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Title: Sex and Society
Author: Thomas, William I., 1863-1947
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Sex and Society" ***
SEX AND SOCIETY
Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
by
WILLIAM I. THOMAS
Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois
1907
Fourth Impression 1913
AUTHOR'S NOTE
These studies have been published in various journals at different
times. They are reprinted together because there is some demand
for them, and they are not easily accessible. In preparing them for
publication in the present form, some of them have been expanded and
all of them have been revised.
While each study is complete in itself, the general thesis running
through all of them is the same--that the differences in bodily
habit between men and women, particularly the greater strength,
restlessness, and motor aptitude of man, and the more stationary
condition of woman, have had an important influence on social forms
and activities, and on the character and mind of the two sexes.
"Organic Differences in the Sexes" appeared in the _American Journal
of Sociology_, III, 31ff., with the title, "On a Difference in the
Metabolism of the Sexes;" "Sex and Primitive Social Control," _ibid._,
III, 754ff.; "Sex and Primitive Industry," _ibid._, IV, 474ff.; "Sex
and Primitive Morality," _ibid._, IV, 774ff.; "The Psychology of
Modesty and Clothing," _ibid._, V, 246ff.; "The Adventitious Character
of Woman," _ibid._, XII, 32ff.; "The Mind of Woman and the Lower
Races," _ibid._, XII, 435ff.; "The Psychology of Exogamy," in the
_Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft_, V, 1ff., with the title,
"Der Ursprung der Exogamie;" "Sex and Social Feeling," in the
_Psychological Review_, XI, 61ff., with the title, "The Sexual
Element in Sensibility." Portions of a paper printed in the _Forum_,
XXXVI, 305ff., with the title, "Is the Human Brain Stationary?"
are incorporated in the paper on "The Mind of Woman and the Lower
Races," and portions of a paper printed in the _American Journal
of Sociology_, IX, 593ff., with the title, "The Psychology of
Race-Prejudice," are incorporated in the paper on "Sex and Social
Feeling." I acknowledge the courtesy of the editors of these journals
for permission to reprint.
W.I.T.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ORGANIC DIFFERENCES IN THE SEXES
SEX AND PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTROL
SEX AND SOCIAL FEELING
SEX AND PRIMITIVE INDUSTRY
SEX AND PRIMITIVE MORALITY
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXOGAMY
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODESTY AND CLOTHING
THE ADVENTITIOUS CHARACTER OF WOMAN
THE MIND OF WOMAN AND THE LOWER RACES
INDEX
ORGANIC DIFFERENCES IN THE SEXES
A grand difference between plant and animal life lies in the fact that
the plant is concerned chiefly with storing energy, and the animal
with consuming it. The plant by a very slow process converts lifeless
into living matter, expending little energy and living at a profit.
The animal is unable to change lifeless into living matter, but has
developed organs of locomotion, ingestion, and digestion which enable
it to prey upon the plant world and upon other animal forms; and in
contrast with plant life it lives at a loss of energy. Expressed in
biological formula, the habit of the plant is predominantly anabolic,
that of the animal predominantly katabolic.
Certain biologists, limiting their attention in the main to the lower
forms of life, have maintained very plausibly that males are more
katabolic than females, and that maleness is the product of influences
tending to produce a katabolic habit of body.[1] If this assumption
is correct, maleness and femaleness are merely a repetition of the
contrast existing between the animal and the plant. The katabolic
animal form, through its rapid destruction of energy, has been carried
developmentally away from the anabolic plant form; and of the two
sexes the male has been carried farther than the female from the plant
process. The body of morphological, physiological, ethnological, and
demographic data which follows becomes coherent, indeed, only on the
assumption that woman stands nearer to the plant process than man,
representing the constructive as opposed to the disruptive metabolic
tendency.[2]
The researches of Düsing,[3] supplementing the antecedent observations
of Ploss,[4] and further supplemented by the ethnological data
collected by Westermarck,[5] seem to demonstrate a connection between
an abundance of nutrition and females, and between scarcity and
males, in relatively higher animal forms and in man. The main facts in
support of the theory that such a connection exists are the following:
Furriers testify that rich regions yield more furs from females and
poor regions more from males. In high altitudes, where nutrition is
scant, the birthrate of boys is high as compared with lower altitudes
in the same locality. Ploss has pointed out, for instance, that in
Saxony from 1847 to 1849 the yield of rye fell, and the birth-rate of
boys rose with the approach of high altitudes. More boys are born in
the country than in cities, because city diet is richer, especially
in meat; Düsing shows that in Prussia the numerical excess of boys is
greatest in the country districts, less in the villages, still less
in the cities, and least in Berlin.[6] In times of war, famine, and
migration more boys are born, and more are born also in poor than in
well-to-do families. European statistics show that when food-stuffs
are high or scarce the number of marriages diminishes, and in
consequence a diminished number of births follows, and a heightened
percentage of boys; with the recurrence of prosperity and an increased
number of marriages and births, the percentage of female births
rises (though it never equals numerically that of the males).[7]
More children are born from warm-weather than from cold-weather
conceptions,[8] but relatively more boys are born from cold-weather
conceptions. Professor Axel Key has shown from statistics of 18,000
Swedish school children that from the end of November and the
beginning of December until the end of March or the middle of April,
growth in children is feeble. From July-August to November-December
their daily increase in weight is three times as great as during the
winter months.[9] This is evidence in confirmation of a connection
between maleness, slow growth, and either poor nutrition or cold
weather, or both. Professor Key's investigations[10] have also
confirmed the well-known fact that maturity is reached earlier in
girls than in boys and have shown that in respect of growth the
ill-nourished girls follow the law of growth of the boys. Growth is a
function of nutrition, and puberty is a sign that somatic growth is
so far finished that the organism produces a surplus of nutrition to
be used in reproduction. Organically reproduction is also a function
of nutrition, and, as Spencer pointed out, is to be regarded as
discontinuous growth. The fact than an anabolic surplus, preparatory
to the katabolic process of reproduction, is stored at an earlier
period in the female than in the male, and that this period is
retarded in the ill-nourished female, is a confirmation of the view
that femaleness is an expression of the tendency to store nutriment,
and explains also the infantile somatic characters of woman. Finally,
the fact that polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries,
coupled with the fact that ethnologists uniformly report a scarcity
of women in those countries, permits us to attribute polyandry to a
scarcity of women and scarcity of women to poor food conditions.
This evidence should be considered in connection with the experiments
of Yung on tadpoles, of Siebold on wasps, and of Klebs on the
modification of male and female organs in plants:
According to Yung, tadpoles pass through an hermaphroditic
stage, in common, according to other authorities, with most
animals.... When the tadpoles were left to themselves,
the females were rather in the majority. In three lots the
proportion of females to males was: 54-46, 61-39, 56-44. The
average number of females was thus about fifty-seven in the
hundred. In the first brood, by feeding one set with beef,
Yung raised the percentage of females from 54 to 78: in the
second, with fish, the percentage rose from 61 to 81; while in
the third set, when the especially nutritious flesh of frogs
was supplied, the percentage rose from 56 to 92. That is to
say, in the last case the result of high feeding was that
there were 92 females and 8 males.[11]
Similarly, the experiments of Siebold on wasps show that the
percentage of females increases from spring to August, and
then diminishes. We may conclude without scruple that the
production of females from fertilized ova increases with
the temperature and food supply, and decreases as these
diminish.[12]
Nor are there many facts more significant than the simple and
well-known one that within the first eight days of larval
life the addition of food will determine the striking and
functional differences between worker and queen.[13]
It is certainly no mere chance, but agrees with other
well-known facts, that for the generation of the female organ
more favorable external circumstances must prevail, while
the male organ may develop under very much more unfavorable
conditions.[14]
These facts are not conclusive, but they all point in the same
direction, and are probably sufficient to establish a connection
between food conditions and the determination of sex. But behind the
mere fact that a different attitude toward food determines difference
of sex lies the more fundamental--indeed, the real--explanation of
the fact, and this chemists and physiologists are not at present
able to give us. Researches must be carried farther on the effect of
temperature, light, and water on variation, before we may hope to
reach a positive conclusion. We can only assume that the chemical
constitution of the organism at a given moment conditions the sex of
the offspring, and is itself conditioned by various factors--light,
heat, water, electricity, etc.--and that food is one of these
variables.[15] It is sufficient for our present purpose that sex is
a constitutional matter, indirectly dependent upon food conditions;
that the female is the result of a surplus of nutrition; and that the
relation reported among the lower forms persists in the human species.
In close connection with the foregoing we have the fact, reported
by Maupas,[16] that certain Infusorians are capable of reproducing
asexually for a number of generations, but that, unless the
individuals are sexually fertilized by crossing with unrelated forms
of the same species, they finally exhibit all the signs of senile
degeneration, ending in death.[17] After sexual conjugation there
was an access of vitality, and the asexual reproduction proceeded as
before. "The evident result of these long and fatiguing experiments
is that among the ciliates the life of the species is decomposed into
evolutional cycles, each one having for its point of departure an
individual regenerated and rejuvenated by sexual copulation."[18]
The results obtained by Maupas receive striking confirmation in the
universal experience of stock-breeders, that, in order to keep a breed
in health, it is necessary to cross it occasionally with a distinct
but allied variety. It appears, then, that a mixture of blood has a
favorable effect on the metabolism of the organism, comparable to that
of abundant nutrition, and that innutrition and in-and-in breeding are
alike prejudicial.
If this is true, and if heightened nutrition yields an increased
proportion of females, we ought to find that breeding-out is favorable
to the production of females, and breeding-in to the production of
males; and a considerable body of evidence in favor of this assumption
exists.[19]
Observations of above 4,000 cases show that, among horses, the
more the parent animals differ in color, the more the female
foals outnumber the male. Similarly, in-and-in-bred cattle give
an excessively large number of bull calves. Liaisons produce an
abnormally large proportion of females;[20] incestuous unions,
of males.[21] Among the Jews, who frequently marry cousins, the
percentage of male births is very high.
According to Mr. Jacobs' comprehensive manuscript collection
of Jewish statistics ... the average proportion of male and
female Jewish births registered in various countries is 114.5
males to 100 females, whilst the average proportion among the
non-Jewish population of the corresponding countries is 105.25
males to 100 females.... His collection includes details
of 118 mixed marriages; of these 28 are sterile, and in the
remainder there are 145 female children and 122 male--that is,
118.82 females to 100 males.[22]
The testimony is also tolerably full that among _metis_ and among
exogamous peoples the female birth-rate is often excessively high.[23]
Viewed with reference to activity, the animal is an advance on the
plant, from which it departs by morphological and physiological
variations suited to a more energized form of life; and the female may
be regarded as the animal norm from which the male departs by further
morphological variations. It is now well known that variations are
more frequent and marked in males than in females. Among the lower
forms, in which activity is more directly determined mechanically
by the stimuli of heat, light, and chemical attraction, and where
in general the food and light are evenly distributed through the
medium in which life exists, and where the limits of variation
are consequently small, the constitutional nutritive tendency of
the female manifests itself in size. Among many Cephalopoda and
Cirripedia, and among certain of the Articulata, the female is larger
than the male. Female spiders, bees, wasps, hornets, and butterflies
are larger than the males, and the difference is noticeable even in
the larval stage. So considerable is the difference in size between
the male and female cocoons of the silk-moth that in France they are
separated by a particular mode of weighing.[24] The same superiority
of the female is found among fishes and reptiles; and this relation,
wherever it occurs, may be associated with a habit of life in which
food conditions are simple and stimuli mandatory. As we rise in the
scale toward backboned and warm-blooded animals, the males become
larger in size; and this reversal of relation, like the development
of offensive and defensive weapons, is due to the superior variational
tendency of the male, resulting in characters which persist in the
species wherever they prove of life-saving advantage.[25]
The superior activity and variability of the male among lower forms
has been pointed out in great detail by Darwin and confirmed by
others.
Throughout the animal kingdom, when the sexes differ in
external appearance, it is, with rare exceptions, the male
which has been more modified; for, generally, the female
retains a closer resemblance to the young of her own species,
and to other adult members of the same group. The cause of
this seems to lie in the males of almost all animals having
stronger passions than the females.[26]
Darwin explains the greater variability of the males--as shown in
more brilliant colors, ornamental feathers, scent-pouches, the power
of music, spurs, larger canines and claws, horns, antlers, tusks,
dewlaps, manes, crests, beards, etc.--as due to the operation of
sexual selection, meaning by this "the advantage which certain
individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in
respect of reproduction,"[27] the female choosing to pair with the
more attractive male, or the stronger male prevailing in a contest for
the female. Wallace[28] advanced the opposite view, that the female
owes her soberness to the fact that only inconspicuous females have
in the struggle for existence escaped destruction during the breeding
season. There are fatal objections to both these theories; and, taking
his cue from Tylor,[29] Wallace himself, in a later work, suggested
what is probably the true explanation, namely, that the superior
variability of the male is constitutional, and due to general laws
of growth and development. "If ornament," he says, "is the natural
product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor, then no
other mode of selection is needed to account for the presence of such
ornament."[30] That a tendency to spend energy more rapidly should
result in more striking morphological variation is to be expected;
or, put otherwise, the fact of a greater variational tendency in the
male is the outcome of a constitutional inclination to destructive
metabolism. It is a general law in the courtship of the sexes that the
male seeks the female. The secondary sexual characters of the male are
developed with puberty, and in some cases these sexual distinctions
come and go with the breeding season. What we know as physiological
energy is the result of the dissociation of atoms in the organism;
expressions of energy are the accompaniment of the katabolic or
breaking-up process, and the brighter color of the male, especially at
the breeding season, results from the fact that the waste products of
the katabolism are deposited as pigments.
When we compare the sexes of mankind morphologically, we find a
greater tendency to variation in man:[31]
All the secondary sexual characters of man are highly variable,
even within the limits of the same race; and they differ much in the
several races.... Numerous measurements carefully made of the stature,
the circumference of the neck and chest, the length of the backbone
and of the arms, in various races ... nearly all show that the males
differ much more from one another than do the females. This fact
indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the
male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged
from their common stock.[32]
Morphologically the development of man is more accentuated than that
of woman. Anthropologists, indeed, regard woman as intermediate in
development between the child and the man.
The outlines of the adult female cranium are intermediate
between those of the child and the adult man; they are softer,
more graceful and delicate, and the apophyses and ridges for
the attachment of muscles are less pronounced,... the forehead
is ... more perpendicular, to such a degree that in a group of
skulls those of the two sexes have been mistaken for different
types; the superciliary ridges and the glabella are less
developed, often not at all; the crown is higher and more
horizontal; the brain weight and cranial capacity are less;
the mastoid apophyses, the inion, the styloid apophyses,
and the condyles of the occipital are of less volume, the
zygomatic and alveolar arches are more regular.[33]
Wagner decided that the brain of a woman, taken as a whole, is
uniformly in a more or less embryonic condition. Huschke says that
woman is always a growing child, and that her brain departs from
the infantile type no more than the other portions of her body.[34]
Weisbach[35] pointed out that the limits of variation in the skull of
man are greater than in that of woman.
Several observers have recorded the opinion that women of
dolichocephalic races are more brachycephalic, and women of
brachycephalic races more dolichocephalic, than the men of the
same races. If this is true, it is a remarkable confirmation of the
conservative tendency of woman. "I have thought for several years that
woman was, in a general way, less dolichocephalic in dolichocephalic
races, and less brachycephalic in brachycephalic races, and that she
had a tendency to approach the typical median form of humanity."[36]
The skin of woman is without exception of a lighter shade than that of
man, even among the dark races. This cannot be due to less exposure,
since the women and men are equally exposed among the uncivilized
races, but is due to the same causes as the more brilliant plumage of
male birds.
The form of woman is rounder and less variable than that of man, and
art has been able to produce a more nearly ideal figure of woman than
of man; at the same time, the bones of woman weigh less with reference
to body weight than the bones of man, and both these facts indicate
less variation and more constitutional passivity in woman. The trunk
of woman is slightly longer than that of man,[37] and her abdomen
is relatively more prominent, and is so represented in art. In these
respects she resembles the child and the lower races, i.e., the less
developed forms.[38] Ranke states that the typical adult male form is
characterized by a relatively shorter trunk, relatively longer arms,
legs, hands, and feet, and relatively to the long upper arms and
thighs by still longer forearms and lower legs, and relatively to
the whole upper extremity by a still longer lower extremity; while
the typical female form approaches the infantile condition in having
a relatively longer trunk, shorter arms, legs, hands, and feet;
relatively to short upper arms still shorter forearms, and relatively
to short thighs still shorter lower legs, and relatively to the whole
short upper extremity[39] a still shorter lower extremity--a very
striking evidence of the ineptitude of woman for the expenditure of
physiological energy through motor action.[40]
The strength of woman, on the other hand, her capacity for motion,
and her muscular mechanical aptitude are far inferior to that of man.
Tests of strength made on 2,300 students of Yale University[41] and
on 1,600 women of Oberlin College[42] show the mean relation of the
strength of the sexes, expressed in kilograms:
Back Legs Right Forearm
Men 153.0 186.0 56.0
Women 54.0 76.5 21.4
The average weight of the men was 63.1 kilograms, and of the women 51
kilograms; and, making deduction for this, the strength of the men
is still not less than twice as great as that of the women. The
anthropometric committee reported to the British Association in 1883
that women are little more than half as strong as men.
The first field day of the Vassar College Athletic Association was
held November 9, 1895, and a comparison of the records of some of
the events with those of similar events at Yale University in the
corresponding year gives us a basis of comparison:[43]
Yale Vassar
100-yard dash 10-2/5 sec. 15¼ sec.
Running broad jump 23 ft. 11 ft. 5 in.
Running high jump 5 ft. 9 in. 4 ft.
220-yard dash 22-3/5 sec. 36¼ sec.
Miss Thompson, whose results were obtained in a psychological
laboratory, concludes that in reactions where strength is involved men
are clearly superior to women, and this is the only respect in which
she finds a marked difference:
Motor ability in most of its forms is better in men than in
women. In strength, rapidity of movement, and rate of fatigue
they have a very decided advantage. These three forms of
superiority are probably all expressions of one and the same
fact--the greater muscular strength of men. Men are very
slightly superior to women in precision of movement. This fact
is probably also connected with their superior muscular force.
In the formation of a new co-ordination women are superior.
The superiority of men in muscular strength is so well known
that it is a universally accepted fact. There has been more
or less dispute as to which sex displayed greater manual
dexterity. According to the present results, that depends on
what is meant by manual dexterity. If it means the ability to
make very delicate and minutely controlled movements, then it
is slightly better in men. If it means ability to co-ordinate
movements rapidly to unforeseen stimuli it is clearly better
in women.[44]
We have no other than a utilitarian basis for judging some variations
advantageous and others disadvantageous. We can estimate them only
with reference to activity and the service or disservice to the
individual and society implied in them, and a given variation must
receive very different valuations at different historical periods in
the development of the race. Departures from the normal are simply
nature's way of "trying conclusions." The variations which have proved
of life-saving advantage have in the course of time become typical,
while the individuals in which unfavorable variations, or defects,
have occurred have not survived in the struggle for existence.
Morphologically men are the more unstable element of society, and this
instability expresses itself in the two extremes of genius and idiocy.
Genius in general is correlated with an excessive development in
brain-growth, stopping dangerously near the line of hypertrophy and
insanity; while microcephaly is a variation in the opposite direction,
in which idiocy results from arrested development of the brain,
usually through premature closing of the sutures; and both these
variations occur more frequently in men than in women. There is also
evidence that defects in general are more frequent in men than in
women.
A committee reported to the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, in 1894,[45] that of some 50,000 children (26,287 boys, and
23,713 girls) seen personally by Dr. Francis Warner (1892-94) 8,941
were found defective in some respect. Of these, 19 per cent. (5,112)
were boys, and 16 per cent. (3,829) were girls.
An examination of 1,345 idiots and imbeciles in Scotland by Mitchell
showed the following distribution of the sexes:
Male Female Male Female
Idiots 430 284 or 100 to 66.0
Imbeciles 321 310 or 100 to 96.5
showing that "the excess of males is much greater among idiots than
among imbeciles; in other words, that the excess of males is most
marked in the graver forms of the disease."[46]
A census of the insane in Prussia in 1880 showed that 9,809 males and
7,827 females were born idiots. Koch's statistics of insanity show
that in idiots there is almost always a majority of males, in the
insane, a majority of females. But the majority of male idiots is so
much greater than the majority of female insane that when idiots and
insane are classed together there remains a majority of males.[47]
Insanity is, however, more frequently induced by external conditions,
and less dependent on imperfect or arrested cerebral development.
Mayr has shown from statistics of Bavaria that insanity is infrequent
before the sixteenth year; and even before the twentieth year the
number of insane is not considerable.[48] In insanity the chances
of recovery of the female are greater than those of the male, and
mortality is higher among insane men than among insane women. There
is practical agreement among pathologists on this point.[49] Campbell
points out in detail[50] that the male sex is more liable than
the female to gross lesions of the nervous system--a fact which he
attributes to the greater variability of the male.
An excess of all other anatomical anomalies, except cleft palate,
is reported among males. Manley reports that of 33 cases of harelip
treated by him only 6 were females.[51] It appears also that
supernumerary digits are more frequent in males. Wilder[52] has
recorded 152 cases of individuals with supernumerary digits, of whom
86 were males, 39 females, and 27 of unknown sex. A similar relation,
according to Bruce, exists in regard to supernumerary nipples.[53]
Muscular abnormalities, monstrosities, deaf-mutism, clubfoot, and
transposition of viscera are also reported as of commoner occurrence
in men than in women.[54] Lombroso states that congenital criminals
are more frequently male than female.[55] Cunningham noted an eighth
(true) rib in 14 of 70 subjects examined. It occurred 7 times in
males and 7 times in females, but the number of females examined
was twice as large as the number of males.[56] The reports of the
registrar-general show that for the years 1884-88, inclusive, the
deaths from congenital defects (spina bifida, imperforate anus, cleft
palate, harelip, etc.) were, taking the average of the five years,
49.6 per million of the persons living in England for the male sex,
and 44.2 for the female.[57]
It has already been noted as a general rule throughout nature that
the male seeks the female and physicians generally believe that men
are sexually more active than women,[58] though woman's need of
reproduction is greater,[59] and celibacy unquestionably impresses
the character of women more deeply than that of man. Additional
evidence of the greater sexual activity of man is furnished by
the overwhelmingly large proportion of the various forms of sexual
perversion reported by psychiatrists in the male sex.
Pathological variations do not become fixed in the species, because
of their disadvantageous nature, but their excess in the male is, as
we have seen in the case of variations which have become fixed, an
expression of the more energetic somatic habit of the male.
A very noticeable expression of the anabolism of woman is her tendency
to put on fat. "Women, as a class, show a greater tendency to put on
fat than men, and the tendency is particularly well marked at puberty,
when some girls become phenomenally stout."[60] The distinctive beauty
of the female form is due to the storing of adipose tissue, and the
form even of very slender women is gracefully rounded in comparison
with that of man. Bischoff found the following relation between muscle
and fat in a man of 33, a woman of 22, and a boy of 16, all of whom
died accidentally and in good physical condition:
Man Woman Boy
Muscle 41.18 35.8 44.2
Fat 18.2 28.2 13.9
The steatopyga of the women of some races and the accumulation of
adipose tissue late in life are quasi-pathological expressions of this
tendency.
In tracing the transition from lower to higher forms of life, we find
a great change in the nature of the blood, or what answers to
the blood, and the constitution of the blood is some index of the
intensity of the metabolic processes going on within the organism. The
sap of plants is thin and watery, corresponding with the preponderant
anabolism of the plant. "Blood is a peculiar kind of sap," and there
is almost as much difference between this sap in warm-blooded and
cold-blooded animals as between the latter and plants. Rich, red blood
characterizes the forms of life fitted for activity and bursts of
energy. In his exhaustive work on the blood Hayem has given a summary
of the results of the investigations of chemists and physiologists
on the differences in the composition of the blood in the two sexes.
Contrary to the assertion of Robin, Hayem finds that the white
blood-corpuscles are not more numerous in women than in men, and he
also states that the number of hæmatoblasts is the same in the two
sexes. All chemists are agreed, however, that the number of red
corpuscles is greater in men than in women. Nasse found in man 0.05824
of iron to 100, and in woman only 0.0499. Becquerel and Rodier give
0.0565 for man, 0.0511 for woman, and Schmidt, Scherer, and others
give similar results. Welcker (using a chromometer) found between
the corpuscles of man and woman the relation of 5 to 4.7, and Hayem
confirmed this by numeration. Cadet found in woman on the average 4.9
million corpuscles per cubic millimeter, and in man 5.2 million. More
recently Korniloff, using still another method--the spectroscope of
Vierordt--has reached about the same result. The proportion of red
blood-corpuscles varies according to individual constitution, race,
and sex. In robust men Lacanu found 136 red corpuscles in 1,000; in
weak men, only 116 in 1,000; in robust women, only 126 in 1,000; and
in weak women, 117.[61] Professor Jones has taken the specific gravity
of the blood of above 1,500 individuals of all ages and of both
sexes.[62] An examination of his charts shows that the specific
gravity of the male is higher than that of the female between the
ages of 16 and 68. Between the ages of 16 and 45 the average specific
gravity of the male is about 1,058, and that of the female about
1,054.5. At 45 years the specific gravity of the male begins to fall
rapidly and that of the female to rise rapidly, and at 55 they are
almost equal; but the male remains slightly higher until 68 years,
when it falls below that of the female. The period of marked
difference in the specific gravity of the blood is thus seen to be
coincident with the period of menstruation in the female. A chart
constructed by Leichtenstern, based upon observations on 191
individuals and showing variations in the amount of hæmoglobin
with age, is also reproduced by Professor Jones, suggesting that
the variations in specific gravity of the blood with age and sex
are closely related to variations in the amount of hæmoglobin.
Leichtenstern states that the excess in men of hæmoglobin is 7 per
cent. until the tenth year, 8 per cent. between 11 and 50 years, and
5 per cent. after the fiftieth year.[63] Jones states further[64] that
the specific gravity is higher in persons of the upper classes and
lower in the poorer classes. Observations of boys who were inmates of
workhouses gave a mean specific gravity of 1,052.8 and on schoolboys
a mean of 1,056, while among the undergraduate students of Cambridge
University he found a mean of 1,059.5. Several men of very high
specific gravity in the last group had distinguished themselves in
athletics. "Workhouse boys are in most cases of poor physique, and
one can hardly find a better antithesis than the general type of
physique common among the athletic members of such a university as
Cambridge."[65] There is no more conclusive evidence of an organic
difference between man and woman than these tests of the blood.
They permit us to associate a high specific gravity, red corpuscles,
plentiful hæmoglobin, and a katabolic constitution.
A comparison of the waste products of the body and of the quantity
of materials consumed in the metabolic process indicates a relatively
larger consumption of energy by man. It is stated that man produces
more urine than woman in the following proportion: men, 1,000 to 2,000
grams daily; women, 1,000 to 1,400 grams. As age advances, the amount
diminishes absolutely and relatively in proportion to the diminution
of the energy of the metabolic process. A table prepared from adults
of both sexes, twenty-five years of age, of the average weight of
sixty kilograms, shows a larger proportion both of inorganic and
organic substances in the urine of men.[66] Milne Edwards has found
that the bones of the male are slightly richer in inorganic substances
than those of the female.[67]
The lung capacity of women is less, and they consume less oxygen and
produce less carbonic acid than men of equal weight, although the
number of respirations is slightly higher than in man. On this account
women suffer deprivation of air more easily than men. They are not so
easily suffocated, and are reported to endure charcoal fumes better,
and live in high altitudes where men cannot endure the deprivation of
oxygen.[68] The number of deaths from chloroform is reckoned as from
two to four times as great in males as in females, and this although
chloroform is used in childbirth. Children also bear chloroform
well.[69] Women, like children, require more sleep normally than men,
but "Macfarlane states that they can better bear the loss of sleep,
and most physicians will agree with him.... One of the greatest
difficulties we have to contend with in nervous men is sleeplessness,
a result, no doubt, of excessive katabolism."[70] Loss of sleep is
a strain which, like gestation, women are able to meet because of
their anabolic surplus. The fact that women undertake changes more
reluctantly than men, but adjust themselves to changed fortunes more
readily, is due to the same metabolic difference. Man has, in short,
become somatically a more specialized animal than woman, and feels
more keenly any disturbance of normal conditions, while he has not
the same physiological surplus as woman with which to meet the
disturbance.
Lower forms of life have the remarkable quality of restoring a lost
organ, and of living as separate individuals if divided. This power
gradually diminishes as we ascend the scale of life, and is lost by
the higher forms. It is a remarkable fact, however, that the lower
human races, the lower classes of society, women and children, show
something of the same quality in their superior tolerance of surgical
disease. The indifference of savage races to wounds and loss of
blood has everywhere been remarked by ethnologists. Dr. Bartels has
formulated the law of resistance to surgical and traumatic treatment
in the following sentence: "The higher the race, the less the
tolerance, and the lower the culture-condition in a given race, the
greater the tolerance."[71] The greater disvulnerability of women is
generally recognized by surgeons. The following figures from Lawrie,
Malgaigne, and Fenwick are representative:[72]
LAWRIE (GLASGOW)
==============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------
Pathological amputations...|110 cases| 29 || 41 cases| 7
Traumatic amputations......|106 " | 59 || 14 " | 4
|---------+------++---------+------
Total..................|216 cases| 88 || 55 cases| 11
|----------------++----------------
|or, 40.74 deaths|| 20 deaths
| per 100 || per 100
--------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 20.74 per cent. in favor of women.
MALGAIGNE (HOSPITALS OF PARIS)
==============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------
Major pathological amputa- | | || |
tions................... |280 cases| 138 || 98 cases| 44
Minor pathological amputa- | | || |
tions................... |106 cases| 9 || 40 cases| 2
Major traumatic amputations|165 " | 107 || 17 " | 10
Minor traumatic amputations| 73 " | 13 || 10 " | 0
|---------+------++--------+------
Total..................|624 cases| 267 ||165 cases| 56
|----------------++----------------
|or, 37.98 deaths|| 34.18 deaths
| per 100 || per 100
--------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 3.8 per cent. in favor of women.
FENWICK (NEWCASTLE, GLASGOW, EDINBURGH)
==============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+---------+------++---------+------
Amputations................|304 cases| 86 || 64 cases| 16
|----------------++----------------
|or, 27.86 deaths|| 25 deaths per
| per 100 || 100
--------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 2.86 per cent. in favor of women.
TOTAL FOR THE THREE SERIES
===============================================================
| Men |Deaths|| Women |Deaths
---------------------------+----------+------++---------+------
Amputations................|1144 cases| 441 ||284 cases| 83
|-----------------++----------------
|or, 38.56 deaths || 29.29 deaths
| per 100 || per 100
---------------------------------------------------------------
A difference of 9.27 per cent. in favor of women.
Legouest states in the same article that the lowest mortality of all
is in children from 5 to 15 years of age. Ellis quotes a passage from
a paper read by Lombroso at the International Congress of Experimental
Psychology held in London:
Billroth experimented on women when attempting a certain
operation (excision of the pylorus) for the first time,
judging that they were less sensitive and therefore more
_disvulnerable_, i.e., better able to resist pain. Carle
assured me that women would let themselves be operated upon
almost as though their flesh were an alien thing. Giordano
told me that even the pains of childbirth caused relatively
little suffering to women, in spite of their apprehensions.
Dr. Martini, one of the most distinguished dentists of Turin,
has informed me of the amazement he has felt at seeing women
endure more easily and courageously than men every kind of
dental operation. Mela, too, has found that men will, under
such circumstances, faint oftener than women.[73]
The same tolerance of pain and misery in women is shown by an
examination of the number of male and female suicides from physical
suffering. Von Oettingen states that in 30,000 cases the percentage of
suicides from physical suffering was in men 11.4, in women 11.3;[74]
and Lombroso, following Morselli, gives the following table
representing the proportion out of a hundred suicides of each sex
resulting from the same cause:[75]
------------------------------------------------------
| Men | Women
----------------------------------+---------+----------
Germany (1852-61).................| 9.61 | 8.08
Prussia (1869-77).................| 6.00 | 7.00
Saxony (1875-78)..................| 4.61 | 6.21
Belgium...........................| 1.34 | 0.84
France (1873-78) .................| 14.28 | 13.56
Italy (1866-77)...................| 6.70 | 8.50
Vienna (1851-59)..................| 9.20 | 10.04
Vienna (1869-78)..................| 7.73 | 70.37
Paris (1851-59)...................| 10.27 | 11.22
Madrid (1884).....................| 31.81 | 31.25
------------------------------------------------------
But these figures represent the numbers of suicides in each hundred of
either sex, whereas suicide is three to four times as frequent among
men as among women, and the absolute proportion of suicide among men
from physical pain is, therefore, overwhelmingly great. Still more
significant is a table given by Lombroso showing the percentage of
suicides from want:[76]
------------------------------------------------------
| Men | Women
--------------------------------------+-------+-------
Germany (1852-61).....................| 37.75 | 18.46
Saxony (1875-78)......................| 6.64 | 1.52
Belgium...............................| 4.65 | 4.02
Italy (1866-77).......................| 7.00 | 4.60
Italy (1866-77) (financial reverses)..| 12.80 | 2.20
Norway (1866-70)......................| 10.30 | 4.50
Vienna (1851-59)......................| 6.64 | 3.10
------------------------------------------------------
But the excess of male suicides over females is so great that,
reckoned absolutely, about one woman to seven or ten men is driven by
want to take her life.
Physical suffering and want are among the motives which,
constitutional differences aside, would appeal with about the same
force to the two sexes. But the great excess both of suicide (3 or
4 men to 1 woman) and of crime (4 or 5 men to 1 woman) in men, while
directly conditioned by a manner of life more subject to vicissitude
and catastrophe, is still remotely due to the male, katabolic tendency
which has historically eventuated in a life of this nature in the
male.
Woman offers in general a greater resistance to disease than man. The
following table from the registrar-general's report for 1888[77] gives
the mortality in England per million inhabitants at all ages and for
both sexes from 1854 to 1887 in a group of diseases chiefly affecting
young children:
------------------------------------------------------
Disease | Year | Male | Female
----------------------------+---------+------+--------
Smallpox....................| 1854-87 | 183 | 148
Measles.....................| 1848-87 | 426 | 408
Scarlet fever...............| 1859-85 | 763 | 738
Diphtheria..................| 1859-87 | 157 | 176
Croup.......................| 1848-87 | 221 | 192
Whooping-cough..............| 1848-87 | 451 | 554
Diarrhoea, dysentery........| 1848-87 | 932 | 835
Enteric fever...............| 1869-87 | 288 | 277
------------------------------------------------------
or, a total mortality of 3,421 per million for the males and 3,328 for
the females. The greater fatality of diphtheria and whooping-cough in
the female is attributed to the smaller larynx of girls, and to their
habit of kissing. In diphtheria, indeed, the number of girls attacked
is in excess of that of the boys, and it does not appear that their
mortality is higher when this is considered.[78] Statistics based on
nearly half a million deaths from scarlet fever in England and Wales
(1859-85) show a mean annual in males of 778, and in females of 717,
per million living.[79] Dr. Farr reports on the mortality from cholera
in the epidemic years of 1849, 1854, and 1866, that
the mean mortality from all causes in the three cholera years
was, for males, 19.3 in excess, for females, 17.0 in excess
of the average mortality to 10,000 living; so females suffered
less than males.... The mortality is higher in boys than in
girls at all ages under 15; at the ages of reproduction, 25 to
45, the mortality of women, many of them pregnant, exceeds the
mortality of men; but at the ages after 65 the mortality of
men exceeds the mortality of women.[80]
Statistics show that woman is more susceptible to many diseases,
but in less danger than man when attacked, because of her anabolic
surplus, and also that the greatest mortality in woman is during the
period of reproduction, when the specific gravity of the blood is low
and her anabolic surplus small. It is significant also that the point
of highest mortality from disease and of the highest rate of suicide
in the female, as compared with the male, falls at about 15 years,
and is to be associated with the rapid physiological changes preceding
that time.[81]
The numerical relation of the sexes at birth seems to be more variable
in those regions where economic conditions and social usages are least
settled, but in civilized countries the relation is fairly constant,
and statistics of 32 countries and states between the years 1865 and
1883 show that to every 100 girls 105 boys are born, or including
stillborn, 100 girls to 106.6 boys.[82] But the mortality of male
children so much exceeds that of female that at the age of five the
sexes are about in numerical equilibrium; and in the adult population
of all European countries the average numerical relation of the
sexes is reckoned as 102.1 women to 100 men. Von Oettingen gives a
representative table;[83] compiled from statistics of eight European
countries, showing that (omitting the stillborn) 124.71 boys to 100
girls die before the end of the first year, and that between the years
of 2 and 5 the proportion is 102.91 boys to 100 girls; or, about 25
per cent. excess of boys in the first year, and 3 per cent. in the
years between 1 and 5. In the intra-uterine period and at the very
threshold of life the mortality of males is still greater. The figures
of Wappaeus were 100 stillborn girls to 140.3 boys; Quetelet gave
the proportion as 100:133.5; and the statistics of fourteen European
countries during the years 1865-83 show that 130.2 boys were stillborn
to every 100 girls.[84] So that, while more boys than girls are
born living, still more are born dead. That this astonishingly high
mortality is due in part to the somewhat larger size of boys at
birth and the narrowness of the maternal pelvis is indicated by the
statement of Collins, of the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital, Dublin, that
within half an hour after birth only 1 female died to 16 males; within
the first hour 2 females to 19 males; and within the first 6 hours, 7
females to 29 males.[85] But that this explanation is not sufficient
is shown by the fact that a high mortality of boys extends through
the whole of the first year, and through five years, in a diminishing
ratio, and also that the tenacity of woman on life, as will be shown
immediately, is greater at every age than man's except during a period
of about five years following puberty. "There must be," says Ploss,
"some cause which operates more energetically in the removal of
male than of female children just before and after birth;"[86] but,
besides the more violent movement of boys and their greater size,
no explanation of the cause has been advanced more acceptably than
Haushofer's teleological one, quoted by Ploss, that Nature wished to
make a more perfect being of man and therefore threw more obstacles
in his way. A satisfactory explanation is found if we regard the young
female as more anabolic, and more quiescent, with a stored surplus of
nutriment by which in the helpless and critical period of change from
intra- to extra-uterine conditions it is able to get its adjustment to
life. The constructive phase of metabolism has prevailed in them even
during fetal life. That there is need of a surplus of nutrition in
the child at birth, or that a surplus will stand it in good stead,
is indicated by the results of the weighing of children communicated
by Winckel to the Gynaecological Society in Berlin in 1862. Winckel
weighed 100 new-born children, 56 boys and 44 girls, showing that
birth was uniformly followed by a loss of weight. The average
diminution was about 108 grams the first day, and but little less
the second day. At the end of five days the loss was 220 grams,
six-sevenths of which occurred during the first two days.[87] The
tendency to decreased vitality in girls after maturity and before
marriage, just referred to, must be associated with the katabolic
changes implied in menstruation and the newness to the system of this
destructive phase of metabolism.
We should expect the death-rate of men to run high during the period
of manhood, in consequence of their greater exposure to peril,
hardship, and the storm and stress of life. But two tendencies operate
to reduce the comparative mortality of men between the twentieth and
about the fortieth year: the fact of the severe male mortality in
infancy, which has removed the constitutionally weak contingent,
and the fact that during this period women are subject to death in
connection with childbirth. So that in the prime of life the mortality
of males does not markedly exceed that of females. But the statistics
of longevity show that with the approach of old age the number of
women of a given age surviving is in excess of the men, and that their
relative tenacity of life increases with increasing years. Ornstein
has shown, from the official statistics of Greece from 1878 to 1883,
that in every period of five years between the ages of 85 and 110
years and upward a larger number of women survive than of men, and in
the following proportion:
------------------------------------
Years | Men | Women
--------------------+-------+-------
85-90 | 1,296 | 1,347
90-95 | 700 | 820
95-100 | 305 | 370
100-105 | 116 | 168
105-110 | 52 | 69
110 and over | 20 | 34
------------------------------------
Of the 459 centenarians 188 were men and 271 were women.[88] In
Bavaria the women aged from 51 to 55 years alive in 1874 had lived in
the aggregate more than seven million years, while the men of the same
age had lived not so much as six and one-half million.[89] Turquan[90]
gives a table showing the death-rate of centenarians in all France
during a period of twenty years (1866-85). From this it appears that
there died in these years an annual average of 73 centenarians, of
whom 27 were men and 46 women. In only one year of the twenty did the
deaths of men exceed those of women. Lombroso and Ferrero have shown
that between 1870 and 1879 the inhabitants of the prisons and convict
establishments in Italy who were over 60 years of age showed a
percentage of 4.3 among the women, and 3.2 among the men, although the
number of men condemned to prison for long periods is far greater than
among women.
Women are not only longer-lived than men, but have greater
powers of resistance to misfortune and deep grief.
This is a well-known law, which in the case of the female
criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her
longevity and the toughness with which she endures the
hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... I
know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the
age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29
without any grave injury to health.[91]
Woman's resistance to death is thus more marked at the two extremes
of life, infancy and old age, the periods in which her anabolism is
uninterrupted. Menstruation, reproduction, and lactation are at once
the cause of an anabolic surplus and the means of getting rid of it.
At the extremes of life no demand of this kind is made on woman,
and her anabolic nature expresses itself at these times in greater
resistance.
Dr. Lloyd Jones has determined that between 17 and 45 years of age the
specific gravity of the blood of women is lower than that of men. In
old women the specific gravity rises above that of old men, and he
suggests that their greater longevity is due to this.[92] No doubt
the greater longevity of women is to be associated with the rise
in specific gravity of their blood, but this rise in the specific
gravity of women after 45 years is consequent upon their anabolic
constitution. High specific gravity in general is associated with
abundant and rich nutrition; it falls in women during pregnancy,
lactation, and menstruation, and when these functions cease it is
natural that the constructive metabolic tendency on which they are
dependent should show itself in a heightened specific gravity of the
blood (i.e., greater richness), and in consequence greater longevity.
Some facts in the brain development of women point to the same
conclusion. The growth of the brain is relatively more rapid in
women than in men before the twentieth year. Between 15 and 20 it has
reached its maximum, and from that time there is a gradual decline in
weight until about the fiftieth year, when there is an acceleration
of growth, followed by a renewed diminution after the sixtieth year.
The maximum of brain weight is almost reached by men at 20 years,
but there is a slow increase until 30 or 35 years. There is then a
diminution until the fiftieth year, followed by an acceleration, and
at 60 years again a rapid diminution in weight; but the acceleration
is more marked and the final diminution less marked in woman than in
man.[93] A table prepared by Topinard shows that woman from 20 to 60
years of age has from 126 to 164 grams less brain weight than man,
while her deficit from 60 to 90 years is from 123 to 158 grams.[94]
The only explanation at hand of this relative superiority of
brain weight in old women is that with the close of the period of
reproduction (the anabolic surplus being no longer consumed in the
processes associated with reproduction) the constructive tendency
still asserts itself, and a slight access of growth and vitality
results to the organism.
* * * * *
It must be confessed that the testimony of anthropologists on the
difference in variability of men and women is to be accepted with
great caution. As a class they have gone on the assumption that
woman is an inferior creation, and have almost totally neglected
to distinguish between the congenital characters of woman and those
acquired as the result of a totally different relation to society
on the part of women and men. They have also failed to appreciate
the fact that differences from man are not necessarily points of
inferiority, but adaptations to different and specialized modes of
functioning. But, whatever may be the final interpretation of details,
I think the evidence is sufficient to establish the following
main propositions: Man consumes energy more rapidly; woman is more
conservative of it. The structural variability of man is mainly toward
motion; woman's variational tendency is not toward motion, but toward
reproduction. Man is fitted for feats of strength and bursts of
energy; woman has more stability and endurance. While woman remains
nearer to the infantile type, man approaches more to the senile.
The extreme variational tendency of man expresses itself in a larger
percentage of genius, insanity, and idiocy; woman remains more nearly
normal.
The fact that society is composed of two sexes, numerically almost
equal, but differing in organic and social habits, is too significant
to remain without influence on the structural and occupational sides
of human life, and in the following chapters we shall note some of the
influences of sex, and of the differences in bodily habit of men and
women, on social forms and activities.
SEX AND PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTROL
The greater strength and restlessness of man and the more stationary
condition of woman have a striking social expression in the fact that
the earliest groupings of population were about the females rather
than the males.
While at a disadvantage in point of force when compared with the male,
the female has enjoyed a negative superiority in the fact that her
sexual appetite was not so sharp as that of the male. Primitive man,
when he desired a mate, sought her. The female was more passive and
stationary. She exercised the right of choice, and had the power to
transfer her choice more arbitrarily than has usually been recognized;
but the need of protection and assistance in providing for offspring
inclined her to a permanent union, and doubtless natural selection
favored the groups in which parents co-operated in caring for the
offspring. But assuming a relation permanent enough to be called
marriage, the man was still, as compared with the woman, unsettled
and unsocial. He secured food by violence or cunning, and hunting and
fighting were fit expressions of his somatic habit.
The woman was the social nucleus, the point to which he returned from
his wanderings. In this primitive stage of society, however, the bond
between woman and child was altogether more immediate and constraining
than the bond between woman and man. The maternal instinct is
reinforced by necessary and constant association with the child. We
can hardly find a parallel for the intimacy of association between
mother and child during the period of lactation; and, in the absence
of domesticated animals or suitable foods, and also, apparently, from
simple neglect formally to wean the child, this connection is greatly
prolonged. The child is frequently suckled from four to five years,
and occasionally from ten to twelve.[95] In consequence we find
society literally growing up about the woman. The mother and her
children, and her children's children, and so on indefinitely in
the female line, form a group. But the men were not so completely
incorporated in this group as the women, not only because parentage
was uncertain and naming of children consequently on the female side,
but because the man was neither by necessity nor disposition so much a
home-keeper as the women and their children.
The tangential disposition of the male is expressed in the system of
exogamy so characteristic of tribal life. The movement toward exogamy
doubtless originates in the restlessness of the male, the tendency to
make new co-ordinations, the stimulus to seek more unfamiliar women,
and the emotional interest in making unfamiliar sexual alliances. But,
quite aside from its origin, exogamy is an energetic expression of
the male nature. Natural selection favors the process by sparing the
groups which by breeding out have heightened their physical vigor.[96]
There results from this a social condition which, from the standpoint
of modern ideas, is very curious. The man makes, and, by force of
convention, finally must make, his matrimonial alliances only with
women of other groups; but the woman still remains in her own group,
and the children are members of her group, while the husband remains
a member of his own clan, and is received, or may be received, as
a guest in the clan of his wife. Upon his death his property is
not shared by his children, nor by his wife, since these are not
members of his clan; but it falls to the nearest of kin within his
clan--usually to his sister's children.
The maternal system of descent is found in all parts of the world
where social advance stands at a certain level, and the evidence
warrants the assumption that every group which advances to a culture
state passes through this stage. Morgan gives an account of this
system among the Iroquois:
Each household was made up on the principle of kin. The
married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, were of
the same gens or clan, the symbol or totem of which was often
painted upon the house, while their husbands and the wives of
their sons belonged to several other gentes. The children were
of the gens of their mother. While husband and wife belonged
to different gentes, the predominating number in each
household would be of the same gens, namely, that of their
mothers. As a rule the sons brought home their wives, and in
some cases the husbands of the daughters were admitted to
the maternal household. Thus each household was composed of
a mixture of persons of different gentes, but this would not
prevent the numerical ascendency of the particular gens to
whom the house belonged. In a village of one hundred and
twenty houses, as the Seneca village of Tiotohatton described
by Mr. Greenbalge in 1677, there would be several houses
belonging to each gens. It presented a general picture of the
Indian life in all parts of America at the epoch of European
discovery.[97]
Morgan also quotes Rev. Ashur Wright, for many years a missionary
among the Senecas and familiar with their language and customs:
As to their family system, when occupying the old log houses,
it is probable that some one clan predominated, the women
taking in husbands, however, from the other clans, and
sometimes for novelty, some of their sons bringing in their
young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their
mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were
doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common,
but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless
to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children
or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any
time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge, and after
such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to
disobey; the house would become too hot for him, and, unless
saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must
retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start
a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the
great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not
hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns," so
it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send
him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination
of the chiefs, also, always rested with them.[98]
Traces of the maternal system are everywhere found on the American
continent, and in some regions it is still in force. McGee says of the
Seri stock of the southwest coast, now reduced to a single tribe, that
the claims of a suitor are pressed by his female relatives, and, if
the suit is favorably regarded by the mother and uncles of the girl,
the suitor is provisionally installed in the house, without purchase
price and presents. He is then expected to show his worthiness of a
permanent relation by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and by
showing himself an implacable foe to aliens. He must support all the
female relatives of his bride's family by the products of his skill
and industry in hunting and fishing for a year. He is the general
protector of the girl's family, and especially of the girl, whose
bower and pelican-skin couch he shares, "not as husband, but as
continent companion," for a year. If all goes well, he is then
permanently received as "consort-guest," and his children are added
to the clan of his mother-in-law.[99] With few exceptions, descent
was formerly reckoned in Australia in the female line, and the usage
survives in some regions. Howitt, in a letter to Professor Tylor,
reports of the tribes near Maryborough, Queensland:
When a man marries a woman from a distant locality, he goes to
her tribelet and identifies himself with her people. This is
a rule with very few exceptions. Of course, I speak of them
as they were in their wild state. He becomes a part of, and
one of, the family. In the event of a war expedition, the
daughter's husband acts as a blood-relation, and will fight
and kill his own blood-relations, if blows are struck by his
wife's relations. I have seen a father and son fighting under
these circumstances, and the son would most certainly have
killed the father, if others had not interfered.[100]
In Australia there is also a very sharp social expression of the fact
of sex in the division of the group into male and female classes in
addition to the division into clans.[101] In the Malay Archipelago the
same system is found.
Among the Padang Malays the child always belongs to its
mother's _suku_, and all blood-relationship is reckoned
through the wife as the real transmitter of the family, the
husband being only a stranger. For this reason his heirs are
not his own children, but the children of his sister, his
brothers, and other uterine relations; children are the
natural heirs of their mother only.... We may assume that,
wherever exogamy is now found coexisting with inheritance
through the father (as among Rejangs and Bataks, the people
of Nias and Timor, or the Alfurs of Ceram and Buru), this was
formerly through the mother; and that the other system has
grown up out of dislike to the inconveniences arising from the
insecure and dependent condition of the husband in the wife's
family.[102]
In Africa descent through females is the rule, with exceptions. The
practice of the Wamoima, where the son of the sister is preferred in
legacies, because "a man's own son is only the son of his wife," is
typical.[103] Battel reported that the state of Loango was ruled by
four princes, the sons of the former king's sister, since the own sons
of the king never succeeded.[104]
Traces of this system are found in China and Japan, and it is still in
full force in parts of India. Among the Kasias of northeast India the
husband resides in the house of his wife, or visits her occasionally.
Laws of rank and property follow the strictest maternal type;
when a couple separate, the children remain with the mother;
the son does not succeed his father, but the raja's neglected
offspring may become a common peasant or laborer; the sister's
son succeeds to rank, and is heir to the property.[105]
Male kinship prevails among the Arabs, but Professor Robertson Smith
has discovered abundant evidence that the contrary practice prevailed
in ancient Arabia.
The women of the Jâhilîya, or some of them, had the right to
dismiss their husbands, and the form of dismissal was this:
If they lived in a tent, they turned it round, so that, if the
door had faced east, it now faced west, and when the man saw
this, he knew that he was dismissed, and did not enter.[106]
And after the establishment of the male system the women still held
property--a survival from maternal times. A form of divorce pronounced
by a husband was, "Begone! for I will no longer drive thy flocks to
the pasture."[107]
Our evidence seems to show that, when something like regular
marriage began, and a free tribeswoman had one husband or one
definite group of husbands at a time, the husbands at first
came to her and she did not go to them.[108]
Numerous survivals of the older system are also found among the
Hebrews. The servant of Abraham anticipated that the bride whom he was
sent to bring for Isaac might be unwilling to leave her home, and the
presents which he carried went to Rebekah's mother and brother.[109]
Laban says to Jacob, "These daughters are my daughters, and these
children are my children;"[110] the obligation to blood-vengeance
rests apparently on the maternal kindred;[111] Samson's Philistine
wife remained among her people;[112] and the injunction in Gen. 2:24,
"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife," refers to the primitive Hebraic form of
marriage.[113] Where the matriarchate prevails we naturally find
no prejudice against marriage with a half-sister on the father's
side, while union with a uterine sister is incestuous. Sara was a
half-sister of Abraham on the father's side, and Tamar could have
married her half-brother Amnon,[114] though they were both children of
David; and a similar condition prevailed in Athens under the laws of
Solon.[115] Herodotus says of the Lycians:
Ask a Lycian who he is, and he will answer by giving his
own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line.
Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their
children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign
woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the
first person in the state, the children forfeit all rights
of citizenship.[116]
Herodotus also relates that when Darius gave to the wife of
Intaphernes permission to claim the life of a single man of her
kindred, she chose her brother, saying that both husband and children
could be replaced.[117] The declaration of Antigone in Sophocles,[118]
that she would have performed for neither husband nor children the
toil which she undertook for Polynices, against the will of the
citizens, indicates that the tie of a common womb was stronger than
the social tie of marriage. The extraordinary honor, privilege,
and proprietary rights enjoyed by ancient Egyptian and Babylonian
wives[119] are traceable to an earlier maternal organization.
All ethnologists admit that descent through females has been very
widespread, but some deny that this system has been universally
prevalent at any stage of culture. Those who have diminished its
importance, however, have done so chiefly in reinforcement of their
denials of the theory of promiscuity. It has been very generally
assumed that maternal descent is due solely to uncertainty of
paternity, and that an admission that the maternal system has been
universal is practically an admission of promiscuity. Opponents
of this theory have consequently felt called upon to minimize the
importance of maternal descent.[120] But descent through females is
not, in fact, fully explained by uncertainty of parentage on the male
side. It is due to the larger social fact, including this biological
one, that the bond between mother and child is the closest in nature,
and that the group grew up about the more stationary female; and
consequently the questions of maternal descent and promiscuity are
by no means so inseparable as has commonly been assumed. We may
accept Sir Henry Maine's terse remark that "paternity is a matter
of inference, as opposed to maternity, which is a matter of
observation,"[121] without concluding that society would have been
first of all patriarchal in organization, even if paternity had been
also a matter of observation. For the association of the woman with
the child is immediate and perforce, but the immediate interest of the
man is in the woman, through the power of her sexual attractiveness,
and his interest in the child is secondary and mediated through her.
This relation being a constant one, having its roots in the nature
of sex rather than in the uncertainty of parentage, we may safely
conclude that the so-called "mother-right" has everywhere preceded
"father-right," and was the fund from which the latter was evolved.
But while it is natural that the children and the group should grow up
about the mother, it is not conceivable that woman should definitely
or long control the activities of society, especially on their motor
side. In view of his superior power of making movements and applying
force, the male must inevitably assume control of the life direction
of the group, no matter what the genesis of the group. It is not
a difficult conclusion that, if woman's leaping, lifting, running,
climbing, and slugging capacity is inferior to man's, by however
slight a margin, her fighting capacity is less in the same degree;
for battle is only an application of force, and there has never been
a moment in the history of society when the law of might, tempered by
sexual affinity, did not prevail. We must then, in fact, recognize
a sharp distinction between the law of descent and the fact of
authority.
The male was everywhere present in primitive society, and everywhere
made his force felt. We can see this illustrated most plainly in the
animal group, where the male is the leader, by virtue of his strength.
There is also a stage of human society which may be called the
prematriarchal stage, from the fact that ideas of kinship are so
feeble that no extensive social filiation is effected through this
principle, in consequence of which the group has not reached the
tribal stage of organization on the basis of kinship, but remains in
the primitive biological relation of male, female, and offspring. The
Botocudos, Fuegians, Eskimos, West Australians, Bushmen, and Veddahs
represent this primitive stage more or less completely; they have
apparently not reached the stage where the fact of kinship expresses
itself in maternal organization. They live in scattered bands, held
together loosely by convenience, safety, and inertia, and the male
is the leader; but the leadership of the male in this case, as among
animals, is very different from the organized and institutional
expression of the male force in systems of political control growing
out of achievement. This involves a social history through which these
low tribes have not passed.
Organization cannot proceed very far in the absence of social mass,
and the collection of social mass took place unconsciously about the
female as a universal preliminary of the conscious synthetization of
the mass through males. From the side of organization, the negative
accretion of population about female centers and filiation through
blood is very precious, since filiation based on relation to females
prepares the way for organization based on motor activities.[122]
But in the prematernal stage, in the maternal stage, and in the
patriarchal stage the male force was present and was the carrier
of the social will. In the fully maternal system, indeed, the male
authority is only thinly veiled, or not at all. Filiation through
female descent precedes filiation through achievement, because it is
a function of somatic conditions, in the main, while filiation through
achievement is a function of historical conditions. This advantage of
maternal organization in point of time embarrasses and obscures the
individual and collective expression of the male force, but under
the veil of female nomenclature and in the midst of the female
organization we can always detect the presence of the male authority.
Bachofen's conception of the maternal system as a political system was
erroneous, as Dargun and others have pointed out,[123] though woman
has been reinforced by the fact of descent, and has so figured
somewhat in political systems.
A most instructive example of the parallel existence of descent
through females and of male authority is found in the Wyandot tribe
of Indians, in which also the participation of woman in the regulative
activities of society is, perhaps, more systematically developed than
in any other single case among maternal peoples. Major Powell gives
the following outline of the civil and military government of this
tribe:
The civil government inheres in a system of councils and
chiefs. In each gens there is a council, composed of four
women, called _Yu-waí-yu-wá-na_. These four women councilors
select a chief of the gens from its male members--that is,
from their brothers and sons. This gentile chief is the head
of the gentile council. The council of the tribe is composed
of the aggregated gentile councils. The tribal council,
therefore, is composed one-fifth of men and four-fifths of
women. The sachem of the tribe, or tribal chief, is chosen by
the chiefs of the gentes. There is sometimes a grand council
of the gens, composed of the councilors of the gens proper and
all the heads of households (women) and leading men--brothers
and sons. There is also a grand council of the tribe, composed
of the council of the tribe proper and the heads of households
of the tribe, and all the leading men of the tribe....
The four women councilors of the gens are chosen by the heads
of households, themselves being women. There is no formal
election, but frequent discussion is had over the matter from
time to time, in which a sentiment grows up within the gens
and throughout the tribe that, in the event of the death
of any councilor, a certain person will take her place. In
this manner there are usually one, two, or more potential
councilors in each gens, who are expected to attend all the
meetings of the council, though they take no part in the
deliberations and have no vote. When a woman is installed as
a councilor, a feast is prepared by the gens to which she
belongs, and to this feast all the members of the tribe are
invited. The woman is painted and dressed in her best attire,
and the sachem of the tribe places upon her head the gentile
chaplet of feathers, and announces in a formal manner to
the assembled guests that the woman has been chosen a
councilor.... The gentile chief is chosen by the council women
after consultation with the other women and men of the gens.
Often the gentile chief is a potential chief through a period
of probation. During this time he attends the meetings of the
council, but takes no part in the deliberations and has no
vote. At his installation, the council women invest him with
an elaborately ornamented tunic, place upon his head a chaplet
of feathers, and paint the gentile totem upon his face.... The
sachem of the tribe is selected by the men belonging to the
council of the tribe.
The management of military affairs inheres in the military
council and chief. The military council is composed of all the
able-bodied men of the tribe; the military chief is chosen
by the council from the Porcupine gens. Each gentile chief is
responsible for the military training of the youth under his
authority. There are usually one or more potential military
chiefs, who are the close companions and assistants of the
chief in time of war and, in case of the death of the chief,
take his place in the order of seniority.[124]
In this tribe the numerical recognition of women is striking, and
indicates that they are the original core of society. They are still
responsible for society, in a way, but all the offices involving
motor activity are deputed to men. Thus women, as heads of households,
choose four women councilors of the clan (gens), and these choose
the fifth member, who is a man and the head of the council and chief
of the clan. The tribal chief is, however, chosen by males, and in
the military organization, which represents the group capacity for
violence, the women have not even a nominal recognition. The real
authority rests with those who are most fit to exercise it. Female
influence persists as a matter of habit, until, under the pressure of
social, particularly of military, activities, the breaking-up of the
habit and a new accommodation follows the accumulation of a larger
fund of social energy.
The men of any group are at any time in possession of the force to
change the habits of the group and push aside any existing system. But
the savage is not revolutionary; his life and his social sanctions are
habitual. He is averse to change as such, and retains form and rite
after their meaning is lost. We consequently find an expression of
social respect for woman under the maternal system suggestive of
chivalry, and even a formal elevation of women to authority in groups
where the actual control is in the hands of men.
In the Mariana Islands the position of woman was distinctly superior;
even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on
marriage, the wife dictated everything and the man could undertake
nothing without her approval; but, if the woman committed an offense,
the man was held responsible and suffered the punishment. The women
could speak in the assembly, they held property, and if a woman asked
anything of a man, he gave it up without a murmur. If a wife was
unfaithful, the husband could send her home, keep her property, and
kill the adulterer; but if the man was guilty, or even suspected of
the same offense, the women of the neighborhood destroyed his house
and all his visible property, and the owner was fortunate if he
escaped with a whole skin; and if a wife was not pleased with her
husband, she withdrew, and a similar attack followed. On this account
many men were not married, preferring to live with paid women.
Likewise, in the Gilbert Islands a man shows the same respect to a
woman as to a chief, by stepping aside when he meets her. If a man
strikes a woman, the other women drive him from the tribe. On Lukunor
the men used, in conversation with women, not the usual, but a
deferential form of language.[125]
The discoverers of the Friendly Islands found there a king in
authority over the people, and his wife in control of the king,
receiving homage from him, but not ruling.[126] In these and similar
cases woman's early relation to the household is formally retained in
the larger group and in the presence of an obviously masculine form of
organization.
But, in contrast with the survival in political systems of the
primitive respect shown mothers, we find the assertion of individual
male force within the very bosom of the maternal organization, in
the person of the husband, brother, or uncle of the woman. Among the
Caribs "the father or head of the household exerts unlimited authority
over his wives and children, but this authority is not founded on
legal rights, but upon his physical superiority."[127] In spite of the
maternal system in North America, the women were often roughly handled
by their husbands. Schoolcraft says of the Kenistenos: "When a young
man marries, he immediately goes to live with the father and mother
of his wife, who treat him, nevertheless, as an entire stranger till
after the birth of his first child." But
it appears that chastity is considered by them as a virtue
... and it sometimes happens that the infidelity of a wife
is punished by the husband with the loss of her hair, nose,
or perhaps life. Such severity proceeds, perhaps, less from
rigidity of virtue than from its having been practiced without
his permission; for a temporary interchange of wives is not
uncommon, and the offer of their persons is considered as a
necessary part of the hospitality due to strangers.[128]
Schoolcraft also says of the women of the Chippeways, among whom the
maternal system had given way:
They are very submissive to their husbands, who have however,
their fits of jealousy; and for very trifling causes treat
them with such cruelty as sometimes to occasion their death.
They are frequently objects of traffic, and the father
possesses the right of disposing of his daughter.[129]
Indian fathers also frequently sold their children, without any show
of right. "Kane mentions that the Shastas ... frequently sell their
children as slaves to the Chinooks."[130] Bancroft says of the
Columbians: "Affection for children is by no means rare, but in
few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell or gamble them
away."[131] Descent through mothers is in force among the negroes
of equatorial Africa, the man's property passing to his sister's
children; but the father is an unlimited despot, and no one dares to
oppose him. So long as his relation with his wives continues, he is
master of them and of their children. He can even sell the latter into
slavery.[132] In New Britain maternal descent prevails, but wives are
obtained by purchase or capture, and are practically slaves; they are
cruelly treated, carry on agriculture, and bear burdens which make
them prematurely stooped, and are likely, if their husbands are
offended, to be killed and eaten.[133]
In many regions of Australia women are treated with extreme brutality,
when their work is not satisfactory, or the husband has any other
cause for offense. In Victoria the men often break their staves over
the heads of the women, and skulls of women have been found in which
knitted fractures indicated former ill-treatment. In Cape York the
women are beaten, and in the interior an angry native burned his wife
alive. In the Adelaide dialect the phrase "owner of a woman" means
husband. When a man dies, his uterine brother inherits his wife and
children.[134]
Where under an exogamous system of marriage a man is forced to go
outside his group to obtain a wife, he may do this either by going
over to her group, by taking possession of her violently, or by
offering her and the members of her group sufficient inducements to
relinquish her; and the contrasted male and female disposition is
expressed in all the forms of marriage incident to the exogamous
system. Every exogamous group is naturally reluctant to relinquish
its women, both because it has in them laborers and potential mothers
whose children will be added to the group, and because, in the event
of their remaining in the group after marriage, their husbands become
additional defenders and providers within the group. Where the husband
is to settle in the family of the wife, a test is consequently often
made of his ability as a provider. Among the Zuni Indians there is
no purchase price, no general exchange of gifts; but as soon as the
agreement is reached, the young man must undertake certain duties:
He must work in the field of his prospective mother-in-law,
that his strength and industry may be tested; he must collect
fuel and deposit it near the maternal domicile, that his
disposition as a provider may be made known; he must chase
and slay the deer, and make from an entire buckskin a pair of
moccasins for the bride, and from other skins and textiles a
complete feminine suit, to the end that his skill in hunting,
skin-dressing, and weaving may be displayed; and, finally, he
must fabricate or obtain for the maiden's use a necklace of
seashell or of silver, in order that his capacity for long
journeys or successful barter may be established; but if
circumstances prevent him from performing these duties
actually, he may perform them symbolically, and such
performance is usually acceptable to the elder people. After
these preliminaries are completed, he is formally adopted
by his wife's parents, yet remains merely a perpetual guest,
subject to dislodgment at his wife's behest, though he cannot
legally withdraw from the covenant; if dissatisfied, he
can only so ill-treat his wife or children as to compel his
expulsion.[135]
This practice is seen in a symbolical form where presents are required
of the suitor before marriage and their equivalent returned later. By
depositing goods accumulated through his activities he demonstrates
his ability as a provider, without undergoing a formal test. This
practice is reported of the Indians of Oregon:
The suitor never, in person, asks the parents for their
daughter; but he sends one or more friends, whom he pays for
their services. The latter sometimes effect their purposes
by feasts. The offer generally includes a statement of the
property which will be given for the wife to the parents,
consisting of horses, blankets, or buffalo robes. The wife's
relations always raise as many horses (or other property)
for her dower as the bridegroom has sent the parents, but
scrupulously take care not to turn over the same horses or
the same articles.... This is the custom alike of the
Walla-Wallas, Nez-Percés, Cayuse, Waskows, Flatheads, and
Spokanes.[136]
In Patagonia the usual custom is for the bridegroom, after
he has secured the consent of his damsel, to send either a
brother or some intimate friend to the parents, offering so
many mares, horses, or silver ornaments for the bride. If
the parents consider the match desirable, as soon after as
circumstances will permit, the bridegroom, dressed in his
best, and mounted on his best horse, proceeds to the toldo
of his intended, and hands over the gifts; the parents then
return gifts of equivalent value, which, however, in the event
of a separation are the property of the bride.[137]
Marriage by capture is an immediate expression of male force. Like
marriage by settlement in the house of the wife, it is an expedient
for obtaining a wife outside the group where marriage by purchase
is not developed, or where the suitor cannot offer property for the
bride. It is an unsocial procedure and does not persist in a growing
society, for it involves retaliation and blood-feud. But it is a
desperate means of avoiding the constraint and embarrassment of a
residence in the family and among the relatives of the wife, where
the power of the husband is hindered, and the male disposition is not
satisfied in this matter short of personal ownership.
The man also sometimes lives under the maternal system in regular
marriage, but escapes its disadvantages by stealing a supplementary
wife or purchasing a slave woman, over whom and whose children he has
full authority. In the Babar Archipelago, where the maternal system
persists, even in the presence of marriage by purchase (the man
living in the house of the woman, and the children reckoned with the
mother), it is considered highly honorable to steal an additional
wife from another group, and in this case the children belong to the
father.[138] Among the Kinbundas of Africa children belong to the
maternal uncle, who has the right to sell them, while the father
regards as his children in fact the offspring of a slave woman, and
these he treats as his personal property. To the same effect, among
the Wanyamwesi, south of the Victoria Nyanza, the children of a slave
wife inherit, to the exclusion of children born of a legal wife. And
husbands among the Fellatahs are in the habit of adopting children,
though they may have sons or daughters of their own, and the adopted
children inherit the property.[139] In Indonesia a man sometimes
marries a woman and settles in her family, and the children belong
to her. But he may later carry her forcibly to his own group, and the
children then belong to him.[140]
Bosman relates that in Guinea religious symbolism was also introduced
by the husband to reinforce and lend dignity to this action. The
maternal system held with respect to the chief wife:
It was customary, however, for a man to buy and take to wife
a slave, a friendless person with whom he could deal at
pleasure, who had no kindred that could interfere for her,
and to consecrate her to his Bossum or god. The Bossum wife,
slave as she had been, ranked next to the chief wife, and was
like her exceptionally treated. She alone was very jealously
guarded, she alone was sacrificed at her husband's death.
She was, in fact, wife in a peculiar sense. And having, by
consecration, been made of the kindred and worship of her
husband, her children would be born of his kindred and
worship.[141]
Altogether the most satisfactory means of removing a girl from her
group is to purchase her. The use of property in the acquisition
of women is not a particular expression of the male nature, since
property is accumulated by females as well; but where this form of
marriage exists it means practically that the male relatives of the
girl are using her for profit, and that her suitor is seeking more
complete control of her than he can gain in her group; and viewed
in this light the purchase and sale of women is an expression of the
dominant nature of the male. In consequence of purchase, woman became
in barbarous society a chattel, and her socially constrained position
in history and the present hindrances to the outflow of her activities
are to be traced largely to the system of purchasing wives.
The simplest form of purchase is to give a woman in exchange. "The
Australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or wives either
as the survivor of a married elder brother or in exchange for his
sisters, or, later in life, for his daughters."[142] A wife is also
often sold on credit, but kept at home until the price is paid. On
the island of Serang a youth belongs to the family of the girl, living
according to her customs and religion until the bride-price is paid.
He then takes both wife and children to his tribe. But in case he is
very poor, he never pays the price, and remains perpetually in the
tribe of his wife.[143] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia
the maternal has only barely given way to the paternal system, and the
form of marriage reflects both systems. The suitor sends a messenger
with blankets, and the number sent is doubled within three months,
making in all about one hundred and fifty. These are to be returned
later. He is then allowed to live with the girl in her father's house.
Three months later the husband gives perhaps a hundred blankets more
for permission to take his wife home.[144] Among the Makassar and
Beginese stems of Indionesia the purchase of a wife involves only
a partial relinquishment of the claim of the maternal house on the
girl; the purchase price is paid by instalments and all belongs to
the mother's kindred in case full payment is not made. A compromise
between the two systems is made on the Molucca Islands, where children
born before the bride-price is paid belong to the mother's side, after
that to the father's.[145]
So long as a wife remained in her group, she could rely upon her
kindred for protection against ill-usage from her husband, but she
forfeited this advantage when she passed to his group. An Arabian girl
replies to her father, when a chief seeks her in marriage: "No! I am
not fair of face, and I have infirmities of temper, and I am not his
_bint'amm_ (tribeswoman), so that he should respect my consanguinity
with him, nor does he dwell in thy country, so that he should have
regard for thee; I fear then that he may not care for me and may
divorce me, and so I shall be in an evil case."[146] The Hassanyeh
Arabs of the White Nile region in Egypt afford a curious example of
the conflict of male and female interests in connection with marriage,
in which the female passes by contract for only a portion of her time
under the authority of the male:
When the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price
of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week
the marriage tie is to be strictly observed. The woman's
mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into
consideration, with a due regard for the feelings of the
family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due
observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to
command for more than two days in the week. After a great deal
of apparently angry discussion, and the promise on the part
of the relatives of the man to pay more, it is arranged that
the marriage shall hold good, as is customary among the
first families of the tribe, for four days in the week, viz.:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; and, in compliance
with old-established custom, the marriage rites during the
three remaining days shall not be insisted on, during which
days the bride shall be perfectly free to act as she may think
proper, either by adhering to her husband and home, or by
enjoying her freedom and independence from all observation of
matrimonial obligations.[147]
We may understand also that the tolerance of loose conduct in
girls before marriage--a tolerance which amounts in many tribes to
approval--is due to the tribal recognition of the value of children,
and children born out of marriage are added to the family of the
mother. When, on the other hand, the conduct of the girl is strictly
watched, this is from a consideration that virgins command a higher
bride-price. Child-marriages and long betrothals are means of
guaranteeing the proper conduct of a girl to her husband, as they
constitute a personal claim and afford him an opportunity to throw
more restrictions about her. So that, in any case, the conduct of the
girl is viewed with reference to her value to the tribe.
A social grouping which is not the product of forces more active
in their nature than the reproductive force may be expected to
yield before male motor activities, when these are for any reason
sufficiently formulated. The primitive warrior and hunter comes into
honor and property through a series of movements involving judgments
of time and space, and the successful direction of force, aided by
mechanical appliances and mediated through the hand and the eye.
Whether directed against the human or the animal world, the principle
is the same; success and honor and influence in tribal life depend
on the application of violence at the proper time, in the right
direction, and in sufficient measure; and this is pre-eminently the
business of the male. The advantage of acting in concert in war and
hunting, and under the leadership of those who have shown evidence of
the best judgment in these matters, is felt in any body of men who are
held together by any tie; and the first tie is the tie of blood, by
which we should understand, not that primitive man has any sentimental
feeling about kinship, but that he is psychologically inseparable from
those among whom he was born and with whom he has to do. Though the
father's sense of kinship and interest in his children is originally
feeble, it increases with the growth of consciousness in connection
with various activities, and, at the point in race development when
chieftainship is hereditary in the clan and personal property is
recognized, the father realizes the awkwardness of a social system
which reckons his children as members of another clan and forces him
to bequeath his rank and possessions to his sister's children, or
other members of his own group, rather than to his children. The
Navajoes[148] and Nairs,[149] and ancient Egyptians[150] avoided this
unpleasant condition by giving their property to their children during
their own lifetime; and the Shawnees, Miamis, Sauks, and Foxes avoided
it by naming the children into the clan of the father, giving a child
a tribal name being equivalent to adoption.[151] The cleverest bit of
primitive politics of which we have record is the device employed in
ancient Peru, and surviving in historical times in Egypt and elsewhere
in the East, by which the ruler married his own sister, contrary to
the exogamous practice of the common folk. The children might then be
regularly reckoned as of the kin of the mother, indeed, but they
were at the same time of and in the group of the father, and the king
secured the succession of his own son by marrying the woman whose son
would traditionally succeed.
As we should expect, the desirability of modifying the system of
descent and inheritance through females is felt first in connection
with situations of honor and profit. At the time of the discovery of
the Hawaiian Islands the government was a brutal despotism, presenting
many of the features of feudalism; the people prostrated themselves
before the king and before objects which he had touched, and a man
suffered death whose shadow fell upon the king, or who went uncovered
within the shadow of the king's house, or even looked upon the king
by day.[152] But descent was in the female line, with a tendency
to transfer to the male line in case of the king, and among chiefs,
priests, and nobility.[153] This assertion of the male authority was
sometimes resented, however, and was a source of frequent trouble.
Wilkes states that there was formerly no regularly established order
of succession to the throne; the children of the chief wife had the
best claim, but the king often named his own successor, and this gave
rise to violent conflicts.[154]
Blood-brotherhood, blood-vengeance, secret societies, tribal marks
(totemism, circumcision, tattooing, scarification), and religious
dedication are devices by which, consciously or unconsciously, the
men escape from the tyranny of the maternal system. We cannot assume
that these practices originate solely or largely in dissatisfaction,
for the men would feel the advantage of a combination of interests
whenever brought into association with one another; but these
artificial bonds and their display to the eye are among the first
attempts to synthetize the male forces of the group, and it is quite
apparent that such unions are unfavorable to the continuance of the
influence of women and of the system which they represent. In West
Africa and among some of the negro tribes the initiatory ceremony
is apparently deliberately hostile to the maternal organization. The
youth is taken from the family of his mother, symbolically killed
and buried, resurrected by the priests into a male organization, and
dedicated to his father's god.[155]
Spatial conditions have played an important rôle also in the
development of societies. Through movements the individual or the
group is able to pick and choose advantageous relations, and by
changing its location adjust itself to changes in the food conditions.
That the success of the group is definitely related to its motor
capacity is revealed by the following law of population, worked out
by statisticians for the three predominant races of modern Europe: In
countries inhabited jointly by these three races, the race possessing
the smallest portion of wealth and the smallest representation among
the more influential and educated classes constitutes also the least
migratory element of the population, and tends in the least degree
to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile regions of the
country; and in countries inhabited jointly by the three races,
the race possessing the largest portion of wealth and the largest
representation among the more influential and educated classes is
also the most migratory element of the population, and tends in the
greatest degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile
portions of the country.[156] The primitive movements of population
necessitated by climatic change, geological disturbances, the failure
of water or exhaustion of the sources of food, were occasions for the
expression of the superior motor disposition of the male and for the
dislodgment of the female from her position of advantage.
We know that the migrations of the natural races are necessary and
frequent, and the movements of the culture races have been even
more complex. The leadership of these mass-movements and spatial
reaccommodations necessarily rests with the men, who, in their
wanderings, have become acquainted with larger stretches of space;
and whose specialty is motor co-ordination. The progressive races have
managed the space problem best. At every favorable point they have
pushed out their territorial boundaries or transferred their social
activities to a region more favorable to their expansion. Under male
leadership, in consequence, territory has always become the prize in
every conflict of races; the modern state is based not on blood but on
territory, and territory is at present the reigning political ideal.
In the process of coming into control of a larger environment through
the motor activities of the male, the group comes into collision with
other groups within which the same movement is going on, and it then
becomes a question which group can apply force more destructively and
remove or bring under control this human portion of its environment.
Military organization and battle afford the grand opportunity for
the individual and mass expression of the superior force-capacity of
the male. They also determine experimentally which groups and which
individuals are superior in this respect, and despotism, caste,
slavery, and the subjection of women are concrete expressions of the
trial.
The nominal headship of woman within the maternal group existed only
in default of forms of activity fit to formulate headship among the
men, and when chronic militancy developed an organization among the
males, the political influence of the female was completely shattered.
At a certain point in history women became an unfree class, precisely
as slaves became an unfree class--because neither class showed a
superior fitness on the motor side; and each class is regaining its
freedom because the race is substituting other forms of decision for
violence.
SEX AND SOCIAL FEELING
An examination of the early habits of man and an analysis of the
instincts which persist in him show that he has been essentially a
predaceous animal, fighting his way up at every step of the struggle
for existence. It therefore becomes a point of considerable interest
to determine what influences have contributed to soften his behavior
and make it possible for him to dwell in harmony and co-operation with
large groups of his fellows.
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors
of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more
pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with
us, ready to burst at any moment into flame, the smouldering
and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived
through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves
unharmed.... If evolution and the survival of the fittest
be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals
must have been among the most important of man's primitive
functions, the fighting and the chasing instincts _must_ have
become ingrained. Certain perceptions _must_ immediately,
and without the intervention of inferences and ideas, have
prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both the latter
must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and
therefore when unchecked of an intensely pleasurable
kind. It is just because bloodthirstiness is such a primitive
part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a
fight or a hunt is promised as a part of the fun.... No! those
who try to account for this from above downwards, as if it
resulted from the consequences of the victory being rapidly
inferred, and from the agreeable sensations associated with
them in the imagination, have missed the root of the matter.
Our ferocity is blind and can only be explained from _below_.
Could we trace it back through our lines of descent, we
should see it taking more and more the form of a fatal reflex
response, and at the same time becoming more and more the pure
and direct emotion that it is.[157]
If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of
elation and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to
instincts developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates.
We can perhaps best get at the meaning of the conflict interest to the
organism in terms of the significance to itself or the organism's own
movements. Locomotion, of whatever type, is primarily to enable the
animal to reach and grasp food, and also to escape other animals
bent on finding food. The structure of the organism has been built
up gradually through the survival of the most efficient structures.
Corresponding with a structure mechanically adapted to successful
movements, there is developed on the psychic side an interest in the
conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the structure itself.
The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations for action,
corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or retreat, and a
connection has even been made out between pleasurable states and the
extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor muscles. We can
have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the experiments made in
nature before the development of these types of structure and interest
of the conflict pattern, but we know from the geological records that
the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so
sharp, that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes
of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working
perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life
of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been
developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements
for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or
precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been
defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.
There has been comparatively little change in human structure or human
interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and
cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts;
but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric
times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that
types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed;
and while objects of attention and interest in different historical
periods are different, we shall never get far away from the original
types of stimulus and reaction. It is, indeed, a condition of normal
life that we should not get too far away from them.
The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in
situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations
which arouse them most readily. War is simply an organized form of
fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses
the interests powerfully. With the accumulation of property, and the
growth of sensibility and intelligence, it becomes apparent that war
is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests
lead us to avoid it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war
may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders
in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the
aristocracy of England, went to war from motives of patriotism, no
doubt; but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded
it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a
lifetime. And there is evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude
of women toward war is no less intense. Grey[158] relates that half a
dozen old women among the Australians will drive the men to war with
a neighboring tribe over a fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out
with music and dancing, and sang that Saul had slain his thousands,
but David his ten thousands. Two American women who passed through the
horrors of the siege of Pekin were, on their return, given a reception
by their friends, and the daily press reported that they exhibited
among other trophies "a Boxer's sword with the blood still on the
blade, which was taken from the body of a Boxer killed by the legation
guards; and a Boxer spear with which a native Christian girl was
struck down in Legation Street." It is not necessary to regard as
morbid or vulgar the action of these ladies in bringing home reminders
of their peril. On the contrary, it is a sign of continued animal
health and instinct in the race to feel deep interest in perilous
situations and pleasure in their revival in consciousness.
"Unaccommodated man" was, to begin with, in relations more hostile
than friendly. The struggle for food was so serious a fact, and
predaceousness to such a degree the habit of life, that a suspicious,
hostile, and hateful state of mind was the rule, with exceptions only
in the cases where truce, association, and alliance had come about
in the course of experience. This was still the state of affairs in
so advanced a stage of development as the Indian society of North
America, where a tribe was in a state of war with every tribe with
which it had not made a treaty of peace; and it is perhaps true,
generally speaking, of men today, that they regard others with a
degree of distrust and aversion until they have proved themselves good
fellows. What, indeed, would be the fate of a man on the streets of
a city if he did otherwise? There has, nevertheless, grown up an
intimate relation between man and certain portions of his environment;
and this includes, not only his wife and children, his dog and his
blood-brother, but, with lessening intensity, the members of his clan,
tribe, and nation. These become, psychologically speaking, a portion
of himself, and stand with him against the world at large. From
the standpoint here outlined, prejudice or its analogue is the
starting-point, and our question becomes one of the determination of
the steps of the process by which man mentally allied with himself
certain portions of his environment to the exclusion of others.
If we look for an explanation of the hostility which a group feels
for another group, and of the sympathy which its members feel for one
another, we may first of all inquire whether there are any conditions
arising in the course of the biological development of a species
which, aside from social activities, lead to a predilection for those
of one's own kind and a prejudice against different groups. And we do,
in fact, find such conditions. The earliest movements of animal life
involve, in the rejection of stimulations vitally bad, an attitude
which is the analogue of prejudice. On the principle of chemiotaxis,
the micro-organism will approach a particle of food placed in the
water and shun a particle of poison; and its movements are similarly
controlled by heat, light, electricity, and other tropic forces.[159]
The development of animal life from this point upward consists in
the growth of structure and organs of sense adapted to discriminate
between different stimulations, to choose between the beneficial and
prejudicial, and to obtain in this way a more complete control of the
environment. Passing over the lower forms of animal life, we find in
the human type the power of attention, memory, and comparison highly
developed, so that an estimate is put on stimulations and situations
correspondent with the bearing of stimulations or situations of this
type on welfare in the past. The choice and rejection involved in this
process are accompanied by organic changes (felt as emotions) designed
to assist in the action which follows a decision.[160] Both the
judgment and the emotions are thus involved in the presentation to the
senses of a situation or object involving possible advantage or hurt,
pleasure or pain. It consequently transpires that the feelings called
out on the presentation of disagreeable objects and their contrary
are very different, and there arise in this connection fixed mental
attitudes corresponding with fixed or habitually recurrent external
situations--hate and love, prejudice and predilection--answering to
situations which revive feelings of pain on the one hand, and feelings
of pleasure on the other. And such is the working of suggestion that,
not alone an object or situation may produce a given state of feeling,
but a voice, an odor, a color, or any characteristic sign of an object
may produce the same effect as the object itself. The sight or smell
of blood is an excitant to a bull, because it revives a conflict state
of feeling, and even the color of a red rag produces a similar effect.
When we come to examine in detail the process by which an
associational and sympathetic relation is set up between the
individual and certain parts of the outside world to the exclusion
of others, we find this at first, on a purely instinctive and reflex
basis, originating in connection with food-getting and reproduction,
and growing more conscious in the higher forms of life. One of the
most important origins of association and prepossession is seen in
the relation of parents, particularly of mothers, to children. This
begins, of course, among the lower animals. The mammalian class, in
particular, is distinguished by the strength and persistence of the
devotion of parents to offspring. The advantage secured by the form
of reproduction characteristic of man and the other mammals is that
a closer connection is secured between the child and the mother. By
the intra-uterine form of reproduction the association of mother and
offspring is set up in an organic way before the birth of the latter,
and is continued and put on a social basis during the period of
lactation and the early helpless years of the child. By continuing the
helpless period of the young for a period of years, nature has made
provision on the time side for a complex physical and mental type,
impossible in types thrown at birth on their own resources. Along
with the structural modification of the female on account of the
intra-uterine form of reproduction and the effort of nature to secure
a more complex type and a better chance of survival, there is a
corresponding development of the sentiments, and maternal feeling,
in particular, is developed as the subjective condition necessary
to carrying out the plan of giving the infant a prolonged period of
helplessness and play through which its faculties are developed.[161]
The scheme would not work if the mother were not more interested
in the child than in anything else in the world. In the course
of development every variational tendency in mothers to dote on
their children was rewarded by the survival of these children, and
the consequent survival of the stock, owing to better nutrition,
protection, and training. Of course, this inherited interest in
children is shared by the males of the group also, though not in the
same degree, and there is reason to believe also that the interest of
the male parent in children is acquired in a great degree indirectly
and socially through his more potent desire to associate with the
mother.
This interest and providence on the score of offspring has also a
characteristic expression on the mental side. All sense-perceptions
are colored and all judgments biased where the child is in question,
and affection for it extends to the particular marks which distinguish
it. Not only its physical features, but its dress and little shoes,
its toys and everything it has touched take on a peculiar aspect.
On the organic side, therefore, there is developed a tendency, both in
connection with reactions to stimulations in general and in connection
with reproductive life in particular, to seize on particular aspects
and to be obsessed by them to the exclusion or disparagement of other
aspects. The feelings of love and hate, and the broader feelings of
race-prejudice and patriotism are consequently based first of all in
the instincts.
Perhaps the most particular and interesting expression of the general
fact of susceptibility is seen in the sensitiveness of man to the
opinion in which he is held by others. Social life in every stage of
society is characterized by an eagerness to make a striking effect.
A bare reference to the ethnological facts in this connection will
suffice: The Kite Indians have a society of young men so brave and so
ostentatious of their bravery that they will not fight from cover nor
turn aside to avoid running into an ambuscade or a hole in the ice.
The African has the privilege of cutting a gash six inches long in
his thigh for every man he has killed. The Melanesian who is planning
revenge sets up a stick or stone where it can be seen; he refuses to
eat, and stays away from the dance; he sits silent in the council and
answers questions by whistling and by other signs draws attention to
himself and has it understood that he is a brave and dangerous man,
and that he is biding his time.[162]
This bidding for the good opinion of others has plainly a connection
with food-getting, and with the conflict side of life. High courage is
praised and valued by society, and a man of courage is less imposed on
by others, and comes in for substantial recognition and the favor of
women. It is thus of advantage to act in such a way as to get public
approval and some degree of appreciation; and a degree of sensibility
on the score of the opinion of others, or at least a reckoning upon
this, is involved in the process of personal adjustment.
But the problem of personal adjustment at this point would seem
to call for more of intelligence than emotion; and we find, on the
contrary, an excess of sensibility and a mania for being well thought
of hardly to be explained as originating in the exigencies of tribal
organization, nor yet on the score of its service to the individual in
getting his food and living out his life. Why could not primitive man
live in society, be of the war-parties, plan ambuscades, develop his
fighting technique and gear, be a blood-brother to another man, show
his trophies, set a high value on his personality, and insist on
recognition and respect, without this almost pathological dependence
on the praise and blame of others?
Or if we approach the question from another standpoint and inspect our
states of consciousness, we find signs that we have a greater fund of
sensibility than is justified in immediate activity. We have the same
mania to be well thought of; we are unduly interested when we hear
that others have been talking about us; we are annoyed, even furious,
at a slight criticism, and are childishly delighted by a compliment
(without regard to our deserts); and children and adults alike
understand how to put themselves forward and get notice, and equally
well how to get notice by withdrawing themselves and staying away or
out of a game. We have a tendency to show off which is not apparently
genetically connected with exploit or organization, and we recognize
that this form of vanity is not consistent with the ordinary run of
our activities when we argue with ourselves that the opinion of this
or that person is of no consequence and attempt to think ourselves
into a state of indifference. Intellectually and deliberately our
attitude toward criticism from others would often be, if we could
choose, represented by Tweed's query: "What are you going to do about
it?" But actually it puts us to bed.
All of this seems to indicate that there is an element in sensibility
not accounted for on the exploit or food side, and this element is, I
believe, genetically connected with sexual life. Unlike the struggle
for existence in the ordinary sense of the phrase, the courtship of
the sexes presents a situation in which an appeal is made for the
favor of another personality, and the success of this appeal has a
survival value--not for the individual, but for the species through
the individual. We have, in fact, a situation in which the good
opinion of another is vitally important. On this account the means
of attracting and interesting others are definitely and bountifully
developed among all the higher species of animals. Voice, plumage,
color, odor, and movement are powerful excitants in wooing and aids
both to the conquest of the female and the attraction of the male. In
this connection we must also recognize the fact that reproductive life
must be connected with violent stimulation, or it would be neglected
and the species would become extinct; and, on the other hand, if the
conquest of the female were too easy, sexual life would be in danger
of becoming a play interest and a dissipation, destructive of energy
and fatal to the species. Working, we may assume, by a process of
selection and survival, nature has both secured and safeguarded
reproduction. The female will not submit to seizure except in a high
state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing
of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to
manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a
marvelous display of technique for this purpose. This is offset by the
coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and
fascinates the male and practices upon him to induce a corresponding
state of nervous excitation.[163]
This is the only situation in the life of the lower animals, at
any rate, where the choice of another is vitally important; and
corresponding with the elaborate technique to secure this choice we
have in wooing pleasure-pain reactions of a violent character. In a
word, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of another answers on
the subjective side to technique for the conquest of a member of the
opposite sex. It seems, therefore, that we are justified in concluding
that our vanity and susceptibility have their origin largely in sexual
life, and that, in particular, our susceptibility to the opinion of
others and our dependence on their good will are genetically referable
to sexual life.
This view would be completely substantiated if we could show that the
qualities of vanity and susceptibility in question are present in any
species where it is impossible to assume that they were developed
in connection with the struggle for food and as the result of the
survival of types showing a tendency to combine and co-operate in
the effort to get food. And we do, in fact, have cases of this kind
among some of the lower animals. It cannot be said that the dog, for
instance, has survived in the struggle for existence because of his
sensitiveness to public opinion in his species nor on account of an
interest in being well thought of by the community of dogs at large
which would lead him to behave in a public-spirited or moral manner.
At the same time, the dog in his relation to man shows as keen a
sensitiveness to man's opinion and treatment as does man himself. The
attention which the master pays to one dog will almost break the heart
of a dog not receiving it. A neglected dog plainly suffers as much
in his way as the soldier who is sent to Coventry by his messmates;
and if neglected and jealous dogs do not commit suicide, as they
are reported to do, they are evidently in a state of mind to do so.
This means that the dog has highly developed susceptibility to the
appreciation of others, and that the species which he represents has
had no history except a sexual history capable of developing this
mental attitude. In connection with courtship he developed a fund of
organic susceptibility, and this condition is involved in his more
general relation to man; the machinery set up in sexual relations is
played on by stimuli in general. A condition favorable to stimuli of
a particular kind is favorable to stimuli in general; and it seems
likely that this not very prominent fact of a state of excitation in a
sexual connection is an important factor in the formation of the mind
and of society.
There are also certain conditions in the development of the individual
and of society where the sexual type of reaction is so near the
surface that it shows through in connection with political, moral, and
other essentially non-sexual activities. Passing over the fact that
the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of "susceptibility"
and personal vanity, we may take as an example of the intrusion or
persistence of the sexual element in conditions of a non-sexual kind
the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement.[164]
The appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person
has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to
overcome the hesitancy of the female. In each case the will has to be
set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the
appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic,
and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral adjustment, it
consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived
originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual
machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying
over into the general process of some sexual manifestations. The
emotional forms used and the emotional states aroused are not entirely
stripped of their sexual content.
On the race side, also, there is a stage in development where the
sexual pattern is transferred almost unmodified to public affairs. The
following extracts from a lengthy description given by Mr. Bowdich
of his reception by the king of Ashanti, in the year 1817, will
illustrate sufficiently the employment of the turkey-cock pattern of
activity in political relations:
The sun was reflected with a glare scarcely more supportable
than the heat from massive gold ornaments which glistened in
every direction. More than a hundred bands burst at once on
our arrival, with the peculiar airs of their several chiefs;
the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of
innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for
a while to the soft breathings of their long flutes.... At
least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies, which could
shelter thirty persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers
with brilliant effect, being made of scarlet, yellow, and
the most showy cloths and silks, and crowned on the top with
crescents, pelicans, elephants, barrels, and arms and swords
of gold.... The caboceers, as did their superior captains, and
attendants, wore Ashanti cloths of extravagant price, from the
costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them
in all the varieties of color as well as pattern: they were
of incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder
exactly like the Roman toga; a small silk fillet generally
encircled their temples, and many gold necklaces, intricately
wrought, suspended Moorish charms, dearly purchased, and
enclosed in small square cases of gold, silver, and curious
embroidery. Some wore necklaces reaching to the waist,
entirely of aggry beads; a band of gold and beads encircled
the knee, from which several strings of the same depended;
small circlets of gold, like guineas, rings, and casts of
animals were strung round their ankles; their sandals were
of green, red and delicate white leather; manillas, and rude
lumps of rock gold hung from their left wrists, which were so
heavily laden as to be supported on the head of one of their
handsomest boys.... [The king] wore a fillet of aggry beads
round his temples, a necklace of gold cockspur shells strung
by their larger ends, and over his right shoulder a red silk
cord, suspending three sapphires cased in gold; his bracelets
were of the richest mixtures of beads and gold, and his
fingers covered with rings; his cloth was of a dark green
silk, a pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white on
his forehead; also a pattern resembling an epaulette on each
shoulder, and an ornament like a full blown rose, one leaf
rising above another until it covered his whole breast.... The
belts of the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and
covered with small jaw-bones of the same metal; the elephants'
tails, waving like a small cloud before him, were spangled
with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished among
them. His eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only
one massive piece of gold about his neck; the royal stool,
entirely cased in gold, was displayed under a splendid
umbrella, with drums, sankos, horns, and various musical
instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of cartridge
paper; large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the
swords of state;... hatchets of the same were intermixed with
them; the breasts of the Ochras and various attendants were
adorned with large stars, stools, crescents, and gossamer
wings of solid gold.[165]
It is not surprising that the characteristically sexual method of
display and emotional appeal should be associated with the earlier
efforts at adjustment, both in the individual and in the state. This
method is based on the instincts, and just as inhibition and brain
legislation follow the instincts in point of development, a rational
mode of control, individual and public, is developed later than the
emotional form, or, at any rate, is not at first independent of it.
The origin of mental impressionability seems to lie then, not in one,
but in the two general regions of activity--that connected with the
struggle for food and that connected with reproduction. The strain
on the attention in the food and conflict side of life involves
the development of mental impressionability, particularly of an
impressionability on the side of cognition. But in addition we have
the impressionability growing out of sexual life which has been in
question above, and which is more closely related to appreciation than
to cognition. And of these two aspects of impressionability--the one
growing out of conflict and the one growing out of reproduction--the
latter has more social possibilities than the former, because it
implies a sympathetic rather than an antagonistic organic attitude. It
is certainly in virtue of susceptibility to the opinion of others that
society works--through public opinion, fashion, tradition, reproof,
encouragement, precept, and doctrine--to bring the individual
under control and make him a member of society; and it is doubtful
whether this could have been accomplished if a peculiar attitude
of responsiveness to opinion had not arisen in sexual relations,
reinforcing the more general and cognitive impressionability.
Without this capacity to be influenced the individual would be in the
condition of the hardened criminal, and society would be impossible.
This sex-susceptibility, which was originally developed as an
accessory of reproduction and had no social meaning whatever, has
thus, in the struggle of society to obtain a hold on the individual,
become a social factor of great importance, and together with another
product of sexual life--the love of offspring--it is, I suspect, the
most immediate source of our sympathetic attitudes in general, and an
important force in the development of the ideal, moral, and aesthetic
sides of life.
Morality, sympathy, and altruism are of tribal origin, and have their
roots in (1) the love of offspring, (2) the sensitivity connected
with courtship, and (3) the comradeship which arises among men in
prosecuting vital interests in common. The history of society on the
moral and aesthetic sides is in great part the history of the attempt
to make the sympathetic attitude prevail over the more antagonistic.
But how far we are still short of this, and how far our sympathy
and morality are still tribal and even familial, is indicated by the
persistence of race-prejudice and of that
lust in man no charm can tame
Of loudly publishing our neighbor's shame.
SEX AND PRIMITIVE INDUSTRY
Labor represents the expenditure of energy in securing food, and in
making the food-process constant and sure; and we may well expect to
find that the somatological differences shown to exist between man and
woman will be found reflected in the labors of primitive society.
An examination of the ethnological facts shows that among the
primitive races men are engaged in activities requiring strength,
violence, speed, and the craft and foresight which follow from
the contacts and strains of their more motor life; and the slow,
unspasmodic, routine, stationary occupations are the part of woman.
Animal life is itself motor, elusive, and violent, and both by
disposition and of necessity man's attention and activities are
devoted first of all to the animal process. It is the most stimulating
and dangerous portion of his environment, and affords the most
immediate and concrete reward.
Contrasted with this violent and intermittent activity of man, we
find with equal uniformity that the attention of woman is directed
principally to the vegetable environment. Man's attention to hunting
and fighting, and woman's attention to agriculture and attendant
stationary industries, is so generally a practice of primitive
society that we may well infer the habit is based on a physiological
difference. An explanation of exceptions to the rule, and the
departure from it in the later life of the race, we shall have to seek
in changes in the social habits of the race.
The old observation, that "woman was first a beast of burden, then
a domestic animal, then a slave, then a servant, and last of all a
minor," represents the usual view of the condition of woman taken by
early missionaries and travelers. This view is, as we shall see, out
of focus, but there is no doubt that the labors of early woman were
exacting, incessant, varied, and hard, and that, if a catalogue of
primitive forms of labor were made, woman would be found doing five
things where man did one.
An Australian of the Kurnai tribe once said to Fison: "A man hunts,
spears fish, fights, and sits about;"[166] and this is a very good
general statement of the male activities of primitive society the
world over, if we add one other activity--the manufacture of weapons.
On the other hand, Bonwick's statement of the labors of Tasmanian
women is a typical one:
In addition to the necessary duty of looking after the
children, they had to provide all the food for the household
excepting that derived from the chase of the kangaroo. They
climbed up hills for the opossum, delved in the ground with
their sticks for yams, native bread, and nutritive roots,
groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea
for oysters, and fished for the finny tribe. In addition to
this, they carried, on their frequent tramps, the household
stuff in native baskets of their own manufacture. Their
affectionate partners would even pile upon their burdens
sundry spears and waddies not required for present service,
and would command their help to rear the breakwind, and
to raise the fire. They acted, moreover, as cooks to
the establishment, and were occasionally regaled, at the
termination of a feast, with the leavings of their gorged
masters.[167]
Among the Andamanese, while the men go into the jungle to hunt pigs,
the women fetch drinking water and firewood, catch shellfish, make
fishing nets and baskets, spin thread, and cook the food ready for
the return of the men.[168] In New Caledonia "girls work in the
plantations, boys learn to fight."[169] In Africa the case is similar.
Among the Bushmen (to take only one example from this continent)
the woman "weaves the frail mats and rushes under which her family
finds a little shelter from the wind and from the heat of the sun,"
constructs a fireplace of three round stones, fashions and bakes a
few earthenware pots. When her household labors are done, she gathers
roots, locusts, etc., from the fields. On the march she frequently
carries a child, a mat, an earthen pot, some ostrich eggshells, and
"a few ragged skins bundled on her head or shoulder," while the man
carries only his spear, bow, and quiver.[170] The conditions among the
American Indians were practically the same. Cotton Mather said of
the Indians of Massachusetts: "The men are most abominably slothful,
making their poor squaws or wives to plant, and dress, and barn, and
beat their corn, and build their wigwams for them;"[171] and Jones,
referring to the women of southern tribes, says:
Doomed to perpetual drudgery and to that subordinate position
to which woman is always consigned where civilization and
religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden,
busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets,
moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her
own children, and at all times a servant to the commands and
passions of the stronger sex.[172]
Primitive woman was therefore undoubtedly very busy, but I have seen
no reason to believe that she considered her condition unfortunate.
Our great-grandmothers were also very busy, but they were apparently
not discontented. There was no reason why woman should not labor
in primitive society. The forces which withdrew her from labor were
expressions of later social conditions. Speaking largely, these
considerations were the desire of men to preserve the beauty of women,
and their desire to withdraw them from association with other men.
It is the connection in thought and fact between idle and beautiful
women and wealth, indeed, which has frequently led to the keeping of
a superfluous number of such women as a sign of wealth.
The exemption of women from labor, in short, implied an economic
surplus which early society did not possess. The lower classes of
modern society do not possess it either, and there the women are
still "drudges," if we want to use that word about a situation which
is normal, in view of the economic condition of the men and women
concerned. It was necessary that primitive society, in the absence
of elaborate machinery for doing things, in unstable and precarious
food conditions, and without resources accumulated from preceding
generations, should utilize _all_ its forces. The struggle for
existence, in its harshest sense, was but little mitigated, and
no group could have spared at all the industry of women. Even if
primitive life had been as hard as Hobbes would have it, "solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short," mere negative, habitual hardness
and miserableness of condition did not get the attention of primitive
society particularly. Their life was hard, as we look at it, not as
they looked at it. They could not compare themselves with the future,
and comparisons with the past were doubtless in their favor. The best
returns from activity will of course follow when each individual
is doing something he is specially well fitted to do, and natural
selection seems to have seen to it that primitive society should so
divide the labor as best to utilize social energy by assigning to men
the tasks requiring violent exertion, and to women those requiring
constant attention.
But was not primitive man very lazy, and did he not do fewer things
than he reasonably could have done? If we mean by lazy an aversion to
certain types of action, primitive man was doubtless lazy; but if we
mean an aversion to all kinds of exertion, he certainly was not lazy.
He was so thoroughly aroused by certain stimulations and so exhausted
by the expenditure of energy in reacting to these stimulations
that periods of recuperation, or "sitting about," were necessary.
Heckenwelder's remarks on the labor of men and women among the Indians
of Pennsylvania are very instructive, although they relate to tribes
which had come under white influences to some extent:
The work of the women is not hard or difficult. They are
both able and willing to do it, and always perform it with
cheerfulness. Mothers teach their daughters those duties which
common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up.
Within doors their labor is very trifling; there is seldom
more than one pot or kettle to attend to. There is no
scrubbing of the house, and but little to wash, and that not
often. Their principal occupations are to cut and fetch in the
firewood, till the ground, sow and reap the grain, and pound
the corn in mortars for their pottage, and to make bread which
they bake in the ashes. When going on a journey or to hunting
camps with their husbands, if they have no horses, they carry
a pack on their backs which often appears heavier than it
really is; it generally consists of a blanket, a dressed deer
skin for moccasins, a few articles of kitchen furniture, as
a kettle, bowl, or dish, with spoons, and some bread, corn,
salt, etc., for their nourishment. I have never known an
Indian woman complain of the hardship of carrying this burden,
which serves for their own comfort and support as well as of
their husbands. The tilling of the ground at home, getting of
firewood, and pounding of corn in mortars, is frequently
done by female parties, much in the manner of those husking,
quilting, and other _frolics_ (as they are called) in some
parts of the United States.... [When accompanying her husband
on the hunt the woman] takes pains to dry as much meat as she
can, that none may be lost; she carefully puts the tallow
up, assists in drying the skins, gathers as much wild hemp as
possible for the purpose of making strings, carrying bands,
bags, and other necessary articles; collects roots for dyeing;
in short, does everything in her power to leave no care to
her husband but the important one of providing meat for the
family. After all, the fatigue of the women is by no means
to be compared to that of the men. Their hard and difficult
employments are periodical and of short duration, while their
husbands' labors are constant and severe in the extreme.
Were a man to take upon himself a part of his wife's duty,
in addition to his own, he must necessarily sink under the
load, and of course his family must suffer with him. On his
exertions as a hunter their existence depends; in order to
be able to follow that rough employment with success, he must
keep his limbs as supple as he can, he must avoid hard labor
as much as possible, that his joints may not become stiffened,
and that he may preserve the necessary strength and agility
of body to enable him to pursue the chase, and bear the
unavoidable hardships attendant on it; for the fatigues of
hunting wear out the body and constitution far more than
manual labor. Neither creeks nor rivers, whether shallow or
deep, frozen or free from ice, must be an obstacle to the
hunter when in pursuit of a wounded deer, bear, or other
animal, as is often the case. Nor has he then leisure to think
on the state of his body, and to consider whether his blood
is not too much heated to plunge without danger into the cold
stream, since the game he is in pursuit of is running off from
him with full speed. Many dangerous accidents often befall
him both as a hunter and a warrior (for he is both), and
are seldom unattended with painful consequences, such
as rheumatism or consumption of the lungs, for which the
sweat-house, on which they so much depend, and to which they
often resort for relief, especially after a fatiguing hunt
or warlike excursion, is not always a sure preservative or
effectual remedy.[173]
The male and female come together by sexual attraction, and the
chances of life are increased through association which permits each
to do that class of things which by reason of its somatic habit it can
do most effectively. Man's exploits were, however, of a more striking
and sensational character, appealed to the emotions more, and
secured the attention and the admiration of the public more, than the
"drudgery" of the woman. The unusual esteem given by society to the
destructive activities of the male can be very well understood in
connection with a reference to the emotions. The emotions of anger,
fear, and joy, to take only these examples, represent a physiological
change in the organism in the presence of dangerous situations. Anger
is a physiological preparation to resist, to crush a dangerous object;
fear is an organic expression of inadequacy to avert the danger; and
joy, in one of its aspects, is an organic revulsion answering to the
recognition of the fact that the danger is safely passed. The same
type of situation incessantly recurring in the life of the race, and
constantly met by the same organic changes, has resulted in a fixed
relation of certain types of situation to certain types of emotion.
The forms of activity recognized first of all in the consciousness of
the race as virtuous are simply those which successfully avert danger
and secure safety. Courage, intrepidity, endurance, skill, sagacity,
an indomitable spirit, and a willingness to die in fight, are virtues
of the first importance, vitally indispensable to the society in
conflict with man and beast, and they are virtues of which man is by
his organic constitution, by the very fact of his capacity for the
rapid destruction of energy, particularly capable. Man's exploits,
therefore, first of all had social attention.
The occupations of women were not of an emotional type, and, apart
from sexual life, they got their excitements as spectators and
approvers of the motor activities of the men. The Hebrew girls who
went out with harps and timbrels to meet a victorious army, and
sang that Saul had slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands,
represent the relation between mighty deeds and social attention and
approval. Thus the attention which the organism gives to situations of
danger, through violent physiological readjustments fitted to meet the
situation, has a parallel in the attention given by society to social
means of meeting situations dangerous to the common life and welfare.
We have a very plain continuance of the primitive appreciation of the
virtues of violence in the worship of military men nowadays, and it
is significant, also, that the appreciation of the fighting quality
still reaches its most animated expression in women--the sex
constitutionally most in need of social protection. It can hardly
be denied, therefore, that man both enjoyed this exciting kind of
performance more than the labors which women were connected with,
and that the women justified him (if we assume that they passed any
judgment on his conduct at all) in refraining from doing many things
which he could have done perfectly well without constitutional hurt.
The abundance of the labors of primitive woman seems to be accounted
for further by the fact that a stationary life is the condition of
a greater variety of industrial expressions than a life inclined
to motor expressions. It is notorious that a wandering life is not
favorable to the development of industries. Industries, in their very
nature, handle and shape stationary stuffs, for the most part, and
woman developed the constructive or industrial activities as a simple
consequence of her more stationary condition of life. The formation
of habit is largely a matter of attention, and the attention of woman
being limited by her bodily habit and the presence of children
to objects lying closer at hand, her energies found expression in
connection with these objects.
First of all, the house was identified with woman. The home was, in
its simplest terms, the place where the wandering male rejoined the
female. It was a cave, or a hollow tree, or a frail structure. It was
sought or made with reference to safety and comfort, particularly
with reference to the comfort of the young. Recognizing the greater
interest of the woman in the child, it is evident that shelter was
a more important consideration to her than to the man. The house is,
indeed, a very fit accompaniment of the stationary habit of woman,
and usually we find the most primitive tribes recognizing her greater
interest in it. Even when the houses are built by men, they are
generally owned by the women. Man as a solitary animal might, of
course, make himself a shelter, but he had a particular interest in
being about the shelter of woman, and it was under her shelter, after
all, that children were born and that society accumulated numbers.
This resulted in the maternal system and the recognition of woman as
the head of the household, and the owner of the house. So, when the
Indian squaw carries the wigwam on the march, she is carrying her
private property and one of her own particular appurtenances. Contrary
to the phrase which I quoted above, man is rather, in the sense in
which I am now speaking, the domesticated animal. He has been inducted
into the family. The estufas of the Pueblo Indians and the men's
clubhouses in Africa represent the failure of men to assimilate
completely in a society which was essentially female in its genius,
and the club still stands for a difference in interest between the
male and the female.
From the house, or shelter, as a base, woman got such connections with
food as she might. For it is an error to suppose that she was in the
most primitive times entirely dependent on man for food. She appears
to have been quite as active in developing food surroundings in her
way as man was in his. The plant world gave her the best returns for
the effort which she could make. She beat out the seeds of plants,
digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen
to grub for most eagerly,[174] strained the poisonous juices from the
cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention
that a southern grass was developed into what we know as Indian corn.
Looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants,
and we are likely to regard it as a more conscious process than it
really was. It was the result of her conversion to her own uses
of the most available portion of her environment. In view of her
physiological habit, the animal environment was, for the most part,
out of the question, and her attention was of necessity directed to
the plant side. While less remunerative in its beginnings than
the animal side of the process, it was, perhaps, at all times less
precarious and uncertain, and we find in consequence that the economic
dependence of man on woman is as evident as her dependence on him.
A dinner of herbs is a humbler resort than a roast of antelope, but
there was less doubt that it would be forthcoming, and primitive man
was often, when in hard luck, dependent on the activities of his wife,
or the females of the group.
The domestication of animals appears similarly to be the following-up
by man of his connections with animal life, when this life began to
be less abundant. It is probable that the practice originated in
the habit of taking the young of animals home as pets, and there is
apparently a point of difference between the attention of the men and
the women given to animals once taken into the household. The men
were interested in these animals as reviving in memory the emotional
situations of hunting life, and also in the clever and inimitable
accuracy of co-ordination and superhuman development of
sense-perceptions, while there was always in the attitude of woman
toward these animals a touch of maternal feeling, such as is still
expended on the "harmless, necessary cat." And, in a small way, woman
also contributed to the domestication of animals by giving them suck,
partly as an economic investment. In Tahiti and New Britain, for
example, the women suckle the pigs, and the old women feed them.[175]
Aside from this, the connections which primitive woman has with animal
life is very slight. Worms and insects, shellfish, and even fish she
may capture, but but after this her relation to animal life is in
caring for the flesh and skins turned over to her by the man.
It was a very general early practice that, when man had killed his
game and brought it home, he was not concerned in the further handling
of it. He did not, indeed, in all cases bring it home, but sent his
wife after it. The Indians killed buffalo only as fast as the squaws
could cut them up and care for the meat, and the men of the Eskimos
would not draw the seal from the water after spearing it. Exhausted
by extraordinary efforts, the man may well have left the dressing of
the animal upon occasion to his wife, and, exhausted or not, he soon
fell into the habit of doing so. It thus turns out that all labors
relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilizations of the
side-products of food stuffs, are apt to be found in the hands of the
women.
Vessels are necessary in cooking, both to carry and hold water, and to
store the surplus of food, both vegetable and animal, and the woman,
feeling the need of these in connection with what she has set about
doing, weaves baskets and makes pottery. Fetching wood, grinding corn,
tanning the hides, and in the main the preparation of clothing, follow
rather necessarily from her relation to the raw products. Spinning and
weaving and dyeing are related closely to the vegetable world to begin
with, and it is to be expected that they would be developed by the
women. But man is very deeply interested in clothing on the ornamental
side, and the farther back we go in society, the more this holds, and
sometimes, particularly in Africa, since the domestication of oxen
there, the men prepare the leather and do the sewing, even for the
women. There is, indeed, nothing in the nature of sewing to make
it a woman's occupation. It involves a relation of the hand to the
eye--similar to that which the man is always practicing and using,
i.e., reaching a given point, perhaps with mechanical aids, through
the mediation of these two organs. It is a motor matter, therefore,
and one of the first industries undertaken by men. There are many
exceptions to the general statement that early manufacture (weapons
excepted) was in the hands of women, but the exceptions may be
regarded as variations due to the fixation of habit through single and
peculiar incidents, or they are the beginning of the later period when
man begins to practice woman's activities.
The primitive division of labor among the sexes was not in any sense
an arrangement dictated by the men, but a habit into which both
men and women fell, to begin with, through their difference of
organization--a socially useful habit whose rightness no one
questioned and whose origin no one thought of looking into. There is,
moreover, a tendency in habits to become more fixed than is inherently
necessary. The man who does any woman's work is held in contempt not
only by men, but by women.
As to the Indian women, they are far from complaining of their
lot. On the contrary, they would despise their husbands could
they stoop to any menial office, and would think it conveyed
an imputation upon their own conduct. It is the worst insult
one virago can cast upon another in a moment of altercation.
"Infamous woman," will she cry, "I have seen your husband
carrying wood into the lodge to make the fire. Where was
his squaw, that he should be obliged to make a woman of
himself!"[176]
That men are similarly prejudiced against women's taking up male
occupations we know from modern industrial history, without looking
to ethnological evidence. Habit was, however, in another regard
favorable to woman, since what she was constantly associated with and
expended her activities upon was looked upon as hers. Through her
identification with the industrial process she became, in fact, a
property-owner. This result did not spring from the maternal system;
but both this and the maternal system were the results of her bodily
habit, and the social habits flowing from this.
When the woman as cultivator was almost the sole creator of
property in land, she held in respect of this also a position
of advantage. In the transactions of North American tribes
with the colonial governments many deeds of assignments bear
female signatures, which doubtless must also be referred to
inheritance through the mother.[177]
Among the Spokanes "all household goods are considered as the wife's
property."[178] The stores of roots and berries laid up by the Salish
women for a time of scarcity "are looked upon as belonging to them
personally, and their husbands will not touch them without having
previously obtained their permission."[179] Among the Menomini a woman
in good circumstances would possess as many as from 1,200 to 1,500
birch-bark vessels, and all of these would be in use during the season
of sugar-making.[180] In the New Mexican pueblo,
what comes from outside the house, as soon as it is inside
is put under the immediate control of the woman. My host at
Cochiti, New Mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a
string of _chile_ without the consent of his thirteen-year-old
daughter, Ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father.
In Cholula district (and probably all over Mexico) the man
has acquired more power, and the storehouse is no longer
controlled by the wife. But the kitchen remains her domain;
and its aboriginal designation, _tezcalli_ (place, or house,
of her who grinds), is still perfectly justified.[181]
A plurality of wives is required by a good hunter, since in
the labors of the chase women are of great service to their
husbands. An Indian with one wife cannot amass property, as
she is constantly occupied in household labors, and has not
time for preparing skins for trading.[182]
The outcome of this closer attention of the woman to the industrial
life is well seen among the ancient Hebrews:
A virtuous woman ... seeketh wool and flax, and worketh
willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships: she
bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet
night, and giveth meat to her household, and their task to her
maidens. She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit
of her hands she planteth a vineyard.... She perceiveth that
her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by
night. She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold
the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; yea, she
reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of
the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed
with scarlet. She maketh for herself carpets of tapestry; her
clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the
gates, when linen garments and selleth them; and delivereth
girdles unto the merchant.[183]
There must come a time in the history of every group when wild game
becomes scarce. This time is put off by successive migrations to
wilder regions; but the rapid increase of population makes any
continent inadequate to the supply of food through the chase
indefinitely. Morgan estimates that the state of New York, with its
47,000 square miles, never contained at any one time more than 25,000
Indians.[184] Sooner or later the man must either fall back on
the process represented by the women, taking up and developing her
industries, or he must change his attitude toward animal life. In
fact, he generally does both. He enters into a sort of alliance with
animal life, or with certain of its forms, feeding them, and tending
them, and breeding them; and he applies his katabolic energies to the
pursuits of woman, organizing and advancing them. Whether the animal
or the plant life receives in the end more attention is a matter
turning on environment and other circumstances.
When the destructive male propensities have exhausted or diminished
the food stores on the animal side, and man is forced to fall back on
the constructive female process, we find that he brings greater and
better organizing force to bear on the industries. Male enterprises
have demanded concerted action. In order to surround a buffalo
herd, or to make a successful assault, or even to row a large boat,
organization and leadership are necessary. To attack under leaders,
give signal cries, station sentinels, punish offenders, is, indeed, a
part of the discipline even of animal groups. The organizing capacity
developed by the male in human society in connection with violent
ways of life is transferred to labor. The preparation of land for
agriculture was undertaken by the men on a large scale. The jungle
was cleared, water courses were diverted and highways prepared for the
transportation of the products of labor.
But more than this, perhaps, man brought with him to the industrial
occupations all the skill in fashioning force-appliances acquired
through his intense, constant, and long-continued attention to the
devising and manufacture of weapons. Man is relatively a feeble
animal, but he made various and ingenious cutting, jabbing, and
bruising appliances to compensate. His life was a life of strains,
both giving and taking, and under the stress he had developed
offensive and defensive weapons. There is, however, no radical
difference, simply a difference in object and intensity of stimulus,
between handling and making weapons and handling and making tools.
So, when man was obliged to turn his attention to the agriculture
and industries practiced by primitive woman he brought all his
technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear
on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the
earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned
his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a
remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms:
with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the
earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus
creating the conditions of culture.
The destructive habits of the male nature were thus converted
under the stress of diminishing nutrition to the habits represented
primarily by the constructive female nature, and the inventive faculty
developed through attention to destructive mechanical aids was now
applied equally to the invention of constructive mechanical aids.
SEX AND PRIMITIVE MORALITY
The function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated
life so that all may have what we call fair play. It is impossible to
think of morality aside from expressions of force, primarily physical
force. "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear
false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not remove
the ancient landmark;" and all approvals and disapprovals imply
that the act in question has affected or will affect the interest of
others, or of society at large, for better or for worse. And since
morality goes back so directly to forms of activity and their
regulation, we may expect to find that the motor male and the more
stationary female have had a different relation to the development of
a moral code.
As between nutrition and reproduction, in the struggle for life,
nutrition plays a larger rôle--in volume, at any rate--in the
life-history of the individual. A consideration of the causes of the
modification of species in nature shows that the changes in morphology
and habit of the animal which relate to food-getting are more
fundamental and numerous than those which relate to wooing. In a moral
code, likewise, whether in an animal or human society, the bulk of
morality turns upon food rather than sex relations; and since the male
is more active in both these relations, and since, further, morality
is the mode of regulating activities in these relations, it is to
be expected that morality, and immorality as well, will be found
primarily to a greater degree functions of the motor male disposition.
Tribal safety and the preservation and extension of the territory
furnishing food demand the organized attention of the group first of
all; and the emotional demonstrations and social rewards following
modes of behavior which have a protective or provident meaning for
the group, and the public disapproval and disallowance of modes of
behavior which impair the safety or force capacity, and consequent
satisfactions of the group, become in the tribe the most powerful
of all stimuli, and stimuli to which the male is peculiarly able to
react. This is not like the case of hunger and other physiological
stimuli which are conditioned from within. The individual acts for the
advantage of the group rather than for his personal advantage, and the
stimulus to this action must be furnished socially. Group preservation
being of first-rate importance, no group would survive in which the
public showed apathy on this point. Lewis and Clarke say of the Dakota
Indians:
What struck us most was an institution peculiar to them and
to the Kite Indians, further to the westward, from whom it
is said to have been copied. It is an association of the most
active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by
attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any
danger, or to give way to their enemies. In war they go
forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding
their natural valor by any artifice.... These young men sit,
and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the
nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years
old; and such is the deference paid to courage that their
seats in the council are superior to those of the chiefs, and
their persons more respected.[185]
The consciousness of the value of male activity is here expressed in
an exaggerated degree--in a degree bordering upon the pathological,
since the reckless exposure of life to danger is not necessary to
success at a given moment, and is unjustifiable from the standpoint
of public safety, unless it be on the side of the suggestive effect
of intrepid conduct in creating a general standard of intrepidity.
Similarly, the Indians in general often failed to get the full benefit
of a victory, because of their practice that the scalp of an enemy
belonged to him who took it, and their pursuits after a rout were
checked by the delay of each to scalp his own.
The pedagogical attempts of primitive society, so far as they are
applied to boys, have as an end the encouragement of morality of a
motor, not a sentimental, type. The boys are taught war and the chase,
and to despise the occupations of women. Thompson says of the Zulu
boys:
It is a melancholy fact that when they have arrived at a very
early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such
is the law that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill
their mothers.[186]
Ethnologists often make mention of the fact that the natural races do
not generally punish children; and while this is due in part to a less
definite sense of responsibility, as well as of less nervousness in
parents, non-interference is a part of their system of training:
Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires
him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to
steal or secrete in joke some trifling article belonging
to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more
troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment,
the more they are praised as giving indication of a future
enterprising and warlike disposition.[187]
Theft is also encouraged among boys as a developer of their wits. The
Spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and Diodorus relates
that in Egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to
enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to
him all stolen articles. The citizens who were robbed went to the
captain of thieves and recovered their property upon payment of
one-fourth of its value.[188] Admiration of a lawless deed often
foreruns censure of the deed in consciousness today: there are few men
who do not admire a particularly daring and successful bank or diamond
robbery, though they deprecate the social injury done.
Formally becoming a man is made so much of in early society, because
it is on this occasion that fitness for activity is put to the test.
Initiatory ceremonies fall at the time of puberty in the candidate,
and consist of instruction and trials of fortitude. A certain show of
the proceeds of activity is also exacted of young men, especially
in connection with marriage, and the youth is not permitted to marry
until he has killed certain animals or acquired certain trophies. The
attention given to manly practices in connection with marriage is seen
in this example from the Kukis:
When a young man has fixed his affections upon a young woman,
either of his own or some neighboring _Parah_, his father
visits her father and demands her in marriage for his son: her
father, on this, inquires what are the merits of the young
man to entitle him to her favor; and how many can he afford
to entertain at the wedding feast; to which the father of
the young man replies that his son is a brave warrior, a good
hunter, and an expert thief; for that he can produce so many
heads of the enemies he has slain and of the game he has
killed; that in his house are such and such stolen goods;
and that he can feast so many (mentioning the number) at his
marriage.[189]
Occasionally the ability to take punishment is even made a part of the
marriage ceremony. At Arab marriages
there is much feasting, and the unfortunate bridegroom
undergoes the ordeal of whipping by the relations of his
bride, in order to test his courage. Sometimes this punishment
is exceedingly severe, being inflicted with the coorbatch,
or whip of hippopotamus hide, which is cracked vigorously
about his ribs and back. If the happy husband wishes to
be considered a man worth having, he must receive the
chastisement with an expression of enjoyment; in which case
the crowds of women in admiration again raise their thrilling
cry.[190]
A very simple record of successful activity is the bones of animals.
McCosh says of the Mishmis of India:
Nor are these hospitable rites allowed to be forgotten; the
skull of every animal that has graced the board is hung up
as a record in the hall of the entertainer; he who has
the best-stocked Golgotha is looked upon as the man of the
greatest wealth and liberality, and when he dies the whole
smoke-dried collection of many years is piled upon his grave
as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth.[191]
And Grange of the Nagas:
In front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up
the bones of the animals with which they have feasted the
villagers, whether tigers, elephants, cows, hogs, or monkeys,
or aught else, for it signifies little what comes to their
net.[192]
The head-hunting mania of Borneo is also a pathological expression
of the desire to get approval of destructive activity from both the
living and the dead:
The aged of the people were no longer safe among their
kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the
grizzly store. Superstition soon added its ready impulse to
the general movement. The aged warrior could not rest in his
grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name; the
maiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not
yet stained with some cowardly murder.[193]
Class distinctions and the attendant ceremonial observances go
immediately back to an appreciation of successful motor activities.
We need only observe the conduct of weaker animals in the presence
of the stronger to appreciate the differences in behavior induced
by the presence of superior motor ability. The recognition of this
difference, as it is finally expressed in habitual forms of behavior,
becomes a symbol of the difference, while the difference goes back,
in reality, to a difference in capacity. This example from Raffles
illustrates the intensity of moral meaning which the appreciation of
achievement may take on in the end:
At the court of _Súra-kérta_ I recollect that once, when
holding a private conference with the _Súsunan_ at the
residency, it became necessary for the _Rádan adipáti_ to be
dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man
was, as usual, squatting, and as the Susunan happened to be
seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes
before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts,
could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach
the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission
on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself
inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were
insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out
of the _dódok_ posture. When it is necessary for an inferior
to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with
his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's
sight.[194]
Drury says that a Malagasy chief, on his return from war,
had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came
out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and
then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the
same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in
the same manner.[195]
An examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times
thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent
and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards
of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude
essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the
representatives of conduct of this type. In the past, at any rate,
there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like
military adulation; and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in
the individual ranks with the fighting quality.[196]
But checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and
more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct. Approval is
expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving
individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery,
promotions, and other rewards; but in general the moral side of life
gets no such definite notice as the immoral side. Practices which are
disliked by all may be forbidden, while there is no equally summary
way of dealing with practices approved by all. In consequence,
practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited,
and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty,
resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment. An analysis of
the following crimes and punishments among the Kafirs, for instance,
indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of
activity and punishments is present at a comparatively early period of
development:
Theft: restitution and fine. Injuring cattle: death or fine,
according to the circumstances. Causing cattle to abort:
heavy fine. Arson: fine. False witness: heavy fine. Maiming:
fine. Adultery: fine, sometimes death. Rape: fine, sometimes
death. Using love philters: death or fine, according to
circumstances. Poisoning, and practices with an evil intent
(termed "witchcraft"): death and confiscation. Murder: death
or fine, according to circumstances.... Treason, as contriving
the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy:
death and confiscation. Desertion from the tribe: death and
confiscation.[197]
Similarly among the Kukis:
Injuring the property of others, or taking it without payment;
using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring
another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to
the aged; marrying an elder brother's wife; putting your
foot on, or walking over, a man's body; speaking profanely of
religion--are acts of impiety.[198]
As the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very
conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of
the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the
safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we
find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional
morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male. The
establishment of moral standards is mediated through the sense of
strain--strain to the personal self, and strain to the social self.
Whether a man is injured by an assault upon his life or upon his
property, he suffers violence, and the first resort of the injured
individual or group is to similar violence; but this results in a
vicious tit-for-tat reaction whereby the stimulus to violence is
reinstated by every fresh act of violence. Within the group this
vicious action and reaction is broken up by the intervention of public
opinion, either in an informal expression of disapproval, or through
the headmen. The man who continues to kill may be killed in turn, but
by order of the council of the tribe; and one of his kinsmen may be
appointed to execute him, as under that condition no feud can follow.
But there is always a reluctance to banish or take the life of the
member of the group, both because no definite machinery is developed
for accomplishing either, and because the loss of an able-bodied
member of a group is a loss to the group itself. The group does not
seek, therefore, immediately to be rid of an offensive member, but
to modify his habits, to convert him. Jones says of the Ojibways that
there were occasionally bad ones among them, "but the good council of
the wise sachems and the mark of disgrace put upon unruly persons had
a very desirable influence."[199] The extreme form of punishment in
the power of the folk-moot of the Tuschinen is to be excluded from the
public feasts, and to be made a spectator while stoned in effigy and
cursed.[200] Sending a man to Coventry is in vogue among the Fejir
Beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never
spoken to again, nor allowed to sit in the tent of any member of the
tribe.[201]
The formulation of sentiment about an act depends also on the
repetition of the act. The act is more irritating, and the irritation
more widespread, with each repetition, and there is an increase of
the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when
frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the
fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket
handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there
follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally
the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount
consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its
intrinsic import so much as to its conformity or nonconformity with a
standard in the law: _summum jus, summa injuria_.
Morality, involving the modification of the conduct of the individual
in view of the presence of others, is already highly developed in
the tribal stage, since the exigencies of life have demanded the most
rigorous regulation of behavior in order to secure the organization
and the prowess essential to success against all comers. But the tribe
is a unit in hostile coexistence with other similar units, and its
morality stops within itself, and applies in no sense to strangers and
outsiders. The North American Indians were theoretically at war with
all with whom they had not concluded a treaty of peace. In Africa
the traveler is safe and at an advantage if by a fiction (the rite of
blood-brotherhood) he is made a member of the group; and similarly
in Arabia and elsewhere. The old epics and histories are full of the
praises of the man who is gentle within the group and furious without
it. The earliest commandments doubtless did not originally apply to
mankind at large. They meant, "Thou shalt not kill within the tribe,"
"Thou shalt not commit adultery within the tribe," etc. Cannibalism
furnishes a most interesting example of the prohibition of a practice
as applied to the members of the group, while extra-tribal cannibalism
continued unabated. And within the tribe there is a continuance of
this practice in the forms which do not interfere with the efficiency
and cripple the activity of the group. That is, while cannibalism
in general is prohibited, the eating of the decrepit, the aged,
of invalids, of deformed children, and of malefactors is still
practiced.[202]
But there gradually grew up a set of disapprovals of conduct as such,
whether within or without the group. In the _Odyssey_ Pallas Athene
says that Odysseus had come from Ephyra from Ilus, son of Mermerus:
"For even thither had Odysseus gone on his swift ship to seek a deadly
drug, that he might have wherewithal to smear his bronze-shod arrows:
but Ilus would in no wise give it to him, for he had in awe the
everlasting gods."[203] Here is an extension to society in general
of a principle which had been first worked out in the group; for
poisoning without the group was long allowed after it was disallowed
in the group. The case of poisoning is, indeed, a particularly good
instance of an unsatisfaction felt in the substitution of clandestine
methods for simple motor force in deciding a dispute, and affords
a clear example of an important relation between moral feeling
and physiological functioning. Animal as well as human society has
developed strategy alongside of direct motor expressions, but strategy
is only an indirect application of the motor principle. Co-ordination,
associative memory, will, judgment, are involved in strategy; it is
only a different mode of functioning. On the other hand, there is
a peculiar abhorrence of murder by night, poisoning, drowning in a
ship's hold, because, while all the physiological machinery for action
is on hand, there is no chance to work it. It is a most exasperating
thing to die without making a fight for it. The so-called American
duel is an abhorrent thing, because life or death is decided by a turn
of the dice, not on the racially developed principle of the battle to
the strong.
When, then, it is observed within the group that this, that, and
the other man has died of poison, each interprets this in terms of
himself, and no one feels safe. The use of poison is not only a means
of checking activities and doing hurt socially, but this form is most
foul and unnatural because it involves a death without the possibility
of motor resistance (except the inadequate opportunity on the
strategic side of taking precautionary measures against poison) and
a victory and social reward without a struggle. The group, therefore,
early adopts very severe methods in this regard. Death is the usual
penalty for the use of poison, and even the possession of poison,
among tribes not employing it for poisoning weapons, is punished.
Among the Karens of India, if a man is found with poison in his
possession, he is bound and placed for three days in the hot sun, his
poison is destroyed, and he is pledged not to obtain any more. If
he is suspected of killing anyone, he is executed.[204] Particularly
distressing modes of death, and other means of penalizing death by
poison more severely than motor modes of killing, were adopted. The
Chinese punish the preparation of poisons or capture of poisonous
animals with beheading, confiscation, and banishment of wife and
children. In Athens insanity caused by poison was punished with death.
The _Sachsenspiegel_ provides death by fire. In the lawbook of the
tsar Wachtang a double composition price was exacted for death by
poison. And in ancient Wales death and confiscation were the penalty
for death by poison, and death or banishment the penalty of the
manufacturer of poisons. The same quality of disapproval is expressed
in early law of sorcery, and it is unnecessary to give details of this
also. But, stated in emotional terms, both poison and sorcery, and
other underhand practices arouse one of the most distressing of the
emotions--the emotion of dread, if we understand by this term that
form of fear which has no tangible or visible embodiment, which
is apprehended but not located, and which in consequence cannot be
resisted; the distress, in fact, lying in the inability to function.
The organism which has developed structure and function through action
is unsatisfied by an un-motor mode of decision. We thus detect in the
love of fair play, in the Golden Rule, and in all moral practices a
motor element; and with changing conditions there is progressively
a tendency, mediated by natural selection and conscious choice, to
select those modes of reaction in which the element of chance is
as far as possible eliminated. This preference for functional over
chance or quasi-chance forms of decision is expressed first within
the group, but is slowly extended, along with increasing commercial
communication, treaties of peace, and with supernatural assistance, to
neighboring groups. The case of Odysseus is an instance of a moment
in the life of the race when a disapproval is becoming of general
application.
On our assumption that morality is dependent on strains, and that
its development is due to the advantage of regulating these strains,
we may readily understand why most of the canons of morality are
functions of the katabolic male activity. Theft, arson, rape,
murder, burglary, highway robbery, treason, and the like, are natural
accompaniments of the more aggressive male disposition; the male is
_par excellence_ both the hero and the criminal. But on the side of
the sex we might expect to find the female disposition setting the
standards of morality, since reproduction is even a greater part of
her nature than of man's. On the contrary, however, we find the male
standpoint carried over and applied to the reproductive process, and
the regulation of sex practices transpiring on the basis of force. In
the earliest period of society, under the maternal system, the woman
had her own will more with her person; but with the formulation of a
system of control, based on male activities, the person of woman was
made a point in the application of the male standpoint. "The wife,
like any other of the husband's goods and chattels, might be sold or
lent."[205] "Even when divorced she was by no means free, as the tribe
exercised its jurisdiction in the woman's affairs and the disposal of
her person."[206] Forsyth reports of the Gonds that
infidelity in the married state is ... said to be very rare;
and, when it does occur, is one of the few occasions when
the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion,
frequently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off
his wife's nose and knocking out the brains of her paramour
with his ax.[207]
The sacrifice of wives in Africa, India, Fiji, Madagascar, and
elsewhere, upon the death of husbands, shows how completely the person
of the female had been made a part of the male activity. Where this
practice obtained, the failure of the widow to acquiesce in the habit
was highly immoral. Williams says of the strangling of widows by the
Fijians:
It has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are
sacrificed at their own instance. There is truth in this
statement, but unless other facts are taken into account it
produces an untruthful impression. Many are importunate to
be killed, because they know that life would henceforth be to
them prolonged insult, neglect, and want.... If the friends
of the woman are not the most clamorous for her death, their
indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late
husband or his friends.[208]
Child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in
gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her
conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or betrothed
before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of
age, and variously, often to an adult, and their husbands were thus
able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their
chastity. On the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where
marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl
is not looked after until she is married; it becomes immoral only when
disapproved by her husband. In the Andaman Islands,
after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse
... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are
required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve....
If any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and
she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or
going to another part of the circle, he considers himself
insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound
her.[209]
Under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual
conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the
act. Hence a very general practice that the husbands prostituted their
wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse:
The chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much
estimation. The husband will, for a trifling present, lend
his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by
increasing the value of the present. Yet, strange as it may
seem, notwithstanding this facility, any connection of this
kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly
offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the
same licentiousness in civilized societies.[210]
When woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the
maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and
particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of
man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and
reflected naïvely the moral standards which were developed for the
most part through male activities. Any system of checks and approvals
in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of
advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were
safeguards of the group as a whole, and not of the men only. The
person and presence of woman in society have stimulated and modified
male behavior and male moral standards, and she has been a faithful
follower, even a stickler for the prevalent moral standards (the very
tenacity of her adhesion is often a sign that she is an imitator);
but up to date the nature of her activities--the nature, in short,
of the strains she has been put to--has not enabled her to set up
independently standards of behavior either like or unlike those
developed through the peculiar male activities.
There is, indeed, a point of difference in the application of
standards of morality to men and to women. Morality as applied to man
has a larger element of the contractual, representing the adjustment
of his activities to those of society at large, or more particularly
to the activities of the male members of society; while the morality
which we think of in connection with woman shows less of the
contractual and more of the personal, representing her adjustment to
men, more particularly the adjustment of her person to men.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXOGAMY
Perhaps the most puzzling questions which meet the student of early
society are connected with marriage and kinship; and among these
questions the practice of exogamy has provoked a very large number of
ingenious theories. These are, however, I believe, all unsatisfactory,
either because they are too narrow to cover the facts completely,
or because they assume in the situation conditions which do not
exist.[211] But quite aside from the facts and the interpretation
of the facts, all theories in the field have failed to reckon
sufficiently with the natural disposition and habits of man in early
society, particularly with his attitude toward sexual matters; and it
seems entirely feasible to get some light on the question why man went
outside his immediate family and clan for women through an examination
of the nature of his sexual consciousness, and of the operation of
this in connection with the laws of habit and attention.
First of all, it is evident to one who looks carefully into the
question of early sex-habits that the lower races are intensely
interested in sexual life. A large part of their thought, and even of
their inventive ingenuity, is spent in this direction. The pleasures
of life are few and gross, but are pursued with vigor; and, _mutatis
mutandis_, love bears about the same relation to the activities of
the Australian aborigine as it bore to those of Sir Lancelot and the
knights of olden time.
A failure to perceive this is the great defect in Westermarck's great
work, where it is assumed that, if animals were monogamous, primitive
man must have been much the more so. The fact is that in respect
to memory, imagination, clothing, mode of association, and social
restraint man differed radically from the animals, and precisely
through these added qualities he took not only an instinctive,
but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and
this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life
uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among
animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether
this state was ever actually reached or not. The widespread and
various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice
of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, phallic worship, erotic
dances, and periodic orgies, of which the Orient furnishes so many
examples, are all found also among the natural races.[212]
Again, the eagerness of men to obtain girl wives, and even a claim on
infants, thus assuring virginity and marriage at the moment of sexual
maturity;[213] the habit of keeping girls in solitary confinement from
a tender age until the consummation of marriage;[214] and the African
custom of infibulation,[215] are classes of facts indicating that
the sexual element occupied a large place in the consciousness of the
natural races.
We must also consider the fact that sexual life is organically a
utilization of a surplus of nutriment, and that when food and leisure
are abundant there is a tendency on the part of sexual activity to
become a play activity, just as there is a tendency of activities in
general to become play activities under the same conditions. And while
there was no leisure class in early society, primitive man was a man
of leisure in the sense that his work activities were intermittent;
a successful hunt was followed by a period of rest, recuperation, and
surplus energy, and a consequent turning of attention to sexual life,
with the result that the sex interest appears as one of the main play
interests among the natural races.
Under these conditions, and in the absence of any considerably
developed social institutions or altruistic sentiments, we not
unnaturally find that the older and stronger men have the better of
it, both in regard to the food supply and the women, and the younger
men are obstructed in their efforts to satisfy their desires in regard
to both. The following passages from the ethnological literature of
Australia indicate the nature of the Australian male in sexual life,
and the nature of the obstructions encountered by the youth in the
presence of the older men.[216]
It is noticeable, first of all, that among the Australian tribes the
older men have worked out or fallen into such habits regarding the
females that the younger men obtain wives with great difficulty and
usually not before waiting a long time. In fact, Spencer and Gillen,
in their invaluable works on the central Australian tribes state
that usually a man is married to a woman of another generation than
himself:
The most usual method of obtaining a wife is that which is
connected with the well-established custom in accordance with
which every woman of the tribe is made _Tualcha mura_ with
some man. The arrangement, which is often a mutual one, is
made between two men, and it will be seen that owing to a girl
being made _Tualcha mura_ to a boy of her own age the men very
frequently have wives much younger than themselves, as the
husband and the mother of the wife obtained in this way are
usually approximately of the same age. When it has been agreed
upon by two men that the relationship shall be established
between their own children, one a boy and the other a girl,
the two latter, who are generally of a tender age, are taken
to the _Erlukwirra_, or women's camp, and here each mother
takes the other child and rubs it over with a mixture of fat
and red ochre.... This relationship indicates that the man has
the right to take as wife the daughter of the woman; she is in
fact assigned to him, and this, as a rule, many years before
she is born.[217]
It will be noticed that this is in reality a modification of the
system of exchanging women, and has an advantage over capture,
elopement, and charming (all of which are methods in practice among
the same tribes) in the fact that it is of the nature of a business
transaction or social agreement, and provokes no bad feeling or
retaliation. It also shows considerable regard on the part of the
elders for the young; but practically it is a reluctant admission of a
youth to participation in sexual privileges, since marriage is delayed
until a girl of his own age has been married and given birth to a girl
who in turn has become marriageable.
In the same connection we have the testimony of Curr that
the marriage customs of the blacks result in very ill-assorted
unions as regards age; for it is usual to see old men with
mere girls as wives, and men in the prime of life married to
old widows. As a rule wives are not obtained by the men
until they are at least thirty years of age. Women have very
frequently two husbands during their lifetime, the first older
and the second younger than themselves. Of course, as polygamy
is the rule and the men of the tribe exceed the females in
number besides, there are always many bachelors in every
tribe; but I never heard of a female over sixteen years of age
who, prior to the breakdown of aboriginal customs after the
coming of the whites, had not a husband.[218]
And Bonwick says:
The old men, who get the best food and hold the franchise of
the tribe in their hands, manage to secure an extra supply of
the prettiest girls.[219]
A further evidence of the keen sexual interest of the male is
furnished by the fact that even when the difficulties in the way of
getting a wife are regularly overcome by the youth, the other men of
the group, especially the older ones, reserve a temporary but prior
claim on her.[220]
In addition to a lively sexual interest in the women of their own
group, we find that even the lowest races have a well-developed
appreciation of the property value of women. In the earliest times
women were the sole creators of certain economic values, and since the
women contributed as much or more to the support of the men as the
men contributed to the support of the women, the men naturally got and
kept as many women as possible.[221] The condition prevailing in this
regard in central Australia is stated by Howitt:
It is an advantage to a man to have as many _Piraurus_ as
possible. He has then less work to do in hunting as his
_Piraurus_ when present supply him with a share of the food
which they procure, their own _Noas_ being absent. He also
obtains great influence in the tribe by lending his _Piraurus_
occasionally and receiving presents from young men to whom
_Piraurus_ have not yet been allotted, or who may not have
_Piraurus_ with them in the camp where they are. This is at
all times carried on, and such a man accumulates a lot of
property, weapons of all kinds, trinkets, etc., which he in
turn gives away to prominent men, heads of totems, and such,
and thus adds to his own influence. This is regarded by the
Dieri as in no way anything but quite right and proper.[222]
The following passages also from Spencer and Gillen's description of
the marriage customs of these aborigines show both the nature of the
sexual system of these tribes in general and the well-developed nature
of both their sexual and their property interest in their women:
The word _Nupa_ is without any exception applied
indiscriminately by men of a particular group to women of
another group, and _vice versa_, and simply implies a member
of a group of possible wives or husbands, as the case may be.
While this is so it must be remembered that in actual practice
each individual man has one or perhaps two of these _Nupa_
women who are especially attached to himself, and live with
him in his own camp. In addition to them, however, each
man has certain _Nupa_ women beyond the limited number
just referred to, with whom he stands in the relation of
_Piraungaru_. To women who are the _Piraungaru_ of a man (the
term is a reciprocal one) the latter has access under certain
conditions, so that they may be considered as accessory wives.
The result is that in the Urabunna tribe every woman is the
especial _Nupa_ of one particular man, but at the same time
he has no exclusive right to her as she is the _Piraungaru_
of certain other men who also have the right of access to her.
Looked at from the point of view of the man his _Piraungaru_
are a limited number of the women who stand in the relation
of _Nupa_ to him. There is no such thing as one man having the
exclusive right to one woman; the elder brothers, or _Nuthie_,
of the latter, in whose hands the matter lies, will give one
man a preferential right, but at the same time they will
give other men of the same group a secondary right to her.
Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in
practice in the Urabunna tribe. The initiation in regard to
establishing the relationship of _Piraungaru_ between a man
and a woman must be taken by the elder brothers, but the
arrangement must receive the sanction of the old men of
the group before it can take effect. As a matter of actual
practice this relationship is usually established at times
when considerable numbers of the tribe are gathered together
to perform important ceremonies, and when these and other
important matters which require the consideration of the
old men are discussed and settled. The number of a man's
_Piraungaru_ depends entirely upon the measure of his power
and popularity; if he be what is called "urku," a word which
implies much the same as our word "influential," he will have
a considerable number; if he be insignificant or unpopular,
then he will meet with scanty treatment. A woman may be
_Piraungaru_ to a number of men, and as a general rule the
women and men who are _Piraungaru_ to one another are to be
found living grouped together. A man may always lend his wife,
that is, the woman to whom he has the first right, to
another man, provided always he be her _Nupa_, without the
relationship of _Piraungaru_ existing between the two, but
unless this relationship exists no man has any right of access
to a woman. Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man
attempts to prevent his wife's _Piraungaru_ from having access
to her, but this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked
upon as churlish.[223]
The evidence up to this point is presented with a view to establishing
the fact that the men in early society had the strongest interest,
both on sexual and on property grounds, in retaining a hold on the
women of their group; and as an extreme expression of this interest I
wish to consider the system of elopement in early society. While there
is no system of government by chiefs among the Australian tribes
which we have been considering, the influence of the old men is very
powerful in all matters. The initiatory ceremonies, covering periods
of months and occurring at intervals during a period of years, and
involving great hardship to the young men, are calculated to inspire
them with great respect for the old men and for the traditional
practices of the tribe. One of the practical workings of this
influence of the older men is to throw restraints about the young
men and obstruct their activities. This obstruction is seen quite
as clearly on the food side as on the side of sex, in the fact that
the old men make certain foods which are not abundant (notably the
kangaroo and the opossum) taboo to the young men and the women, and
thus reserve these delicacies for themselves. We have already seen,
however, that the tribe usually makes some kind of a tardy sexual
provision for its male members, and we shall presently examine this
question more in detail; but the fact remains that the desires of the
young men are not adequately or promptly provided for. They may never
get a wife in the usual course of things, or they may have to delay
marriage for a period of twenty years beyond the point of maturity.
Under these conditions it is to be expected that the young men should
sometimes attempt to obtain women in spite of existing obstructions;
and this is the real significance of elopement. It is, of course, true
that married men sometimes eloped with married women, as with us;
but in some of the Australian tribes the difficulties in the way of
marriage were so great that elopement was recognized as the only way
out:
The young Kurnai could, as a rule, acquire a wife in one way
only. He must run away with her. Native marriage might
be brought about in various ways. If the young man was so
fortunate as to have an unmarried sister and to have a friend
who also had an unmarried sister they might arrange with the
girls to run off together or he might make his arrangements
with some eligible girl whom he fancied and who fancied him;
or a girl, if she fancied some young man might send him a
secret message asking, "Will you find me some food?" and this
was understood to be a proposal. But in every case it was
essential for success that the parents of the bride should be
utterly ignorant of what was about to transpire.[224]
Fison[225] is of the opinion that elopement in this case is caused
by the monopoly of women in the tribe by the older men. Even when the
assent of the parents has been secured, or when the match has been
arranged by the parents of the young people, it is in some cases
necessary to elope because of the reluctance of the men in general to
have a young woman appropriated:
If the woman was caught her female relatives gave her a good
beating. Fights took place over these cases between the girl's
relatives--both male and female--and those of the man. The
women were generally the most excited; they would stir up
the men and then assist with their yamsticks. If the girl
was first caught by other than her own relatives, she would
be abused by all the men; but this never occurred when her
parents or brothers were present to protect her.[226]
When we consider the difficulties in the way of young men in getting
wives at home, we should expect that they would make a practice of
capturing women from other tribes; and, indeed, it is well known that
marriage by capture has been assumed to be at the base of exogamy by
both Lubbock and Spencer. But the importance which has been attached
to this form of marriage in the literature of sociology is due to
the fact that these eminent writers have constructed theories on the
assumption that marriage by capture was widespread and important,
more than to anything else. For, to say nothing of the fact that the
theories of both these writers are too weak to stand even if capture
were found to be very prevalent, the evidence from Australia shows
that capture was comparatively little practiced there, although that
country affords most of the examples referred to by writers on this
subject. Spencer and Gillen say in this connection:
The method of capture which has so frequently been described
as characteristic of Australian tribes, is the very rarest way
in which the Central Australian secures a wife. It does not
often happen that a man forcibly takes a woman from someone
else within his own group, but it does sometimes happen, and
especially when the man from whom the woman is taken has
not shown his respect for his actual or tribal _Ikuntera_
(father-in-law) by cutting himself on the occasion of the
death of one or the other of the latter's relations. In this
case the aggressor will be aided by the members of his local
group, but in other cases of capture he will have to fight
for himself. At times, however, a woman may be captured from
another group, though this again is of rare occurrence, and is
usually associated with an avenging party, the women captured
by which, who are almost sure to be the wives of men killed,
are allotted to certain members of the avenging party.[227]
Curr reports to the same effect:
On rare occasions a wife is captured from a neighboring tribe
and carried off.... At present, as the stealing of a woman
from a neighboring tribe would involve the whole tribe in war
for his sole benefit, and as the possession of the woman would
lead to constant attacks, tribes set themselves generally
against the practice.[228]
It is, of course, not to be denied that the sexual impulse of the male
was sometimes strong enough to lead him to seize a woman wherever
he found her, if he could not get a wife otherwise, but there is no
evidence that capture ever formed a regular or important means of
getting wives.[229]
On the contrary, the evidence points to the view that as soon as for
any reason men ceased to marry with the women of their own blood and
went outside of their immediate families for women, they ordinarily
secured them in a social, not a hostile, way, and from a different
branch of their own group, not, as a rule, from a strange group. In
fact, the regular means of securing a wife other than a woman of one's
own family seems to have been to exchange a woman of one's family for
a woman of a different family.
The Australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or
wives either as the survivor of a married brother, or
in exchange for his sisters, or later on in life for his
daughters. Occasionally also an ancient widow, whom the
rightful heir does not claim, is taken possession of by
some bachelor but for the most part those who have no female
relatives to give in exchange have to go without wives. Girls
become wives at from eight to fourteen years. Males are free
to possess wives after ... attaining the status of young man,
which they do when about eighteen years of age. One often sees
a child of eight the wife of a man of fifty. Females until
married are the property of their father or his heir, and
afterwards of their husband, and have scarcely any rights.
When a man dies his widows devolve on his oldest surviving
brother of the same caste as himself--that is, full brother.
Should a man leave, say two widows, each of whom has a son who
has attained the rank of a young man, then I believe each of
the young men may dispose of his uterine sister and obtain a
wife in exchange for her. But should the deceased father of
the young men have already obtained wives on faith of giving
these daughters in marriage when of suitable age, then the
contract made must be kept. When the father is old and his
sons young men, it happens sometimes that he barters females
at his disposal for wives for them.[230]
Roth also reports[231] that exchange of sisters is one mode of
negotiating marriage; and Haddon says that in the region of Torres
Straits marriage is proposed by the woman, but the man must either pay
for her or furnish a woman in return. In Tud, after the young people
have come to an agreement,
they both go home and tell their respective relatives. "For
girl more big (i.e., of more consequence) than boy." If the
girl has a brother, he takes the man's sister, and then all
is settled. The fighting does not appear to be a very serious
business.[232]
Similarly in Maibung:
An exchange of presents and foods was made between the
contracting parties, but the bridegroom's friends had to give
the larger amount, and the bridegroom had to pay the parents
for his wife, the usual price being a canoe or dugong harpoon,
or shell armlet, or goods to equal value. The man might give
his sister in exchange for a wife, and thus save the purchase
price. A poor man who had no sister might perforce remain
unmarried, unless an uncle took pity on him and gave him a
cousin to exchange for a wife.[233]
Fison and Howitt[234] give other examples of marriage by exchange, and
I have already given a description of the custom of _Tualcha
mura_, the _regular_ method of obtaining a wife among the central
Australians, by means of which a man secures a wife for his son by
making an arrangement with some other man with regard to the latter's
daughter.
From the evidence given first of all I think we must conclude that
early man was inclined to appropriate whatever women came in his way.
In this regard we have a condition resembling that among the higher
animals, where the more vigorous males try to monopolize the females.
We may assume also that the women first appropriated were those
born in the group--that is, in the immediate family--as being more
proximate and not already possessed by others. In this regard also the
condition resembled that among the higher gregarious animals; and
in so far as the control of the women by the men of the group is
concerned the condition remains unchanged. But the men have ceased
to marry the women of their immediate families, and the problem of
exogamy is to determine why men living with women and controlling them
should cease to marry them.
In other papers I have pointed out that the interest of man is not
held nor the emotions aroused when the objects of attention have
grown so familiar in consciousness that the problematical and elusive
elements disappear;[235] and I have also alluded to the laws of sexual
life, that an excited condition of the nervous system is a necessary
preparation to pairing.[236] And just here we must recognize the fact
that monogamy is a habit acquired by the race, not because it has
answered more completely to the organic interest of the individual,
but because it has more completely served social needs, particularly
by assuring to the woman and her children the undivided interest
and providence of the man. But in early times the law of natural
selection, not the law of choice, operated to preserve the groups in
which a monogamous or quasi-monogamous tendency showed itself (since
the children in these cases were better trained and nourished), and
in historical times and among ourselves all of the machinery of church
and state has been set in motion in favor of the system. In point
of fact, the members of civilized societies at the present time have
become so refined and have so far accepted ethical standards that
monogamy is the system actually favored on sentimental grounds as well
as on grounds of expediency by a large proportion of any civilized
population. On the other hand, speaking from the biological
standpoint, monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of
highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements
disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so
familiar in consciousnes that the emotional reactions are qualified.
This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and
women frequently become interested in others than their partners in
matrimony. I may also just allude to the fact that the large body of
the literature of intrigue, represented by the tales of Boccaccio and
Margaret of Navarre, is based on the interest in unfamiliar women.
Familiarity with women within the group and unfamiliarity with
women without the group is the explanation of exogamy on the side of
interest; and the system of exogamy is a result of exchanging familiar
women for others. We have seen that capture was not an important
means of securing wives outside the group, and that exogamy was fully
developed before property and media of exchange were developed to any
extent, and consequently before the purchase of women had become a
system. We have seen also that the Australian who wants a woman at
the present time gets her by exchanging another woman for her. Social
groups were necessarily small in the beginning. Before invention and
co-operation have advanced far, the group must remain small in order
to pick up enough food to sustain life on a given area.
Starting out with a single pair, when the family increases in size a
separation is necessary; and clans are an outcome of the process of
division and redivision, the bond between the clans and their union
in a tribe resulting from their consciousness of kinship. Now, it is
a well-known condition of exogamy that, while a man must marry without
his clan, he must not marry without his tribe, and for the most part,
in fact, the clan into which he shall marry is designated. In other
words, allied clans gave their women in exchange mutually. This was
a natural arrangement, both because the two groups were neighbors and
because they were friendly, and at the same time the psychological
demand for newness was satisfied. When a family was divided into
two branches, Branch A had a property interest in its own women, but
preferred the women of Branch B because of their unfamiliarity. The
exchange took place at first occasionally and not systematically, and
the women parted with in each case were not, perhaps, in all cases the
youngest, and we may assume that they had in all cases been married
before they were given up. But gradually, and when the habit of
exchange had been established, men came to look forward to the
exchange and to desire to secure the girl at the earliest possible
moment, until finally young women were exchanged at puberty, and
virgins. When for any reason there is established in a group a
tendency toward a practice, then the tendency is likely to become
established as a habit, and regarded as right, binding, and
inevitable: it is moral and its contrary is immoral. When we consider
the binding nature of the food taboos, of the _couvade_, and of the
regulation that a man shall not speak to or look at his mother-in-law
or sister, we can understand how the habit of marrying out, introduced
through the charm of unfamiliarity, becomes a binding habit.
I think, therefore, we have every reason to conclude that exogamy is
one expression of the more restless and energetic habit of the
male. It is psychologically true that only the unfamiliar and
not-completely-controlled is interesting. This is the secret of the
interest of modern scientific pursuit and of games. States of high
emotional tension are due to the presentation of the unfamiliar--that
is, the unanalyzed, the uncontrolled--to the attention. And although
the intimate association and daily familiarity of family life produce
affection, they are not favorable to the genesis of romantic
love. Cognition is so complete that no place is left for emotional
appreciation. Our common expressions "falling in love" and "love at
sight" imply, in fact, unfamiliarity; and there can be no question
that men and women would prefer at present to get mates away from
home, even if there were no traditional prejudice against the marriage
of near kin.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODESTY AND CLOTHING
No altogether satisfactory theory of the origin of modesty has been
advanced. The naïve assumption that men were ashamed because they were
naked, and clothed themselves to hide their nakedness, is not tenable
in face of the large mass of evidence that many of the natural races
are naked, and not ashamed of their nakedness; and a much stronger
case can be made out for the contrary view, that clothing was first
worn as a mode of attraction, and modesty then attached to the act
of removing the clothing; but this view in turn does not explain an
equally large number of cases of modesty among races which wear no
clothing at all. A third theory of modesty, the disgust theory, stated
by Professor James[237] and developed somewhat by Havelock Ellis,[238]
makes modesty the outgrowth of our disapproval of immodesty in
others--"the application in the second instance to ourselves of
judgments primarily passed upon our mates."[239] The sight of
offensive behavior is no doubt a powerful deterrent from like
behavior, but this seems to be a secondary manifestation in the
case of modesty. The genesis of modesty is rather to be found in the
activity in the midst of which it appears, and not in the inhibition
of activity like the activity of others. It appears also that it has
primarily no connection with clothing whatever.[240]
Professor Angell and Miss Thompson have made an investigation of the
relation of circulation and respiration to attention, which advances
considerably our knowledge of the nature of the emotions. They say:
When the active process runs smoothly and uninterruptedly,
these bodily activities [circulation and respiration] progress
with rhythmic regularity. Relatively tense, strained
attention is generally characterized by more vigorous bodily
accompaniments than is low-level, gentle, and relatively
relaxed attention (drowsiness, for instance); but both
agree, so long as their progress is free and unimpeded, in
relative regularity of bodily functions. Breaks, shocks, and
mal-co-ordinations of attention are accompanied by sudden,
spasmodic changes and irregularities in bodily processes, the
amount and violence of such changes being roughly proportioned
to the intensity of the experiences.
Now, emotions represent psychological conditions of great
instability. Especially is this true when the emotion is
profound. The necessity is suddenly thrown upon the organism
of reacting to a situation with which it is at the moment able
to cope only imperfectly, if at all. The condition is one in
which normal, uninterrupted, coordinated movements are for a
time checked and thrown out of gear.[241]
And again, in concluding their admirable study:
All the processes with which we have been dealing are cases of
readjustment of an organism to its environment. Attention is
always occupied with the point in consciousness at which the
readjustment is taking place. If the process of readjustment
goes smoothly and evenly, we have a steady strain of
attention--an equilibrated motion in one direction. The
performance of mental calculation is a typical case of
this sort of attention. But often the readjustment is more
difficult. Factors are introduced which at first refuse to
be reconciled with the rest of the conscious content. The
attentive equilibrium is upset, and there are violent shifts
back and forth as it seeks to recover itself. These are the
cases of violent emotion. Between these two extremes comes
every shade of difficulty in the readjustment, and of
consequent intensity in emotional tone. We have attempted to
show in the preceding paper that the readjustment of organism
to environment involves a maintenance of the equilibrium of
the bodily processes, which runs parallel with the maintenance
of the attentive equilibrium, and is an essential part of the
readjustment of the psycho-physical organism.
The more motile organisms are constantly, by very reason of their
motility, encountering situations which put a strain upon the
attention. The quest for food leads to encounters with members of
their own and of different species; the resulting fight, pursuit, and
flight are accompanied by the powerful emotions of anger and fear.
The emotion is, as Darwin has pointed out, a part of the effort to
reaccommodate, since it is a physiological preparation for action
appropriate to the type of situation in question.[242] The strain upon
the attention, the affective bodily condition, and the motor activity
appear usually in the same connection, and, from the standpoint
of biological design, the action concluding the series of bodily
activities is of advantage to the organism.
In animal life the situation is simple. Whether the animal decides to
fight for it or to run for it, he has at any rate two plain courses
before him, and the relation between his emotional states and the
type of situation is rather definitely fixed racially, and relatively
constant. Even in the associated life of animals the type of reaction
is not much changed, and is here also instinctively fixed. But in
mankind the instinctive life is overshadowed or rivaled by the freedom
of initiative secured through an extraordinary development of the
power of inhibition and of associative memory, while, at the same
time, this freedom of choice is hindered and checked by the presence
of others. The social life of mankind brings out a thousand situations
unprovided for in the instincts and unanticipated in consciousness.
In the midst, then, of a situation relatively new in race experience,
where advantage is still the all-important consideration, and where
this can no longer be secured either by fighting or running, but by
the good opinion of one's fellows as well, we may look for some new
strains upon the attention and some emotions not common to animal
life.
I do not think we can entirely understand the nature of these
emotional expressions in the race unless we realize that man is, in
his savage as well as his civilized state, enormously sensitive to the
opinion of others.[243] The longing of the Creek youth to "bring in
hair" and be counted a man; the passion of the Dyak of Borneo for
heads, and the recklessness of the modern soldier, "seeking the bubble
reputation at the cannon's mouth;" the alleged action of the young
women of Kansas in taking a vow to marry no man who had not been to
the Philippine war, and of the ladies of Havana, during the rebellion
against Spain, in sending a chemise to a young man who stayed at home,
with the suggestion that he wear it until he went to the field--all
indicate that the opinion of one's fellows is at least as powerful a
stimulus as any found in nature. To the student of ethnology no point
in the character of primitive man is more interesting and surprising
than his vanity. This unique susceptibility to social influence is,
indeed, essential to the complex institutional and associational
life of mankind. The transmission of language, tradition, morality,
knowledge, and all race experience from the older to the younger,
and from one generation to another, is accomplished through mental
suggestibility, and the activity of the individual in associational
life is mediated largely through it.
Now, taking them as we find them, we know that such emotions as
modesty and shame are associated with actions which injure and shock
others, and show us off in a bad light. They are violations of modes
of behavior which have become habitual in one way and another. In an
earlier paper[244] have indicated some of the steps by which approvals
and disapprovals were set up in the group. When once a habit is fixed,
interference with its smooth running causes an emotion. The nature of
the habit broken is of no importance. If it were habitual for _grandes
dames_ to go barefoot on our boulevards or to wear sleeveless dresses
at high noon, the contrary would be embarrassing. Psychologically the
important point is that, when the habit is set up, the attention is
in equilibrium. When inadvertently or under a sufficiently powerful
stimulus we break through a habit, the attention and associative
memory are brought into play. We are conscious of a break, of what
others will think; we anticipate a damaged or diminished personality;
we are, in a word, upset. We may consequently expect to find that
whatever brings the individual into conflict with the ordinary
standards of life of the society in which he is living is the
occasion of a strain on the attention and of an accompanying bodily
change.[245]
A minimum expression of modesty, and one having an organic rather than
a social basis, is seen in the coyness of the female among animals.
In many species of animals the female does not submit at once to the
solicitations of the male, but only after the most arduous wooing.
The female cuckoo answers the call of her mate with an
alluring laugh that excites him to the utmost, but it is long
before she gives herself up to him. A mad chase through tree
tops ensues, during which she constantly incites him with that
mocking call, till the poor fellow is fairly driven crazy. The
female kingfisher often torments her devoted lover for half
a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. But
she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as
she flies, and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he
suddenly gives up the pursuit.[246]
There is here a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse
to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached,
which is not essentially different from the case, in human society,
of that woman who, "whispering, 'I will ne'er consent,' consented." In
either case, the minimum that it is necessary to assume is an organic
hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even
the greater rôle. Pairing is in its nature a seizure, and the coquetry
of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being
seized.
Our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted
by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same
reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in
totally contrary effects. A show of fight may produce either anger or
fear; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us
from another; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today
and please us tomorrow. Mere movement is, to take another instance,
one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life; and, if we examine
its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have
different meanings in terms of sex. If the female runs, the movement
attracts the notice of the male, and the movement is a sexual
stimulus. Or the movement may be a movement of avoidance--a
running-away; and in this way the female may secure contrary
desires by the same general type of activity. Or, on the other hand,
not-running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding
the attention of the male. Similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in
sexual life. In appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and
at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the
case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only
a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch
necessary for pairing.
But without going farther into the question of the psychology of
wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is
necessary to be always attractive and never disgusting to the opposite
sex, and even the most serious attention to this problem is not always
successful.[247] Sexual association is a treacherous ground, because
our likes and dislikes turn upon temperamental traits rather than
on the judgment, or, at any rate, upon modes of judgment not clearly
analyzable in consciousness. An openness of manner in the relations
of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness,
or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is
charming, but too much modesty is prudery. Under these circumstances,
when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is realized, but the
effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and
when, at the same time, the effect produced by the action is felt to
be very important to happiness, it is to be expected that there should
often be a conflict between the tendency to follow a stimulus and
the tendency to inhibit it, a hovering between advance and retreat,
assent and negation--a disturbed state of attention, and an organic
hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the
act is realized or thought as improper.
But, however thin and movable the partitions between attraction and
disgust, every person is aware of certain standards of behavior,
derived either from the strain of personal relationship or by
imitation of current modes of behavior. The girl of the unclothed
races who takes in sitting a modest attitude is acting on the result
of experience. She may have been often annoyed by the attentions of
men at periods when their attention was not welcome, and in this case
the action is one of shrinking and avoidance. She doubtless has in
mind also that all females are not at all times attractive to all
males, that female boldness sometimes excites disgust, and that the
concealment of the person may be more attractive than its exposure.
This more or less instinctive recognition of the suggestive power
of her person and her corresponding attitude of modesty have been
assisted also by her observation of the experiences of other women,
and by the talk of the older women. I may add the following instances
to make it plain that the sexual relation is the object of much
attention from both sexes in primitive society, and furnishes occasion
for the interruption of the smooth flow of the attention and the
bodily activities. Describing the use of magic by the male Australians
in obtaining wives, Spencer and Gillen add:
In the case of charming, however, the initiative may be taken
by the woman, who can, of course, imagine that she has been
charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man,
whose vanity is flattered by the response to the magic
power which he can soon persuade himself that he did really
exercise.[248]
If this attempt at suggestion failed, we should have a case of lively
embarrassment in the woman, and her discomfiture would be heightened
if the other women and men of the community were aware of her attempt.
Similarly on Jervis Island in Torres Straits, if an unmarried woman
was interested in a man, she accosted him, but the man did not address
the woman "for, if she refused him, he would feel ashamed, and maybe
he would brain her with a stone club, and so 'he would kill her for
nothing.'"[249]
A wholesale unsettling of habit is seen when a lower culture is
impinged upon by a higher. The consciousness of other standards of
behavior causes new forms of modesty in the lower race. Haddon reports
of the natives of Torres Straits:
The men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf
petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now
both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before
me--only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only
when they were diving.... Amongst themselves they are, of
course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming
more so.... I have not noticed any reticence in their
speaking about sexual matters before the young, but missionary
influence has modified this a great deal; formerly, I imagine,
there was no restraint in speech, now there is a great deal
of prudery;... and I had the greatest possible difficulty
in getting the little information I did about the former
relationships between the sexes. All this, I suspect, is not
really due to a sense of decency _per se_, but rather to a
desire on their part not to appear barbaric to strangers; in
other words, the hesitancy is between them and the white man,
not as between themselves.[250]
Bonwick says also:
I have repeatedly been amused at observing the Australian
natives prepare for their approach to the abode of
civilization by wrapping their blankets more decently around
them and putting on their ragged trousers or petticoats.[251]
There are numerous cases found among the lower races where the wearing
of clothing and ornament are not associated with feelings of modesty.
Von den Steinen reports that the women of Brazil wore a small,
delicately made and ornamented covering or _uluri_, which evidently
had an attractive as well as protective value; but the women showed no
embarrassment, but rather astonishment, when he asked them to remove
them and give them to him. When they understood that he really wanted
them, they removed them and gave them to him with a laugh.[252] This
is a case, in fact, of the beginning of clothing without a beginning
of modesty. But while we find cases of modesty without clothing and of
clothing without modesty the two are usually found together, because
clothing and ornament are the most effective means of drawing the
attention to the person, sometimes by concealing it and sometimes by
emphasizing it.
The original covering of the body was in the nature of ornament rather
than clothing. The waist, the neck, the wrists, and the ankles are
smaller than the portion of the body immediately below them, and are
from this anatomical accident a suitable place to tie ornaments, and
the ornamentation of the body results incidently in giving some degree
of covering to the body. The most suggestive use of clothing is the
use of just a sufficient amount to call attention to the person,
without completely concealing it. I need not refer to the fact that
in modern society this is accomplished by, or perhaps we should better
say transpires in connection with, diaphanous fabrics and décolleté
dresses; and the same effect was doubtless accomplished by a typical
early form of female dress, of which I will give one instance in
Australia and one in America:
Among the Arunta and Luricha the women normally wear nothing,
but amongst tribes farther north, especially the Kaitish and
Warramunga, a small apron is made and worn, and this sometimes
finds its way south into the Arunta. Close-set strands of
fur-string hang vertically from a string waist-girdle. Each
strand is about eight or ten inches in length, and the breadth
of the apron may reach the same size, though it is often not
more than six inches wide.[253]
Mr. Powers says:
A fashionable young Wittun woman wears a girdle of deer skin,
the lower edge of which is slit into a long fringe, with the
polished pine-nut at the end of each strand, while the upper
border and other portions are studded with brilliant bits of
shell.[254]
If we recall the psychological standpoint that the emotions are an
organic disturbance of equilibrium occurring when factors difficult
of reconciliation are brought to the attention, and if we have in
mind that the association of the sexes has furnished so powerful an
emotional disturbance as jealousy, it seems a simple matter to explain
the comparatively mild by-play of sexual modesty as a function
of wooing, without bringing either clothing or ornament into the
question.
We saw a minimum expression of modesty in the courtship of animals,
where the modesty of the female was a form of fear on the organic
side, but the accompanying movements of avoidance were, at the same
time, a powerful attraction to the male. And we have in this, as
in all expressions of fear--shame, guilt, timidity, bashfulness--an
affective bodily state growing out of the strain thrown upon the
attention in the effort of the organism to accommodate itself to its
environment. The essential nature of the reaction is already fixed
in types of animal life where the operation of disgust is out of the
question, and in relations which imply no attention to the conduct of
others. If any separation between the bodily self and the environment
is to be made at all, it is putting the cart before the horse to make
out that modesty is derived from our repugnance at the conduct of
others, more immediately than through attention to the meaning of our
own activities. The fallacy of the disgust theory lies, in fact, in
the attempt to separate the copies for imitation derived from our own
activities from those derived from our observation of the activities
of others.
When habits are set up and are running smoothly, the attention is
withdrawn; and nakedness was a habit in the unclothed societies, just
as it may become a habit now in the artist's model. But when, for any
of the reasons I have outlined, women or men began to cover the body,
then putting off the covering became peculiarly suggestive, because
the breaking-up of a habit brings an act clearly into attention. And
when dress becomes habitual in a society whose sense of modesty has
also developed to a high degree, the suggestive effect is so great
that the bare thought of unclothing the person becomes painful, and we
have the possibility of such a phenomenon as mock modesty. But, so far
as sexual modesty is concerned, the clothing has only reinforced the
already great suggestive power of the sexual characters.
In animal society the coyness of the female is the analogue of
modesty. The male is always aggressive, and in both animal and human
society used ornament as a means of interesting and influencing the
female. In the course of time, however, man's activities became his
main dependence, and woman's person and personal behavior became
more significant, especially in a state of society where she became
dependent on man's activities, and both ornament and modesty were
largely transferred to her.
In speaking of the relation of sex to morality,[255] I have already
shown that the morality of man is peculiarly a morality of prowess and
contract, while woman's morality is to a greater degree a morality of
bodily habits, both because child-bearing, which is a large factor
in determining sexual morality, is more closely connected with her
person, and in consequence also of male jealousy. Physiologically and
socially reproduction is more identified with the person of woman than
of man, and it has come about that her sexual behavior has been more
closely looked after, not only by men, but by women--for it would not
be difficult to show that women have been always, as they are still,
peculiarly watchful of one another in this respect.
In the course of history woman developed an excessive and scrupulous
concern for the propriety of her behavior, especially in connection
with her bodily habits; and this in turn became fixed and
particularized by fashion, with the result that not only her physical
life became circumscribed, but her attention and mental interests
became limited largely to safeguarding and enhancing her person.
The effect of this and of other similar restrictions of behavior on
her character and mind is indicated in following chapters.
THE ADVENTITIOUS CHARACTER OF WOMAN
There is more than one bit of evidence that nature changed her
plan with reference to some organism at the very last moment, and
introduced a feature which was not contemplated at the outset. This
change of plan is carried out through the specialization of some
organ, sense, or habit, to such a degree as to make practically a new
type of the organism. In the human species, for example, the atrophied
organs distributed through the body are evidence that the physical
make-up of the species was well-nigh definitely fixed before the
advantage of free hands led to an erect posture, thereby throwing
certain sets of muscles out of use; and the specialization of the
voice as a means of communicating thought was, similarly, a device
for relieving the hands of the burden of communication, and was not
introduced systematically until a gesture language had been so
well established that even now we fall back into it unconsciously,
especially in moments of excitement, and attempt to talk with our
hands and bodies.
But perhaps the most interesting modification or reversal of plan to
be noted in mankind is connected with the relation of the two sexes.
As will presently be indicated, life itself was in the beginning
female, so far as sex could be postulated of it at all, and the
life-process was primarily a female process, assisted by the male. In
humankind as well, nature obviously started out on the plan of having
woman the dominant force, with man as an aid; but after a certain
time there was a reversal of plan, and man became dominant, and woman
dropped back into a somewhat unstable and adventitious relation to
the social process. Up to a certain point, in fact, in his physical
and social evolution man shows an interesting structural and mental
adaptation to woman, or to the reproductive process which she
represents; while the later stages of history show, on the other
hand, that the mental attitude of woman, and consequently her forms
of behavior, have been profoundly modified, and even her physical life
deeply affected, by her effort to adjust to man.
The only attitude which nature can be said to show toward life is the
design that the individual shall sustain its own life, and at death
leave others of its kind--that it shall get food, avoid destruction,
and reproduce. In pursuance of this policy it naturally turns out that
those types showing greater morphological and functional complexity,
along with freer movement and more mental ingenuity, come into the
more perfect control and use of their environment, and consequently
have greater likelihood of survival. Failing of this greater
complexity, their chance of life lies in occupying so obscure a
position, so to speak, that they do not come into collision with more
dominant forms, or in reproducing at such a rate as to survive in
spite of this. The number of devices in the way of modification of
form and habit to secure advantage is practically infinite, but all
progressive species have utilized the principle of sex as an accessory
of success. By this principle greater variability is secured, and
among the larger number of variations there is always a chance of the
appearance of one of superior fitness. The male in many of the lower
forms is very insignificant in size, economically useless (as among
the bees), often a parasite on the female, and, as many biologists
hold, merely a secondary device or afterthought of nature, designed
to secure greater variation than can be had by the asexual mode of
reproduction. In other words, he is of use to the species by assisting
the female to reproduce progressively fitter forms.
When, in the course of time, sexual reproduction eventuated in a
mammalian type, with greater intimacy between mother and offspring and
a longer period of dependence of offspring on the mother, the
function of the male in assisting the female became social as well as
biological; and this was pre-eminently so in the case of man,
because of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child.[256]
The characteristic helplessness of the child, which at first
thought appears to be a disadvantage, is in fact the source of human
superiority, since the design of nature in providing this condition of
helplessness is to afford a lapse of time sufficient for the growth
of the very complex mechanism, the human brain, which, along with free
hands, is the medium through which man begins that reaction on his
environment--inventing, exterminating, cultivating, domesticating,
organizing--which ends in his supremacy.
It is plain, therefore, that species in which growth is slow are at an
advantage, if to the care and nourishment of the female are added the
providence and protection of the male; and this is especially true in
mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years.
In this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater
variability of the male. Instead of an insignificant addendum to the
reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful,
jealous, a fighting specialization--still an attaché of the female,
but now a defender and provider. This is the general condition among
mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results
in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate association of the
parents, which we denominate marriage. For Westermarck is quite right
in his view that children are not the result of marriage, but marriage
is the result of children. From this point of view marriage is a union
favored by the scheme of nature because it is favorable to the rearing
and training of children, and the groups practicing marriage, or its
animal analogue, have the best chance of survival.
But the evolution of a courageous and offensive disposition naturally
did not result in an eminently domestic disposition. Man did the
hunting and fighting. He was attached to the woman, but he was not
steady. He did not stay at home. The woman and the child were the core
of society, the fixed point, the point to which man came back. There
consequently grew up a sort of dual society and dual activity. Man
represented the more violent and spasmodic activities, involving
motion and skillful co-ordinations, as well as organization for
hunting and fighting; while woman carried on the steady, settled life.
She was not able to wander readily from a fixed point, on account of
her children; and, indeed, her physical organization fitted her for
endurance rather than movement. Consequently her attention was turned
to industries, since these were compatible with settled and stationary
habits. Agriculture, pottery, weaving, tanning, and all the industrial
processes involved in working up the by-products of the chase,
were developed by her. She domesticated man and assisted him in
domesticating the animals. She built her house, and it was hers. She
did not go to her husband's group after marriage. The child was hers,
and remained a member of her group. The germ of social organization
was, indeed, the woman and her children and her children's children.
The old women were the heads of civil society, though the men had
developed a fighting organization and technique which eventually
swallowed them up.
From the standpoint of physical force, man was the master, and was
often brutal enough. But woman led an independent life, to
some extent. She was, if not economically independent, at least
economically creative, and she enjoyed the great advantage of being
less definitely interested in man than he was in her. For while woman
is more deeply involved physiologically in the reproductive life than
man, she is apparently less involved from the standpoint of immediate
stimulus, or her interest is less acute in consciousness. The excess
activity which characterizes man in his relation to the general
environment holds also for his attitude toward woman. Not only is the
male the wooer among the higher orders of animals and among men, but
he has developed all the accessories for attracting attention--in the
animals, plumage, color, voice, and graceful and surprising forms of
motion; and in man, ornament and courageous action. For primitive man,
like the male animal, was distinguished by ornament.
Up to this time the relation of man to woman was the natural
development of a relation calculated to secure the best results
for the species. His predacious disposition had been, in part at
least, developed in the service of woman and her child, and he was
emotionally dependent on her to such a degree that he used all the
arts of attraction at his command to secure a relation with her.
In the course of time, however, an important change took place in
environmental conditions. While woman had been doing the general work
and had developed the beginnings of many industries, man had become
a specialist along another line. His occupation had been almost
exclusively the pursuit of animals or conflict with his neighbors; and
in this connection he had become the inventor of weapons and traps,
and in addition had learned the value of acting in concert with his
companions. But a hunting life cannot last forever; and when large
game began to be exhausted, man found himself forced to abandon
his destructive and predacious activities, and adopt the settled
occupations of woman. To these he brought all the inventive technique
and capacity for organized action which he had developed in his
hunting and fighting life, with the result that he became the master
of woman in a new sense. Not suddenly, but in the course of time,
he usurped her primacy in the industrial pursuits, and through his
organization of industry and the application of invention to the
industrial processes became a creator of wealth on a scale before
unknown. Gradually also he began to rely not altogether on ornament,
exploits, and trophies to get the attention and favor of woman. When
she was reduced to a condition of dependence on his activity, wooing
became a less formidable matter; he purchased her from her male
kindred, and took her to his own group, where she was easier to
control.
In unadvanced stages of society, where machinery and the division
of labor and a high degree of organization in industry have not been
introduced, and among even our own lower classes, woman still retains
a relation to industrial activities and has a relatively independent
status. Among the Indians of this country it was recognized that a man
could not become wealthy except through the possession of a sufficient
number of wives to work up for trade the products of the chase; and
today the West African youth does not seek a young woman in marriage
but an old one, preferably a widow, who knows all about the arts of
preparing and adulterating rubber. Among peasants, also, and plain
people the proverb recognizes that the "gray mare is the better
horse." The heavy, strong, enduring, patient, often dominant type,
frequently seen among the lower classes, where alone woman is still
economically functional, is probably a good representative of what the
women of our race were before they were reduced by man to a condition
of parasitism which, in our middle and so-called higher classes, has
profoundly affected their physical, mental, and moral life.
On the moral side, particularly, man's disposition to bend the
situation to his pleasure placed woman in a hard position and resulted
in the distortion of her nature, or rather in bringing to the front
elemental traits which under our moral code are not reckoned the
best. In the animal world the female is noted for her indirection. On
account of the necessity of protecting her young, she is cautious and
cunning, and, in contrast with the open and pugnacious methods of
the more untrammeled male, she relies on sober colors, concealment,
evasion, and deception of the senses. This quality of cunning is, of
course, not immoral in its origin, being merely a protective instinct
developed along with maternal feeling. In woman, also, this tendency
to prevail by passive means rather than by assault is natural; and
especially under a system of male control, where self-realization is
secured either through the manipulation of man or not at all, a resort
to trickery, indirection, and hypocrisy is not to be wondered at. Man
has, however, always insisted that woman shall be better than he is,
and her immoralities are usually not such as he greatly disapproves.
There has, in fact, been developed a peculiar code of morals to cover
the peculiar case of woman. This may be called a morality of the
person and of the bodily habits, as contrasted with the commercial and
public morality of man. Purity, constancy, reserve, and devotion are
the qualities In woman which please and flatter the jealous male;
and woman has responded to these demands both really and seemingly.
Without any consciousness of what she was doing (for all moral
traditions fall in the general psychological region of habit), she
acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing to men. And--always
with the rather definite realization before her of what a dreadful
thing it is to be an old maid--she has naïvely insisted that her
sisters shall play well within the game, and has become herself the
most strict censor of that morality which has become traditionally
associated with woman. Fearing the obloquy which the world attaches to
a bad woman, she throws the first stone at any woman who bids for the
favor of men by overstepping the modesty of nature. Morality, in the
most general sense, represents the code under which activities are
best carried on, and is worked out in the school of experience. It
is pre-eminently an adult and a male system, and men are intelligent
enough to recognize that neither women nor children have passed
through this school. It is on this account that, while man is
merciless to woman from the standpoint of personal behavior, he
exempts her from anything in the way of contractual morality, or views
her defections in this regard with allowance and even with amusement.
In the absence of any participation in commercial activity and with no
capital but her personal charms and her wits, and with the possibility
of realizing on these only through a successful appeal to man,
woman naturally puts her best foot first. It was, of course, always
one of the functions of the female to charm the male; but so long
as woman maintained her position of economic usefulness and her
quasi-independence she had no great problem, for there was never a
chance in primitive society, any more than in animal society, that
a woman would go unmated. But when through man's economic and social
organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and
when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree
of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not
married--especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the
wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman
had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts
innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had
been one of man's accessories in courtship, but which he had dispensed
with when the superiority acquired through occupational pursuits
enabled him to do so. Under a new stimulation to be attractive, and
with the addition of ornament to the repertory of her charms, woman
has assumed an almost aggressive attitude toward courtship. The means
of attraction she employs are so highly elaborated, and her technique
is so finished, that she is really more active in courtship than man.
We speak of man as the wooer, but falling in love is really mediated
by the woman. By dress, behavior, coquetry, modesty, reserve, and
occasional boldness she gains the attention of man and infatuates
him. He does the courting, but she controls the process. "Er glaubt zu
schieben, und er wird geschoben."
The condition of limited stimulation, also, in which woman finds
herself as a result of the control by man of wealth, of affairs, of
the substantial interests of society, and even of her own personality,
leads woman to devote herself to display as an interest in itself,
regardless of its effect on men. In doing this she is really falling
back on an instinct. One of the most powerful stimulations to either
sex is glitter, in the most general sense, and the interest in showing
off begins in the coloration and plumage of animals, and continues as
ornament in the human species. It is true that the wooing connotation
of ornament was originally its most important one, and that it was
characteristic of man in particular; but woman has generalized it as
an interest, and as a means of self-realization. She seeks it as a
means of charming men, of outdoing other women, and as an artistic
interest; and her attention often takes that direction to such
a degree that its acquisition means satisfaction, and its lack
discontent. Sometimes, indeed, when a woman is married and knows that
she is "sped," she drops the display pose altogether, tends to lose
herself in household interests, and to become a slattern. On the
other hand, she often makes marriage the occasion of display on a more
elaborate scale, and is pitiless in her demands for the means to
this. A glance at the windows of our great stores shows that men
have organized their business in a full appreciation of these facts.
Dressing, indeed, becomes a competitive game with women, and since
their opponents and severest critics are women, it turns out curiously
enough that they dress even more with reference to the opinion of
women than for men.
The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them.
It would, of course, be absurd to censure woman too greatly for these
frailties, and it would be very unjust to imply that all women share
them. Some women, in adapting themselves to the situation, follow
apparently, a bent acquired in connection with the maternal instinct,
and become true and devoted and grand to a degree hardly known by man.
Others, following a bent gotten along with coquetry in connection
with the wooing instinct, and having no activity through which their
behavior is standardized, become difficile, unreal, inefficient,
exacting, unsatisfied, absurd. And we have also the paradox that
the same woman can be the two things at different times. There is
therefore a basis of truth in Pope's hard saying that "Women have no
characters at all." Because their problem is not to accommodate to the
solid realities of the world of experience and sense, but to adjust
themselves to the personality of men, it is not surprising that they
should assume protean shapes.
Moreover, man is so affected by the charms of woman, and offers so
easy a mark for her machinations, as to invite exploitation. Having
been evolved largely through the stimulus of the female presence, he
continues to be more profoundly affected by her presence and behavior
than by any other stimulus whatever, unless it be the various forms of
combat. From Samson and Odysseus down, history and story recognize
the ease and frequency with which a woman makes a fool of a man. The
male protective and sentimental attitude is indeed incompatible with
resistance. To charm, pursue, court, and possess the female, involve a
train of memories which color all after-relations with the whole sex.
In both animals and men there is an instinctive disposition to take a
great deal off the female. The male animal takes the assaults of the
female complacently and shamefacedly, "just like folks." Peasants
laugh at the hysterical outbreaks of their women, and the "bold, bad
man" is as likely to be henpecked as any other. Woman is a disturbing
element in business and in school to a degree not usually apprehended.
In her presence a man instinctively assumes a different attitude.
He is, in fact, so susceptible as seemingly, almost, to want to be
victimized, and, as Locke expressed the matter, "It is in vain to find
fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be
deceived."
This disposition of man and the detached condition of woman have much
to do with the emergence of the adventuress and the sporting-woman.
Human nature was made for action; and perhaps the most distressing
and disconcerting situation which confronts it is to be played on by
stimulations without the ability to function. The mere superinducing
of passivity, as in the extreme case of solitary confinement, is
sufficient to produce insanity; and the emotion of dread, or passive
fear, is said to be the most painful of emotions, because there is
no possibility of relief by action. Modern woman is in a similar
condition of constraint and unrest, which produces organic ravages for
which no luxury can compensate. The general ill-health of girls of the
better classes, and the equally general post-matrimonial breakdown,
are probably due largely to the fact that the nervous organization
demands more normal stimulations and reactions than are supplied.
The American woman of the better classes has superior rights and no
duties, and yet she is worrying herself to death--not over specific
troubles, but because she has lost her connection with reality.
Many women, more intelligent and energetic than their husbands and
brothers, have no more serious occupations than to play the house-cat,
with or without ornament. It is a wonder that more of them do not
lose their minds; and that more of them do not break with the system
entirely is due solely to the inhibitive effects of early habit and
suggestion.
As long as woman is comfortably cared for by the men of her group or
by marriage, she is not likely to do anything rash, especially if
the moral standards in her family and community are severe. But an
unattached woman has a tendency to become an adventuress--not so much
on economic as on psychological grounds. Life is rarely so hard that a
young woman cannot earn her bread; but she cannot always live and have
the stimulations she craves. As long, however, as she remains with
her people and is known to the whole community, she realizes that any
infraction of the habits of the group, any immodesty or immorality,
will ruin her standing and her chance of marriage, and bring her
into shame and confusion. Consequently, good behavior is a protective
measure--instinctive, of course; for it is not true that the ordinary
girl has imagination enough to think out a general attitude toward
life other than that which is habitual in her group. But when she
becomes detached from home and group, and is removed not only from
surveillance, but from the ordinary stimulation and interest afforded
by social life and acquaintanceship, her inhibitions are likely to be
relaxed.
The girl coming from the country to the city affords one of the
clearest cases of detachment. Assuming that she comes to the city to
earn her living, her work is not only irksome, but so unremunerative
that she finds it impossible to obtain those accessories to her
personality in the way of finery which would be sufficient to hold
her attention and satisfy her if they were to be had in plenty. She is
lost from the sight of everyone whose opinion has any meaning for her,
while the separation from her home community renders her condition
peculiarly flat and lonely; and she is prepared to accept any
opportunity for stimulation offered her, unless she has been morally
standardized before leaving home. To be completely lost sight of may,
indeed, become an object under these circumstances--the only means by
which she can without confusion accept unapproved stimulations--and
to pass from a regular to an irregular life and back again before the
fact has been noted is not an unusual course.
The professionally irregular class of women represents an extreme and
unfortunate result of an adventitious and not-completely-functional
relation to society. They do not form a class in the psychological
sense, but only a trade. There are many sorts of natural dispositions
among them--as many perhaps as will be found in any other occupation.
None of the reputable occupations are homogeneous from the standpoint
of the natural dispositions of the men and women who compose them,
and the same is true of the disreputable occupations. Many women of
fine natural character and disposition are drawn in a momentary and
incidental way into an irregular life, and recover, settle down
to regular modes of living, drift farther, are married, and make
uncommonly good wives. In this respect the adventuress is more
fortunate than the criminal (that other great adventitious product),
because the criminal is labeled and his record follows him, making
reformation difficult; while the in-and-out life of woman with
reference to what we call virtue is not officially noted and does not
bring consequences so inevitable. But "if you drive nature out at the
door, she will come back through the window;" and this interest in
greater stimulation is, I believe, the dominant force in determining
the choice--or, rather, the drift--of the so-called sporting-woman.
She is seeking what, from the psychological standpoint, may be called
a normal life.
The human mind was formed and fixed once for all in very early times,
through a life of action and emergency, when the species was fighting,
contriving, and inventing its way up from the sub-human condition; and
the ground-patterns of interest have never been, and probably never
will be, fundamentally changed. Consequently, all pursuits are irksome
unless they are able, so to speak, to assume the guise of this early
conflict for life in connection with which interest and modes of
attention were developed. As a matter of fact, however, anything in
the nature of a problem or a pursuit stimulates the emotional centers,
and is interesting, because it is of the same general pattern as these
primitive pursuits and problems. Scientific and artistic pursuits,
business, and the various occupational callings are analogues of the
hunting, flight, pursuit, courtship, and capture of early racial life,
and the problems they present may, and do, become all-absorbing. The
moral and educational problem of development has been, indeed, to
substitute for the simple, co-ordinative killing, escaping, charming,
deceiving activities of early life, analogues which are increasingly
serviceable to society, and to expand into a general social feeling
the affection developed first in connection with courtship, the
rearing of children, and joint predatory and defensive enterprises.
The gamester, adventuress, and criminal are not usually abnormal in
a biological sense, but have failed, through defective manipulation
of their attention, to get interested in the right kind of problems.
Their attention has not been diverted from interests of a primary type
containing a maximum of the sensory, to interests of an analogous type
containing more elements of reflection, and involving problems and
processes of greater benefit to society.
The remedy for the irregularity, pettiness, ill-health, and
unserviceableness of modern woman seems to lie, therefore, along
educational lines. Not in a general and cultural education alone, but
in a special and occupational interest and practice for women, married
and unmarried. This should be preferably gainful, though not onerous
nor incessant. It should, in fact, be a play-interest, in the sense
that the interest of every artist and craftsman, who loves his work
and functions through it, is a play-interest. Normal life without
normal stimulation is not possible, and the stimulations answering
to the nature of the nervous organization seem best supplied by
interesting forms of work. This reinstates racially developed
stimulations better than anything except play; and interesting work
is, psychologically speaking, play.
Some kind of practical activity for women would also relieve the
strain on the matrimonial situation--a situation which at present
is abnormal and almost impossible. The demands for attention from
husbands on the part of wives are greater than is compatible with the
absorbing general activities of the latter, and women are not only
neglected by the husband in a manner which did not happen in the case
of the lover, but they are jealous of men in a more general sense than
men are jealous of women. In the absence of other interests they are
so dependent on the personal interest that they unconsciously put a
jealous construction, not only on personal behavior, but on the most
general and indifferent actions of the men with whom their lives are
bound up; and this process is so obscure in consciousness that it is
usually impossible to determine what the matter really is.
An examination, also, of so-called happy marriages shows very
generally that they do not, except for the common interest of
children, rest on the true comradeship of like minds, but represent an
equilibrium reached through an extension of the maternal interest of
the woman to the man, whereby she looks after his personal needs as
she does after those of the children--cherishing him, in fact, as
a child--or in an extension to woman on the part of the man of that
nurture and affection which is in his nature to give to pets and all
helpless (and preferably dumb) creatures.
Obviously a more solid basis of association is necessary than either
of these two instinctively based compromises; and the practice of an
occupational activity of her own choosing by woman, and a generous
attitude toward this on the part of man, would contribute to relieve
the strain and to make marriage more frequently successful.
THE MIND OF WOMAN AND THE LOWER RACES
I
The mind is a very wonderful thing, but it is questionable whether it
is more wonderful than some of the instinctive modes of behavior of
lower forms of life. If mind is viewed as an adjustment to external
conditions for the purpose of securing control, the human mind is no
more wonderful in its way than the homing and migratory instincts of
birds; the tropic quality of the male butterfly which leads it to the
female though she is imprisoned in a cigar-box in a dark room; or the
peculiar sensitivity of the bat which enables it, though blinded, to
thread its way through a maze of obstructions hung about a room.
The fact of sensitivity, in short, or the quality of response to
stimulation, is more wonderful than its particular formulation in
the human brain. Mind simply represents a special development of the
quality of sensitivity common to organic nature, and analogous to the
sensitivity of the photographic plate. The brain receives impressions,
records them, remembers them, compares new experiences with old, and
modifies behavior, in the presence of a new or recurrent stimulation,
in view of the pleasure-pain connotation of similar situations in the
past.
In very low forms of life, as is well known, there is no development
of brain or special organs of sense; but the organism is pushed and
pulled about by light, heat, gravity, and acid and other chemical
forces, and is unable to decline to act on any stimulus reaching it.
It reacts in certain characteristic, habitual, and adequate ways,
because it responds uniformly to the same stimulation; but it has
no choice, and is controlled by the environment. The object of brain
development is to reverse these conditions and control the actions of
the organism, and of the outside world as well, from within. With the
development of the special organs of sense, memory, and consequent
ability to compare present experiences with past, with inhibition
or the ability to decline to act on a stimulus, and, finally, with
abstraction or the power of separating general from particular
aspects, we have a condition where the organism sits still, as it
were, and picks and chooses its reactions to the outer world; and, by
working in certain lines to the exclusion of others, it gains in its
turn control of the environment, and begins to reshape it.
All the higher animals possess in some degree the powers of memory,
judgment, and choice; but in man nature followed the plan of
developing enormously the memory, on which depend abstraction, or
the power of general ideas, and the reason. In order to secure this
result, the brain, or surface for recording experience, was developed
out of all proportion with the body. In the average European the brain
weighs about 1,360 grams, or 3 per cent. of the body weight, while
the average brain weight of some of the great anthropoid apes is only
about 360 grams, or, in the orangoutang, one-half of 1 per cent. of
the body weight. In point of fact, nature seems to have reached the
limit of her materials in creating the human species. The development
of hands freed from locomotion and a brain out of proportion to bodily
weight are _tours de force_, and, so to speak, an afterthought, which
put the heaviest strain possible on the materials employed, and even
diverted some organs from their original design. A number of ailments
like hernia, appendicitis, and uterine displacement, are due to the
fact that the erect posture assumed when the hands were diverted from
locomotion to prehensile uses put a strain not originally contemplated
on certain tissues and organs. Similarly, the proportion of idiocy and
insanity in the human species shows that nature had reached the limit
of elasticity in her materials and began to take great risks. The
brain is a delicate and elaborate organ on the structural side, and
in these cases it is not put together properly, or it gets hopelessly
out of order. This strain on the materials is evident in all races
and in both sexes, and indicates that the same general structural
ground-pattern has been followed in all members of the species.
Viewed from the standpoint of brain weight, all races are, broadly
speaking, in the same class. For while the relatively small series of
brains from the black race examined by anthropologists shows a slight
inferiority in weight--about 45 grams in negroes--when compared
with white brains, the yellow race shows more than a corresponding
superiority to the white; in the Chinese about 70 grams. There is
also apparently no superiority in brain weight in modern over ancient
times. The cranial capacity of Europeans between the eleventh and
eighteenth centuries, as shown by the cemeteries of Paris, is not
appreciably different from that of Frenchmen of today, and the
Egyptian mummies show larger cranial capacity than the modern
Egyptians. Furthermore, the limits of variation between individuals in
the same race are wider than the average difference between races.
In a series of 500 white brains, the lowest and highest brains will
differ, in fact, as much as 650 grams in weight.
There is also no ground for the assumption that the brain of woman
is inferior to that of man; for, while the average brain of woman is
smaller, the average body weight is also smaller, and it is open
to question whether the average brain weight of woman is smaller in
proportion to body weight.[257] The importance of brain weight in
relation to intelligence, moreover, has usually been much exaggerated
by anthropologists; for intelligence depends on the rapidity and range
of the acts of associative memory, and this in turn on the complexity
of the neural processes. Brains are, in fact, like timepieces in this
respect, that the small ones work "excellent well" if they are good
material and well put together. Although brains occasionally run above
2,000 grams in weight (that of the Russian novelist Turgenieff weighed
2,012), the brains of many eminent men are not distinguished for their
great size. That of the French statesman Gambetta weighed only 1,160
grams. It must be borne in mind also that there are many individuals
among the lower races and among women having brain weight much in
excess of that of that of the average male white.
Of all the possible ways of treating the brain for the purpose of
testing its intelligence, that of weighing is the least satisfactory,
and has been most indefatigably practiced. A better method, that of
counting the nerve cells, has been lately introduced, but to treat a
single brain in this way is a work of years, and no series of results
exists. In the meantime Miss Thompson, in co-operation with Professor
Angell, has completed a study of the mental traits of men and women
on what is perhaps the best available principle--that of a series
of laboratory tests which eliminate or take into consideration
differences due to the characteristic habits of the two sexes. Her
findings are probably the most important contribution in this field,
and her general conclusion on differences of sex will, I think, hold
also for differences of race:
The point to be emphasized as the outcome of this study
is that, according to our present light, the psychological
differences of sex seem to be largely due, not to difference
of average capacity, nor to difference in type of mental
activity, but to differences in the social influences brought
to bear on the developing individual from early infancy to
adult years. The question of the future development of the
intellectual life of women is one of social necessities and
ideals rather than of the inborn psychological characteristics
of sex.[258]
There is certainly great difference in the mental ability of
individuals, and there are probably less marked differences in the
average ability of different races; but difference in natural ability
is, in the main, a characteristic of the individual, not of race or
of sex. It is probable that brain efficiency (speaking from the
biological standpoint) has been, on the average, approximately the
same in all races and in both sexes since nature first made up a good
working-model, and that differences in intellectual expression are
mainly social rather than biological, dependent on the fact that
different stages of culture present different experiences to the
mind, and adventitious circumstances direct the attention to different
fields of interest.
II
In approaching the question of the parity or disparity of the mental
ability of the white and the lower races, we bring to it a fixed and
instinctive prejudice. No race views another race with that generosity
with which it views itself. It may even be said that the existence of
a social group depends on its taking an exaggerated view of its own
importance; and in a state of nature, at least, the same is true of
the individual. If self-preservation is the first law of nature, there
must be on the mental side an acute consciousness of self, and a habit
of regarding the self as of more importance than the world at large.
The value of this standpoint lies in the fact that, while a wholesome
fear of the enemy is important, a wholesome contempt is even more so.
Praising one's self and dispraising an antagonist creates a confidence
and a mental superiority in the way of confidence. The vituperative
recriminations of modern prize-fighters, the boastings of the Homeric
heroes, and the _bôgan_ of the old Germans, like the back-talk of the
small boy, were calculated to screw the courage up; and the Indians of
America usually gave a dance before going on the war-path, in which
by pantomime and boasting they magnified themselves and their past,
and so stimulated their self-esteem that they felt invincible. In
race-prejudice we see the same tendency to exalt the self and the
group at the expense of outsiders. The alien group is belittled by
attaching contempt to its peculiarities and habits--its color, speech,
dress, and all the signs of its personality. This is not a laudable
attitude, but it has been valuable to the group, because a bitter and
contemptuous feeling is an aid to good fighting.
No race or nation has yet freed itself from this tendency to exalt
and idealize itself. It is very difficult for a member of western
civilization to understand that the orientals regard us with a
contempt in comparison with which our contempt for them is feeble. Our
bloodiness, our newness, our lack of reverence, our land-greed, our
break-neck speed and lack of appreciation of leisure make Vandals
of us. On the other hand, we are very stupid about recognizing the
intelligence of orientals. We have been accustomed to think that there
is a great gulf between ourselves and other races; and this persists
in an undefinable way after scores of Japanese have taken high rank in
our schools, and after Hindus have repeatedly been among the wranglers
in mathematics at Cambridge. It is only when one of the far eastern
nations has come bodily to the front that we begin to ask ourselves
whether there is not an error in our reckoning.
The instinct to belittle outsiders is perhaps at the bottom of our
delusion that the white race has one order of mind and the black
and yellow races have another. But, while a prejudice--a matter of
instinct and emotion--may well be at the beginning of an error of this
kind, it could not sustain itself in the face of our logical habits
unless reinforced by an error of the judgment. And this error is found
in the fact that in a naïve way we assume that our steps in progress
from time to time are due to our mental superiority as a race over
other races, and to the mental superiority of one generation of
ourselves over the preceding.
In this we are confusing advance in culture with brain improvement. If
we should assume a certain grade of intelligence, fixed and invariable
in all individuals, races, and times--an unwarranted assumption,
of course--progress would still be possible, provided we assumed a
characteristically human grade of intelligence to begin with. With
associative memory, abstraction, and speech men are able to compare
the present with the past, to deliberate and discuss, to invent, to
abandon old processes for new, to focus attention on special problems,
to encourage specialization, and to transmit to the younger generation
a more intelligent standpoint and a more advanced starting-point.
Culture is the accumulation of the results of activity, and culture
could go on improving for a certain time even if there were a
retrogression in intelligence. If all the chemists in class A
should stop work tomorrow, the chemists in class B would still make
discoveries. These would influence manufacture, and progress would
result. If a worker in any specialty acquaints himself with the
results of his predecessors and contemporaries and _works_, he will
add some results to the sum of knowledge in his line. And if a race
preserves by record or tradition the memory of what past generations
have done, and adds a little, progress is secured whether the brain
improves or stands still. In the same way, the fact that one race has
advanced farther in culture than another does not necessarily imply a
different order of brain, but may be due to the fact that in the one
case social arrangements have not taken the shape affording the most
favorable conditions for the operation of the mind.
If, then, we make due allowance for our instinctive tendency as a
white group to disparage outsiders, and, on the other hand, for our
tendency to confuse progress in culture and general intelligence with
biological modification of the brain, we shall have to reduce very
much our usual estimate of the difference in mental capacity between
ourselves and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether;
and we shall perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there
has been an increase in the mental capacity of the white race since
prehistoric times.
The first question arising in this connection is whether any of
the characteristic faculties of the human mind--perception, memory,
inhibition, abstraction--are absent or noticeably weak in the lower
races. If this is found to be true, we have reason to attribute the
superiority of the white race to biological causes; otherwise we
shall have to seek an explanation of white superiority in causes lying
outside the brain.
In examining this question we need not dwell on the acuteness of the
sense-perceptions, because these are not distinctively human. As a
matter of fact, they are usually better developed in animals and in
the lower races than in the civilized, because the lower mental life
is more perceptive than ratiocinative. The memory of the lower races
is also apparently quite as good as that of the higher. The memory of
the Australian native or the Eskimo is quite as good as that of our
"oldest inhabitant;" and probably no one would claim that the modern
scientist has a better memory than the bard of the Homeric period.
There is, however, a prevalent view, for the popularization of which
Herbert Spencer is largely responsible, that primitive man has feeble
powers of inhibition. Like the equally erroneous view that early
man is a free and unfettered creature, it arises from our habit of
assuming that, because his inhibitions and unfreedom do not correspond
with our own restraints, they do not exist. Sir John Lubbock pointed
out long ago that the savage is hedged about by conventions so minute
and so mandatory that he is actually the least free person in the
world. But, in spite of this, Spencer and others have insisted that
he is incapable of self-restraint, is carried away like a child by
the impulse of the moment, and is incapable of rejecting an immediate
gratification for a greater future one. Cases like the one mentioned
by Darwin of the Fuegian who struck and killed his little son when
the latter dropped a basket of fish into the water are cited without
regard to the fact that cases of sudden domestic violence and quick
repentance are common in any city today; and the failure of the
Australian blacks to throw back the small fry when seining is referred
to without pausing to consider that our practice of exterminating
game and denuding our forests shows an amazing lack of individual
self-restraint.
The truth is that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely
on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and, if we have
this in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of
inhibition. It is doubtful if modern society affords anything more
striking in the way of inhibition than is found in connection with
taboo, fetish, totemism, and ceremonial among the lower races. In the
great majority of the American Indian and Australian tribes a man
is strictly forbidden to kill or eat the animals whose name his clan
bears as a totem. The central Australian may not, in addition, eat
the flesh of any animal killed or even touched by persons standing
in certain relations of kinship to him. At certain times also he is
forbidden to eat the flesh of a number of animals and at all times he
must share all food secured with the tribal elders and some others.
A native of Queensland will put his mark on an unripe zamia fruit, and
may be sure that it will be untouched and that when it is ripe he has
only to go and get it. The Eskimos, though starving, will not molest
the sacred seal basking before their huts. Similarly in social
intercourse the inhibitions are numerous. To some of his sisters,
blood and tribal, the Australian may not speak at all; to others only
at certain distances, according to the degree of kinship. The west
African fetish acts as a police, and property protected by it is safer
than under civilized laws. Food and palm wine are placed beside the
path with a piece of fetish suspended near by, and no one will touch
them without leaving the proper payment. The garden of a native may be
a mile from the house, unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by
the owner; but it is immune from depredations if protected by fetish.
Our proverb says, "A hungry belly has no ears," and it must be
admitted that the inhibition of food impulses implies no small power
of restraint.
Altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign of
mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species.
The well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing
stimulations of the kitchen. And it is also true that one race, at
least--the American Indian--makes inhibition of the most conspicuous
feature in its system of education. From the time the ice is broken to
give him a cold plunge and begin the toughening process on the day of
his birth, until he dies with out a groan under torture the Indian
is schooled in the restraint of his impulses. He does not, indeed,
practice our identical restraints, because his traditions and the run
of his attention are different; but he has a capacity for controlling
impulse equal to our own.
Another serious charge against the intelligence of the lower races is
lack of the power of abstraction. They certainly do not deal largely
in abstraction, and their languages are poor in abstract terms. But
there is a great difference between the habit of thinking in abstract
terms and the ability to do so.
The degree to which abstraction is employed in the activities of
a group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the
complexity of consciousness in the group. When science, philosophy,
and logic, and systems of reckoning time, space, and number are
taught in the schools; when the attention is not so much engaged in
perceptual as in deliberate acts; and when thought is a profession,
then abstract modes of thought are forced on the mind. This does not
argue absence of the power of abstraction in the lower races, or even
a low grade of ability, but lack of practice. To one skilled in any
line an unpracticed person seems very stupid; and this is apparently
the reason why travelers report that the black and yellow races have
feeble powers of abstraction. It is generally admitted, however, that
the use of speech involves the power of abstraction, so that all races
have the power in some degree. When we come further to examine the
degree in which they possess it, we find that they compare favorably
with ourselves in any test which involves a fair comparison.
The proverb is a form of abstraction practiced by all races, and
is perhaps the best test of the natural bent of the mind in this
direction, because, like ballad poetry, and slang, proverbial sayings
do not originate with the educated class, but are of popular origin.
At the same time, proverbs compare favorably with the _mots_ of
literature, and many proverbs have, in fact, drifted into literature
and become connected with the names of great writers. Indeed, the
saying that there is nothing new under the sun applies with such force
and fidelity to literature that, if we should strip Hesiod and Homer
and Chaucer of such phrases as "The half is greater than the whole,"
"It is a wise son that knows his own father" (which Shakespeare quotes
the other end about), and "To make a virtue of necessity," and if we
should further eliminate from literature the motives and sentiments
also in ballad poetry and in popular thought, little would remain but
form.
If we assume, then, that the popular mind--let us say the peasant
mind--in the white race is as capable of abstraction as the mind of
the higher classes, but not so specialized in this direction--and
no one can doubt this in view of the academic record of country-bred
boys--the following comparison of our proverbs with those of the
Africans of the Guinea coast (the latter reported by the late Sir A.B.
Ellis[259]) is significant:
_African._ Stone in the water-hole does not feel the cold.
_English._ Habit is second nature.
_A._ One tree does not make a forest.
_E._ One swallow does not make a summer.
_A._ "I nearly killed the bird." No one can eat nearly in a stew.
_E._ First catch your hare.
_A._ Full-belly child says to hungry-belly child, "Keep good cheer."
_E._ We can all endure the misfortunes of others.
_A._ Distant firewood is good firewood.
_E._ Distance lends enchantment to the view.
_A._ Ashes fly back in the face of him who throws them.
_E._ Curses come home to roost.
_A._ If the boy says he wants to tie the water with a string, ask
him whether he means the water in the pot or the water in
the lagoon.
_E._ Answer a fool according to his folly.
_A._ Cowries are men.
_E._ Money makes the man.
_A._ Cocoanut is not good for bird to eat.
_E._ Sour grapes.
_A._ He runs away from the sword and hides himself in the scabbard.
_E._ Out of the frying-pan into the fire.
_A._ A fool of Ika and an idiot of Iluka meet together to make
friends.
_E._ Birds of a feather flock together.
_A._ The ground-pig [bandicoot] said: "I do not feel so angry with
the man who killed me as with the man who dashed me on the
ground afterward."
_E._ Adding insult to injury.
_A._ Quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman.
_E._ Married in haste we repent at leisure.
_A._ Three elders cannot all fail to pronounce the word _ekulu_
[an antelope]: one may say _ekúlu_, another _ekulú_, but
the third will say _ekulu_.
_E._ In a multitude of counselors there is safety.
_A._ If the stomach is not strong, do not eat cockroaches.
_E._ Milk for babes.
_A._ No one should draw water from the spring in order to supply
the river.
_E._ Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
_A._ The elephant makes a dust and the buffalo makes a dust, but
the dust of the buffalo is lost in the dust of the
elephant.
_E._ _Duo cum faciunt idem non est idem._
_A._ Ear, hear the other before you decide.
_E._ _Audi alteram partem._
On the side of number we have another test of the power of
abstraction; and while the lower races show lack of practice in this,
they show no lack of power. It is true that tribes have been found
with no names for numbers beyond two, three, or five; but these are
isolated groups, like the Veddahs and Bushmen, who have no trade or
commerce, and lead a miserable existence, with little or nothing to
count. The directions of attention and the simplicity or complexity
of mental processes depend on the character of the external situation
which the mind has to manipulate. If the activities are simple, the
mind is simple, and if the activities were nil, the mind would be nil.
The mind is nothing but a means of manipulating the outside world.
Number, time, and space conceptions and systems become more complex
and accurate, not as the human mind grows in capacity, but as
activities become more varied and call for more extended and accurate
systems of notation and measurement. Trade and commerce, machinery
and manufacture, and all the processes of civilization involve
specialization in the apprehension of series as such. Under these
conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires time
and instruction for its mastery. The advance which mathematics has
made within a brief historical time is strikingly illustrated by the
words with which the celebrated mathematician, Sir Henry Savile, who
died in 1662, closed his career as a professor at Oxford:
By the grace of God, gentlemen hearers, I have performed
my promise. I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained,
according to my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms,
and the first eight propositions of the _Elements_ of Euclid.
Here, sinking under the weight of years, I lay down my art and
my instruments.[260]
From the standpoint of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the
Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness
is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of the science.
In respect, then, to brain structure and the more important mental
faculties we find that no race is radically unlike the others. Still,
it might happen that the mental activities and products of two groups
were so different as to place them in different classes. But precisely
the contrary is true. There is in force a principle called the law of
parallelism in development, according to which any group takes much
the same steps in development as any other. The group may be belated,
indeed, and not reach certain stages, but the ground patterns of
life are the same in the lower races and in the higher. Mechanical
inventions, textile industries, rude painting, poetry, sculpture, and
song, marriage and family life, organization under leaders, belief
in spirits, a mythology, and some form of church and state exist
universally. At one time students of mankind, when they found a myth
in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or
an Aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge,
were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from
Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic sources, or whether they did not
afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt
together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition. But this
standpoint has been abandoned, and it is recognized that the human
mind and the outside world are essentially alike the world over; that
the mind everywhere acts on the same principles; and that, ignoring
the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar laws of growth
among all peoples.
The number of things which can stimulate the human mind is somewhat
definite and limited. Among them, for example, is death. This happens
everywhere, and the death of a dear one may cause the living to
imagine ways of being reunited. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may
thus arise spontaneously and perpetually, wherever death and affection
exist. Or, there may be a separation from home and friends, and the
mind runs back in distress and longing over the happy past, and the
state of consciousness aroused is as definite a fact among savages
as among the civilized. A beautiful passage in Homer represents Helen
looking out on the Greeks from the wall of Troy and saying:
And now behold I all the other glancing-eyed Achaians, whom
well I could discern and tell their names; but two captains
of the host can I not see, even Kastor tamer of horses and
Polydukes the skilful boxer, mine own brethren whom the same
mother bare. Either they came not in the company from lovely
Lakedaimon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring
ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors,
for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are
mine.[261]
When this passage is thus stripped of its technical excellence by a
prose translation, we may compare it with the following New Zealand
lament composed by a young woman who was captured on the island of
Tuhua and carried to a mountain from which she could see her home:
My regret is not to be expressed. Tears, like a spring, gush
from my eyes. I wonder whatever is Tu Kainku [her lover]
doing, he who deserted me. Now I climb upon the ridge of Mount
Parahaki, whence is clear the view of the island of Tuhua.
I see with regret the lofty Tanmo where dwells [the chief]
Tangiteruru. If I were there, the shark's tooth would hang
from my ear. How fine, how beautiful should I look!... But
enough of this; I must return to my rags and to my nothing at
all.[262]
The situation of the two women in this case is not identical, and it
would be possible to claim that the Greek and Maori passages differ
in tone and coloring; but it remains true that a captive woman of any
race will feel much the same as a captive woman of any other race when
her thoughts turn toward home, and that the poetry growing out of such
a situation will be everywhere of the same general pattern.
Similarly, to take an illustration from morals, we find that widely
different in complexion and detail as are the moral codes of lower and
higher groups, say the Hebrews and the African Kafirs, yet the general
patterns of morality are strikingly coincident. It is reported of
the Kafirs that "they possess laws which meet every crime which may
be committed." Theft is punished by restitution and fine; injuring
cattle, by death or fine; false witness, by a heavy fine; adultery,
by fine or death; rape, by fine or death; poisoning or witchcraft, by
death and confiscation of property; murder, by death or fine; treason
or desertion from the tribe, by death or confiscation.[263] The Kafirs
and Hebrews are not at the same level of culture, and we miss the more
abstract and monotheistic admonitions of the higher religion--"thou
shalt not covet; thou shalt worship no other gods before me"--but the
intelligence shown by the social mind in adjusting the individual to
society may fairly be called the same grade of intelligence in the two
cases.
When the environmental life of two groups is more alike and the
general cultural conditions more correspondent, the parallelism of
thought and practice becomes more striking. The recently discovered
Assyrian Code of Hammurabi (about 2500 B.C.) contains striking
correspondences with the Mosaic code; and while Semitic scholars
probably have good and sufficient reasons for holding that the Mosaic
Code was strongly influenced by the Assyrian, we may yet be very
confident that the two codes would have been of the same general
character if no influence whatever had passed from one to the other.
The institutions and practices of a people are a product of the mind;
and if the early and spontaneous products of mind are everywhere
of the same general pattern as the later manifestations, only less
developed, refined, and specialized, it may well be that failure to
progress equally is not due to essential unlikeness of mind, but to
conditions lying outside the mind.
Another test of mental ability which deserves special notice is
mechanical ingenuity. Our white pre-eminence owes much to this
faculty, and the lower races are reckoned defective in it. But the
lower races do invent, and it is doubtful whether one invention is
ever much more difficult than another. On the psychological side,
an invention means that the mind sees a roundabout way of reaching
an end when it cannot be reached directly. It brings into play the
associative memory, and involves the recognition of analogies. There
is a certain likeness between the flying back of a bough in one's face
and the rebound of a bow, between a serpent's tooth and a poisoned
arrow, between floating timber and a raft or boat; and water, steam,
and electricity are like a horse in one respect--they will all make
wheels go around, and do work.
Now, the savage had this faculty of seeing analogies and doing things
in indirect ways. With the club, knife, and sword he struck more
effectively than with the fist; with hooks, traps, nets, and pitfalls
he understood how to seize game more surely than with the hands; in
the bow and arrow, spear, blow-gun, and spring-trap he devised motion
swifter than that of his own body; he protected himself with armor
imitated from the hides and scales of animals, and turned their
venom back on themselves. That the savage should have originated the
inventive process and carried it on systematically is, indeed, more
wonderful than that his civilized successors should continue the
process; for every beginning is difficult.
When occupations become specialized and one set of men has continually
to do with one and only one set of machinery and forces, the constant
play of attention over the limited field naturally results in
improvements and the introduction of new principles. Modern inventions
are magnificent and seem quite to overshadow the simpler devices
of primitive times; but when we consider the precedents, copies,
resources, and accumulated knowledge with which the modern
investigator works, and, on the other hand, the resourcelessness of
primitive man in materials, ideas, and in the inventive habit itself,
I confess that the bow and arrow seems to me the most wonderful
invention in the world.
Viewing the question from a different angle, we find another argument
for the homogeneous character of the human mind in the fact that the
patterns of interest of the civilized show no variation from those of
the savage. Not only the appetites and vanities remain essentially the
same, but, on the side of intellectual interest, the type of mental
reaction fixed in the savage by the food-quest has come down unaltered
to the man of science as well as to the man of the street. In
circumventing enemies and capturing game, both the attention and the
organic processes worked together in primitive man under great stress
and strain. Whenever, indeed, a strain is thrown on the attention, the
heart and organs of respiration are put under pressure also in their
effort to assist the attention in manipulating the problem; and these
organic fluctuations are felt as pleasure and pain. The strains thrown
on the attention of primitive man were connected with his struggle
for life; and not only in the actual encounter with men and animals
did emotion run high, but the memory and anticipation of conflict
reinstated the emotional conditions in those periods when he was
meditating future conflicts and preparing his bows and arrows, traps
and poisons. The problem of invention, the reflective and scientific
side of his life, was suffused with interest, because the manufacture
of the weapon was, psychologically speaking, a part of the fight.
This type of interest, originating in the hunt, remains dominant
in the mind down to the present time. Once constructed to take an
interest in the hunting problem, it takes an interest in any problem
whatever. Not only do hunting and fighting and all competitive
games--which are of precisely the same psychological pattern as the
hunt and fight--remain of perennial interest, but all the useful
occupations are interesting in just the degree that this pattern is
preserved. The man of science works at problems and uses his ingenuity
in making an engine in the laboratory in the same way that primitive
man used his mind in making a trap. So long as the problem is
present, the interest is sustained; and the interest ceases when
the problematical is removed. Consequently, all modern occupations
of the hunting pattern--scientific investigation, law, medicine,
the organization of business, trade speculation, and the arts and
crafts--are interesting as a game; while those occupations into which
the division of labor enters to the degree that the workman is not
attempting to control a problem, and in which the same acts are
repeated an indefinite number of times, lose interest and become
extremely irksome.
This means that the brain acts pleasurably on the principle it was
made up to act on in the most primitive times, and the rest is a
burden. There is no brain change, but the social changes have been
momentous; and the brain of each generation is brought into contact
with new traditions, inhibitions, copies, obligations, problems, so
that the run of attention and content of consciousness are different.
Social suggestion works marvels in the manipulation of the mind;
but the change is not in the brain as an organ; it is rather in the
character of the stimulations thrust on it by society.
The child begins as a savage, and after we have brought to bear
all the influence of home, school, and church to socialize him, we
speak as though his nature had changed organically, and institute a
parallelism between the child and the race, assuming that the child's
brain passes in a recapitulatory way through phases of development
corresponding to epochs in the history of the race. I have no
doubt myself that this theory of recapitulation is largely a
misapprehension. A stream of social influence is turned loose on the
child; and if the attention to him is incessant and wise, and the
copies he has are good and stimulating, he is molded nearer to the
heart's desire. Sometimes he escapes, and becomes a criminal, tramp,
sport, or artist; and even if made into an impeccable and model
citizen, he periodically breaks away from the network of social habit
and goes a-fishing.
The fundamental explanation of the difference in the mental life
of two groups is not that the capacity of the brain to do work is
different, but that the attention is not in the two cases stimulated
and engaged along the same lines. Wherever society furnishes copies
and stimulations of a certain kind, a body of knowledge and a
technique, practically all its members are able to work on the plan
and scale in vogue there, and members of an alien race who become
acquainted in a real sense with the system can work under it. But
when society does not furnish the stimulations, or when it has
preconceptions which tend to inhibit the run of attention in given
lines, then the individual shows no intelligence in these lines. This
may be illustrated in the fields of scientific and artistic interest.
Among the Hebrews a religious inhibition--"thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image"--was sufficient to prevent anything like the
sculpture of the Greeks; and the doctrine of the resurrection of the
body in the early Christian church, and the teaching that man was
made in the image of God, formed an almost insuperable obstacle to the
study of human anatomy.
The Mohammedan attitude toward scientific interest is represented by
the following extracts from a letter from an oriental official to a
western inquirer, printed by Sir Austen Henry Layard:
_My Illustrious Friend and Joy of my Liver:_
The thing which you ask of me is both difficult and useless.
Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have
neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the
inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and
the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no
business of mine. But above all, as to the previous history
of this city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion
that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the
sword of Islam. It were unprofitable for us to inquire into
it.... Listen, O my son! There is no wisdom equal to the
belief in God! He created the world, and shall we liken
ourselves unto him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries
of his creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round
that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh
in so many years? Let it go! He from whose hand it came will
guide and direct it.... Thou art learned in the things I care
not for, and as for that which thou hast seen, I spit upon it.
Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou
seek paradise with thine eyes?...
The meek in spirit, IMAUM ALI ZADI.[264]
The works of Sir Henry Maine, who gained by his long residence in
India a profound insight into the oriental character, frequently point
out that the eastern pride in conservatisms is quite as real as the
western pride in progress:
Vast populations, some of them with a civilization
considerable but peculiar, detest that which in the language
of the West would be called reform. The entire Mohammedan
world detests it. The multitudes of colored men who swarm in
the great continent of Africa detest it, and it is detested by
that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on
one side as barbarous or savage. The millions upon millions of
men who fill the Chinese Empire loathe it and (what is more)
despise it.... There are few things more remarkable, and in
their way more instructive, than the stubborn incredulity
and disdain which a man belonging to the cultivated part of
Chinese society opposes to the vaunts of western civilization
which he frequently hears.... There is in India a minority,
educated at the feet of English politicians and in books
saturated with English political ideas, which has learned to
repeat their language; but it is doubtful whether even these,
if they had a voice in the matter, would allow a finger to be
laid on the very subjects with which European legislation is
beginning to concern itself--social and religious usage. There
is not, however, the shadow of a doubt that the enormous mass
of the Indian population hates and dreads change.[265]
To the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively
rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern. It is
known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for
a short period during a history of incalculable length.[266]
The oriental attitude does not argue a lack of brain power, but a
prepossession hostile to scientific inquiry. The society represented
does not interest its members in what, from the western standpoint, is
knowledge.
The Chinese afford a fine example of a people of great natural ability
letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of a scientific
standpoint. As indicated above, they are not defective in brain
weight, and their application to study is long continued and very
severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot
possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint. They learn
no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry
of the T'ang Dynasty, in order to learn the Chinese characters, and
in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern
characters are not represented in this ancient poetry. Their attention
to Chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past;
but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate
textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction
between fact and fiction. In general, they learn only rules and no
principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the
result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and
the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own
work:
Multitudes of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about
matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard
to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful.
A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming
naïveté that he had never understood the allusions in the
Trimetrical Classic (which stands at the very threshold of
Chinese study) until at the age of sixty he had an opportunity
to read a Universal History prepared by a missionary, in which
for the first time Chinese history was made accessible to
him.[267]
Add to this that the whole of their higher learning, corresponding
to our university system, consists in writing essays and always more
essays on the Chinese classics, and "it is impossible," as Mr.
Smith points out, "not to marvel at the measure of success which
has attended the use of such materials in China."[268] But when this
people is in possession of the technique of the western world--a
logic, general ideas, and experimentation--we cannot reasonably doubt
that they will be able to work the western system as their cousins,
the Japanese, are doing, and perhaps they, too, may better the
instruction.
White effectiveness is probably due to a superior technique acting
in connection with a superior body of knowledge and sentiment. Of two
groups having equal mental endowment, one may outstrip the other by
the mere dominance of incident. It is a notorious fact that the course
of human history has been largely without prevision or direction.
Things have drifted and forces have arisen. Under these conditions
an unusual incident--the emergence of a great mind or a forcible
personality, or the operation of influences as subtle as those which
determine fashions in dress--may establish social habits and duties
which will give a distinct character to the modes of attention
and mental life of the group. The most significant fact for Aryan
development is the emergence among the Greeks of a number of eminent
men who developed logic, the experimental method, and philosophic
interest, and fixed in their group the habit of looking behind the
incident for the general law. Mediaeval attention was diverted from
these lines by a religious movement, and the race lost for a time the
key to progress and got clean away from the Greek copies; but it found
them again and took a fresh start with the revival of Greek learning.
It is quite possible to make a fetish of classical learning; but Sir
Henry Maine's remark, that nothing moves in the modern world that is
not Greek in its origin, is quite just.
The real variable is the individual, not the race. In the
beginning--perhaps as the result of a mutation or series of
mutations--a type of brain developed which has remained relatively
fixed in all times and among all races. This brain will never have
any faculty in addition to what it now possesses, because as a type of
structure it is as fixed as the species itself, and is indeed a mark
of species. It is not apparent either that we are greatly in need of
another faculty, or that we could make use of it even if by a chance
mutation it should emerge, since with the power of abstraction we are
able to do any class of work we know anything about. Moreover, the
brain is less likely to make a leap now than in earlier time, both
because the conditions of nature are more fixed or more nearly
controlled by man, and hence the urgency of adjustment to sharp
variations in external conditions is removed, and because the struggle
for existence has been mitigated so that the unfit survive along with
the fit. Indeed, the rapid increase in idiocy and insanity shown by
statistics indicates that the brain is deteriorating slightly, _on the
average_, as compared with earlier times.[269]
Nature is not producing a better average brain than in the time of
Aristotle and the Greeks. If we have more than the wisdom of our
ancestors, our advantage lies in our specialization, our superior body
of knowledge, and our superior technique for its transmission. At the
same time, the individual brain is unstable, fluctuating in normal
persons between 1,100 and 1,500 grams in weight, while the extremes
of variation are represented, on the one side, by the imbecile with
300 grams, and the man of genius with 2,000 on the other. It is
therefore perfectly true that by artificial selection--Mr. Galton's
"eugenism"--a larger average brain could be created, and also a higher
average of natural intelligence, whether this be absolutely dependent
on brain weight or not. But it is hardly to be expected that a stable
brain above the capacity of those of the first rank now and in the
past will result, since the mutations of nature are more radical than
the breeding process of man, and she probably ran the whole gamut.
"Great men lived before Agamemnon," and individual variations will
continue to occur, but not on a different pattern; and what has been
true in the past will happen again in the future, that the group which
by hook or by crook comes into possession of the best technique and
the best copies will make the best show of intelligence and march at
the head of civilization.
III
The foregoing examination of the relation of the mental faculty of the
lower races to the higher places us in a position to examine to better
advantage the other question of the relation of the intelligence of
woman to that of man.
The differences in mental expression between the lower and the higher
races can be expressed for the most part in terms of attention and
practice. The differences in run of attention and practice are in this
case due to the development of different habits by groups occupying
different habitats, and consequently having no copies in common.
Woman, on the other hand, exists in the white man's world of practical
and scientific activity, but is excluded from full participation in
it. Certain organic conditions and historical incidents have, in fact,
inclosed her in habits which she neither can nor will fracture, and
have also set up in the mind of man an attitude toward her which
renders her almost as alien to man's interests and practices as if she
were spatially separated from them.
One of the most important facts which stand out in a comparison of
the physical traits of men and women is that man is a more specialized
instrument for motion, quicker on his feet, with a longer reach, and
fitted for bursts of energy; while woman has a greater fund of stored
energy and is consequently more fitted for endurance. The development
of intelligence and motion have gone along side by side in all animal
forms. Through motion chances and experiences are multiplied, the
whole equilibrium characterizing the stationary form is upset, and the
organs of sense and the intelligence are developed to take note of and
manipulate the outside world. Amid the recurrent dangers incident to
a world peopled with moving and predacious forms, two attitudes may be
assumed--that of fighting, and that of fleeing or hiding. As between
the two, concealment and evasion became more characteristic of the
female, especially among mammals, where the young are particularly
helpless and need protection for a long period. She remained,
therefore, more stationary, and at the same time acquired more
cunning, than the male.
In mankind especially, the fact that woman had to rely on cunning
and the protection of man rather than on swift motion, while man had
a freer range of motion and adopted a fighting technique, was the
starting-point of a differentiation in the habits and interests,
which had a profound effect on the consciousness of each. Man's most
immediate, most fascinating, and most remunerative occupation was
the pursuit of animal life. The pursuit of this stimulated him to
the invention of devices for killing and capture; and this aptitude
for invention was later extended to the invention of tools and of
mechanical devices in general, and finally developed into a settled
habit of scientific interest. The scientific imagination which
characterizes man in contrast with women is not a distinctive male
trait, but represents a constructive habit of attention associated
with freer movement and the pursuit of evasive animal forms. The
problem of control was more difficult, and the means of securing it
became more indirect, mediated, reflective, and inventive; that is,
more intelligent.
Woman's activities, on the other hand, were largely limited to plant
life, to her children, and to manufacture, and the stimulation to
mental life and invention in connection with these was not so powerful
as in the case of man. Her inventions were largely processes of
manufacture connected with her handling of the by-products of the
chase. So simple a matter, therefore, as relatively unrestricted
motion on the part of man and relatively restricted motion on the part
of woman determined the occupations of each, and these occupations
in turn created the characteristic mental life of each. In man this
was constructive, answering to his varied experience and the need of
controlling a moving environment; and in woman it was conservative,
answering to her more stationary and monotonous condition.
In early times man's superior physical force, the wider range of his
experience, his mechanical inventions in connection with hunting and
fighting, and his combination under leadership with his comrades to
carry out their common enterprises, resulted in a contempt for the
weakness of women and an almost complete separation in interest
between himself and the women of the group. The men frequently formed
clubs, and lived apart from the women; and even where this did not
happen, the men and women had no mental life in common. To this
contempt for women also was added a superstitious fear of them,
growing out of the primitive belief that weakness or any other bad
quality is infectious, and may be transferred by physical contact or
association.[270]
From Mr. Crawley's excellent paper on "Sexual Taboo" I transcribe the
following illustrations of this attitude:
In New Caledonia you rarely see men and women talking or
sitting together. The women seem perfectly content with the
company of their own sex. The men who loiter about with spears
in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the
opposite sex.... The Ojebwey, Peter Jones, thus writes of his
own people: "I have scarcely ever seen anything like social
intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable
that the women say little in the presence of the men." The
Zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. If a man
were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and
they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in
company. If he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his
wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. In Senegambia
the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands,
and their sex is virtually a clique. In Egypt a man never
converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by
a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the
same vault.[271]
Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the
wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her
husband's sphere of action. The Bechuanas never allow their
women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow
themselves.... In Guiana no woman may go near the hut where
_ourali_ is made. In the Marquesas Islands the use of canoes
is prohibited to the female sex by _tabu_: the breaking of
the rule is punished with death. Conversely, amongst the same
people _tapa_-making belongs exclusively to the women: when
they are making it for their own headdresses it is _tabu_ for
the men to touch it. In Nicaragua all the marketing was done
by the women. A man might not enter the market nor even see
the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... In Samoa where
the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women,
it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the
process.... An Eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an
_umiak_, the large boat used by women. The different offices
of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for
example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a
stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore,
and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to
interfere with what is the work of women. In British Guiana
cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one
occasion when the men were compelled perforce to bake some
bread they were only persuaded to do so with the utmost
difficulty, and were ever after pointed at as old women.[272]
Amongst the Barea, man and wife seldom share the same bed; the
reason they give is that the breath of the wife weakens the
husband.... The Khyoungthas have a legend of a man who reduced
a king and his men to a condition of feebleness by persuading
them to dress up as women and perform female duties. When
they had thus been rendered effeminate they were attacked and
defeated without a blow.... Contempt for female timidity has
caused a curious custom amongst the Gallas: they amputate the
mammae of the boys soon after birth, believing that no warrior
can possibly be brave who possesses them, and that they should
belong to women only.... Amongst the Lhoosais when a man is
unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or
bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to
associate and work with the women. Amongst the Pomo Indians of
California, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is
made a menial and assists the squaws.... When the Delawares
were denationized by the Iroquois and prohibited from going
to war they were according to the Indian notion "made women,"
and were henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits
appropriate to women.[273]
Women were still further degraded by the development of property and
its control by man, together with the habit of treating her as a piece
of property, whose value was enhanced if its purity was assured and
demonstrable. As a result of this situation, man's chief concern in
women became an interest in securing the finest specimens for his own
use, in guarding them with jealous care from contact with other men,
and in making them, together with the ornaments they wore, signs of
his wealth and social standing. The instances below are extreme ones,
taken from lower social stages than our own, but they differ only in
degree from the chaperonage of modern Europe:
I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected
with some of the young girls here [New Ireland], so I asked
the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house
was about twenty-five feet in length and stood in a reed and
bamboo enclosure, across the entrance of which a bundle of
dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly _tabu_.
Inside the house there were three conical structures about
seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in
circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the
ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the
top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus
tree, sewn quite close together so that no light, and little
or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening
which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoanut tree and
pandanus tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there
is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these
cages, we were told there was a young woman confined, each
of whom had to remain for at least four or five years without
ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely
credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too
horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief and told him that
I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the
girls that I might make them a present of a few beads.... [A
girl having been allowed to come out] I then went to inspect
the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could
scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot
and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few
short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room
for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the
bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly
or quite dark inside. They are never allowed to come out
except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed
close to the cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They
are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must
remain there until they are young women, when they are taken
out and have each a great marriage feast prepared for them.
One of them was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and the
chief told me that she had been there for five years, but
would soon be taken out now. The other two were about eight
and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several
years longer. I asked if they never died, but they said
"No."[274]
They [the Azande] are extremely jealous of their womenfolk,
whom they do not permit to live in the same village with
themselves. The women's village is generally in the bush,
about 200 yards or so distant from that of the chief. Women
are never seen in an Azande village, the pathway to their own
being kept secret from all outsiders. This system while being
something like that observed by the Arabs, has the important
distinction that the women are not shut up. They are free
to come and go and do what they like, except visit the men's
village. In common with the entire native population of
Central Africa, the custom among the Zande is that the men
do no work that is not connected with the chase or the
manufacture of implements. All agriculture is carried on by
the women.[275]
From the time of engagement until marriage a young lady is
required to maintain the strictest seclusion. Whenever friends
call upon her parents she is expected to retire to the inner
apartments, and in all her actions and words guard her conduct
with careful solicitude. She must use a close sedan whenever
she visits her relations, and in her intercourse with her
brothers and the domestics in the household maintain great
reserve. Instead of having any opportunity to form those
friendships and acquaintances with her own sex which among
ourselves become a source of much pleasure at the time and
advantage in after life, the Chinese maiden is confined to the
circle of her relations and her immediate neighbors. She has
few of the pleasing remembrances and associations that are
usually connected with school-day life, nor has she often the
ability or opportunity to correspond by letter with girls of
her own age. Seclusion at this time of life, and the custom
of crippling the feet, combine to confine women in the house
almost as much as the strictest laws against their appearing
abroad; for in girlhood, as they know only a few persons
except relatives, and can make very few acquaintances after
marriage their circle of friends contracts rather than
enlarges as life goes on. This privacy impels girls to learn
as much of the world as they can, and among the rich their
curiosity is gratified through maid-servants, match-makers,
peddlers, visitors, and others.[276]
The world of white civilization is intellectually rich because it has
amassed a rich fund of general ideas, and has organized these into
specialized bodies of knowledge, and has also developed a special
technique for the presentation of this knowledge and standpoint to
the young members of society, and for localizing their attention in
special fields of interest. When for any reason a class of society is
excluded from this process, as women have been historically, it must
necessarily remain ignorant. But, while no one would make any question
that women confined as these in New Ireland and China, as shown above,
must have an intelligence as restricted as their mode of life, we are
apt to lose sight altogether of the fact that chivalry and chaperonage
and modern convention are the persistence of the old race habit of
contempt for women, and of their intellectual sequestration. Men
and women still form two distinct classes and are not in free
communication with each other. Not only are women unable and unwilling
to be communicated with directly, unconventionally, and truly on many
subjects, but men are unwilling to talk to them. I do not have in mind
situations involving questions of propriety or delicacy alone, but a
certain habit of restraint, originating doubtless in matters relating
to sex, extends to all intercourse with women, with the result that
they are not really admitted to the intellectual world of men; and
there is not only a reluctance on the part of men to admit them, but
a reluctance--or, rather, a real inability--on their part to enter.
Modesty with reference to personal habits has become so ingrained and
habitual, and to do anything freely is so foreign to woman, that even
free thought is almost of the nature of an immodesty in her.
In connection also with the adventitious position of woman referred
to in another paper,[277] the feminine interests and habits are set so
strongly toward dress and personal display that they are not readily
diverted. Women may and do protest against the triviality of their
lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual
ones, and human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuit
voluntarily, but is forced into it in connection with the urgency of
practical activities. The women who are obliged to work are of the
poorer classes, and have not that leisure and opportunity preliminary
to any specialized acquirement; while those who have leisure are
supported in that position both by money and by precedent and habit,
and have no immediate stimulation to lift them out of it. They
sometimes entertain ideas of freedom and plan occupational interests,
but they have usually become thoroughly habituated to their unfreedom,
and continue to feed from the hand.
Custom lies upon them with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.
The usual reasoning as to the ability of women also overlooks the fact
that many women are larger and stronger than many men, and some
of them possessed of tremendous energy, will, wit, endurance, and
sagacity. This type appears in all classes of society, but more
frequently in the lower classes and among peasants, both because the
natural qualities are less glozed over there by aristocratic custom,
and because these classes are bred truer to nature. Unfortunately, the
attention of the women of these classes is limited to very immediate
concerns; but, on the other hand, they present the true qualities of
the female type, and few, I believe, will deny that the peasant woman
described below would shine in intellectual walks if fate had called
her there:
Mother was a large, stout, full-blooded woman of great
strength. She could not read or write, and yet she was well
thought of. There are all sorts of educations, and though
reading and writing are very well in their way, they would not
have done mother any good. She had the sort of education
that was needed in her work. Nobody knew more about raising
vegetables, ducks, chickens and pigeons than she did. There
were some among the neighbors who could read and write and so
thought themselves above mother, but when they went to market
they found their mistake. Her peas, beans, cauliflower,
cabbages, pumpkins, melons, potatoes, beets, and onions sold
for the highest price of any, and that ought to show whose
education was the best, because it is the highest education
that produces the finest work.
Mother used to take me frequently to the market.... The market
women were a big, rough, fat, jolly set, who did not know
what sickness was, and it might have been well for me if I had
stayed among them and grown up like mother. One time in the
market-place I saw a totally different set of women. It was
about 8 o'clock in the morning, when some people began
to shout: "Here come the rich Americans! Now we will sell
things!" We saw a large party of travelers coming through the
crowd. They looked very queer. Their clothes seemed queer,
as they were so different from ours. They wore leather boots
instead of wooden shoes, and they all looked weak and pale.
The women were tall and thin, like beanpoles, and their
shoulders were stooped and narrow; most of them wore glasses
or spectacles, showing that their eyes were weak. The corners
of their mouths were all pulled down, and their faces were
crossed and crisscrossed with lines and wrinkles, as though
they were carrying all the care of the world. Our women all
began to laugh and dance and shout at the strangers.... The
sight of these people gave me my first idea of America. I
heard that the women there never worked, laced themselves too
tightly, and were always ill.[278]
The French dressmaker who wrote this passage has the true idea of
education and of mind. The mind is an organ for controlling the
environment, and it is a safe general principle that the mind which
shows high power in the manipulation of a simple situation will show
the same quality of efficiency in a more complex one.
The savage, the peasant, the poor man, and woman are not what we call
intellectual, because they are not taught to know and manipulate
the materials of knowledge. The savage is outside the process from
geographical reasons; the peasant is not in the center of interest;
the poor man's needs are pressing, and do not permit of interests of
a mediate character; and woman does not participate because it is
neither necessary nor womanly.
Even the most serious women of the present day stand, in any work
they undertake, in precisely the same relation to men that the
amateur stands to the professional in games. They may be desperately
interested and may work to the limit of endurance at times; but, like
the amateur, they got into the game late, and have not had a life-time
of practice, or they do not have the advantage of that pace gained
only by competing incessantly with players of the very first rank.
No one will contend that the amateur in billiards has a nervous
organization less fitted to the game than the professional; it
is admitted that the difference lies in the constant practice of
the professional, the more exacting standards prevailing in the
professional ranks, and constant play in "fast company." A group
of women would make a sorry spectacle in competition with a set of
men who made billiards their life-work. But how sad a spectacle the
eminent philosophers of the world would make in the same competition!
Scientific pursuits and the allied intellectual occupations are a
game which women have entered late, and their lack of practice is
frequently mistaken for lack of natural ability. Writing some years
ago of the women in his classes at the University of Zürich, Professor
Carl Vogt said:
At lectures the young women are models of attention and
application; perhaps they even make too great effort to carry
home in black and white what they have heard. They generally
sit in the front seats, because they register early, and,
moreover, because they come early, long before the lecture
begins. But it is noticeable that they give only a superficial
glance at the preparations which the professor passes around.
Sometimes they pass them to their neighbor without even
looking at them; a longer examination would prevent their
taking notes.
On examination the conduct of the young women is the same as
during the lectures. They know better than the young men. To
employ a classroom expression, they are enormously crammed.
Their memory is good, so that they know perfectly how to give
the answer to the question which is put. But generally they
stop there. An indirect question makes them lose the thread.
As soon as the examiner appeals to individual reason, the
examination is over; they do not answer. The examiner seeks
to make the sense of the question clearer, and uses a word,
perhaps, which is in the manuscript of the student, when,
pop! the thing goes as if you had pressed the button of a
telephone. If the examination consisted solely in written or
oral replies to questions on subjects which have been treated
in the lectures or which could be read up on in the manuals,
the ladies would always secure brilliant results. But, alas!
there are other practical tests in which the candidate finds
herself face to face with reality, and that she cannot
meet successfully unless she has done practical work in the
laboratories, and it is there the shoe pinches.
The respect in which laboratory work is particularly difficult
to women--one would hardly believe it--is that they are often
very awkward and clumsy with their hands. The assistants in
the laboratories are unanimous in their complaint; they are
pursued with questions about the most trifling things, and one
woman gives them more trouble than three men. One would think
the delicate fingers of these young women adapted especially
to microscopic work, to the manipulation of small slides,
to cutting thin sections, to making the most delicate
preparations; the truth is quite the contrary. You can tell
the table of a woman at a glance: from the fragments of
glass, broken instruments, the broken scalpels, the spoiled
preparations. There are doubtless exceptions, but they are
exceptions.[279]
Zürich was among the first of the European universities opening their
doors to women, and it is particularly interesting to see their
first efforts in connection with the higher learning. Without a wide
experience of life, and without practice in constructive thinking,
they naturally fell back on the memory to retain a hold on results in
a field with which they were not sufficiently trained to operate in it
independently. It is frequently alleged, and is implied in Professor
Vogt's report, that women are distinguished by good memories and
poor powers of generalization. But this is to mistake the facts. A
tenacious memory is characteristic of women and children, and of
all persons unskilled in the manipulation of varied experiences in
thought. But when the mind is able at any moment to construct a result
from the raw materials of experience, the memory loses something of
its tenacity and absoluteness. In this sense it may even be said that
a good memory for details is a sign of an untrained or imitative mind.
As the mind becomes more inventive, the memory is less concerned with
the details of knowledge and more with the knowledge of places to find
the details when they are needed in any special problem.
The awkwardness in manual manipulation shown by these girls was also
surely due to lack of practice. The fastest typewriter in the world
is today a woman; the record for roping steers (a feat depending on
manual dexterity rather than physical force) is held by a woman; and
anyone who will watch girls making change before the pneumatic tubes
in the great department stores about Christmas time will experience
the same wonder one feels on first seeing a professional gambler
shuffling cards.
In short, Professor Vogt's report on women students is just what was
to be expected in Germany forty years ago. The American woman, with
the enjoyment of greater liberty, has made an approach toward the
standards of professional scholarship, and some individuals stand at
the very top in their university studies and examinations. The trouble
with these cases is that they are either swept away and engulfed by
the modern system of marriage, or find themselves excluded in some
intangible way from association with men in the fullest sense, and no
career open to their talents.
The personal liberty of women is, comparatively speaking, so great in
America, suggestion and copies for imitation are spread broadcast
so copiously in the schools, newspapers, books, and lectures, and
occupations and interests are becoming so varied, that a number of
women of natural ability and character are realizing some definite aim
in a perfect way. But these are sporadic cases, representing usually
some definite interest rather than a full intellectual life, and
resembling also in their nature and rarity the elevation of a peasant
to a position of eminence in Europe. Nowhere in the world do women as
a class lead a perfectly free intellectual life in common with the men
of the group, unless it be in restricted and artificial groups like
the modern revolutionary party in Russia.
Even in America a number of the great schools are not coeducational,
and in those which are so, many of the instructors claim that they do
not find it possible to treat with the men and women on precisely the
same basis, both because of their own mental attitude toward mixed
classes and the inability of the women to receive such treatment. In
the case of women also we can say what Mr. Smith says of the Chinese
and their system of education, that it is impossible not to marvel
at the results they accomplish in view of the system under which they
work.
The mind and the personality are largely built up by suggestion from
the outside, and if the suggestions are limited and particular, so
will be the mind. The world of modern intellectual life is in reality
a white man's world. Few women and perhaps no blacks have ever entered
this world in the fullest sense. To enter it in the fullest sense
would be to be in it at every moment from the time of birth to the
time of death, and to absorb it unconsciously and consciously, as the
child absorbs language. When something like this happens, we shall be
in a position to judge of the mental efficiency of woman and the lower
races. At present we seem justified in inferring that the differences
in mental expression between the higher and lower races and between
men and women are no greater than they should be in view of the
existing differences in opportunity.
Indeed, when we take into consideration the superior cunning as well
as the superior endurance of women, we may even raise the question
whether their capacity for intellectual work is not under equal
conditions greater than in men. Cunning is the analogue of
constructive thought--an indirect, mediated, and intelligent approach
to a problem--and characteristic of the female, in contrast with the
more direct and open procedure of the male. Owing to the limited and
personal nature of the activities of woman, this trait has expressed
itself historically in womankind as intrigue rather than invention,
but that it is very deeply based in the instincts is shown by the
important rôle it plays in the life of the female in animal life.
Endurance is also a factor of prime importance in intellectual
performance, for here as in business life "it is doggedness as does
it;" and if woman's endurance and natural ingenuity were combined in
intellectual pursuits, it might prove that the gray mare is the better
horse in this field as well as in peasant life. The most serious
objection, also, to the view that woman is fitted to do continuous and
hard work, arises from her relation to child-bearing; but this is at
bottom trivial. The period of child-bearing is not only not continuous
through life, but it is not serious from the standpoint of the time
lost. No work is without interruption, and child-birth is an incident
in the life of normal woman of no more significance, when viewed in
the aggregate and from the standpoint of time, than the interruption
of the work of men by their in-and out-of-door games. The important
point in all work is not to be uninterrupted, but to begin again.
Whether the characteristic mental life of women and the lower races
will prove to be identical with those of the white man or different
in quality is a different question, and problematical. It is certain,
at any rate, that our civilization is not of the highest type
possible. In all our relations there is too much of primitive man's
fighting instinct and technique; and it is not impossible that
the participation of woman and the lower races will contribute new
elements, change the stress of attention, disturb the equilibrium, and
force a crisis which will result in the reconstruction of our habits
on more sympathetic and equitable principles. Certain it is that no
civilization can remain the highest if another civilization adds to
the intelligence of its men the intelligence of its women.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Geddes and Thomson, _The Evolution of Sex_ _passim_.]
[Footnote 2: Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, has brought together
a mass of very valuable material on the question of the somatic and
psychic differences of man and woman, and H. Campbell, in a volume of
much the same scope, _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Man
and Woman_, has given a résumé of the theory of Geddes and Thomson,
and suggested its extension to the human species.]
[Footnote 3: C. Düsing, (1) _Die Regulirung des
Geschlechtsverhältnisses bei der Vermehrung der Menschen, Thiere und
Pflanzen_. (2) _Das Geschlechtsverhältniss der Geburten in Preussen_.]
[Footnote 4: H. Ploss, "Ueber die das Geschlechtsverhältniss der
Kinder bedingenden Ursachen," _Monatsschrift für Geburtskunde und
Frauenkrankheiten_, Vol. XII, pp. 321-60.]
[Footnote 5: E. Westermarck, _The History of Human Marriage_, pp.
470-83.]
[Footnote 6: Düsing, _Das Geschlechtsverhältniss der Geburten in
Preussen_, pp. 29-33.]
[Footnote 7: Düsing, _loc. cit._, pp. 14-19.]
[Footnote 8: H. Ploss, _Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde_, 3.
Aufl., Vol. I, p. 419.]
[Footnote 9: Axel Key, "Die Pubertätsentwickelung und das Verhältniss
derselben zu den Krankheitserscheinungen der Schuljugend,"
_Verhandlungen des X. Internationalen Medicinischen Congresses_, 1890,
Vol. I, p. 91.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid., pp. 84-90.]
[Footnote 11: Geddes and Thompson, _loc. cit._, Book I, chap. 4.]
[Footnote 12: Rolph, quoted by Geddes and Thompson, _loc. cit._, Book
I, chap. 4.]
[Footnote 13: Geddes and Thompson, _ibid._]
[Footnote 14: G. Klebs, _Ueber das Verhältniss des männlichen und
weiblichen Geschlechts in der Natur_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 15: Food affords the basis for metabolic changes in the
parent organism, but it is probable that food is less _directly_
related than heat and light to the determination of sex. Sachs, whose
experiments must be given the greatest possible weight, has determined
that the ultra-violet rays of light are necessary to the chemical
changes essential to the formation of the reproductive organs.
(J. Sachs, "Ueber die Wirkung der ultravioletten Strahlen auf die
Blüthenbildung," _Gesammelte Abhandlungen über Pflanzen-Physiologie_,
Vol. I, pp. 293ff.) More recently, Klebs has shown that by diminishing
the intensity of light the development of female sex organs in ferns
can be interrupted, so that, in spite of the presence of male organs,
fertilization is impossible; at the same time, the prothallia are
enabled in weak light to grow feebly and to put out small asexual
processes, which in the presence of bright light become normal
prothallia. Similarly, the development of sexual organs in algae
is dependent on a certain intensity of light, and the plant remains
sterile if the light is diminished below a certain point. (G. Klebs,
_Ueber einige Probleme der Physiologie der Fortpflanzung_, pp.
13-16.)]
[Footnote 16: E. Maupas, "Théorie de la sexualité des Infusoires
ciliés," _Comptes rendus_, Vol. CV, pp. 356ff.]
[Footnote 17: The extinction took place at about the 330th generation
in _Onychodromus grandis_, at about the 320th generation in
_Stylonichia mytilis_, at about the 330th generation in _Leucophrys
patula_, and at about the 660th generation in _Oxytricha_
(indeterminate). (Maupas, _loc. cit._, p. 358.)]
[Footnote 18: Maupas, _loc. cit._, p. 358. Later investigations have
tended to discredit Maupas' experiments as a whole by showing that the
Infusorians with which he experimented can be kept alive indefinitely
by a change of diet, without the aid of sexual conjugation. This
merely confirms the view, however, that abundant nutrition and
crossing are alike favorable to health: "We must admire the skill of
the investigator who was able to keep his colonies alive for months
and years under such artificial conditions, but we may venture to
doubt whether the fate of extinction which did ultimately overtake
them was really due to the absence of conjugation, and not to the
unnaturalness of the conditions." A. Weismann, _The Evolution of
Theory_, Vol. I, p. 329.
Since the above was written, Calkins has made a series of new
experiments, the results of which differed in several respects from
those yielded by Maupas' experiments. When his infusorian cultures
began to grow weaker, as happened frequently and at irregular
intervals, he was always able to restore them to more vigorous life by
a change of diet, and especially by substituting grated meat, liver,
and the like for infusions of hay. Certain salts too, had the same
effect; the animals became perfectly vigorous again. Calkins believes
that chemical agents, and especially salts, must be supplied to
the protoplasm from time to time. He reared 620 generations of
_Paramoecium_ without conjugation. But the 620th was weakly and
without energy. The addition of an extract of sheep's brains made
them perfectly fresh and vigorous again. Further experiments in this
direction are to be desired, but, according to those of Calkins, it is
probable that Infusorians can continue to live for an unlimited time
even without conjugation. (Ibid., note.)]
[Footnote 19: Westermarck, _loc. cit._, pp. 476-83, following a
suggestion of Düsing, has brought together much of the evidence on
this point, but the application of the facts here made has not, I
believe, been suggested.]
[Footnote 20: A. von Oettingen, _Die Moralstatistik_, 3. Aufl., p.
56.]
[Footnote 21: Düsing, _Die Regulirung des Geschlechtsverhältnisses_,
p. 237.]
[Footnote 22: Westermarck, _loc. cit._, pp. 479 and 481 n.]
[Footnote 23: Cf. _ibid._, pp. 476-83.]
[Footnote 24: G. Delaunay, "De l'égalité et inégalité des deux sexes,"
_Revue scientifique_, September 3, 1881; C. Darwin, _Descent of Man_,
chap. 10.]
[Footnote 25: A. Weismann, _Essays on Heredity_, Vol. I, "The Duration
of Life," has shown that size and longevity are determined by natural
selection.]
[Footnote 26: Darwin, _Descent of Man_, chap. 8.]
[Footnote 27: Ibid.]
[Footnote 28: A.R. Wallace, _Contributions to the Theory of Natural
Selection_, chap. 3.]
[Footnote 29: "If we take the highly decorated species--that is,
animals marked by alternate dark or light bands or spots, such as the
zebra, some deer, or the carnivora--we find, first, that the region
of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe; secondly, that the
regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly,
that the flanks are striped or spotted along or between the regions of
the lines of the ribs; fourthly, that the shoulder and hip regions
are marked by curved lines; fifthly, that the pattern changes, and the
direction of the lines or spots, at the head, neck, and every joint of
the limbs; and, lastly, that the tips of the ears, nose, tail, and
the feet and the eye are emphasized in color. In spotted animals
the greatest length of the spot is generally in the direction of
the largest development of the skeleton."--A. Tylor, _Coloration in
Animals and Plants_, p. 92.]
[Footnote 30: A.R. Wallace, _Darwinism_, chap. 10.]
[Footnote 31: Professor Carl Pearson, in a severe, not to say
unmannerly, paper ("Variation in Man and Woman," _The Chances of
Death_, Vol. I), has criticized some of the results of the physical
anthropologists and attempted to show that the theory of the greater
variability of man has no legs to stand on. His argument is mainly
statistical, and affects, perhaps, some of the details of the theory,
but not, I think, the theory as a whole.]
[Footnote 32: Darwin, _loc. cit._, chap. 19.]
[Footnote 33: P. Topinard, _Éléments d'anthropologie générale_, p.
253.]
[Footnote 34: Delaunay, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 35: Weisbach, "Der deutsche Weiberschadel," _Archiv für
Anthropologie_, Vol. III, p. 66.]
[Footnote 36: Topinard, _loc. cit._, p. 375.]
[Footnote 37: Topinard, _loc. cit._, p. 1066.]
[Footnote 38: Topinard's figures (_loc. cit._, p. 1066) show, however,
that the Eskimos and the Tasmanians have a shorter trunk than the
Europeans.]
[Footnote 39: J. Ranke, "Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der
Bayern," _Beiträge zur Anthropologie und Urgeschichte Bayerns_, Vol.
VIII, p. 65.]
[Footnote 40: Morphological differences are less in low than in high
races, and the less civilized the race, the less is the physical
difference of the sexes. In the higher races the men are both more
unlike one another than in the lower races, and at the same time
more unlike the women of their own race. But, while some of these
differences may probably be justly set down as congenital, as
representing varieties of the species which have passed through
different variational experiences, they are doubtless mainly due to
the fact that the activities of men and women are more unlike in the
higher than in the lower races.]
[Footnote 41: J.W. Seaver, _Anthropometric Table_, 1889.]
[Footnote 42: Delphine Hanna, _Anthropometric Table_ 1891.]
[Footnote 43: Where a large body of men are intensely interested in
a competition, as over against a small body of women not seriously
interested, any comparison of results is almost out of the question.
But the superior physical strength of man is, I believe, disputed in
no quarter. The Vassar records have been improved in succeeding years
(the 100-yard dash was 13 seconds in 1904, the running high jump 4
feet 2½ inches in 1905, the running broad jump 14 feet 6½ inches in
1904), but Miss Harriet Isabel Ballantine, director of the Vassar
College Gymnasium, writes me: "I do not believe women can ever, no
matter what the training, approach man in their physical achievements;
and I see no reason why they should."]
[Footnote 44: Helen B. Thompson, _The Mental Traits of Sex_, p. 178.
"While it is improbable that _all_ the difference of the sexes with
regard to physical strength can be attributed to persistent difference
in training, it is certain that a large part of the difference is
explicable on this ground. The great strength of savage women and
the rapid increase in strength of civilized women wherever systematic
physical training has been introduced both show the importance of this
factor."--Ibid., p. 178.]
[Footnote 45: "Physical and Mental Deviations from the Normal among
Children in Public Elementary and Other Schools," _Report of the
Sixty-fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science_, 1894. pp. 434ff.]
[Footnote 46: A. Mitchell, "Some Statistics of Idiocy," _Edinburgh
Medical Journal_, Vol. XI, p. 639.]
[Footnote 47: "Koch's Statistics of Insanity," _Journal of Mental
Science_, Vol. XXVI, p. 435.]
[Footnote 48: Mayr, _Die Verbreitung der Blindheit, der Taubstummheit,
des Blödsinns und des Irrsinns in Baiern_, p. 100.]
[Footnote 49: Cf. Campbell, _loc. cit._, pp. 146ff.]
[Footnote 50: Ibid., pp. 132-40.]
[Footnote 51: J.H. Manley, "Harelip," _International Medical Journal_,
Vol. II, pp. 209ff.]
[Footnote 52: _Communications of the Massachusetts Medical Society_,
Vol. II, No. 3, p. 9.]
[Footnote 53: Of the 3,956 individuals examined, 1,645 were males, and
of these 47 (2.857 per cent.) presented supernumerary nipples. Of
the 3,956 individuals 2,311 were females, and of these 14 (0.605
per cent.) presented supernumerary mammae or nipples. That is, this
anomaly was found to occur more than four times as frequently in
men as in women.--J. Mitchell Bruce, "On Supernumerary Nipples and
Mammae," _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, Vol. XIII, p. 432.
Leichtenstern, however, whose investigations were of earlier date than
those of Bruce, says that supernumerary mammae occur with about equal
frequency in the two sexes.--Leichtenstern, "Ueber das Vorkommen
und die Bedeutung supernumerärer Brüste und Brustwarzen," Virchow's
_Archiv für pathologische Anatomie_, Vol. LXXIII, p. 238.]
[Footnote 54: Ellis, _loc. cit._ (4th ed.), pp. 413ff.]
[Footnote 55: Lombroso e Ferrero, _La donna delinquente_, chap. 12.]
[Footnote 56: Hyrtl, of Vienna, however, examined thirty subjects,
and found the anomaly in question only three times, and exclusively
in females. He attributed it to tight lacing. D.J. Cunningham,
"The Occasional Eighth True Rib in Man," _Journal of Anatomy and
Physiology_, Vol. XXIV, p. 127.]
[Footnote 57: H. Campbell, _loc. cit._, p. 133.]
[Footnote 58: Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, p. 14; Campbell,
_loc. cit._, pp. 199-215; Ploss, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 313.]
[Footnote 59: A. Hegar, _Der Geschlechtstrieb_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 60: H. Campbell, _loc. cit._, p. 115.]
[Footnote 61: J. Hayem, _Du sang et de ses alterations anatomiques_,
pp. 184, 185.]
[Footnote 62: E. Lloyd Jones, "Further Observations on the Specific
Gravity of the Blood in Health and Disease", _Journal of Physiology_,
Vol. XII, pp. 299ff.]
[Footnote 63: O. Leichtenstern, _Untersuchungen über den
Hæmoglobulingehalt des Blutes_, p. 38.]
[Footnote 64: _Loc. cit._, pp. 316ff.]
[Footnote 65: Ibid., pp. 316ff.]
[Footnote 66: E. Bourgoin, art. "Urines", _Dictionnaire encyclopédique
des sciences médicales_.]
[Footnote 67: Delaunay, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 68: Delaunay, _loc. cit._; Ploss, _Das Weib_, Vol. I, pp.
36, 37; Ellis, _loc. cit._, pp. 231ff.]
[Footnote 69: Ellis, _loc. cit._, p. 252.]
[Footnote 70: Campbell, _loc. cit._, pp. 117 and 119.]
[Footnote 71: Max Bartels, "Culturelle und Rassenunterschiede in Bezug
auf die Wundkrankheiten". _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Vol. XX, p.
183.]
[Footnote 72: Legouest, art. "Amputations", _Dictionnaire
encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.]
[Footnote 73: Ellis, _loc. cit._, p. 132.]
[Footnote 74: A. von Oettingen, _loc. cit._, p. 780.]
[Footnote 75: Lombroso e Ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. 16.]
[Footnote 76: Lombroso e Ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. 16.]
[Footnote 77: P. xxi, Table F, quoted by Campbell, _loc. cit._, p.
124.]
[Footnote 78: B.A. Whitelegge, "Milroy Lectures on Changes of Type in
Epidemic Diseases," _British Medical Journal_, March 18, 1893.]
[Footnote 79: A. Newsholme, _Vital Statistics_, 3d ed., p. 178.]
[Footnote 80: W. Farr, _Vital Statistics_, p. 385.]
[Footnote 81: Mortality from cancer is, however, much higher in women
than in men. Newsholme, _loc. cit._, p. 208.]
[Footnote 82: Ploss, _Das Weib_, Vol. I, p. 26.]
[Footnote 83: Von Oettingen, _loc. cit._, p. 58.]
[Footnote 84: Ploss, _Das Weib_, Vol. I, p. 207.]
[Footnote 85: Ellis, _loc. cit._, p. 432.]
[Footnote 86: Ploss, _Das Weib_, Vol. I, p. 206.]
[Footnote 87: Depaul, art. "Nouveau-né," _Dictionnaire encyclopédique
des sciences médicales_.]
[Footnote 88: B. Ornstein, "Makrobiotisches aus Griechenland," _Archiv
für Anthropologie_ Vol. XVII, pp. 193ff.]
[Footnote 89: G. Mayr, _Die Gesetzmässigkeit im Gesellschaftsleben_
(1877), p. 144.]
[Footnote 90: V. Turquan, "Statistique des centénaires," _Revue
scientifique_ September 1, 1888.]
[Footnote 91: Lombroso e Ferrero, _loc. cit._, chap. 10.]
[Footnote 92: E. Lloyd Jones, "Further Observations on the Specific
Gravity of the Blood in Health and Disease," _Journal of Physiology_,
Vol. XII, p. 308.]
[Footnote 93: Cf. Topinard, _Loc. cit._, pp. 517-25, 557, 558.]
[Footnote 94: Ibid., p. 559.]
[Footnote 95: H. Ploss, _Das Weib in der Natur--und Völkerkunde_, 3.
Aufl., Vol. II, p. 379.]
[Footnote 96: Endogamous tribes have survived, in the main, in
isolated regions where competition was not sufficiently sharp to set
a premium on exogamy. It may be assumed that the history of exogamous
groups has been more cataclysmical.]
[Footnote 97: L.H. Morgan, _Houses and House-Life of the American
Aborigines_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 98: _Loc. cit._]
[Footnote 99: W.J. McGee, "The Beginning of Marriage," _American
Anthropologist_, Vol. IX, p. 376.]
[Footnote 100: E.B. Tylor, "The Matriarchal Family System,"
_Nineteenth Century_, July, 1896, p. 89.]
[Footnote 101: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 33ff.]
[Footnote 102: F. Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, Vol. I, p. 438.]
[Footnote 103: J. Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte_, Vol. II, p. 57.]
[Footnote 104: Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, p. 151.]
[Footnote 105: Tylor, _loc. cit._, p. 87.]
[Footnote 106: W. Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early
Arabia_, p. 65.]
[Footnote 107: Ibid., p. 94.]
[Footnote 108: Ibid., p. 173.]
[Footnote 109: Gen. 24:5, 53.]
[Footnote 110: Gen. 31:43.]
[Footnote 111: Judg. 8:19.]
[Footnote 112: Judg. 15.]
[Footnote 113: Cf. Smith, _loc. cit._, 176.]
[Footnote 114: II Sam. 13:13.]
[Footnote 115: G.A. Wilken, _Das Matriarchat_, p. 41.]
[Footnote 116: Herodotus (Rawlinson), I, 173.]
[Footnote 117: Ibid., III, 119.]
[Footnote 118: Lines 905ff.]
[Footnote 119: E.J. Simcox, _Primitive Civilisations_, Vol. I, pp.
200-11, 233, _et passim_.]
[Footnote 120: Notably, Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp.
100ff.]
[Footnote 121: _Dissertation on Early Law and Custom_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 122: It prepares the way, however, only in the sense that it
furnishes the mass out of which the organization arises. If there had
been no social grouping through reproduction, there would yet have
been ultimately filiation of men for the sake of mutually profitable
enterprises. Blood-brotherhood and the treaty are devices indicating
that early man had sufficient inventive imagination to do this.
The tribal group may, in fact, be described as a fighting male
organization living in a group of females.]
[Footnote 123: See L. von Dargun, _Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht_.]
[Footnote 124: J.W. Powell, "Wyandot Government", _First Annual Report
of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1879-80, pp. 61ff.]
[Footnote 125: Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, Vol. V,
pp. 107ff.]
[Footnote 126: Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte_, Vol. II, p. 50.]
[Footnote 127: C.N. Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 37.]
[Footnote 128: H.R. Schoolcraft, _History, Condition, and Prospects of
the Indian Tribes of the United States_, Vol. V, p. 167.]
[Footnote 129: Ibid., pp. 174-76.]
[Footnote 130: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, Vol. I,
p. 351.]
[Footnote 131: Ibid., Vol. I, p. 219.]
[Footnote 132: A. Hovelaque, _Les Nègres_, p. 316.]
[Footnote 133: Von Dargun, _loc. cit._, p. 5.]
[Footnote 134: Waitz-Gerland, _loc. cit._, Vol. VI, pp. 774ff.]
[Footnote 135: McGee, _loc. cit._, p. 374.]
[Footnote 136: Schoolcraft, _loc. cit._, Vol. V, p. 654.]
[Footnote 137: Lieutenant Musters, "On the Races of Patagonia",
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. I, p. 201.]
[Footnote 138: R. Steinmetz, _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten
Entwickelung der Strafe_, Vol. II, p. 272.]
[Footnote 139: A. Giraud-Teulon, _Les origines du mariage el de la
famille_, p. 440.]
[Footnote 140: Von Dargun, _loc. cit._, p. 119.]
[Footnote 141: J.F. McLennan, _The Patriarchal Theory_, p. 235.]
[Footnote 142: E.M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, Vol. I, p. 107.]
[Footnote 143: Steinmetz, _loc. cit._, Vol. II, p. 273.]
[Footnote 144: F. Boas, "On the Indians of British Columbia", _Report
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science_, 1889, p.
838.]
[Footnote 145: Von Dargun, _loc. cit._, 121-25.]
[Footnote 146: Smith, _loc. cit._, p. 101.]
[Footnote 147: Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_, Vol. V, p. 8, quoting
Petherick, _Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa_, pp. 140-44.]
[Footnote 148: H.H. Bancroft, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 506.]
[Footnote 149: Simcox, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 211.]
[Footnote 150: Ibid.]
[Footnote 151: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 169.]
[Footnote 152: Waitz-Gerland, _loc. cit._, Vol. VI, p. 20.]
[Footnote 153: Ellis, _Tour through Hawaii_, p. 391.]
[Footnote 154: Waitz-Gerland, _loc. cit._, Vol. VI, pp. 201-3.]
[Footnote 155: J. Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte_, Vol. II, p. 342.]
[Footnote 156: C.C. Closson, "The Hierarchy of European Races."
_American Journal of Sociology_, Vol. III, pp. 315ff.]
[Footnote 157: William James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, pp.
410ff.]
[Footnote 158: _Journals of Two Expeditions_, Vol. II, p. 317.]
[Footnote 159: I have alluded in more than one paper to the theory
of tropisms, but this does not imply an acceptance of this theory
as stated by Loeb (_Der Heliotropismus der Thiere und seine
Uebereinstimmung mil dem Heliotropismus der Pflanzen_), Vervorn (_Das
lebendige Substanz_), and other representatives of the "mechanical"
school of physiologists. The recent researches of Jennings seem
to establish the view that reactions of the lower organisms to
stimulation are less mechanical than has been assumed by this school.
The current theory holds that "the action of the stimulus is directly
on the motor organs of that part of the organism upon which the
stimulus impinges, thus giving rise to changes in the state of
contraction, which produce orientation." Jennings finds that "the
responses to stimuli are usually reactions of the organisms as
wholes, brought about by some physiological change produced by the
stimulus.... The organism reacts as a unit, not as the sum of a number
of independently reacting organs." H.S. Jennings, "The Theory of
Tropisms," _Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of the Lower
Organisms_ (Publications of the Carnegie Institution, 1904), pp. 106,
107.]
[Footnote 160: Cf. J.R. Angell and Helen B. Thompson, "A Study of the
Relations between Certain Organic Processes and Consciousness," _The
University of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy_, Vol. II, No. 2.]
[Footnote 161: Cf. John Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, Vol.
II, pp. 342ff.]
[Footnote 162: Cf. R. Steinmetz, _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten
Entwickelung der Strafe_, Vol. I, p. 305.]
[Footnote 163: See Groos, _The Play of Animals_, p. 283.]
[Footnote 164: See e.g., Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_,
3. Aufl., p. 10; Adams, "Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church
Discipline in Colonial New England," _Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society_, 2d Series, 1891, pp. 417-516.]
[Footnote 165: A.B. Ellis, _The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold
Coast_, pp. 249ff.]
[Footnote 166: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 206.]
[Footnote 167: Bonwick, _Daily Life of the Tasmanians_, p. 55.]
[Footnote 168: Owen, _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_, New
Series, Vol. II, p. 36.]
[Footnote 169: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 424.]
[Footnote 170: Arbousset and Daumas, _Voyage and Exploration_, p. 249;
Maffat, _Missionary Labors and Scenes in Southern Africa_, p. 53.]
[Footnote 171: Schoolcraft, _History, Condition, and Prospects of the
Indian Tribes of the United States_, Part I, p. 285.]
[Footnote 172: Jones, _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, p. 70.]
[Footnote 173: John Hechenwelder, _History, Manners, and Customs of
the Indian Nations_, pp. 155-58.]
[Footnote 174: Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, Vol. II, p. 289.]
[Footnote 175: Ratzel, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 253.]
[Footnote 176: Irving, "Astoria," _Works_, Vol. VIII, p. 134.]
[Footnote 177: Ratzel, _loc. cit._, Vol. II, p. 130.]
[Footnote 178: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, Vol. I,
p. 277.]
[Footnote 179: Featherman, _Social History of Mankind:
Aoneo-Maranonians_, p. 364.]
[Footnote 180: W.J. Hoffman, "The Menomini Indians," _Fourteenth
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, p. 288.]
[Footnote 181: A.F. Bandelier, "Report of an Archaeological Tour in
Mexico," _Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America_, Vol. II,
p. 138.]
[Footnote 182: Dorsey, "Siouxan Sociology," _Fifteenth Report of the
Bureau of American Ethnology_, p. 225.]
[Footnote 183: Prov. 31:10-24.]
[Footnote 184: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 111.]
[Footnote 185: Lewis and Clarke, _Travels to the Source of the
Missouri_, ed. 1814, Vol. I, p. 60.]
[Footnote 186: G. Thompson, _Travels and Adventures in Southern
Africa_, Appendix, p. 286.]
[Footnote 187: J.L. Burckhardt, _Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys_,
Vol. I, p. 98.]
[Footnote 188: Post, _Bausteine einer allgemeinen Rechtswissenschaft_,
Vol. I, p. 287.]
[Footnote 189: Macrae, "Account of the Kookies and Lunctas," _Asiatic
Researches_, Vol. VII, p. 193.]
[Footnote 190: S.W. Baker, _The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia_, p.
125.]
[Footnote 191: _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. V, p.
195.]
[Footnote 192: Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 470.]
[Footnote 193: F. Boyle, _Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo_, p.
170]
[Footnote 194: T.S. Raffles, _History of Java_, Vol. I, p. 309.]
[Footnote 195: R. Drury, _Madagascar_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 196: No notice is here taken of the moral content of
forms of worship, since religious practices are to be regarded as
reflections of social practices. Morality springs from human activity,
and religious belief consists in positing human traits in spirits;
but it is impossible to find in religious practice an element which
did not before exist in human practice. Religion and art have a
philosophical and an ideal side, and their representations may be
regarded as more perfect and valid than the human models on which they
are based, but the ground-patterns of both religion and art are those
of human experience.]
[Footnote 197: J. Shooter, _The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country_,
p. 102.]
[Footnote 198: Major J. Butler, _Travels and Adventures in Assam_, p.
88.]
[Footnote 199: Jones, _History of the Ojibway Indians_, p. 57.]
[Footnote 200: Von Seidlitz, "Ethnographische Rundschau,"
_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, 1890, p. 136.]
[Footnote 201: Doughty, _Travels in Arabia Deserta_, p. 360.]
[Footnote 202: Cf. R. Steinmetz, "Endokannibalismus," _Mittheilungen
der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien_, Vol. XXVI.]
[Footnote 203: _Odyssey_ (translated by Butcher and Lang), i, 260.]
[Footnote 204: F. Mason, "On the Dwellings Works of Art, Laws, etc.,
of the Karens," _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1868, p.
149.]
[Footnote 205: Bonwick, _Daily Life of the Tasmanians_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 206: Ibid., p. 74.]
[Footnote 207: _Highlands of Central India_, p. 149.]
[Footnote 208: T. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 201.]
[Footnote 209: Owen, _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_, New
Series, Vol. II, p. 35.]
[Footnote 210: Lewis and Clarke, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 421.]
[Footnote 211: The theories of Lubbock, Spencer, Tylor, Kohler, Huth,
and Morgan are criticized by Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_,
pp. 311-19.]
[Footnote 212: Cf. Ploss, _Das Weib_, 3. Aufl., Vol. I, pp. 313ff.]
[Footnote 213: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 213ff.]
[Footnote 214: Danks, "Marriage Customs of the New Britain Group,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XVIII, p. 281.]
[Footnote 215: Ploss, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 150.]
[Footnote 216: The evidence in this paper will bear chiefly on
Australia, both because the natives are in a very primitive condition,
and because the customs of the aborigines have been very fully
reported by a large number of competent observers.]
[Footnote 217: Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 558.]
[Footnote 218: _The Australian Race_, Vol. I, p. 110.]
[Footnote 219: _Daily Life of the Tasmanians_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 220: Howitt, "The Dieri and Other Kindred Tribes of Central
Australia," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XX,
p. 87; Roth, _Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central
Queensland Aborigines_, p. 174; Spencer and Gillen, _loc. cit._, p.
93.]
[Footnote 221: Cf. pp. 136ff. of this volume.]
[Footnote 222: Howitt, "The Dieri and Other Kindred Tribes of Central
Australia," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XX, p.
58.]
[Footnote 223: Spencer and Gillen, _loc. cit._, pp. 62, 63.]
[Footnote 224: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 200.]
[Footnote 225: Ibid., p. 354.]
[Footnote 226: Fison and Howitt, _loc. cit._, p. 288, quoting Rev.
John Bulmer on the Wa-imbio tribe.]
[Footnote 227: Spencer and Gillen, _loc. cit._, p. 554.]
[Footnote 228: _Loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 108. At the same time, Curr
thinks that capture was formerly more frequent.]
[Footnote 229: Misapprehension as to the prevalence of marriage by
capture is due in the main to two causes: (1) cases of elopement
have been classed as cases of capture; (2) the so-called survivals
of marriage by capture in historical times, of which so much has
been made, are merely systematized expressions of the coyness of the
female, differing in no essential point from the coyness of the female
among birds at the pairing season.]
[Footnote 230: Curr, _loc. cit._, Vol. I, p. 107.]
[Footnote 231: _Loc. cit._, p. 181.]
[Footnote 232: Haddon, "Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres
Straits," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XIX, p.
414.]
[Footnote 233: Ibid., p. 356.]
[Footnote 234: _Loc. cit._, p. 285.]
[Footnote 235: Cf. "The Gaming Instinct," _American Journal of
Sociology,_ Vol. VI, pp. 736ff., _et passim_.]
[Footnote 236: Cf. pp. 208ff. of this volume.]
[Footnote 237: William James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p.
435.]
[Footnote 238: "The Evolution of Modesty," _Psychological Review_,
Vol. VI, pp. 134ff.]
[Footnote 239: James, _loc. cit._, p. 436.]
[Footnote 240: Darwin's explanation of shyness, modesty, shame, and
blushing as due originally to "self-attention directed to personal
appearance, in relation to the opinion of others," appears to me to
be a very good statement of some of the aspects of the process, but
hardly an adequate explanation of the process as a whole. (Darwin,
_Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals_, p. 326.)]
[Footnote 241: James R. Angell and Helen B. Thompson, "A Study of
the Relations between Certain Organic Processes and Consciousness,"
_University of Chicago Contributions to Philosophy_, Vol. II, No. 2,
pp. 32-69.]
[Footnote 242: The paralysis of extreme fear seems to be a case
of failure to accommodate when the equilibrium of attention is too
violently disturbed. (See Mosso, _La peur_, p. 122.)]
[Footnote 243: Cf. pp. 108ff. of this volume.]
[Footnote 244: "Sex and Primitive Morality," pp. 149ff.]
[Footnote 245: Without making any attempt to classify the emotions, we
may notice that they arise out of conditions connected with both the
nutritive and reproductive activities of life; and it is possible to
say that such emotions as anger, fear, and guilt show a more plain
genetic connection with the conflict aspect of the food-process, while
modesty is connected rather with sexual life and the attendant bodily
habits.]
[Footnote 246: Groos, _The Play of Animals_, p. 285. The utility of
these antics is well explained by Professor Ziegler in a letter to
Professor Groos: "Among all animals a highly excited condition of the
nervous system is necessary for the act of pairing, and consequently
we find an exciting playful prelude is very generally indulged in"
(Groos, _loc. cit._, p. 242); and Professor Groos thinks that the
sexual hesitancy of the female is of advantage to the species, as
preventing "too early and too frequent yielding to the sexual impulse"
(_loc. cit._, p. 283).]
[Footnote 247: Old women among the natural races often lose their
modesty because it is no longer of any use. Bonwick says that the
Tasmanian women, though naked, were very modest, but that the old
women were not so particular on this point. (Bonwick, _The Daily Life
of the Tasmanians_, p. 58.)]
[Footnote 248: _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 556.]
[Footnote 249: A.C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribes
of Torres Straits," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol.
XIX, p. 397; cf. also "The Psychology of Exogamy," pp. 175ff. of this
volume.]
[Footnote 250: _Loc. cit._, p. 336.]
[Footnote 251: Bonwick, _loc. cit._, p. 24.]
[Footnote 252: Karl von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern
Zentral-Brasiliens_, p. 192.]
[Footnote 253: Spencer and Gillen, _loc. cit._, p. 572.]
[Footnote 254: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 189.]
[Footnote 255: Pp. 167ff.]
[Footnote 256: See John Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, Vol.
II, pp. 342ff.]
[Footnote 257: See, however, Topinard, _Éléments d'anthropologie
générale_, pp. 557ff.]
[Footnote 258: Helen B. Thompson, _The Mental Traits of Sex_, p. 182.]
[Footnote 259: _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West
Africa_, pp. 218ff.]
[Footnote 260: Whewell, _History of the Inductive Sciences_, Vol. I,
p. 205.]
[Footnote 261: _Iliad_, iii, 233; translation by Lang, Leaf, and
Myers.]
[Footnote 262: Thomson, _New Zealand_, Vol. I, p. 164.]
[Footnote 263: Shooter, _The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country_, p.
102.]
[Footnote 264: _Fresh Discoveries at Nineveh and Researches at
Babylon: Supplement._]
[Footnote 265: Maine, _Popular Government_, p. 132.]
[Footnote 266: Ibid., p. 134.]
[Footnote 267: Smith, _Village Life in China_, p. 99.]
[Footnote 268: Ibid., p. 95.]
[Footnote 269: On the increase of insanity and feeble-mindedness see
R.R. Rentoul, "Proposed Sterilization of Certain Mental Degenerates,"
_American Journal of Sociology_, Vol. XII, pp. 319ff.]
[Footnote 270: It is true that in many parts of the world, among the
lower races, woman was treated by the men with a chivalrous respect,
due to the prevalence of the maternal system and ideas of sympathetic
magic; but she nevertheless did not participate in their activities
and interests.]
[Footnote 271: A.E. Crawley, "Sexual Taboo," _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XXIV, p. 233.]
[Footnote 272: _Loc. cit._, p. 227.]
[Footnote 273: Ibid., pp. 123-25.]
[Footnote 274: Danks, "Marriage Customs of the New Britain Group,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XVII, p. 284.]
[Footnote 275: Burrows, "On the Native Races of the Upper Welle
District of the Belgian Congo," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, N.S. Vol. I, p. 41.]
[Footnote 276: Williams, _The Middle Kingdom_, Vol. I, p. 786.]
[Footnote 277: Cf. pp. 223ff. of this volume.]
[Footnote 278: _The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans_,
(Edited) by Hamilton Holt, pp. 100ff.
This peasant woman represents the true female type, and the American
women in the scene represent the adventitious type of woman. The frail
and clinging type is an adjustment to the tastes of man, produced
partly by custom and partly by breeding. But in so far as the
selection of frail women by men of the upper classes has contributed
to the production of a frail or so-called "feminine" type in these
classes, this applies to the males as well as the females of these
classes. And there is, in fact, a more or less marked tendency to
"feminism" apparent among the men and women of the "better classes."
If we want to breed for mind, we can do so, but we must breed on
better principles than beauty and docility.]
[Footnote 279: Ploss, _Das Weib_, 2 Auf., Vol. I, p. 46.]
INDEX
A
Abnormalities, 27.
Abstraction, in lower races, 267.
Adams, 115.
Adolescence, 115.
Adoption, 82, 88.
Adventuress, 239.
Aesthetic life and sex-susceptibility, 120.
Agriculture: and woman, 136;
as man's work, 145.
Altruism, 120.
Anabolism of female, 29, 35, 42, 48.
Anaesthetics, 35.
Angell, 105, 202.
Animal environment of man, 136;
more katabolic, 3.
Animals: domestication of, 137;
memory and judgment of, 253.
Anomalies, 27.
Aphrodisiacs, 176.
Appendicitis, 253.
Arbousset and Daumas, 126.
Aristotle, 289.
Asexual reproduction, 10.
Associational and sympathetic relations, 105.
Athleticism in women, 22.
Attention, 279;
break in, 108, 202, 207.
Atrophied organs, 223.
B
Bachhofen, 70.
Baker, 155.
Bancroft, 76, 88, 141.
Bandelier, 142.
Bartels, 36.
Battel, 62.
Becquerel, 31.
Behavior: regulation of, 211;
standards of, 212, 214, 219.
Billroth, 38.
Birthrate, 13, 42;
of Jews, 13;
of metis, 13.
Blood, 30, 48.
Blood-brotherhood, 90.
Blood-vengeance, 90.
Blushing, 211.
Boas, 84.
Boccaccio, 194.
Bonwick, 125, 168, 180, 210, 214.
Bosman, 82.
Bowdich, 116.
Boyle, 156.
Boys, training of, 152.
Brain, 18, 49;
methods of studying, 256;
of apes, 253;
of Chinese, 254;
of Egyptians, 254;
of negro, 254;
relation of, to culture, 260;
relation of, to social condition, 281;
weight, 253.
Bride-price, 78, 83.
Brother-sister marriage, 89.
Bruce, 27,
Burckhardt, 153.
Burgoin, 34.
Burrows, 300.
Butler, 159.
C
Cadet, 31.
Calkins, 11.
Campbell, 27, 29, 35, 40.
Cannibalism, 163.
Carle, 38.
Caste, 93.
Celibacy, 29.
Chastity, attitude toward, 86, 170.
Chemiotaxis, 103.
Child, helplessness of, 226;
parallelism between, and race, 281.
Child-bearing, 313.
Child-birth, 38.
Child-marriage, 86, 169, 177.
Children, punishment of, 152.
Chivalry, 73.
Choice and rejection, 104.
Circumcision, 90.
Civilization: nature of, 301;
ours not of highest order, 314.
Clan, 195.
Class distinctions, origin of, 156.
Closson, 92.
Clothing: as ornament, 215;
man's interest in, 139;
origin of, 201;
psychology of, 201-220.
Clubfoot, 28.
Clubs, among primitive men, 294.
Coeducation, 311.
Collins, 44.
Comradeship, origin of, 120.
Conflict interest, 98, 101, 105, 132, 137, 204, 243.
Conservatism: among orientals, 284;
of woman, morphological and physiological, 18, 19, 51.
Control: based on male activity, 168;
by old men, 184;
in relation to sex, 55;
primitive social, 55-94.
Courage, 109, 132, 151.
Courtship, 111, 208, 210, 213, 229, 235, 238.
Cousins, marriage of, 13.
Coyness of female, 208, 219.
Crawley, 295.
Criminal, 243.
Criminality, 28.
Crossing, 12, 57.
Cruelty to women, 76.
Culture, effect of higher on lower, 213.
Cunning: analogue of constructive thought, 313;
of woman, 292.
Cunningham, 28.
Curr, 180, 188, 190.
D
Dances, erotic, 177.
Danks, 177, 299.
Dargun, 70, 77, 82.
Darwin, 15, 18, 202, 204.
Deafmutism, 28.
Defectives, 25.
Delaunay, 14, 19, 34, 35.
Depaul, 45.
Despotism, 93.
Development, problem of, 244.
Diodorus, 153.
Disreputable occupations, 242.
Disvulnerability, 36.
Divorce, 63.
Domestication of animals, 137.
Domestication of plants by women, 136.
Dorsey, 142.
Doughty, 161.
Dress, as play interest, 237.
Drudgery of primitive woman, 126, 131.
Drury, 157.
Düsing, 4, 5.
E
Economic dependence of man on woman, 137.
Education for women, 245.
Ellis, A.B., 90, 118, 269.
Ellis, H., 4, 28, 38, 44, 201.
Elopement, 184.
Emotions, 104;
as organic preparations for activity, 99, 131;
complexity of, in man, 205, 209;
organic basis of, 202;
origin and classification of, 208.
Endogamy, 57, 192.
Environment and mind, 252.
Equality of women in unadvanced societies, 231.
Equilibrium of bodily processes, 202.
Eroticism, 176.
Eugenism, 290.
Exchange of women, 179, 189, 194, 195.
Exploitation of man by woman, 238.
Exogamy, 13, 57, 78, 89, 175-97.
F
Familiarity and sex interest, 194.
Farr, 41.
Fatness, 29.
Fear, paralysis of, 204.
Featherman, 141.
Female, anabolic, 3.
Fenwick, 36, 37.
Ferrero, 47.
Fiske, 107, 226.
Fison and Howitt, 124, 186, 187, 191.
Forsyth, 168.
G
Galton, 290.
Gambetta, brain of, 256.
Game: effect of scarcity of, 143;
preparation of, for food, 138.
Geddes and Thomson, 3, 8.
Genius, 24, 51.
Giordano, 38.
Giraud-Teulon, 82.
Grange, 155.
Grey, 101.
Groos, 112, 208, 209.
Group-marriage, 183.
Growth, law of, in boys and girls, 6.
H
Habit, break in, 207, 218.
Haddon, 190, 213, 214.
Hammurabi, Code of, 276.
Hanna, 21.
Haushofer, 44.
Hayem, 31, 32.
Head-form, 19.
Head-hunting, 155.
Heckenwelder, 129, 131.
Hegar, 29.
Herodotus, 64.
Hernia, 253.
Hobbes, 128.
Hoffman, 142.
Homer, 164, 274.
House, owned by woman, 135.
Hovelaque, 77.
Howitt, 61, 181.
Hunting-pattern of interest, 280.
Huschke, 19.
I
Idiocy, 24, 51, 254;
increase of, 289.
Ill-health in woman, 240.
Imbeciles, 25.
Incident, as social force, 287.
Industry: and sex, 123-46;
organization of, by man, 230.
Infant mortality, 43.
Infibulation, 177.
Ingenuity in lower races, 277.
Inhibition: and art, 283;
in lower races, 263.
Initiation, 90, 153.
Insanity, 24, 51, 254;
increase of, 289.
Insomnia, 35.
Instincts, persistence of, 99.
Intelligence and culture, 260.
Interest, hunting-pattern of, 280.
Interests of savage and civilized, 279.
Invention: and labor, 230;
based on analogy, 278;
psychology of, 277.
Inventiveness of man, 146.
Irving, 140.
J
Jacobs, 13.
James, 98, 201.
Jealousy, 217.
Jennings, 104.
Jews, 12.
Jones, 32, 33, 48, 126, 161.
Judgment, 104.
K
Kane, 76.
Katabolism of male, 3, 33, 35, 40.
Key, 6.
Kinship, bond of clans, 195.
Klebs, 8.
Koch, 26.
Korniloff, 31.
Krafft-Ebing, 29, 115.
L
Labor: and invention, 146;
division of, between sexes, 123, 140, 228;
of primitive woman, 124, 129, 134;
significance of, 123;
woman's exemption from, 127.
Lacanu, 31.
Lawlessness, admiration of, 153;
Lawrie, 36, 37.
Layard, 283.
Laziness of primitive man, 128.
Legal authority, 161.
Legal standards, 162.
Legouest, 36, 38.
Leichtenstern, 27, 32, 33.
Lewis and Clarke, 151, 171.
Liberty of woman in America, 311.
Life, primarily female, 224.
Lippert, 62, 75, 91.
Locke, 239.
Loeb, 104.
Lombroso, 28, 38, 39, 47.
Longevity, 46.
Love of offspring, 120.
Lubbock, 62, 187.
Lungs, 34.
M
McCosh, 155.
Macfarlane, 35.
McGee, 60, 79.
McLennan, 82.
Macrae, 154.
Maine, 66, 284, 285, 288.
Male: activity, social value of, 151;
control in maternal organization, 75;
katabolism of 3, 33, 35, 40;
relation to nutrition, 4.
Malgaigne, 36, 37.
Man as a domesticated animal, 135
Manley, 27.
Manual dexterity, 23;
of woman, 310.
Manufacture, woman's relation to, 293.
Margaret of Navarre, 194.
Marriage: by capture, 80, 187, 190;
by purchase, 80;
customs of, 78, 154;
definition of, 227;
modern problem of, 245;
of cousins among Jews, 13.
Martini, 38.
Mason, 166.
Maternal instinct, 106, 232.
Maternal system, 57-94, 135, 141, 168, 228.
Mather, 126.
Maupas, 10, 11.
Mayr, 26, 47.
Mela, 38.
Memory in woman, 309.
Metis, 13.
Migration, social significance of, 91.
Militancy, chronic, 93.
Military: glory, 158;
organization, 73.
Milne-Edwards, 34.
Mind: formation of, 312;
ground-pattern of, 243;
nature of, 251;
of lower races, 251-312;
of woman, 291-313;
produces society, 277.
Mitchell, 25.
Modesty, psychology of, 201-20, 302.
Moffat, 126.
Monogamy, 176;
acquired, 192;
basis of, 192;
from biological standpoint, 193,
from social standpoint, 193.
Morality: contractual in man, imitational in woman, 172;
contractual in men, personal in women, 172, 219, 233;
definition of, 149;
dependence on food relations, 150;
extribal extension of, 163;
generalization of, 167;
in relation to sex, 149-72;
male and female codes of, 233;
motor type of, 149, 152;
of woman, 233;
parallelism of development in, 275;
regulative function of, 149;
relation to religion, 158;
standards of, developed by men, 171;
tribal character of, 120, 162, 163.
Morgan, 58, 88, 143.
Morphological: conservatism in woman, 18, 19, 51;
instability in men, 24.
Morselli, 39.
Mortality, 26, 40, 43, 45.
Mosaic code, 276.
Mosso, 204.
Mother-right, priority of, 67.
Motion: appreciation of, 156;
capacity for, 21, 23;
in man, 51, 55, 67, 87, 92, 123, 132, 154, 219, 228, 291;
in woman, 293.
Murder, prohibition of, 165.
Muscular co-ordination, 23.
Musters, 80.
N
Nasse, 31.
Newsholme, 41.
Number-sense in lower races, 270.
Nutrition and sex, 5, 9, 149.
O
Occupational interest for women, 245.
Occupations: hunting-pattern of, 280;
stationary and motor, 123.
Odyssey, 163.
Oettingen, 39, 43.
Organization: man's capacity for, 145;
of industry by man, 145, 230.
Ornament: as basis of clothing, 215;
transference of, to woman, 219, 235.
Ornstein, 46, 47.
Owen, 125, 170.
P
Parallelism: of development, 272;
in morality, 275;
in poetry, 274.
Parasitic condition of women of upper classes, 232.
Parental instinct, 107.
Paternal authority, 62, 67, 70, 76, 87, 90.
Pearson, 17.
Peasant woman, 304.
Phallic worship, 177.
Plant: anabolic, 3;
domestication of, 136.
Pleasure and pain, 279.
Ploss, 4, 43, 44, 56, 177, 309.
Poetry, parallelism of development in, 274.
Poison, restrictions in use of, 165.
Political organization, 70.
Polyandry, 7.
Polygamy, 81, 142, 180, 181, 191.
Pope, 238.
Post, 153.
Pottery, 138.
Powell, 70.
Powers, 216.
Prejudice, 103.
Pre-matriarchal stage, 68.
Primitive life, its character, 128.
Prohibitions, 159.
Promiscuity, 67, 176.
Property, 63, 141;
controlled by man, 297.
Proverb, as form of abstraction, 267.
Puberty in girls, 177.
Public opinion, 150.
Punishment, 159-62.
Q
Quetelet, 43.
R
Race-prejudice, 108, 120, 258.
Raffles, 156.
Ranke, 20.
Ratzel, 62, 136, 138, 141.
Recapitulation, theory of, 282.
Regeneration, 36.
Religion: and art, 120;
and sex, 115;
as reflection of social practices, 158.
Religious dedication, 90.
Rentoul, 289.
Reproduction, as discontinuous growth, 7.
Resistance to disease, 40.
Robin, 31.
Rodier, 31.
Rolph, 8.
Roth, 190.
S
Sachs, 9.
Scherer, 31.
Schmidt, 31.
Schoolcraft, 75, 80, 126.
Science, oriental attitude toward, 283.
Seaver, 21.
Secret societies, 90.
Seidlitz, 161.
Sense-perception of lower races, 263.
Sensitiveness to opinion, 108, 111, 113, 119, 151, 202, 206.
Sensitivity, 251.
Sex: determination of, 9;
social significance of, 51, 97-120;
susceptibility, 119.
Sexes, organic differences in, 3-51.
Sexual: activity, 29;
characters, 17;
life as play-interest, 177;
life, primitive interest in, 176;
perversion, 29;
selection, 15.
Sewing, as man's work, 139.
Shame, 201, 202.
Shooter, 159.
Showing-off, 108, 151, 236.
Simcox, 65, 88.
Size, relation of, to sex, 14.
Slave-wife, 81.
Slavery, 93.
Smith, A.R., 287.
Smith, W.R., 63, 85.
Sophocles, 65.
Space problem in society, 91.
Spencer, 187.
Spencer and Gillen, 179, 182, 187, 213, 216.
Sporting-woman, 239.
Starcke, 75.
Steatopyga, 30.
Steinen, 215.
Steinmetz, 81, 84, 163.
Stimulation, lack of in woman's life, 240, 245.
Stimulus, variable reaction to, 209.
Strategy, 164.
Strength, 21, 22, 67.
Suggestibility, cultural significance of, 206.
Suggestion, 312.
Suicide, 39.
Supplementary wife, 81.
Suttee, 169.
Sympathy, 105, 120;
tribal character of, 120.
T
Taboo, authority of, 196.
Tattooing, 90.
Technological skill of man, 145, 230.
Territory, 92, 150.
Theft, encouragement of, 153.
Thompson, G., 152.
Thompson, H.B., 23, 105, 202, 257.
Thomson, 275.
Topinard, 18, 19, 20, 50, 255.
Totemism, 90.
Tribal marks, 90.
Trophies, 155, 206.
Tropisms, 103.
Turgenieff, brain of, 256.
Turkey-cock politics, 116.
Turner, 125.
Turquan, 47.
Tylor, A., 16.
Tylor, E.B., 61, 63.
U
Unfamiliarity, and emotional tension, 196.
Urine, 34.
Uterine displacement, 253.
V
Vanity, 111, 206.
Variability, 15, 50, 225, 227.
Variation, 13.
Vassar College Athletic Association, 22.
Vegetable environment of woman, 136.
Vervorn, 104.
Viscera, 28.
Vitality: decreased in girls at puberty, 45;
decreased in woman by reproductive processes, 48.
Vogt, 307.
W
Wagner, 18.
Waitz-Gerland, 74, 77, 89, 90.
Wallace, 16.
Wappaeus, 43.
War, 100;
as sport, 100;
attitude of women toward, 101, 133, 206;
social significance of war, 93.
Warner, 25.
Wealth, 127.
Weaving, 139.
Weisbach, 19.
Weismann, 11.
Welcker, 31.
Westermarck, 4, 12, 66, 176, 177, 216, 227.
Whewell, 272.
Whitelegge, 41.
Widows, sacrifice of, 169.
Wilder, 27.
Wilkes, 90.
Williams, S.W., 301.
Williams, T., 169.
Winckel, 45.
Woman: adventitious character of, 223-47, 302;
as creator of economic values, 181, 228;
as property, 168, 181, 190, 297;
as social nucleus, 56;
beauty of, 127;
capacity for intellectual work, 313;
character of, 237;
contempt for, 294;
endurance of, 313;
fear of, 294;
high position of, 73;
indirection of, 232;
labor of, 124, 129, 134;
liberty of, in America, 311;
not in white man's world, 306-12;
occupations of, taken over by men, 139, 144, 230;
present unrest of, 240;
relation to occupations, 303;
stationary condition of, 51, 55, 123, 133, 228, 293;
subjection of, 93, 224, 230, 235;
withdrawal of, from labor, 127.
Work as play-interest, 245.
Wright, 59.
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