Once primitive man had made the discovery that it lay in his own
hands—speaking literally—to improve his lot on earth by working, it
cannot have been a matter of indifference to him whether another
man worked with him or against him. The other acquired the value
of a fellow-worker, and it was advantageous to live with him. Even
earlier, in his ape-like prehistory, man had adopted the habit of
forming families: his first helpers were probably the members of his
family. One may suppose that the founding of families was in some way
connected with the period when the need for genital satisfaction,
no longer appearing like an occasional guest who turns up suddenly
and then vanishes without letting one hear anything of him for long
intervals, had settled down with each man like a permanent lodger. When
this happened, the male acquired a motive for keeping the female, or
rather, his sexual objects, near him; while the female, who wanted
not to be separated from her helpless young, in their interests, too,
had to stay by the stronger male.[13] In this primitive family one
essential feature of culture is lacking; the will of the father, the
head of it, was unfettered. I have endeavoured in _Totem und Tabu_ to
show how the way led from this family-life to the succeeding phase of
communal existence in the form of a band of brothers. By overpowering
the father, the sons had discovered that several men united can be
stronger than a single man. The totemic stage of culture is founded
upon the restrictions that the band were obliged to impose on one
another in order to maintain the new system. These taboos were the
first ‘Right’ or law. The life of human beings in common therefore
had a twofold foundation, _i.e._ the compulsion to work, created by
external necessity, and the power of love, causing the male to wish to
keep his sexual object, the female, near him, and the female to keep
near her that part of herself which has become detached from her, her
child. Eros and Ananke were the parents of human culture, too. The
first result of culture was that a larger number of human beings could
then live together in common. And since the two great powers were here
co-operating together, one might have expected that further cultural
evolution would have proceeded smoothly towards ever greater mastery
over the external world, as well as towards greater extension in the
numbers of men sharing the life in common. Nor is it easy to understand
how this culture can be felt as anything but satisfying by those who
partake of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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