ides. It depends on the way in which each pair
arranges its affairs, develops its sentiments, and forms its habits.
Conjugal affection makes great demands on the good sense, spirit of
accommodation, and good nature of each. These are very great
pre-conditions. It is no wonder that they often fail. In no primitive or
half-civilization does the word "wife" bear the connotations which it
bears to us. In Levit. xxi. 1 a case may be seen in which a man's blood
kin takes precedence of his wife. Arabs, in the time of Mohammed, did
not think that the conjugal tie could be as serious and strong as the
kin tie, because the former is institutional only; that is, it is a
product of convention and contract.[1190] Public demonstrations of love
they thought offensive and insulting to the woman. People of rank often
admitted no suitors for their daughters. It was thought a disgrace to
give a daughter into the power of an outsider. They killed female
infants, not, like the poor, because they could not afford to rear them,
but from fear of incurring disgrace from them.[1191] By veiling the
women are excluded from all social intercourse with men and from any
share in intellectual interests.[1192] They cannot win conjugal
affection--certainly not from educated men. Erotic passion fills
Mohammedan poetry and is cultivated at home. The few cultivated women of
the higher classes emancipate themselves from moral restraints, often
without concealment.[1193] In Mohammed's last sermon he said: "You have
rights against your wives and they have rights against you. They are
bound not to violate marital fidelity and to commit no act of public
wrong. If they do so, you have the power to beat them, yet without
danger to their lives."[1194] Islam is not a field in which conjugal
affection could be expected to develop.[1195] "A Japanese who should
leave his father and mother for his wife would be looked upon as an
outcast." Therefore the Bible "is regarded as irreligious and
immoral."[1196] The notion that a man's wife is the nearest person in
the world to him is a relatively modern notion, and one which is
restricted to a comparatively small part of the human race.

+375. Heroic conjugal devotion.+ In general, the European analogy for
the relation of husband and wife in the rest of the world, now or in
past ages, would be rather that of master and servant. The erotic
sentiment has generally been thought of as independent of marriage,
possible in it, gen