What aeons of culture lie between such a scene and a dinner party in Europe or America, with its refined, well-behaved guests, its table etiquette, its varied menu, its choice viands, skilfully cooked and blended so as to bring out the most diverse and delicate flavors, its esthetic features—­fine linen and porcelains, silver and cut glass, flowers, lights—­its bright conversation, and flow of wit.  Yet there are writers who would have us believe that these Indians, Eskimos, and Africans, who manifest their appetite for food in so disgustingly coarse a way, are in their love-affairs as sentimental and aesthetic as we are!  In truth they are as gross, gluttonous, and selfish in the gratification of one appetite as in that of the other.  To a savage a woman is not an object of chaste adoration and gallant devotion, but a mere bait for wanton lust; and when his lust hath dined he kicks her away like a mangy dog till he is hungry again.  In Ploss-Bartels[118] may be found an abundance of facts culled from various sources in all parts of the world, showing that the bestiality of many savages is not even restrained by the presence of spectators.  At the phallic and bacchanalian festivals of ancient and Oriental nations all distinctions of rank and all family ties were forgotten in a carnival of lust.  Licentious orgies are indeed carried on to this day in our own large cities; but their participants are the criminal classes, and occasionally some foolish young men who would be very much ashamed to have their doings known; whereas the orgies and phallic festivals of savages and barbarians are national or tribal institutions, approved by custom, sanctioned by religion, and indulged in openly by every man and woman in the community; often regardless even of incest.

More shockingly still are the grossness and diabolical selfishness of the savage’s carnal appetite revealed by his habit of sacrificing young girls to it years before they have reached the age of puberty.  Some details will be found in the chapters on Australia, Africa, and India.  Here it may be noted—­to indicate the wide prevalence of a custom which it would be unjust to animals to call bestial, because beasts never sink so low—­that Borneans, as Schwaner notes, marry off girls from three to five; that in Egypt child-wives of seven or eight can be seen; that Javanese girls may be married at seven; that North American Indians often took brides of ten or eleven, while in Southern Australia girls were appropriated as early as seven.  Hottentot girls were not spared after the age of seven, nor were Bushman girls, though they did not become mothers till ten or twelve years old; while Kaffir girls married at eight, Somals at six to eight.  The cause of these early marriages is not climatic, as some fancy, but simply, as Roberton has pointed out, the coarseness of the men.  The list might be extended indefinitely.  In Old Calabar sometimes, we read in Ploss,