Aboriginal Australian Love
Risking Life For A Woman
Henry Theophilus Finck
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_ Lumholtz relates the following story to show that "these blacks also may be greatly overcome by the sentiment of love":
"A 'civilized' black man entered a station on Georgina
River and carried off a woman who belonged to a young
black man at the station. She loved her paramour and
was glad to get away from the station; but the whites
desired to keep her for their black servant, as he
could not be made to stay without her, and they brought
her back, threatening to shoot the stranger if he came
again. Heedless of the threat, he afterward made a
second attempt to elope with his beloved, but the white
men pursued the couple and shot the poor fellow."
If Lumholtz had reflected for a moment on the difference between love as a sentiment and love as an appetite, he would have realized the error of using the expression "the sentiment of love" in connection with such a story of adulterous kidnapping, in which there is absolutely nothing to indicate whether the kidnapper coveted the other man's wife for any other than the most carnal reasons. It is not unusual for an Australian to risk his life in stealing a woman. He does that every time he captures one from another tribe. In men who have so little imaginative faculty as these, the possibility of being killed has no more deterrent effect than it has in two dogs or stags fighting for a female. We must not judge such indifference to deadly consequences from our point of view. _