THE ELUSIVE ELEMENT
Living With Lepchas. By John Morris. (Heinemann. i5s.) THE Lepchas live between the high desert of Tibet and the cultivated foothills of the Himalaya near Darjeeling. They are a pale-skinned people, handsomer than the sometimes monkey-faced Nepalis whose industry has driven the Lepchas into the forests of higher and remoter valleys ; cleaner, shyer and again better looking than the Tibetans. Major Morris and Geoffrey Gorer visited them ; they parked themselves in an upper room of a village monastery and observed their community. Here is the first book.
The Lepchas believe this, do that ; they drink chi, plant maize, have children. Is there any point in reading about it ? The dust-cover suggests that a full account of their sex-life may interest us. The author, I fear, has had too much in mind the selling value of private lives ; nevertheless, much of the Lepchas' culture and feeling gets through. This is worth reading and thinking about if your scepticism has turned back on itself ; if you believe that there is in man a component which rational thought can only disregard at its peril. Each philosophy will, have its own name for this essence ; what a Jung may call a Collective Subconscious may be just " human nature " nearer home. Whatever it is named it is difficult to grasp, even if apprehended. To appreciate this elusive element in our own lives it may help to study a neighbour's first.
The Lepcha is continually engaged in pacifying his gods. He does not, like the Tibetan, attempt by rigorous training to master the irrational. Instead, by an unending sequence of minor gifts and ceremonies he shows his awareness of the deities and hopes that on the whole they will work in his favour. Provided this awareness exists, the rules need not be too precisely followed. In most matters the Lepchas are very casual in their observances ; this applies also to their intimate relationships, a fact which has caused the word " promiscuous " to be attached to their private affairs. That they do live promiscuously is undeniable, but it is not the major point. Their rules allow for intimicy with a defined series of relatives besides the married partner. Typical Lepcha custom has extended the privilege freely. This does not mean that, for instance, as in Tibet, a woman practically marries such relatives as the husband's brothers. Within the strictest rules monogamy is combined with the right to ephemei-al relationships with certain other people. The essential point is that no jealousy arises ; that this system, which is in fact in one form or another more widely distributed than the book would suggest, appears to work without the disastrous consequences which a European might reasonably anticipate.
Major Morris makes a suggestion which I remember also reading in a novel by Carl Fallas about Japan : that this liberation from the problems of sexual life is only possible by renouncing the ecstatic Condition of being " in _love." Our Western monogamy seems to be based on the belief that this state is attained by most people. This at any rate, appears to be the meaning of a strict monogamy. But whether even a passing phase of intoxication is experienced by the majority would be hard to say. Marriage is a failure for so many Europeans that it may be noted as an instigator of war, which exists as a desperate solution of innumerable private problems. Some would make our customs responsible for our troubles. Attention is often called to the falling birth-rate as evidence of dissatisfaction. But the Lepchas, who might be thought by some readers to have arrived at a happy system, are faced with a decline in numbers far more rapid than ours.
MICHAEL SPENDER.
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