Courtship in Nature

Logically the history of courting would begin with the animal kingdom, but that is a field which, of late, has been unusually well explored. It is worth pointing out, however, that courtship in Nature sometimes presents a pattern of constancy rare among humans.

If the naturalists are right, the sexual morals of the bearded tit are on a far higher plane than those of the bearded philosopher. Although André Gide confidently says that there is no such thing as love in the animal world (and La Rochefoucauld believes that there are men who would never have loved if they had not heard love talked about), naturalists like Konrad Lorenz write of the courtship of birds in terms of love, constancy, engagement and marriage. Nor do there appear to be any felicities of courtship known to man which cannot be duplicated in the animal kingdom. The Encyclopaedia Britannica which has a long article, with colored plates, on animal courtship but nothing on the court­ship of humans, lists these as the methods by which animals incite each other to sexual activity: 

...the display of bright colours or adornments, such as crests; special tactile contacts; dances or other antics; pursuit; music, vocal or instrumental; the discharge of scents and per­fumes; and the presentation of prey or of inedible but other­wise stimulating objects. 

Does man bring pretty presents wrapped in cellophane? There is a fly which wraps up its love gifts in a shining trans­parent envelope. Does man seek to domesticate a flighty maiden by finding her a desirable bijou residence? The male bower bird does the same, and fills the home with those useless glittering objects which he knows are dear to the female heart. 

Along with the birds and beasts, Hunting Man and Pastoral Man are summarily dismissed from these pages, leaving the field to Romantic Man. This means forswearing many beguil­ing topics, like speculation as to whether the dance orgies of primitive peoples are necessary to work off, or to work up, passion. It means shutting an eye to the communal courtship of the Papuan youth house, in which young men and maidens sit rubbing their noses until they reach the desired state of ecstasy, and those totem-slaying forays by which Antipodean young women seek to goad laggard males into pursuing them. 

It means neglecting those valiant tribes in which the young men ride down their chosen in a horseback chase, or show their fitness to woo by first killing a crocodile, procuring a human head or allowing themselves to be sewn up in a hammock with fire ants; or in which man and maid are locked up together for a day and a night, after which the maid is allowed to say whether she is in favor of a life partnership. 

Fascinating though these and a hundred other customs may be, there is no room to list them all here or to try to assess their significance. This is a history of "civilized" courtship. But it is right to say that there are many primitive tribes which (like the bearded tits) tackle the problems of courtship more sensibly and decently than do many "civilized" groups, and who appreciate that court­ship is as much a biological necessity after marriage as before it. Though Victorian explorers shook their heads at the way in which certain American Indian tribes set out, at fixed periods, to 'indulge their amorous propensities', modern anthropologists tend to agree that downright immorality is unusual in primitive communities. There are tribes in which youth is allowed to blunt its sexual appetites, but it must obey the community code after marriage. 

The Oxford Dictionary definition of courting is a straight­forward one, but not without one significant detail. To court is ‘to pay attention to, seek to gain the affection of, make love to (with a view to marriage), pay addresses to, woo'.