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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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