ill, sect, v, 5 
 
 29 lb,, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, 18 
 
 30 Castiglione, p. 107 
 
 31 Routledge, pp. 137-8 
 
 32 lb., p. 140 
 
 33 Ih. 
 
 34 R. C. A. E. T. S., vi, 115 
 
IVeferences 
 
 233 
 
 35 MacDonald,J. "East Central African Customs." Journal 
 
 Anthropological Institute, xxii (1892-3), loi 
 
 36 Donaldson, p. 144 
 
 37 Castiglione, p. 119 
 
 38 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, i, 477 
 
 39 Webster, p. 90 
 
 40 ROUTLEDGE, p. I43 
 
 41 Indian Boyhood, p. 67 
 
 42 Cole, p. 325 
 
 43 MacDonald, Duff. Africana/i, 63-4. London, Edinburgh, 
 
 Aberdeen, 1882 
 
 44 R. C. A. E. T. S., vi, 140 
 
 45 Essays for Young Ladies, pp. 174-5. London, 1777 
 
 46 Webster, pp. 92, 93 
 
 47 76., p. 90 
 
 48 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, i, 542 
 
 49 Webster, p. 90 
 
 50 Lt Kt, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, i ; pt. iii, 3 
 
 51 Eastman, p. 58 
 
 52 Letter Hi 
 
 53 Autobiography of an Elderly Woman, pp. 193-4 
 
 54 Smyth, i, 137 
 
 55 Routledge, p. 23 
 
 56 Hollis, pp. 285-6 
 
 57 Farrar, p. 211 
 
 58 R. C. A. E.T.S.,v, 214 
 
 59 Westermarck, Moral Ideas, \, 604 
 
 60 Lt Kt, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. ii, 21 
 
 61 FuRNiVALL, p. 16. Written about 1480 
 
 62 Lt Kt, Bk. I, sect, i, pt. iii, 60 
 
 63 GouLDSBURY and Sheane, p. 259 
 
 64 Griffis, p. 259 
 
 65 Native Tribes, p. 22 
 
 66 Laws, ix, 16 
 
 67 Hilton-Simpson, M. W. Land and Peoples of the Kasai, p. 
 
 92. Chicago, 1912 
 
 68 Seligmann, The Melanesians, p. 70 
 
 69 Webster, pp. 27-8 
 
 70 lb., p. 81 
 
 71 Crawley, p. 160 
 
234 References 
 
 72 Webster, p. 89 
 
 73 Man, xii, 344 
 
 74 Farrar, p. 348 
 
 75 HoLLis, pp. 287-8 
 
 76 Seligmann, The Melanesians, pp. 460, 470-1 
 
 77 The Self -Tormentor, Kct III 
 
 78 Webster, pp. 88-9 
 
 79 ROUTLEDGE, p. 1 87 
 
 80 A Turkish Woman's European Impressions, ?• 156 
 
 XVI 
 
 1 Rivers, p. 370 
 
 2 Parsons, Religious Chastity, pp. 65-9 
 
 3 Martyr, Peter. The Decades of the New World or West 
 
 India, First Decade, Bk. ix, sec. 46, in The First Three 
 English Books on America, Westminster, 1895 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abipones, 70, 82, 87, no, 120 
 Address, 49 n., 68, 69-70, 166 
 -7; 178-9; titles of, 69 n., 
 
 143 
 Aenezes. See Arabs 
 Afghans, 35 
 Africa, Central, 6; East, 165, 
 
 184; South, 187, 193; West 
 
 Coast of, 57, 63, 71, 83, 151, 
 
 168, 199 n. 
 Age-classes, vii, viii, ix, x, 29 
 
 n., 47, 48, 50, 76, 77, 82, 99, 
 
 loo-i, 1 16-7, 123, 124, 163 
 
 flf., 176 ff., 205, 207, 208, 
 
 210-11 
 Ainu, ID, 12, 13, 20, 26, 36, 
 
 38 n., 45, 83, 85, 112, 131, 
 
 132, 150, 182 n. 
 Akikdyu, 3, 44, 84, 86, 112, 
 
 122, 178, 180, 181, 183, 185, 
 
 190, 196 
 Albania, 9-10, 120, 140, 145 n., 
 
 150 
 Aleuts, 128, 142 
 Andamanese, 40, 41, 95, 124, 
 
 144, 150, 166, 171, 194 
 Arabs, 10, 37, 48, 81, 84, 121, 
 
 125, 127, 141-2, 165, 182 
 Armenians, 160 
 Ashantee, 59 
 Avoidance, x, i ff., 94, 95, 131, 
 
 158 ff., 211 
 Awemba, 11, 37, 39, 41, 56, 68, 
 
 84, 86, III, 158, 160, 192 
 
 Baduwis, 4, 55 
 
 Baganda, 3, 7, 12, 26, 28, 34, 
 
 38. 39» 57. 64, 65, 88, 122, 
 
 132. See Mutesa 
 Balonda, 83 
 Banks' Islands, 83 
 
 Baralongs, 126 
 
 Basuto, 160 
 
 Bechuana, 193 
 
 Beni-Amer, 158 
 
 Benin, 54, 111-12 
 
 Betrothal, 88, 89, 91, 93, 96, 
 138, 166, 171, 178 
 
 Birth, 88, 89, 93, 171, 193 
 
 Birthdays, 91, 170, 212 
 
 Blackfeet, 94-5, 168 
 
 Blackfellows, 5, 11, 12, 13, 
 25.28-9,36,45,50,54, 112, 
 123, 129, 142, 150, 157, 158, 
 159, 161, 162, 166, 171, 177, 
 179, 181, 185, 187-8, 190, 
 
 192, 193, 198 n. 
 Borneo, 3 n., 127, 144 
 Bororo, 112, 163 
 Bowing, 68-9, 83, 109 
 Burma, 83 
 Bushmans, 126 
 Bushongo, 192 
 Byron, 4, 139 n., 148-9 
 
 Calling. See Visiting 
 
 Caribs, 142 
 
 Caste, viii, ix, x, 2, 8 n., 29, 38, 
 
 55ff., loi, 1 15-6, 123, 125-6, 
 
 205, 206 n., 211, 218 
 Cazembe, 56, 60 
 CeHbacy, 47, 145-6, 177, 186, 
 
 218 
 Chesterfield, Lord, viii, 3,8, 19, 
 
 60,61,70,74-5, 189 
 Chinese, 2, 6, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 
 
 26-7, 28, 35-^, 49 n., 53 n-. 
 
 55. 84, 90. 102 n., 112, 119- 
 
 20, 123, 125, 157, 159, 172, 
 
 173, 180, 182, 183, 189, 191 
 Chivalry, 73 ff., 131 
 Chukmas, 174 
 
 235 
 
236 
 
 Index 
 
 Clothes, magic of, i6, 6i. 
 
 See Dress 
 Club, viii, 24, 44, 52, 121, 163, 
 
 Colour, 13, 62-3, 64, 182, 198 
 
 Comanche, 27 
 
 "Coming-out," 109, no, 116, 
 180, 183 
 
 Commensality, xiii, 21-4, 31, 
 56, 109, 114 ff., 170, 173, 
 193. 194-5; taboo on, 2, 28, 
 56-7. 59, 73» 102, 113 n., 
 115 ff., 165 
 
 Condolence, 80, 89, 92, 98 
 
 Congo, 42, 56 
 
 Congratulations, 11-12, 18, 80, 
 89, 92 
 
 Conjugality, ix, 42, 46, 56, 68, 
 94, 95 n., 111-12, 128, 129, 
 i30» 139 ff., 211. See Mar- 
 riage 
 
 Conversation, 8 n., 21, 44-5, 
 49, 78 ff., 84 ff., 89, 99, 105, 
 1 14-5, 118, 123, 152, 167-8, 
 189-90 
 
 Corea, 55, 64, 66-7, 120, 121, 
 143, 166, 177, 192 
 
 Courtship, 62, in, 137-8, 140, 
 
 Crees, 160 
 
 Crow Indians, 162 
 
 Dahomi, 56, 57 n., 108-9, i io» 
 III 
 
 Dancing, 29 n., 53 n., 66, 72, 
 79 n., 104, iio-i, 188, 195-6 
 
 Death, 14 ff., 88, 89, 91, 92, 
 93. 95, 96, 123, 171, 198; 
 taboo, 16 n., 213. See Fun- 
 erals, Ghosts, Mourning 
 
 Divorce, 88, 138, 144, 150, 153 
 
 Dress, 63, 64, 74, 98-9, 134, 
 143, 181-3, 198 n., 204 
 
 Drinking, 16, 23, 24, 31, 32, 
 34. 36. 37. 56, 59, 60, 65, 103, 
 112, 114, 180-1, 191 
 
 Eatmg, II, 16, 22-4, 35, 63, 65, 
 98, 103-4, 164, 179-80. See 
 Commensality, Entertaining 
 
 Egypt, 62 
 
 Endogamy, x, 62, 126, 157-8 
 
 English, 3, 6, 7, 8, 37, 38, 40, 
 
 44. 53 n., 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 
 
 65, 66, 67, 70, 75, 120, 122, 
 
 123, 144, 163-4, ^7^* 187, 
 
 188 n., 191 
 Entertaining, 11, 12, 29, 36, 44, 
 
 56-7, 72, 85, 89, 102 ff., 106, 
 
 107 ff., 194, 212 
 Eskimos, 27, 29 n., 36 
 Ewes, 63, III 
 Exclusiveness, 6-7, 29, 55 ff., 
 
 209,210. 5ee Sexes 
 Exogamy, x, 155-7 
 Exorcism, 6, 54, 197 
 Experts, vi, 202-3 
 
 Family, viii, ix, 9, 12, 17, 20, 
 21 n., 24, 28, 37 n., 41, 48 n., 
 50, 67, 84, 85, 86, 93, 94-5, 
 100, 136 ff., 155 ff., 211 
 
 Farewell, 9-10, 17, 18, 39, 40, 
 87-8, 172, 210 
 
 Feminism, 133 n. 
 
 Fernando Po, 55 
 
 Fiji, I, 15, 65, 68, 69, 71, 82, 
 83, 87, 150, 151, 159, 162, 
 177, 179-80 
 
 Fors, 36 n. 
 
 French, 6-7, 20, 64, 81, 84, 87, 
 148, 196 
 
 Funerals, 10, 15-6, 109, no, 
 III, 170, 197,212 
 
 Fiita, 142, 152 n. 
 
 Games, 65, 66, 75, 114, 122 
 Gentry, viii, x, 2, 3, 58 ff., 64, 
 
 65, 68, 70-1, 73-6, 164 
 Germans, 62, 69, 81, 87-8 
 Gerontocracy, 124 n., 137, 
 
 157, 168, 185 ff., 206-8 
 Ghosts, 5, 6, 10, 14-8, 69 n., 
 
 96, 182 n., 187, 197-9, 206-7 
 Gods, 8, 9, 10, 1 1, 13, 14, 15, 20, 
 
 27 n., 34, 35, 38, 39. 42. 91, 
 
 94,97, loi n., 109, III, 133, 
 
 182 n., 187, 192, 199 ff. 
 Greeks, 15, 41, 67, 148, 157, 
 
 192, 198 
 
Index 
 
 237 
 
 Gregariousness, vi-vii, ix, 8, 
 90, 92, 97, 106, 107, III n., 
 114, 149 n., 202, 205 
 
 Guatemalans, 125 
 
 Hand-shaking, 2, 3, 61, 83-4 
 Hayti, 6, 54, 103, 199 
 Hebrews, 6, 7, 15, 17, 81, no, 
 
 125, 141, 157, 184, 191, 199 n. 
 Hereros, 37 
 Hindus, 6, 38 n., 48, 59, 65, 66, 
 
 81, 104, III, 141 
 Hospitality, viii, ix, x, 19 ff., 
 
 95, 96, 102 fiE., 109, 112, 195, 
 
 210 
 Hottentots, 161 
 Hovas, 125 
 
 Igorot, 144, 163 
 
 Imitation, viii, 58, 62, 134 n., 
 
 203 
 India, 4, 59, 62, 145 n. 
 Initiation, 89, 93, 94. 95. "0» 
 
 168, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 
 
 183, 185, 186-7, 193 
 Insults, 9ij., 132, 166, 200 
 Introduction, 2, 44 ff., 55, 61, 
 
 78; letters of, 9, 53. See 
 
 Passports 
 Iroquois, 22 
 Italians, 70, 103, in, 122, 
 
 182-3. See Urbino 
 
 James, William, 2, 4, 147 
 Japan, 50 n., 63, 69, 82, 103, 
 113, 114 
 
 Kabuis, 179 
 
 Kakhyens, 27, 74 n., 127, 178 
 
 Kayans, 128 
 
 Kissing, 83, 84, 148, 172 
 
 Krumen, 36 
 
 Letters, 30, 70, 89, 149; bread 
 and butter, 42-3; to the 
 dead, 17. See Introduction 
 
 Loango, 45, 62, 63 n. 
 
 Magic, 41, 54, 128, 132 n., 179 
 
 n., 207; black, vii n., 3, 36, 
 54 n., 201 ; in hospitality, 34; 
 sympathetic, 4 1 n.,95, 151 n.; 
 white, 9, 10, 53 n., 63 n. 
 
 Makalaka, 194 
 
 Makololo, 36, 130 
 
 Malagasy, 6 
 
 Mandingo, 151 
 
 Manhattan Indians, 32 
 
 Manila, 103, 126 
 
 Marriage, viii, ix, x, 8, 19 n., 
 36, 62, 88, 94, 95, 124 ff., 
 135, 136 ff., 155, 168 n., 177, 
 178, 179, 183 ff., 193 n., 196, 
 211, 214, 217. See Mono- 
 gamy, Polyandry, Polygyny, 
 Weddings 
 
 Masai, 39, 124, 143, 181, 190, 
 
 195 
 Massim, 50, 123, 142, 151, 166, 
 
 180, 195 \ 
 
 Molucca Islands, 182 I 
 
 Monogamy, x, 19 n., 62, I44t5 
 Moslems, 9, 10, 13, 56 n., iti, 
 
 125, 142, 182 n. > 
 
 Mosquito Indians, 151 
 Mourning, 49 n., 69 n., 89, 
 
 182 n., 197-8. See Widows 
 Mpongwe, 191 
 Mutesa, 19, 57, 63 
 
 Nagas, 122 
 
 Naming, 40-1, 46 ff., 69, 70, 78, 
 
 89. 94. 123, 160, 162, 166-7, 
 
 178, 198 n. 
 Negritoes, 167 n. 
 New Britain, 94, 139, 145 n., 
 
 156, 161 
 New Caledonians, 162 
 New England, 6, 27, 126, 144, 
 
 166 
 New Guinea, 16, 24, 31 n., 
 
 54.79.87.121,127,161,163, 
 
 178, 180, 193. See Massun 
 New Hebrides, 121 
 New Ireland, 83 
 New York, 8 n., 28, 32, 60, 68, 
 
 72-3. 91. 109 n., "6, 117- 
 
 8, 120-1, 130, 144 
 New Zealand, 59, 61 
 Nubas, 60 
 
238 
 
 Index 
 
 Omahas, 169-70 
 
 Pddams, 126 
 Parades, 107-9, "O 
 Passports, 15, 53 
 Persia, 9, 36, 40, 56-7, 181 
 Personality, vii, ix, xiv, 46, 87, 
 88, 107, 114, 138, 148, 153, 
 160 n., 176-7, 203, 204, 205, 
 209-10, 213, 215 
 Peru, 62 
 
 Pilgrimage, 13-14 
 Plays, 64 n., 113-4, 122 
 Polyandry, 139, 141-2, 148-9 
 Polygyny, x, 62, 139, 140-1, 
 
 185 
 
 Presents, 20, 41, 89, 91 ff., 
 193; from guests, 41, 91, 95, 
 96; from hosts, 20, 41, 96; 
 from travellers, 12, 91, 95; 
 good-bye, 9; to overlords, 35; 
 to the dead, 15, 16 n., 89, 
 91 » 93» 96; to the gods, 10, 
 ii> 91. 97 » 200. See Sexes, 
 Weddings 
 
 Priests, 10, 13-14, 20-1, 54, 
 63.66,97,111, 1 13-4. 122 n., 
 128-9, 145, 186-7, 192, 199 
 flF. 
 
 Prostitution, 74 n., 95 n., 122, 
 
 138-9, 152 
 Proverbs, 70-1, 79, 80, 112 n. 
 Pueblo Indians, 4, 83, 103, 166, 
 
 181, 192 
 Puns, 70 
 
 Race relations, 3 flf., 125-8, 
 157,214,217 
 
 Riddles, 112 
 
 Romans, 44, 92-3, 125, 130, 
 136-7, 145 n., 182, 184, 195 
 
 Royalty, 2, 6, 13, 19-20, 45, 
 55 ff., 60-1, 62-3, 66, 68, 69, 
 70, 74, 88, 97, 107-9, no, 
 111,112,115,125, 193, 201 n. 
 
 Russia, 6, 7, 15 n., 68, 202 
 
 Salutations, 80 ff., 124, 143, 
 
 150, 171-2, 190-1 
 Samoa, 69, 80-1, 82-3, 86 n., 
 . 168-9, 177 
 
 Sandwich Islands, 165 
 
 San Salvador, 65 
 
 Santals, 27 
 
 Seating, 16, 27, 36-7, 41, 59, 
 68, 73, 86, 1 17-8, 119, 121, 
 191 
 
 Servants, domestic, 24, 27, 
 38, 55, 59, 64 n., 65, 67, 71, 
 72-3, 75, 116, 164 
 
 Sex, characters, 134; education 
 in, 168, 185; inferiority of, 
 73, 76; mystery of, 133-4 
 
 Sexes, calls between the, 29-30, 
 98, 99; contagion between 
 the, 129-30; colours appro- 
 priate to the, 182 n.; com- 
 parative conventionality of 
 the, 94 n.; exclusiveness of 
 the, 77, 113, 121 ff.; generali- 
 ties about the, 130-1; intro- 
 ductions between the, 47, 51 ; 
 presents between the, 95 n., 
 124; restrictions upon the, vi, 
 viii, 29, 95 n., 152 ; salutation 
 between the, 81 n.; separa- 
 tion of the, V, viii, x, xiii-xiv, 
 96, 1 17-8, 119 ff., 186, 194, 
 205, 206, 211. See Avoid- 
 ance 
 
 Sexual hospitality, 35-6, 142 
 
 Shyness, i ff., 152, 165-6, 218 
 
 Siam, 122 
 
 Singing, 13, 29 n., III-13 
 
 Sinhalese, 5, 88 
 
 Sioux, 63, 130, 169 n., 180, 181, 
 186, 189 
 
 Slaves, 8, 59, 67, 125, 151, 157 
 
 Smoking, 61, 63, 65, 86, 181, 
 192 
 
 Snake Indians, 78 n. 
 
 Solomon Islands, 34 
 
 Soudan, 9, 54, 201 n. 
 
 Speaking, public, 51, 80 n., 
 188, 189 
 
 Speech, 68, 69 ff., 74, 89 n., 
 99; taboo on, 45, 57, 95 n., 
 109, no, 114, 123, 132, 152, 
 159, 160, 161, 162, 177,189- 
 90, 204. See Conversation 
 
 Staring, 2-3, 26 
 
 Steins, 23 
 
Index 
 
 239 
 
 Strangers, i ff., 8, 43, 45 ff., 
 53 Qm 54. 61,76, 117 n., 120, 
 133, 158, 209, 210 
 
 Suffrage, Woman, 2, 61, 109, 
 132 n., 149 
 
 Suicide, 17-18, 62 
 
 Sumatra, 62-3, 156 
 
 Swedes, 125 
 
 Switzerland, 88 
 
 Table manners, 22-4, 28, 73 n., 
 113 n., 115, 197,212 n. 
 
 Tasmanians, 131 
 
 Teknonymy, 160, 166 
 
 Thibetans, 141 
 
 Timor-laut, 143 
 
 Tipperahs, 140 
 
 Todas, 93, 162, 171-2, 198 
 
 Tonga Isles, 56, 59, 199 n. 
 
 Torres Straits, Islands of, 94, 
 166, 173, 184, 191 
 
 Tourists, 2, 8, 50 n., 79 
 
 Travel, 45 n., 50, 52, 56, 78 n., 
 79 n., 91, 95, 112, 133, 150, 
 170, 20I--2, 210. See Tour- 
 ists 
 
 Tshis, no. III 
 
 Turks, 20, III, 196 
 
 Urbino, 48, 58, 122-3, 184-5 
 Uripiv Idanders, 117, 194, 195 
 
 Veddas, 4, 5, 17 n., 26, no n., 
 119, 127, 144, 162, 163 
 
 Visiting, 4, II n., 29-30, 36, 
 61, 89,97ff., 138,171,17411., 
 188 n., 190, 198, 200; cards, 
 26, 49-50* 99 ff- See Hos- 
 pitality 
 
 Wadai, 57, 189 
 
 Wagogo, 86, 180, 187 
 
 Wahuma, 66 
 
 Wanyamwesi, lo, 78 n. 
 
 Washington, D. C, 11, 56, 58, 
 68, 104-6, 116 
 
 Weddings, 89, 91, 92, 98, 109, 
 iio-ii, 138, 170, 177, 183, 
 212 
 
 Weeping, 87, 171 
 
 Widows, 15, 124 n., 145, 199 
 
 Women, as property, 145 flf., 
 calling obligatory upon, 100; 
 conservative, 132 n.; drink- 
 ing by, 24; fear of the 
 unusual among, 8 n.; food 
 taboos on, 180 n.; of leisure, 
 206; present of, 19 n.; se- 
 cluded, 28; smoking by, 65; 
 travelling alone, 8 n. See 
 Sexes 
 
 Yaunde, 180 
 Yezidi Kurds, 15 
 Yorubans, 54 
 Yucatan, 157 
 
 Zulus, 86 n,f 158, 166, 195 
 
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 without involving them in unduly advanced 
 work. Controverted theory is carefully dis- 
 tinguished from fact, and the suggestions and 
 bibliographical notes for research which it 
 contains are separated from those for more 
 elementary descriptive work. It is also a 
 guide for home-reading clubs for young women 
 of college age. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
Life and Law 
 
 By Maude Glasgow, M.D. 
 
 /2^ $L25ncl 
 
 In this volume the author traces the nattiral 
 history of sex from the lower animal forms 
 through the more complex organisms to man. 
 In this retrospect the importance of the function 
 of sex is made clear, and the need of safeguard- 
 ing it from the dangers incident to immoral 
 living becomes manifest. To these dangers the 
 author directs attention in the later chapters of 
 the book, and points out that both sound hygiene 
 and a developed public conscience demand the 
 eradication of the evil of prostitution, not only 
 because of the appalling toll it takes of the lives 
 of those who are degraded, but because of the 
 very considerable harm it inflicts through the 
 indirect communication of veenreal diseases to 
 innocent wives and children. The inadequate 
 protection afforded women by the laws of many 
 of our States is traced in this connection, and 
 the direction in which an amelioration of social 
 conditions may be looked for is pointed out. 
 
 New York G. P. Putnam's SonS London 
 
ros 
 
 The Development of Sex Relation 
 through the Ages 
 
 By Eiml Lucka 
 
 Translated by Ellie Schleussner 
 
 Here is the first attempt ever made to present 
 a historical and philosophical account of the 
 development of the passion of love in all times, 
 and the best critics declare that Dr. Lucka has 
 succeeded. His book is pronounced to be the 
 most searching and at the same time most po- 
 etical work on the subject. Like all remarkable 
 books, it has aroused controversy, for some Latin 
 and Slav thinkers resent bitterly Dr. Lucka'S 
 conclusion that only the Germanic race, including 
 the British and North American peoples, is capa- 
 ble of the highest love. 
 
 Lucka's main thesis is that genuine love, the 
 synthesis of the sensual and the ideal, is some- 
 thing entirely modern. He shows that love 
 among barbarous races, and among civilized 
 races of antiquity, was always purely a matter 
 of the senses. In ancient Greece that which is 
 now called " Platonic love " did not exist, not 
 even as an ideal, for Platonic love was not love 
 of woman at all, but merely love of an ideal. 
 
 New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 
 
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