ual type, which leads
to the life-long imprisonment of women in order to enforce a fidelity
which in the absence of true love could not be secured otherwise. As
for the wives in primitive households, they often indulge in "jealous"
squabbles, but their passion, though it may lead to manifestations of
rage and to fierce and cruel fights, is after all only skin deep, for
it is easily overcome with soft words, presents, or the desire for the
social position and comfort which can be secured in the house of a man
who is wealthy enough to marry several women--especially if the
husband is rich and wise enough to keep the women in separate lodges;
though even that is often unnecessary.

There is no difficulty in understanding why primitive feminine
"jealousy," despite seeming exceptions, should have been so shallow
and transient a feeling. Everything conspired to make it so. From the
earliest times the men made systematic efforts to prevent the growth
of that passion in women because it interfered with their own selfish
desires. Hearne says of the women of the Northern Indians that "they
are kept so much in awe of their husbands, that the liberty of
thinking is the greatest privilege they enjoy" (310); and A.H. Keane
(_Journ. of Anthrop. Inst_., 1883) remarks that while the Botocudos
often indulge in fierce outbreaks of jealousy, "the women have not yet
acquired the right to be jealous, a sentiment implying a certain
degree of equality between the sexes." Everywhere the women were
taught to subordinate themselves to the men, and among the Hindoos as
among the Greeks, by the ancient Hebrews as well as by the mediaeval
Arabs freedom from jealousy was inculcated as a supreme virtue. Rachel
actually fancied she was doing a noble thing in giving her handmaids
to Jacob as concubines. Lane (246) quotes the Arab historian
El-Jabartee, who said of his first wife:

"Among her acts of conjugal piety and submission was
this that she used to buy for her husband beautiful
slave girls, with her own wealth, and deck them with
ornaments and apparel, and so present them to him
confidently looking to the reward and recompense which
she should receive [in Paradise] for such conduct."

"In case of failure of an heir," says Griffis, in his famous work on
Japan (557), "the husband is fully justified, often strongly advised
even by his wife, to take a handmaid to raise up seed to preserve
their ancestral line." A Pers