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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account