Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of SexThomas, William Isaac
Science
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
Thomas, William Isaac
Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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