Physiologists tell us that in all our long ages of animal evolution
we have not yet completed the physical changes incident to assuming
an erect posture. Psychologists may as plainly see that in the short
centuries of social evolution we have naturally failed to complete
the changes incident to our growth from tribal to national and
international relationships.
Since we remained savages for some 90 per cent of the period of human
life on earth, it is to be expected that the long-practiced tribal
morals should have modified our characters more deeply than those
evolved in the recent, varied, and fluctuating relationship of larger
range. Yet we see, during the short period of progressive civilization,
such swift and amazing development in some lines, such achievement in
knowledge, in wealth, in ability, in breadth of thought, and nobility
of feeling that our coincident stupidity and senseless misbehavior
call for explanation.
The main reason for this peculiar delay and irregularity in social
evolution is that it has been limited to half the race, the other half
being restricted to domestic industry and to the still lower level of
misused sex. Our specialized knowledge, power, and skill are developed
through the organic relationships of the social group; as are also
those characteristics of mutual loyalty and love, of truth, honor, and
courage which are as natural to a human society as the distinctive
virtues of ants or beavers to their groups.
Humanity’s major error, the exploitation of the female by the male,
has not only kept her at the lowest step in social progress--solitary
hand-labor in and for the family--but has resulted in excessive
sex-development through prolonged misuse. This has made her
ultra-feminine, to a degree often injurious to motherhood; and him
ultra-masculine, his social advance confused, impeded, and repeatedly
destroyed by his excessive emotions. In social morals he has of course
outdistanced her, as he alone has entered into the relationships
which develop them; but he has carefully exempted his essentially male
activities from this elevating influence, maintaining that “all’s fair
in love and war.” Of her, domestic morality demanded but one virtue,
sex-loyalty; her mate or master taking it upon himself to be both judge
and executioner in case of failure. She might be a liar and a coward,
lazy, selfish, extravagant, or cruel, but if chaste these traits were
overlooked. If unchaste, no array of other virtues was enough to save
her. In her household labors she developed minor virtues natural to
the position; a tireless industry, an instinct for cleanliness and
order, with great capacity for self-denial and petty economy. Speaking
broadly, of a race where the young, though necessarily inheriting
from both parents, yet are divided almost from birth in training and
experience, it may be said that the social virtues have belonged to
men, the domestic virtues to women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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