The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial artsVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial arts
Veblen, Thorstein
Industrial arts -- History; Industries -- History; Technology -- History; Workmanship -- History
But if the magical-technological fitness and efficacy of women has
led to the growth of institutions vesting the disposal of the produce
in the women, in a more or less discretionary way, the like effect
has been even more pronounced, comprehensive and lasting as regards
the immaterial developments of the case. With great uniformity the
evidence from the earlier peaceable agricultural civilisations runs
to the effect that the primitive ritual of husbandry, chiefly of a
magical character, is in the hands of the women and is made up of
observances presumed to be particularly consonant with the phenomena
of motherhood.[58] And presently, when the more elaborate phases of
these magical rites of husbandry come, by further superinduction of
anthropomorphism, to grow into religious observances and mythological
tenets, the greater _daimones_ and divinities that emerge in the
shuffle are women, and again it is the motherhood of women that is in
evidence. The deities, great and small, are prevailingly females; and
the great ones among them seem invariably to have set out with being
mothers.
In the creation of female and maternal divinities the parental
instinct has doubtless greatly re-enforced the drift of the instinct
of workmanship in the same direction. The female deities have two main
attributes or characteristics because of which they came to hold their
high place; they are goddesses of fertility in one way or another,
and they are mothers of the people. It is perhaps unnecessary to hold
these two concomitant attributions apart, as many if not most of the
great deities claim precedence on both grounds. But the lower orders of
female divinities in the matriarchal scheme of things divine will much
more commonly specialise in fertility of crops than in maternity of the
people. The number of divinities that have mainly or solely to do with
fertility is greater than that of those which figure as mothers of the
people, either locally or generally. And perhaps in the majority of
cases there is some suggestive evidence that the great female deities
have primarily been goddesses of fertility having to do with the growth
of crops--and, usually in the second place, of animals--rather than
primarily mothers of the tribe;[59] which would suggest that their
genesis and character is due to the canons of the sense of workmanship
more than to the parental bent, although the latter seems to have had
its part in shaping many of them if not all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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