th a selfishness which is entirely
incompatible with true affection. The Rev. Peter Jones, moreover, an
Indian himself, tells us in his book on the Ojibwas:

"I have scarcely ever seen anything like social
intercourse between husband and wife, and it is
remarkable that the women say little in presence of the
men."

Obviously, at the beginning of the passage quoted, Morgan should have
used the word attachment in place of affection. Bulmer (by accident, I
suspect) uses the right word when he says (Brough Smyth, 77) that
Australians, notwithstanding their brutal forms of marriage, often
"get much attached to each other." At the same time it is easy to show
that, if not among Australians or Indians, at any rate with such a
people as the ancient Greeks, conjugal affection may have existed
while romantic love was still impossible. The Greeks looked down on
their women as inferior beings. Now one can feel affection--conjugal
or friendly--toward an inferior, but one cannot feel adoration--and
adoration is absolutely essential to romantic love. Before romantic
love could be born it was necessary that women should not only be
respected as equal to man but worshipped as his superior. This was not
done by any of the lower or ancient races; hence romantic love is a
peculiarly modern sentiment, later than any other form of human
affection.

OBSTACLES TO ROMANTIC LOVE

When Shakspere wrote that "The course of true love never did run
smooth" he had in mind individual cases of courtship. But what is true
of individuals also applies to the story of love itself. For many
thousands of years savagery and barbarism "proved an unrelenting foe
to love," and it was with almost diabolical ingenuity that obstacles
to its birth and growth were maintained and multiplied. It was
crushed, balked, discountenanced, antagonized, discredited,
disheartened so persistently that the wonder is not that there should
be so little true love even at the present day, but that there is any
at all. A whole volume might be written on the Obstacles to Love; my
original plan for this book included a long chapter on this matter;
but partly to avoid repetition, partly to save space, I will condense
my material to a few pages, considering briefly the following
obstacles: I. Ignorance and stupidity. II. Coarseness and obscenity.
III. War. IV. Cruelty. V. Masculine selfishness. VI. Contempt for
women. VII. Capture and sale of brides. VIII. Infan