It may perhaps be supposed that the object of these prohibitions is to remove all apprehensions as to pregnancy. But this cannot be the case when the time of mourning lasts for a year or more. In Saraë, where a widow is bound to celibacy for two years, a divorced wife is prevented from marrying within two months only, as Munzinger says, “in order to avoid all uncertainty as to pregnancy;”[730] and, among the Bedouins, a divorced woman has, for the same reason, to remain unmarried for no longer time than forty days.[731] Moreover, certain peoples, especially those among whom monogamy is the only recognized form of marriage, or among whom polygyny is practised as a rare exception, prohibit the speedy remarriage not only of widows but of widowers.[732] The meaning of the interdict appears also from the common rule that a wife, after her husband’s death, shall give up all her ornaments, and have her head shaved, her hair cut short, or her face blackened. Among certain Indians, the law compels the widow through the long term of her mourning to refrain from all public company and diversions, under pain of being considered an adulteress, and, likewise to go with flowing hair without the privilege of oil to anoint it;[733] whilst, in Greenland tales, it is said of a truly disconsolate widow, “She mourns so, that she cannot be recognised for dirt.”[734] Hence we see how deep-rooted is the idea that a woman belongs exclusively to one man. Savages believe that the soul of the deceased can return and become a tormentor of the living. Thus a husband, even after his death, may punish a wife who has proved unfaithful. According to travellers’ statements, there are, indeed, peoples almost devoid of the feeling of jealousy, and the practice of lending or prostituting wives is generally taken as evidence of this. But jealousy, as well as love, is far from being the same feeling in the mind of a savage as in that of a civilized man. A wife is often regarded as not very different from other property, and an adulterer as a thief.[735] In some parts of Africa, he is punished as such, having his hands, or one of them, cut off.[736] The fact that a man lends his wife to a visitor no more implies the absence of jealousy than other ways of showing hospitality imply that he is without the proprietary feeling. According to Wilkes, the aborigines of New South Wales “will frequently give one of their wives to a friend who may be in want of one; but notwithstanding this laxity they are extremely jealous, and are very prompt to resent any freedom taken with their wives.”[737]