At the same time, the dog in his relation to man shows as keen a
sensitiveness to man's opinion and treatment as does man himself. The
attention which the master pays to one dog will almost break the heart
of a dog not receiving it. A neglected dog plainly suffers as much
in his way as the soldier who is sent to Coventry by his messmates;
and if neglected and jealous dogs do not commit suicide, as they
are reported to do, they are evidently in a state of mind to do so.
This means that the dog has highly developed susceptibility to the
appreciation of others, and that the species which he represents has
had no history except a sexual history capable of developing this
mental attitude. In connection with courtship he developed a fund of
organic susceptibility, and this condition is involved in his more
general relation to man; the machinery set up in sexual relations is
played on by stimuli in general. A condition favorable to stimuli of
a particular kind is favorable to stimuli in general; and it seems
likely that this not very prominent fact of a state of excitation in a
sexual connection is an important factor in the formation of the mind
and of society.

There are also certain conditions in the development of the individual
and of society where the sexual type of reaction is so near the
surface that it shows through in connection with political, moral, and
other essentially non-sexual activities. Passing over the fact that
the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of "susceptibility"
and personal vanity, we may take as an example of the intrusion or
persistence of the sexual element in conditions of a non-sexual kind
the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement.[164]
The appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person
has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to
overcome the hesitancy of the female. In each case the will has to be
set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the
appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic,
and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral adjustment, it
consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived
originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual
machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying
over into the general process of some sexual manifestations. The
emotional forms used and the emotional states aroused are not entirely
stripped of their sexual content.

On the race side, also, there is a stage in development where the
sexual pattern is transferred almost unmodified to public affairs. The
following extracts from a lengthy description given by Mr. Bowdich
of his reception by the king of Ashanti, in the year 1817, will
illustrate sufficiently the employment of the turkey-cock pattern of
activity in political relations:

    The sun was reflected with a glare scarcely more supportable
    than the heat from massive gold ornaments which glistened in
    every direction. More than a hundred bands burst at once on
    our arrival, with the peculiar airs of their several chiefs;
    the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of
    innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for
    a while to the soft breathings of their long flutes.... At
    least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies, which could
    shelter thirty persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers
    with brilliant effect, being made of scarlet, yellow, and
    the most showy cloths and silks, and crowned on the top with
    crescents, pelicans, elephants, barrels, and arms and swords
    of gold.... The caboceers, as did their superior captains, and
    attendants, wore Ashanti cloths of extravagant price, from the
    costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them
    in all the varieties of color as well as pattern: they were
    of incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder
    exactly like the Roman toga; a small silk fillet generally
    encircled their temples, and many gold necklaces, intricately
    wrought, suspended Moorish charms, dearly purchased, and
    enclosed in small square cases of gold, silver, and curious
    embroidery. Some wore necklaces reaching to the waist,
    entirely of aggry beads; a band of gold and beads encircled
    the knee, from which several strings of the same depended;
    small circlets of gold, like guineas, rings, and casts of
    animals were strung round their ankles; their sandals were
    of green, red and delicate white leather; manillas, and rude
    lumps of rock gold hung from their left wrists, which were so
    heavily laden as to be supported on the head of one of their
    handsomest boys.... [The king] wore a fillet of aggry beads
    round his temples, a necklace of gold cockspur shells strung
    by their larger ends, and over his right shoulder a red silk
    cord, suspending three sapphires cased in gold; his bracelets
    were of the richest mixtures of beads and gold, and his
    fingers covered with rings; his cloth was of a dark green
    silk, a pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white on
    his forehead; also a pattern resembling an epaulette on each
    shoulder, and an ornament like a full blown rose, one leaf
    rising above another until it covered his whole breast.... The
    belts of the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and
    covered with small jaw-bones of the same metal; the elephants'
    tails, waving like a small cloud before him, were spangled
    with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished among
    them. His eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only
    one massive piece of gold about his neck; the royal stool,
    entirely cased in gold, was displayed under a splendid
    umbrella, with drums, sankos, horns, and various musical
    instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of cartridge
    paper; large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the
    swords of state;... hatchets of the same were intermixed with
    them; the breasts of the Ochras and various attendants were
    adorned with large stars, stools, crescents, and gossamer
    wings of solid gold.[165]

It is not surprising that the characteristically sexual method of
display and emotional appeal should be associated with the earlier
efforts at adjustment, both in the individual and in the state. This
method is based on the instincts, and just as inhibition and brain
legislation follow the instincts in point of development, a rational
mode of control, individual and public, is developed later than the
emotional form, or, at any rate, is not at first independent of it.

The origin of mental impressionability seems to lie then, not in one,
but in the two general regions of activity--that connected with the
struggle for food and that connected with reproduction. The strain
on the attention in the food and conflict side of life involves
the development of mental impressionability, particularly of an
impressionability on the side of cognition. But in addition we have
the impressionability growing out of sexual life which has been in
question above, and which is more closely related to appreciation than
to cognition. And of these two aspects of impressionability--the one
growing out of conflict and the one growing out of reproduction--the
latter has more social possibilities than the former, because it
implies a sympathetic rather than an antagonistic organic attitude. It
is certainly in virtue of susceptibility to the opinion of others that
society works--through public opinion, fashion, tradition, reproof,
encouragement, precept, and doctrine--to bring the individual
under control and make him a member of society; and it is doubtful
whether this could have been accomplished if a peculiar attitude
of responsiveness to opinion had not arisen in sexual relations,
reinforcing the more general and cognitive impressionability.
Without this capacity to be influenced the individual would be in the
condition of the hardened criminal, and society would be impossible.

This sex-susceptibility, which was originally developed as an
accessory of reproduction and had no social meaning whatever, has
thus, in the struggle of society to obtain a hold on the individual,
become a social factor of great importance, and together with another
product of sexual life--the love of offspring--it is, I suspect, the
most immediate source of our sympathetic attitudes in general, and an
important force in the development of the ideal, moral, and aesthetic
sides of life.

Morality, sympathy, and altruism are of tribal origin, and have their
roots in (1) the love of offspring, (2) the sensitivity connected
with courtship, and (3) the comradeship which arises among men in
prosecuting vital interests in common. The history of society on the
moral and aesthetic sides is in great part the history of the attempt
to make the sympathetic attitude prevail over the more antagonistic.
But how far we are still short of this, and how far our sympathy
and morality are still tribal and even familial, is indicated by the
persistence of race-prejudice and of that

        lust in man no charm can tame
  Of loudly publishing our neighbor's shame.

SEX AND PRIMITIVE INDUSTRY

Labor represents the expenditure of energy in securing food, and in
making the food-process constant and sure; and we may well expect to
find that the somatological differences shown to exist between man and
woman will be found reflected in the labors of primitive society.

An examination of the ethnological facts shows that among the
primitive races men are engaged in activities requiring strength,
violence, speed, and the craft and foresight which follow from
the contacts and strains of their more motor life; and the slow,
unspasmodic, routine, stationary occupations are the part of woman.
Animal life is itself motor, elusive, and violent, and both by
disposition and of necessity man's attention and activities are
devoted first of all to the animal process. It is the most stimulating
and dangerous portion of his environment, and affords the most
immediate and concrete reward.

Contrasted with this violent and intermittent activity of man, we
find with equal uniformity that the attention of woman is directed
principally to the vegetable environment. Man's attention to hunting
and fighting, and woman's attention to agriculture and attendant
stationary industries, is so generally a practice of primitive
society that we may well infer the habit is based on a physiological
difference. An explanation of exceptions to the rule, and the
departure from it in the later life of the race, we shall have to seek
in changes in the social habits of the race.

The old observation, that "woman was first a beast of burden, then
a domestic animal, then a slave, then a servant, and last of all a
minor," represents the usual view of the condition of woman taken by
early missionaries and travelers. This view is, as we shall see, out
of focus, but there is no doubt that the labors of early woman were
exacting, incessant, varied, and hard, and that, if a catalogue of
primitive forms of labor were made, woman would be found doing five
things where man did one.

An Australian of the Kurnai tribe once said to Fison: "A man hunts,
spears fish, fights, and sits about;"[166] and this is a very good
general statement of the male activities of primitive society the
world over, if we add one other activity--the manufacture of weapons.
On the other hand, Bonwick's statement of the labors of Tasmanian
women is a typical one:

    In addition to the necessary duty of looking after the
    children, they had to provide all the food for the household
    excepting that derived from the chase of the kangaroo. They
    climbed up hills for the opossum, delved in the ground with
    their sticks for yams, native bread, and nutritive roots,
    groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea
    for oysters, and fished for the finny tribe. In addition to
    this, they carried, on their frequent tramps, the household
    stuff in native baskets of their own manufacture. Their
    affectionate partners would even pile upon their burdens
    sundry spears and waddies not required for present service,
    and would command their help to rear the breakwind, and
    to raise the fire. They acted, moreover, as cooks to
    the establishment, and were occasionally regaled, at the
    termination of a feast, with the leavings of their gorged
    masters.[167]

Among the Andamanese, while the men go into the jungle to hunt pigs,
the women fetch drinking water and firewood, catch shellfish, make
fishing nets and baskets, spin thread, and cook the food ready for
the return of the men.[168] In New Caledonia "girls work in the
plantations, boys learn to fight."[169] In Africa the case is similar.
Among the Bushmen (to take only one example from this continent)
the woman "weaves the frail mats and rushes under which her family
finds a little shelter from the wind and from the heat of the sun,"
constructs a fireplace of three round stones, fashions and bakes a
few earthenware pots. When her household labors are done, she gathers
roots, locusts, etc., from the fields. On the march she frequently
carries a child, a mat, an earthen pot, some ostrich eggshells, and
"a few ragged skins bundled on her head or shoulder," while the man
carries only his spear, bow, and quiver.[170] The conditions among the
American Indians were practically the same. Cotton Mather said of
the Indians of Massachusetts: "The men are most abominably slothful,
making their poor squaws or wives to plant, and dress, and barn, and
beat their corn, and build their wigwams for them;"[171] and Jones,
referring to the women of southern tribes, says:

    Doomed to perpetual drudgery and to that subordinate position
    to which woman is always consigned where civilization and
    religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden,
    busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, mats, baskets,
    moccasins, etc., a tiller of the ground, a nurse for her
    own children, and at all times a servant to the commands and
    passions of the stronger sex.[172]

Primitive woman was therefore undoubtedly very busy, but I have seen
no reason to believe that she considered her condition unfortunate.
Our great-grandmothers were also very busy, but they were apparently
not discontented. There was no reason why woman should not labor
in primitive society. The forces which withdrew her from labor were
expressions of later social conditions. Speaking largely, these
considerations were the desire of men to preserve the beauty of women,
and their desire to withdraw them from association with other men.
It is the connection in thought and fact between idle and beautiful
women and wealth, indeed, which has frequently led to the keeping of
a superfluous number of such women as a sign of wealth.

The exemption of women from labor, in short, implied an economic
surplus which early society did not possess. The lower classes of
modern society do not possess it either, and there the women are
still "drudges," if we want to use that word about a situation which
is normal, in view of the economic condition of the men and women
concerned. It was necessary that primitive society, in the absence
of elaborate machinery for doing things, in unstable and precarious
food conditions, and without resources accumulated from preceding
generations, should utilize _all_ its forces. The struggle for
existence, in its harshest sense, was but little mitigated, and
no group could have spared at all the industry of women. Even if
primitive life had been as hard as Hobbes would have it, "solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short," mere negative, habitual hardness
and miserableness of condition did not get the attention of primitive
society particularly. Their life was hard, as we look at it, not as
they looked at it. They could not compare themselves with the future,
and comparisons with the past were doubtless in their favor. The best
returns from activity will of course follow when each individual
is doing something he is specially well fitted to do, and natural
selection seems to have seen to it that primitive society should so
divide the labor as best to utilize social energy by assigning to men
the tasks requiring violent exertion, and to women those requiring
constant attention.

But was not primitive man very lazy, and did he not do fewer things
than he reasonably could have done? If we mean by lazy an aversion to
certain types of action, primitive man was doubtless lazy; but if we
mean an aversion to all kinds of exertion, he certainly was not lazy.
He was so thoroughly aroused by certain stimulations and so exhausted
by the expenditure of energy in reacting to these stimulations
that periods of recuperation, or "sitting about," were necessary.
Heckenwelder's remarks on the labor of men and women among the Indians
of Pennsylvania are very instructive, although they relate to tribes
which had come under white influences to some extent:

    The work of the women is not hard or difficult. They are
    both able and willing to do it, and always perform it with
    cheerfulness. Mothers teach their daughters those duties which
    common sense would otherwise point out to them when grown up.
    Within doors their labor is very trifling; there is seldom
    more than one pot or kettle to attend to. There is no
    scrubbing of the house, and but little to wash, and that not
    often. Their principal occupations are to cut and fetch in the
    firewood, till the ground, sow and reap the grain, and pound
    the corn in mortars for their pottage, and to make bread which
    they bake in the ashes. When going on a journey or to hunting
    camps with their husbands, if they have no horses, they carry
    a pack on their backs which often appears heavier than it
    really is; it generally consists of a blanket, a dressed deer
    skin for moccasins, a few articles of kitchen furniture, as
    a kettle, bowl, or dish, with spoons, and some bread, corn,
    salt, etc., for their nourishment. I have never known an
    Indian woman complain of the hardship of carrying this burden,
    which serves for their own comfort and support as well as of
    their husbands. The tilling of the ground at home, getting of
    firewood, and pounding of corn in mortars, is frequently
    done by female parties, much in the manner of those husking,
    quilting, and other _frolics_ (as they are called) in some
    parts of the United States.... [When accompanying her husband
    on the hunt the woman] takes pains to dry as much meat as she
    can, that none may be lost; she carefully puts the tallow
    up, assists in drying the skins, gathers as much wild hemp as
    possible for the purpose of making strings, carrying bands,
    bags, and other necessary articles; collects roots for dyeing;
    in short, does everything in her power to leave no care to
    her husband but the important one of providing meat for the
    family. After all, the fatigue of the women is by no means
    to be compared to that of the men. Their hard and difficult
    employments are periodical and of short duration, while their
    husbands' labors are constant and severe in the extreme.
    Were a man to take upon himself a part of his wife's duty,
    in addition to his own, he must necessarily sink under the
    load, and of course his family must suffer with him. On his
    exertions as a hunter their existence depends; in order to
    be able to follow that rough employment with success, he must
    keep his limbs as supple as he can, he must avoid hard labor
    as much as possible, that his joints may not become stiffened,
    and that he may preserve the necessary strength and agility
    of body to enable him to pursue the chase, and bear the
    unavoidable hardships attendant on it; for the fatigues of
    hunting wear out the body and constitution far more than
    manual labor. Neither creeks nor rivers, whether shallow or
    deep, frozen or free from ice, must be an obstacle to the
    hunter when in pursuit of a wounded deer, bear, or other
    animal, as is often the case. Nor has he then leisure to think
    on the state of his body, and to consider whether his blood
    is not too much heated to plunge without danger into the cold
    stream, since the game he is in pursuit of is running off from
    him with full speed. Many dangerous accidents often befall
    him both as a hunter and a warrior (for he is both), and
    are seldom unattended with painful consequences, such
    as rheumatism or consumption of the lungs, for which the
    sweat-house, on which they so much depend, and to which they
    often resort for relief, especially after a fatiguing hunt
    or warlike excursion, is not always a sure preservative or
    effectual remedy.[173]

The male and female come together by sexual attraction, and the
chances of life are increased through association which permits each
to do that class of things which by reason of its somatic habit it can
do most effectively. Man's exploits were, however, of a more striking
and sensational character, appealed to the emotions more, and
secured the attention and the admiration of the public more, than the
"drudgery" of the woman. The unusual esteem given by society to the
destructive activities of the male can be very well understood in
connection with a reference to the emotions. The emotions of anger,
fear, and joy, to take only these examples, represent a physiological
change in the organism in the presence of dangerous situations. Anger
is a physiological preparation to resist, to crush a dangerous object;
fear is an organic expression of inadequacy to avert the danger; and
joy, in one of its aspects, is an organic revulsion answering to the
recognition of the fact that the danger is safely passed. The same
type of situation incessantly recurring in the life of the race, and
constantly met by the same organic changes, has resulted in a fixed
relation of certain types of situation to certain types of emotion.

The forms of activity recognized first of all in the consciousness of
the race as virtuous are simply those which successfully avert danger
and secure safety. Courage, intrepidity, endurance, skill, sagacity,
an indomitable spirit, and a willingness to die in fight, are virtues
of the first importance, vitally indispensable to the society in
conflict with man and beast, and they are virtues of which man is by
his organic constitution, by the very fact of his capacity for the
rapid destruction of energy, particularly capable. Man's exploits,
therefore, first of all had social attention.

The occupations of women were not of an emotional type, and, apart
from sexual life, they got their excitements as spectators and
approvers of the motor activities of the men. The Hebrew girls who
went out with harps and timbrels to meet a victorious army, and
sang that Saul had slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands,
represent the relation between mighty deeds and social attention and
approval. Thus the attention which the organism gives to situations of
danger, through violent physiological readjustments fitted to meet the
situation, has a parallel in the attention given by society to social
means of meeting situations dangerous to the common life and welfare.
We have a very plain continuance of the primitive appreciation of the
virtues of violence in the worship of military men nowadays, and it
is significant, also, that the appreciation of the fighting quality
still reaches its most animated expression in women--the sex
constitutionally most in need of social protection. It can hardly
be denied, therefore, that man both enjoyed this exciting kind of
performance more than the labors which women were connected with,
and that the women justified him (if we assume that they passed any
judgment on his conduct at all) in refraining from doing many things
which he could have done perfectly well without constitutional hurt.

The abundance of the labors of primitive woman seems to be accounted
for further by the fact that a stationary life is the condition of
a greater variety of industrial expressions than a life inclined
to motor expressions. It is notorious that a wandering life is not
favorable to the development of industries. Industries, in their very
nature, handle and shape stationary stuffs, for the most part, and
woman developed the constructive or industrial activities as a simple
consequence of her more stationary condition of life. The formation
of habit is largely a matter of attention, and the attention of woman
being limited by her bodily habit and the presence of children
to objects lying closer at hand, her energies found expression in
connection with these objects.

First of all, the house was identified with woman. The home was, in
its simplest terms, the place where the wandering male rejoined the
female. It was a cave, or a hollow tree, or a frail structure. It was
sought or made with reference to safety and comfort, particularly
with reference to the comfort of the young. Recognizing the greater
interest of the woman in the child, it is evident that shelter was
a more important consideration to her than to the man. The house is,
indeed, a very fit accompaniment of the stationary habit of woman,
and usually we find the most primitive tribes recognizing her greater
interest in it. Even when the houses are built by men, they are
generally owned by the women. Man as a solitary animal might, of
course, make himself a shelter, but he had a particular interest in
being about the shelter of woman, and it was under her shelter, after
all, that children were born and that society accumulated numbers.
This resulted in the maternal system and the recognition of woman as
the head of the household, and the owner of the house. So, when the
Indian squaw carries the wigwam on the march, she is carrying her
private property and one of her own particular appurtenances. Contrary
to the phrase which I quoted above, man is rather, in the sense in
which I am now speaking, the domesticated animal. He has been inducted
into the family. The estufas of the Pueblo Indians and the men's
clubhouses in Africa represent the failure of men to assimilate
completely in a society which was essentially female in its genius,
and the club still stands for a difference in interest between the
male and the female.

From the house, or shelter, as a base, woman got such connections with
food as she might. For it is an error to suppose that she was in the
most primitive times entirely dependent on man for food. She appears
to have been quite as active in developing food surroundings in her
way as man was in his. The plant world gave her the best returns for
the effort which she could make. She beat out the seeds of plants,
digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen
to grub for most eagerly,[174] strained the poisonous juices from the
cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention
that a southern grass was developed into what we know as Indian corn.
Looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants,
and we are likely to regard it as a more conscious process than it
really was. It was the result of her conversion to her own uses
of the most available portion of her environment. In view of her
physiological habit, the animal environment was, for the most part,
out of the question, and her attention was of necessity directed to
the plant side. While less remunerative in its beginnings than
the animal side of the process, it was, perhaps, at all times less
precarious and uncertain, and we find in consequence that the economic
dependence of man on woman is as evident as her dependence on him.
A dinner of herbs is a humbler resort than a roast of antelope, but
there was less doubt that it would be forthcoming, and primitive man
was often, when in hard luck, dependent on the activities of his wife,
or the females of the group.

The domestication of animals appears similarly to be the following-up
by man of his connections with animal life, when this life began to
be less abundant. It is probable that the practice originated in
the habit of taking the young of animals home as pets, and there is
apparently a point of difference between the attention of the men and
the women given to animals once taken into the household. The men
were interested in these animals as reviving in memory the emotional
situations of hunting life, and also in the clever and inimitable
accuracy of co-ordination and superhuman development of
sense-perceptions, while there was always in the attitude of woman
toward these animals a touch of maternal feeling, such as is still
expended on the "harmless, necessary cat." And, in a small way, woman
also contributed to the domestication of animals by giving them suck,
partly as an economic investment. In Tahiti and New Britain, for
example, the women suckle the pigs, and the old women feed them.[175]
Aside from this, the connections which primitive woman has with animal
life is very slight. Worms and insects, shellfish, and even fish she
may capture, but but after this her relation to animal life is in
caring for the flesh and skins turned over to her by the man.

It was a very general early practice that, when man had killed his
game and brought it home, he was not concerned in the further handling
of it. He did not, indeed, in all cases bring it home, but sent his
wife after it. The Indians killed buffalo only as fast as the squaws
could cut them up and care for the meat, and the men of the Eskimos
would not draw the seal from the water after spearing it. Exhausted
by extraordinary efforts, the man may well have left the dressing of
the animal upon occasion to his wife, and, exhausted or not, he soon
fell into the habit of doing so. It thus turns out that all labors
relating to the preparation of food, and to the utilizations of the
side-products of food stuffs, are apt to be found in the hands of the
women.

Vessels are necessary in cooking, both to carry and hold water, and to
store the surplus of food, both vegetable and animal, and the woman,
feeling the need of these in connection with what she has set about
doing, weaves baskets and makes pottery. Fetching wood, grinding corn,
tanning the hides, and in the main the preparation of clothing, follow
rather necessarily from her relation to the raw products. Spinning and
weaving and dyeing are related closely to the vegetable world to begin
with, and it is to be expected that they would be developed by the
women. But man is very deeply interested in clothing on the ornamental
side, and the farther back we go in society, the more this holds, and
sometimes, particularly in Africa, since the domestication of oxen
there, the men prepare the leather and do the sewing, even for the
women. There is, indeed, nothing in the nature of sewing to make
it a woman's occupation. It involves a relation of the hand to the
eye--similar to that which the man is always practicing and using,
i.e., reaching a given point, perhaps with mechanical aids, through
the mediation of these two organs. It is a motor matter, therefore,
and one of the first industries undertaken by men. There are many
exceptions to the general statement that early manufacture (weapons
excepted) was in the hands of women, but the exceptions may be
regarded as variations due to the fixation of habit through single and
peculiar incidents, or they are the beginning of the later period when
man begins to practice woman's activities.

The primitive division of labor among the sexes was not in any sense
an arrangement dictated by the men, but a habit into which both
men and women fell, to begin with, through their difference of
organization--a socially useful habit whose rightness no one
questioned and whose origin no one thought of looking into. There is,
moreover, a tendency in habits to become more fixed than is inherently
necessary. The man who does any woman's work is held in contempt not
only by men, but by women.

    As to the Indian women, they are far from complaining of their
    lot. On the contrary, they would despise their husbands could
    they stoop to any menial office, and would think it conveyed
    an imputation upon their own conduct. It is the worst insult
    one virago can cast upon another in a moment of altercation.
    "Infamous woman," will she cry, "I have seen your husband
    carrying wood into the lodge to make the fire. Where was
    his squaw, that he should be obliged to make a woman of
    himself!"[176]

That men are similarly prejudiced against women's taking up male
occupations we know from modern industrial history, without looking
to ethnological evidence. Habit was, however, in another regard
favorable to woman, since what she was constantly associated with and
expended her activities upon was looked upon as hers. Through her
identification with the industrial process she became, in fact, a
property-owner. This result did not spring from the maternal system;
but both this and the maternal system were the results of her bodily
habit, and the social habits flowing from this.

    When the woman as cultivator was almost the sole creator of
    property in land, she held in respect of this also a position
    of advantage. In the transactions of North American tribes
    with the colonial governments many deeds of assignments bear
    female signatures, which doubtless must also be referred to
    inheritance through the mother.[177]

Among the Spokanes "all household goods are considered as the wife's
property."[178] The stores of roots and berries laid up by the Salish
women for a time of scarcity "are looked upon as belonging to them
personally, and their husbands will not touch them without having
previously obtained their permission."[179] Among the Menomini a woman
in good circumstances would possess as many as from 1,200 to 1,500
birch-bark vessels, and all of these would be in use during the season
of sugar-making.[180] In the New Mexican pueblo,

    what comes from outside the house, as soon as it is inside
    is put under the immediate control of the woman. My host at
    Cochiti, New Mexico, could not sell an ear of corn or a
    string of _chile_ without the consent of his thirteen-year-old
    daughter, Ignacia, who kept house for her widowed father.
    In Cholula district (and probably all over Mexico) the man
    has acquired more power, and the storehouse is no longer
    controlled by the wife. But the kitchen remains her domain;
    and its aboriginal designation, _tezcalli_ (place, or house,
    of her who grinds), is still perfectly justified.[181]

    A plurality of wives is required by a good hunter, since in
    the labors of the chase women are of great service to their
    husbands. An Indian with one wife cannot amass property, as
    she is constantly occupied in household labors, and has not
    time for preparing skins for trading.[182]

The outcome of this closer attention of the woman to the industrial
life is well seen among the ancient Hebrews:

    A virtuous woman ... seeketh wool and flax, and worketh
    willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships: she
    bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet
    night, and giveth meat to her household, and their task to her
    maidens. She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit
    of her hands she planteth a vineyard.... She perceiveth that
    her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by
    night. She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold
    the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; yea, she
    reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of
    the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed
    with scarlet. She maketh for herself carpets of tapestry; her
    clothing is fine linen and purple. Her husband is known in the
    gates, when linen garments and selleth them; and delivereth
    girdles unto the merchant.[183]

There must come a time in the history of every group when wild game
becomes scarce. This time is put off by successive migrations to
wilder regions; but the rapid increase of population makes any
continent inadequate to the supply of food through the chase
indefinitely. Morgan estimates that the state of New York, with its
47,000 square miles, never contained at any one time more than 25,000
Indians.[184] Sooner or later the man must either fall back on
the process represented by the women, taking up and developing her
industries, or he must change his attitude toward animal life. In
fact, he generally does both. He enters into a sort of alliance with
animal life, or with certain of its forms, feeding them, and tending
them, and breeding them; and he applies his katabolic energies to the
pursuits of woman, organizing and advancing them. Whether the animal
or the plant life receives in the end more attention is a matter
turning on environment and other circumstances.

When the destructive male propensities have exhausted or diminished
the food stores on the animal side, and man is forced to fall back on
the constructive female process, we find that he brings greater and
better organizing force to bear on the industries. Male enterprises
have demanded concerted action. In order to surround a buffalo
herd, or to make a successful assault, or even to row a large boat,
organization and leadership are necessary. To attack under leaders,
give signal cries, station sentinels, punish offenders, is, indeed, a
part of the discipline even of animal groups. The organizing capacity
developed by the male in human society in connection with violent
ways of life is transferred to labor. The preparation of land for
agriculture was undertaken by the men on a large scale. The jungle
was cleared, water courses were diverted and highways prepared for the
transportation of the products of labor.

But more than this, perhaps, man brought with him to the industrial
occupations all the skill in fashioning force-appliances acquired
through his intense, constant, and long-continued attention to the
devising and manufacture of weapons. Man is relatively a feeble
animal, but he made various and ingenious cutting, jabbing, and
bruising appliances to compensate. His life was a life of strains,
both giving and taking, and under the stress he had developed
offensive and defensive weapons. There is, however, no radical
difference, simply a difference in object and intensity of stimulus,
between handling and making weapons and handling and making tools.
So, when man was obliged to turn his attention to the agriculture
and industries practiced by primitive woman he brought all his
technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear
on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the
earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned
his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a
remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms:
with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the
earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus
creating the conditions of culture.

The destructive habits of the male nature were thus converted
under the stress of diminishing nutrition to the habits represented
primarily by the constructive female nature, and the inventive faculty
developed through attention to destructive mechanical aids was now
applied equally to the invention of constructive mechanical aids.

SEX AND PRIMITIVE MORALITY

The function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated
life so that all may have what we call fair play. It is impossible to
think of morality aside from expressions of force, primarily physical
force. "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear
false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not remove
the ancient landmark;" and all approvals and disapprovals imply
that the act in question has affected or will affect the interest of
others, or of society at large, for better or for worse. And since
morality goes back so directly to forms of activity and their
regulation, we may expect to find that the motor male and the more
stationary female have had a different relation to the development of
a moral code.

As between nutrition and reproduction, in the struggle for life,
nutrition plays a larger rôle--in volume, at any rate--in the
life-history of the individual. A consideration of the causes of the
modification of species in nature shows that the changes in morphology
and habit of the animal which relate to food-getting are more
fundamental and numerous than those which relate to wooing. In a moral
code, likewise, whether in an animal or human society, the bulk of
morality turns upon food rather than sex relations; and since the male
is more active in both these relations, and since, further, morality
is the mode of regulating activities in these relations, it is to
be expected that morality, and immorality as well, will be found
primarily to a greater degree functions of the motor male disposition.

Tribal safety and the preservation and extension of the territory
furnishing food demand the organized attention of the group first of
all; and the emotional demonstrations and social rewards following
modes of behavior which have a protective or provident meaning for
the group, and the public disapproval and disallowance of modes of
behavior which impair the safety or force capacity, and consequent
satisfactions of the group, become in the tribe the most powerful
of all stimuli, and stimuli to which the male is peculiarly able to
react. This is not like the case of hunger and other physiological
stimuli which are conditioned from within. The individual acts for the
advantage of the group rather than for his personal advantage, and the
stimulus to this action must be furnished socially. Group preservation
being of first-rate importance, no group would survive in which the
public showed apathy on this point. Lewis and Clarke say of the Dakota
Indians:

    What struck us most was an institution peculiar to them and
    to the Kite Indians, further to the westward, from whom it
    is said to have been copied. It is an association of the most
    active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by
    attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any
    danger, or to give way to their enemies. In war they go
    forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding
    their natural valor by any artifice.... These young men sit,
    and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the
    nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years
    old; and such is the deference paid to courage that their
    seats in the council are superior to those of the chiefs, and
    their persons more respected.[185]

The consciousness of the value of male activity is here expressed in
an exaggerated degree--in a degree bordering upon the pathological,
since the reckless exposure of life to danger is not necessary to
success at a given moment, and is unjustifiable from the standpoint
of public safety, unless it be on the side of the suggestive effect
of intrepid conduct in creating a general standard of intrepidity.
Similarly, the Indians in general often failed to get the full benefit
of a victory, because of their practice that the scalp of an enemy
belonged to him who took it, and their pursuits after a rout were
checked by the delay of each to scalp his own.

The pedagogical attempts of primitive society, so far as they are
applied to boys, have as an end the encouragement of morality of a
motor, not a sentimental, type. The boys are taught war and the chase,
and to despise the occupations of women. Thompson says of the Zulu
boys:

    It is a melancholy fact that when they have arrived at a very
    early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such
    is the law that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill
    their mothers.[186]

Ethnologists often make mention of the fact that the natural races do
not generally punish children; and while this is due in part to a less
definite sense of responsibility, as well as of less nervousness in
parents, non-interference is a part of their system of training:

    Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires
    him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to
    steal or secrete in joke some trifling article belonging
    to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more
    troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment,
    the more they are praised as giving indication of a future
    enterprising and warlike disposition.[187]

Theft is also encouraged among boys as a developer of their wits. The
Spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and Diodorus relates
that in Egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to
enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to
him all stolen articles. The citizens who were robbed went to the
captain of thieves and recovered their property upon payment of
one-fourth of its value.[188] Admiration of a lawless deed often
foreruns censure of the deed in consciousness today: there are few men
who do not admire a particularly daring and successful bank or diamond
robbery, though they deprecate the social injury done.

Formally becoming a man is made so much of in early society, because
it is on this occasion that fitness for activity is put to the test.
Initiatory ceremonies fall at the time of puberty in the candidate,
and consist of instruction and trials of fortitude. A certain show of
the proceeds of activity is also exacted of young men, especially
in connection with marriage, and the youth is not permitted to marry
until he has killed certain animals or acquired certain trophies. The
attention given to manly practices in connection with marriage is seen
in this example from the Kukis:

    When a young man has fixed his affections upon a young woman,
    either of his own or some neighboring _Parah_, his father
    visits her father and demands her in marriage for his son: her
    father, on this, inquires what are the merits of the young
    man to entitle him to her favor; and how many can he afford
    to entertain at the wedding feast; to which the father of
    the young man replies that his son is a brave warrior, a good
    hunter, and an expert thief; for that he can produce so many
    heads of the enemies he has slain and of the game he has
    killed; that in his house are such and such stolen goods;
    and that he can feast so many (mentioning the number) at his
    marriage.[189]

Occasionally the ability to take punishment is even made a part of the
marriage ceremony. At Arab marriages

    there is much feasting, and the unfortunate bridegroom
    undergoes the ordeal of whipping by the relations of his
    bride, in order to test his courage. Sometimes this punishment
    is exceedingly severe, being inflicted with the coorbatch,
    or whip of hippopotamus hide, which is cracked vigorously
    about his ribs and back. If the happy husband wishes to
    be considered a man worth having, he must receive the
    chastisement with an expression of enjoyment; in which case
    the crowds of women in admiration again raise their thrilling
    cry.[190]

A very simple record of successful activity is the bones of animals.
McCosh says of the Mishmis of India:

    Nor are these hospitable rites allowed to be forgotten; the
    skull of every animal that has graced the board is hung up
    as a record in the hall of the entertainer; he who has
    the best-stocked Golgotha is looked upon as the man of the
    greatest wealth and liberality, and when he dies the whole
    smoke-dried collection of many years is piled upon his grave
    as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth.[191]

And Grange of the Nagas:

    In front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up
    the bones of the animals with which they have feasted the
    villagers, whether tigers, elephants, cows, hogs, or monkeys,
    or aught else, for it signifies little what comes to their
    net.[192]

The head-hunting mania of Borneo is also a pathological expression
of the desire to get approval of destructive activity from both the
living and the dead:

    The aged of the people were no longer safe among their
    kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the
    grizzly store. Superstition soon added its ready impulse to
    the general movement. The aged warrior could not rest in his
    grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name; the
    maiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not
    yet stained with some cowardly murder.[193]

Class distinctions and the attendant ceremonial observances go
immediately back to an appreciation of successful motor activities.
We need only observe the conduct of weaker animals in the presence
of the stronger to appreciate the differences in behavior induced
by the presence of superior motor ability. The recognition of this
difference, as it is finally expressed in habitual forms of behavior,
becomes a symbol of the difference, while the difference goes back,
in reality, to a difference in capacity. This example from Raffles
illustrates the intensity of moral meaning which the appreciation of
achievement may take on in the end:

    At the court of _Súra-kérta_ I recollect that once, when
    holding a private conference with the _Súsunan_ at the
    residency, it became necessary for the _Rádan adipáti_ to be
    dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man
    was, as usual, squatting, and as the Susunan happened to be
    seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes
    before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts,
    could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach
    the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission
    on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself
    inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were
    insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out
    of the _dódok_ posture. When it is necessary for an inferior
    to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with
    his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's
    sight.[194]

Drury says that a Malagasy chief, on his return from war,

    had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came
    out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and
    then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the
    same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in
    the same manner.[195]

An examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times
thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent
and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards
of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude
essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the
representatives of conduct of this type. In the past, at any rate,
there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like
military adulation; and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in
the individual ranks with the fighting quality.[196]

But checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and
more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct. Approval is
expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving
individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery,
promotions, and other rewards; but in general the moral side of life
gets no such definite notice as the immoral side. Practices which are
disliked by all may be forbidden, while there is no equally summary
way of dealing with practices approved by all. In consequence,
practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited,
and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty,
resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment. An analysis of
the following crimes and punishments among the Kafirs, for instance,
indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of
activity and punishments is present at a comparatively early period of
development:

    Theft: restitution and fine. Injuring cattle: death or fine,
    according to the circumstances. Causing cattle to abort:
    heavy fine. Arson: fine. False witness: heavy fine. Maiming:
    fine. Adultery: fine, sometimes death. Rape: fine, sometimes
    death. Using love philters: death or fine, according to
    circumstances. Poisoning, and practices with an evil intent
    (termed "witchcraft"): death and confiscation. Murder: death
    or fine, according to circumstances.... Treason, as contriving
    the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy:
    death and confiscation. Desertion from the tribe: death and
    confiscation.[197]

Similarly among the Kukis:

    Injuring the property of others, or taking it without payment;
    using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring
    another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to
    the aged; marrying an elder brother's wife; putting your
    foot on, or walking over, a man's body; speaking profanely of
    religion--are acts of impiety.[198]

As the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very
conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of
the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the
safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we
find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional
morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male. The
establishment of moral standards is mediated through the sense of
strain--strain to the personal self, and strain to the social self.
Whether a man is injured by an assault upon his life or upon his
property, he suffers violence, and the first resort of the injured
individual or group is to similar violence; but this results in a
vicious tit-for-tat reaction whereby the stimulus to violence is
reinstated by every fresh act of violence. Within the group this
vicious action and reaction is broken up by the intervention of public
opinion, either in an informal expression of disapproval, or through
the headmen. The man who continues to kill may be killed in turn, but
by order of the council of the tribe; and one of his kinsmen may be
appointed to execute him, as under that condition no feud can follow.
But there is always a reluctance to banish or take the life of the
member of the group, both because no definite machinery is developed
for accomplishing either, and because the loss of an able-bodied
member of a group is a loss to the group itself. The group does not
seek, therefore, immediately to be rid of an offensive member, but
to modify his habits, to convert him. Jones says of the Ojibways that
there were occasionally bad ones among them, "but the good council of
the wise sachems and the mark of disgrace put upon unruly persons had
a very desirable influence."[199] The extreme form of punishment in
the power of the folk-moot of the Tuschinen is to be excluded from the
public feasts, and to be made a spectator while stoned in effigy and
cursed.[200] Sending a man to Coventry is in vogue among the Fejir
Beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never
spoken to again, nor allowed to sit in the tent of any member of the
tribe.[201]

The formulation of sentiment about an act depends also on the
repetition of the act. The act is more irritating, and the irritation
more widespread, with each repetition, and there is an increase of
the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when
frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the
fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket
handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there
follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally
the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount
consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its
intrinsic import so much as to its conformity or nonconformity with a
standard in the law: _summum jus, summa injuria_.

Morality, involving the modification of the conduct of the individual
in view of the presence of others, is already highly developed in
the tribal stage, since the exigencies of life have demanded the most
rigorous regulation of behavior in order to secure the organization
and the prowess essential to success against all comers. But the tribe
is a unit in hostile coexistence with other similar units, and its
morality stops within itself, and applies in no sense to strangers and
outsiders. The North American Indians were theoretically at war with
all with whom they had not concluded a treaty of peace. In Africa
the traveler is safe and at an advantage if by a fiction (the rite of
blood-brotherhood) he is made a member of the group; and similarly
in Arabia and elsewhere. The old epics and histories are full of the
praises of the man who is gentle within the group and furious without
it. The earliest commandments doubtless did not originally apply to
mankind at large. They meant, "Thou shalt not kill within the tribe,"
"Thou shalt not commit adultery within the tribe," etc. Cannibalism
furnishes a most interesting example of the prohibition of a practice
as applied to the members of the group, while extra-tribal cannibalism
continued unabated. And within the tribe there is a continuance of
this practice in the forms which do not interfere with the efficiency
and cripple the activity of the group. That is, while cannibalism
in general is prohibited, the eating of the decrepit, the aged,
of invalids, of deformed children, and of malefactors is still
practiced.[202]

But there gradually grew up a set of disapprovals of conduct as such,
whether within or without the group. In the _Odyssey_ Pallas Athene
says that Odysseus had come from Ephyra from Ilus, son of Mermerus:
"For even thither had Odysseus gone on his swift ship to seek a deadly
drug, that he might have wherewithal to smear his bronze-shod arrows:
but Ilus would in no wise give it to him, for he had in awe the
everlasting gods."[203] Here is an extension to society in general
of a principle which had been first worked out in the group; for
poisoning without the group was long allowed after it was disallowed
in the group. The case of poisoning is, indeed, a particularly good
instance of an unsatisfaction felt in the substitution of clandestine
methods for simple motor force in deciding a dispute, and affords
a clear example of an important relation between moral feeling
and physiological functioning. Animal as well as human society has
developed strategy alongside of direct motor expressions, but strategy
is only an indirect application of the motor principle. Co-ordination,
associative memory, will, judgment, are involved in strategy; it is
only a different mode of functioning. On the other hand, there is
a peculiar abhorrence of murder by night, poisoning, drowning in a
ship's hold, because, while all the physiological machinery for action
is on hand, there is no chance to work it. It is a most exasperating
thing to die without making a fight for it. The so-called American
duel is an abhorrent thing, because life or death is decided by a turn
of the dice, not on the racially developed principle of the battle to
the strong.

When, then, it is observed within the group that this, that, and
the other man has died of poison, each interprets this in terms of
himself, and no one feels safe. The use of poison is not only a means
of checking activities and doing hurt socially, but this form is most
foul and unnatural because it involves a death without the possibility
of motor resistance (except the inadequate opportunity on the
strategic side of taking precautionary measures against poison) and
a victory and social reward without a struggle. The group, therefore,
early adopts very severe methods in this regard. Death is the usual
penalty for the use of poison, and even the possession of poison,
among tribes not employing it for poisoning weapons, is punished.
Among the Karens of India, if a man is found with poison in his
possession, he is bound and placed for three days in the hot sun, his
poison is destroyed, and he is pledged not to obtain any more. If
he is suspected of killing anyone, he is executed.[204] Particularly
distressing modes of death, and other means of penalizing death by
poison more severely than motor modes of killing, were adopted. The
Chinese punish the preparation of poisons or capture of poisonous
animals with beheading, confiscation, and banishment of wife and
children. In Athens insanity caused by poison was punished with death.
The _Sachsenspiegel_ provides death by fire. In the lawbook of the
tsar Wachtang a double composition price was exacted for death by
poison. And in ancient Wales death and confiscation were the penalty
for death by poison, and death or banishment the penalty of the
manufacturer of poisons. The same quality of disapproval is expressed
in early law of sorcery, and it is unnecessary to give details of this
also. But, stated in emotional terms, both poison and sorcery, and
other underhand practices arouse one of the most distressing of the
emotions--the emotion of dread, if we understand by this term that
form of fear which has no tangible or visible embodiment, which
is apprehended but not located, and which in consequence cannot be
resisted; the distress, in fact, lying in the inability to function.
The organism which has developed structure and function through action
is unsatisfied by an un-motor mode of decision. We thus detect in the
love of fair play, in the Golden Rule, and in all moral practices a
motor element; and with changing conditions there is progressively
a tendency, mediated by natural selection and conscious choice, to
select those modes of reaction in which the element of chance is
as far as possible eliminated. This preference for functional over
chance or quasi-chance forms of decision is expressed first within
the group, but is slowly extended, along with increasing commercial
communication, treaties of peace, and with supernatural assistance, to
neighboring groups. The case of Odysseus is an instance of a moment
in the life of the race when a disapproval is becoming of general
application.

On our assumption that morality is dependent on strains, and that
its development is due to the advantage of regulating these strains,
we may readily understand why most of the canons of morality are
functions of the katabolic male activity. Theft, arson, rape,
murder, burglary, highway robbery, treason, and the like, are natural
accompaniments of the more aggressive male disposition; the male is
_par excellence_ both the hero and the criminal. But on the side of
the sex we might expect to find the female disposition setting the
standards of morality, since reproduction is even a greater part of
her nature than of man's. On the contrary, however, we find the male
standpoint carried over and applied to the reproductive process, and
the regulation of sex practices transpiring on the basis of force. In
the earliest period of society, under the maternal system, the woman
had her own will more with her person; but with the formulation of a
system of control, based on male activities, the person of woman was
made a point in the application of the male standpoint. "The wife,
like any other of the husband's goods and chattels, might be sold or
lent."[205] "Even when divorced she was by no means free, as the tribe
exercised its jurisdiction in the woman's affairs and the disposal of
her person."[206] Forsyth reports of the Gonds that

    infidelity in the married state is ... said to be very rare;
    and, when it does occur, is one of the few occasions when
    the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion,
    frequently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off
    his wife's nose and knocking out the brains of her paramour
    with his ax.[207]

The sacrifice of wives in Africa, India, Fiji, Madagascar, and
elsewhere, upon the death of husbands, shows how completely the person
of the female had been made a part of the male activity. Where this
practice obtained, the failure of the widow to acquiesce in the habit
was highly immoral. Williams says of the strangling of widows by the
Fijians:

    It has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are
    sacrificed at their own instance. There is truth in this
    statement, but unless other facts are taken into account it
    produces an untruthful impression. Many are importunate to
    be killed, because they know that life would henceforth be to
    them prolonged insult, neglect, and want.... If the friends
    of the woman are not the most clamorous for her death, their
    indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late
    husband or his friends.[208]

Child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in
gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her
conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or betrothed
before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of
age, and variously, often to an adult, and their husbands were thus
able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their
chastity. On the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where
marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl
is not looked after until she is married; it becomes immoral only when
disapproved by her husband. In the Andaman Islands,

    after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse
    ... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are
    required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve....
    If any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and
    she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or
    going to another part of the circle, he considers himself
    insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound
    her.[209]

Under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual
conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the
act. Hence a very general practice that the husbands prostituted their
wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse:

    The chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much
    estimation. The husband will, for a trifling present, lend
    his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by
    increasing the value of the present. Yet, strange as it may
    seem, notwithstanding this facility, any connection of this
    kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly
    offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the
    same licentiousness in civilized societies.[210]

When woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the
maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and
particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of
man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and
reflected naïvely the moral standards which were developed for the
most part through male activities. Any system of checks and approvals
in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of
advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were
safeguards of the group as a whole, and not of the men only. The
person and presence of woman in society have stimulated and modified
male behavior and male moral standards, and she has been a faithful
follower, even a stickler for the prevalent moral standards (the very
tenacity of her adhesion is often a sign that she is an imitator);
but up to date the nature of her activities--the nature, in short,
of the strains she has been put to--has not enabled her to set up
independently standards of behavior either like or unlike those
developed through the peculiar male activities.

There is, indeed, a point of difference in the application of
standards of morality to men and to women. Morality as applied to man
has a larger element of the contractual, representing the adjustment
of his activities to those of society at large, or more particularly
to the activities of the male members of society; while the morality
which we think of in connection with woman shows less of the
contractual and more of the personal, representing her adjustment to
men, more particularly the adjustment of her person to men.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXOGAMY

Perhaps the most puzzling questions which meet the student of early
society are connected with marriage and kinship; and among these
questions the practice of exogamy has provoked a very large number of
ingenious theories. These are, however, I believe, all unsatisfactory,
either because they are too narrow to cover the facts completely,
or because they assume in the situation conditions which do not
exist.[211] But quite aside from the facts and the interpretation
of the facts, all theories in the field have failed to reckon
sufficiently with the natural disposition and habits of man in early
society, particularly with his attitude toward sexual matters; and it
seems entirely feasible to get some light on the question why man went
outside his immediate family and clan for women through an examination
of the nature of his sexual consciousness, and of the operation of
this in connection with the laws of habit and attention.

First of all, it is evident to one who looks carefully into the
question of early sex-habits that the lower races are intensely
interested in sexual life. A large part of their thought, and even of
their inventive ingenuity, is spent in this direction. The pleasures
of life are few and gross, but are pursued with vigor; and, _mutatis
mutandis_, love bears about the same relation to the activities of
the Australian aborigine as it bore to those of Sir Lancelot and the
knights of olden time.

A failure to perceive this is the great defect in Westermarck's great
work, where it is assumed that, if animals were monogamous, primitive
man must have been much the more so. The fact is that in respect
to memory, imagination, clothing, mode of association, and social
restraint man differed radically from the animals, and precisely
through these added qualities he took not only an instinctive,
but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and
this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life
uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among
animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether
this state was ever actually reached or not. The widespread and
various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice
of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, phallic worship, erotic
dances, and periodic orgies, of which the Orient furnishes so many
examples, are all found also among the natural races.[212]

Again, the eagerness of men to obtain girl wives, and even a claim on
infants, thus assuring virginity and marriage at the moment of sexual
maturity;[213] the habit of keeping girls in solitary confinement from
a tender age until the consummation of marriage;[214] and the African
custom of infibulation,[215] are classes of facts indicating that
the sexual element occupied a large place in the consciousness of the
natural races.

We must also consider the fact that sexual life is organically a
utilization of a surplus of nutriment, and that when food and leisure
are abundant there is a tendency on the part of sexual activity to
become a play activity, just as there is a tendency of activities in
general to become play activities under the same conditions. And while
there was no leisure class in early society, primitive man was a man
of leisure in the sense that his work activities were intermittent;
a successful hunt was followed by a period of rest, recuperation, and
surplus energy, and a consequent turning of attention to sexual life,
with the result that the sex interest appears as one of the main play
interests among the natural races.

Under these conditions, and in the absence of any considerably
developed social institutions or altruistic sentiments, we not
unnaturally find that the older and stronger men have the better of
it, both in regard to the food supply and the women, and the younger
men are obstructed in their efforts to satisfy their desires in regard
to both. The following passages from the ethnological literature of
Australia indicate the nature of the Australian male in sexual life,
and the nature of the obstructions encountered by the youth in the
presence of the older men.[216]

It is noticeable, first of all, that among the Australian tribes the
older men have worked out or fallen into such habits regarding the
females that the younger men obtain wives with great difficulty and
usually not before waiting a long time. In fact, Spencer and Gillen,
in their invaluable works on the central Australian tribes state
that usually a man is married to a woman of another generation than
himself:

    The most usual method of obtaining a wife is that which is
    connected with the well-established custom in accordance with
    which every woman of the tribe is made _Tualcha mura_ with
    some man. The arrangement, which is often a mutual one, is
    made between two men, and it will be seen that owing to a girl
    being made _Tualcha mura_ to a boy of her own age the men very
    frequently have wives much younger than themselves, as the
    husband and the mother of the wife obtained in this way are
    usually approximately of the same age. When it has been agreed
    upon by two men that the relationship shall be established
    between their own children, one a boy and the other a girl,
    the two latter, who are generally of a tender age, are taken
    to the _Erlukwirra_, or women's camp, and here each mother
    takes the other child and rubs it over with a mixture of fat
    and red ochre.... This relationship indicates that the man has
    the right to take as wife the daughter of the woman; she is in
    fact assigned to him, and this, as a rule, many years before
    she is born.[217]

It will be noticed that this is in reality a modification of the
system of exchanging women, and has an advantage over capture,
elopement, and charming (all of which are methods in practice among
the same tribes) in the fact that it is of the nature of a business
transaction or social agreement, and provokes no bad feeling or
retaliation. It also shows considerable regard on the part of the
elders for the young; but practically it is a reluctant admission of a
youth to participation in sexual privileges, since marriage is delayed
until a girl of his own age has been married and given birth to a girl
who in turn has become marriageable.

In the same connection we have the testimony of Curr that

    the marriage customs of the blacks result in very ill-assorted
    unions as regards age; for it is usual to see old men with
    mere girls as wives, and men in the prime of life married to
    old widows. As a rule wives are not obtained by the men
    until they are at least thirty years of age. Women have very
    frequently two husbands during their lifetime, the first older
    and the second younger than themselves. Of course, as polygamy
    is the rule and the men of the tribe exceed the females in
    number besides, there are always many bachelors in every
    tribe; but I never heard of a female over sixteen years of age
    who, prior to the breakdown of aboriginal customs after the
    coming of the whites, had not a husband.[218]

And Bonwick says:

    The old men, who get the best food and hold the franchise of
    the tribe in their hands, manage to secure an extra supply of
    the prettiest girls.[219]

A further evidence of the keen sexual interest of the male is
furnished by the fact that even when the difficulties in the way of
getting a wife are regularly overcome by the youth, the other men of
the group, especially the older ones, reserve a temporary but prior
claim on her.[220]

In addition to a lively sexual interest in the women of their own
group, we find that even the lowest races have a well-developed
appreciation of the property value of women. In the earliest times
women were the sole creators of certain economic values, and since the
women contributed as much or more to the support of the men as the
men contributed to the support of the women, the men naturally got and
kept as many women as possible.[221] The condition prevailing in this
regard in central Australia is stated by Howitt:

    It is an advantage to a man to have as many _Piraurus_ as
    possible. He has then less work to do in hunting as his
    _Piraurus_ when present supply him with a share of the food
    which they procure, their own _Noas_ being absent. He also
    obtains great influence in the tribe by lending his _Piraurus_
    occasionally and receiving presents from young men to whom
    _Piraurus_ have not yet been allotted, or who may not have
    _Piraurus_ with them in the camp where they are. This is at
    all times carried on, and such a man accumulates a lot of
    property, weapons of all kinds, trinkets, etc., which he in
    turn gives away to prominent men, heads of totems, and such,
    and thus adds to his own influence. This is regarded by the
    Dieri as in no way anything but quite right and proper.[222]

The following passages also from Spencer and Gillen's description of
the marriage customs of these aborigines show both the nature of the
sexual system of these tribes in general and the well-developed nature
of both their sexual and their property interest in their women:

    The word _Nupa_ is without any exception applied
    indiscriminately by men of a particular group to women of
    another group, and _vice versa_, and simply implies a member
    of a group of possible wives or husbands, as the case may be.
    While this is so it must be remembered that in actual practice
    each individual man has one or perhaps two of these _Nupa_
    women who are especially attached to himself, and live with
    him in his own camp. In addition to them, however, each
    man has certain _Nupa_ women beyond the limited number
    just referred to, with whom he stands in the relation of
    _Piraungaru_. To women who are the _Piraungaru_ of a man (the
    term is a reciprocal one) the latter has access under certain
    conditions, so that they may be considered as accessory wives.
    The result is that in the Urabunna tribe every woman is the
    especial _Nupa_ of one particular man, but at the same time
    he has no exclusive right to her as she is the _Piraungaru_
    of certain other men who also have the right of access to her.
    Looked at from the point of view of the man his _Piraungaru_
    are a limited number of the women who stand in the relation
    of _Nupa_ to him. There is no such thing as one man having the
    exclusive right to one woman; the elder brothers, or _Nuthie_,
    of the latter, in whose hands the matter lies, will give one
    man a preferential right, but at the same time they will
    give other men of the same group a secondary right to her.
    Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in
    practice in the Urabunna tribe. The initiation in regard to
    establishing the relationship of _Piraungaru_ between a man
    and a woman must be taken by the elder brothers, but the
    arrangement must receive the sanction of the old men of
    the group before it can take effect. As a matter of actual
    practice this relationship is usually established at times
    when considerable numbers of the tribe are gathered together
    to perform important ceremonies, and when these and other
    important matters which require the consideration of the
    old men are discussed and settled. The number of a man's
    _Piraungaru_ depends entirely upon the measure of his power
    and popularity; if he be what is called "urku," a word which
    implies much the same as our word "influential," he will have
    a considerable number; if he be insignificant or unpopular,
    then he will meet with scanty treatment. A woman may be
    _Piraungaru_ to a number of men, and as a general rule the
    women and men who are _Piraungaru_ to one another are to be
    found living grouped together. A man may always lend his wife,
    that is, the woman to whom he has the first right, to
    another man, provided always he be her _Nupa_, without the
    relationship of _Piraungaru_ existing between the two, but
    unless this relationship exists no man has any right of access
    to a woman. Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man
    attempts to prevent his wife's _Piraungaru_ from having access
    to her, but this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked
    upon as churlish.[223]

The evidence up to this point is presented with a view to establishing
the fact that the men in early society had the strongest interest,
both on sexual and on property grounds, in retaining a hold on the
women of their group; and as an extreme expression of this interest I
wish to consider the system of elopement in early society. While there
is no system of government by chiefs among the Australian tribes
which we have been considering, the influence of the old men is very
powerful in all matters. The initiatory ceremonies, covering periods
of months and occurring at intervals during a period of years, and
involving great hardship to the young men, are calculated to inspire
them with great respect for the old men and for the traditional
practices of the tribe. One of the practical workings of this
influence of the older men is to throw restraints about the young
men and obstruct their activities. This obstruction is seen quite
as clearly on the food side as on the side of sex, in the fact that
the old men make certain foods which are not abundant (notably the
kangaroo and the opossum) taboo to the young men and the women, and
thus reserve these delicacies for themselves. We have already seen,
however, that the tribe usually makes some kind of a tardy sexual
provision for its male members, and we shall presently examine this
question more in detail; but the fact remains that the desires of the
young men are not adequately or promptly provided for. They may never
get a wife in the usual course of things, or they may have to delay
marriage for a period of twenty years beyond the point of maturity.
Under these conditions it is to be expected that the young men should
sometimes attempt to obtain women in spite of existing obstructions;
and this is the real significance of elopement. It is, of course, true
that married men sometimes eloped with married women, as with us;
but in some of the Australian tribes the difficulties in the way of
marriage were so great that elopement was recognized as the only way
out:

    The young Kurnai could, as a rule, acquire a wife in one way
    only. He must run away with her. Native marriage might
    be brought about in various ways. If the young man was so
    fortunate as to have an unmarried sister and to have a friend
    who also had an unmarried sister they might arrange with the
    girls to run off together or he might make his arrangements
    with some eligible girl whom he fancied and who fancied him;
    or a girl, if she fancied some young man might send him a
    secret message asking, "Will you find me some food?" and this
    was understood to be a proposal. But in every case it was
    essential for success that the parents of the bride should be
    utterly ignorant of what was about to transpire.[224]

Fison[225] is of the opinion that elopement in this case is caused
by the monopoly of women in the tribe by the older men. Even when the
assent of the parents has been secured, or when the match has been
arranged by the parents of the young people, it is in some cases
necessary to elope because of the reluctance of the men in general to
have a young woman appropriated:

    If the woman was caught her female relatives gave her a good
    beating. Fights took place over these cases between the girl's
    relatives--both male and female--and those of the man. The
    women were generally the most excited; they would stir up
    the men and then assist with their yamsticks. If the girl
    was first caught by other than her own relatives, she would
    be abused by all the men; but this never occurred when her
    parents or brothers were present to protect her.[226]

When we consider the difficulties in the way of young men in getting
wives at home, we should expect that they would make a practice of
capturing women from other tribes; and, indeed, it is well known that
marriage by capture has been assumed to be at the base of exogamy by
both Lubbock and Spencer. But the importance which has been attached
to this form of marriage in the literature of sociology is due to
the fact that these eminent writers have constructed theories on the
assumption that marriage by capture was widespread and important,
more than to anything else. For, to say nothing of the fact that the
theories of both these writers are too weak to stand even if capture
were found to be very prevalent, the evidence from Australia shows
that capture was comparatively little practiced there, although that
country affords most of the examples referred to by writers on this
subject. Spencer and Gillen say in this connection:

    The method of capture which has so frequently been described
    as characteristic of Australian tribes, is the very rarest way
    in which the Central Australian secures a wife. It does not
    often happen that a man forcibly takes a woman from someone
    else within his own group, but it does sometimes happen, and
    especially when the man from whom the woman is taken has
    not shown his respect for his actual or tribal _Ikuntera_
    (father-in-law) by cutting himself on the occasion of the
    death of one or the other of the latter's relations. In this
    case the aggressor will be aided by the members of his local
    group, but in other cases of capture he will have to fight
    for himself. At times, however, a woman may be captured from
    another group, though this again is of rare occurrence, and is
    usually associated with an avenging party, the women captured
    by which, who are almost sure to be the wives of men killed,
    are allotted to certain members of the avenging party.[227]

Curr reports to the same effect:

    On rare occasions a wife is captured from a neighboring tribe
    and carried off.... At present, as the stealing of a woman
    from a neighboring tribe would involve the whole tribe in war
    for his sole benefit, and as the possession of the woman would
    lead to constant attacks, tribes set themselves generally
    against the practice.[228]

It is, of course, not to be denied that the sexual impulse of the male
was sometimes strong enough to lead him to seize a woman wherever
he found her, if he could not get a wife otherwise, but there is no
evidence that capture ever formed a regular or important means of
getting wives.[229]

On the contrary, the evidence points to the view that as soon as for
any reason men ceased to marry with the women of their own blood and
went outside of their immediate families for women, they ordinarily
secured them in a social, not a hostile, way, and from a different
branch of their own group, not, as a rule, from a strange group. In
fact, the regular means of securing a wife other than a woman of one's
own family seems to have been to exchange a woman of one's family for
a woman of a different family.

    The Australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or
    wives either as the survivor of a married brother, or
    in exchange for his sisters, or later on in life for his
    daughters. Occasionally also an ancient widow, whom the
    rightful heir does not claim, is taken possession of by
    some bachelor but for the most part those who have no female
    relatives to give in exchange have to go without wives. Girls
    become wives at from eight to fourteen years. Males are free
    to possess wives after ... attaining the status of young man,
    which they do when about eighteen years of age. One often sees
    a child of eight the wife of a man of fifty. Females until
    married are the property of their father or his heir, and
    afterwards of their husband, and have scarcely any rights.
    When a man dies his widows devolve on his oldest surviving
    brother of the same caste as himself--that is, full brother.
    Should a man leave, say two widows, each of whom has a son who
    has attained the rank of a young man, then I believe each of
    the young men may dispose of his uterine sister and obtain a
    wife in exchange for her. But should the deceased father of
    the young men have already obtained wives on faith of giving
    these daughters in marriage when of suitable age, then the
    contract made must be kept. When the father is old and his
    sons young men, it happens sometimes that he barters females
    at his disposal for wives for them.[230]

Roth also reports[231] that exchange of sisters is one mode of
negotiating marriage; and Haddon says that in the region of Torres
Straits marriage is proposed by the woman, but the man must either pay
for her or furnish a woman in return. In Tud, after the young people
have come to an agreement,

    they both go home and tell their respective relatives. "For
    girl more big (i.e., of more consequence) than boy." If the
    girl has a brother, he takes the man's sister, and then all
    is settled. The fighting does not appear to be a very serious
    business.[232]

Similarly in Maibung:

    An exchange of presents and foods was made between the
    contracting parties, but the bridegroom's friends had to give
    the larger amount, and the bridegroom had to pay the parents
    for his wife, the usual price being a canoe or dugong harpoon,
    or shell armlet, or goods to equal value. The man might give
    his sister in exchange for a wife, and thus save the purchase
    price. A poor man who had no sister might perforce remain
    unmarried, unless an uncle took pity on him and gave him a
    cousin to exchange for a wife.[233]

Fison and Howitt[234] give other examples of marriage by exchange, and
I have already given a description of the custom of _Tualcha
mura_, the _regular_ method of obtaining a wife among the central
Australians, by means of which a man secures a wife for his son by
making an arrangement with some other man with regard to the latter's
daughter.

From the evidence given first of all I think we must conclude that
early man was inclined to appropriate whatever women came in his way.
In this regard we have a condition resembling that among the higher
animals, where the more vigorous males try to monopolize the females.
We may assume also that the women first appropriated were those
born in the group--that is, in the immediate family--as being more
proximate and not already possessed by others. In this regard also the
condition resembled that among the higher gregarious animals; and
in so far as the control of the women by the men of the group is
concerned the condition remains unchanged. But the men have ceased
to marry the women of their immediate families, and the problem of
exogamy is to determine why men living with women and controlling them
should cease to marry them.

In other papers I have pointed out that the interest of man is not
held nor the emotions aroused when the objects of attention have
grown so familiar in consciousness that the problematical and elusive
elements disappear;[235] and I have also alluded to the laws of sexual
life, that an excited condition of the nervous system is a necessary
preparation to pairing.[236] And just here we must recognize the fact
that monogamy is a habit acquired by the race, not because it has
answered more completely to the organic interest of the individual,
but because it has more completely served social needs, particularly
by assuring to the woman and her children the undivided interest
and providence of the man. But in early times the law of natural
selection, not the law of choice, operated to preserve the groups in
which a monogamous or quasi-monogamous tendency showed itself (since
the children in these cases were better trained and nourished), and
in historical times and among ourselves all of the machinery of church
and state has been set in motion in favor of the system. In point
of fact, the members of civilized societies at the present time have
become so refined and have so far accepted ethical standards that
monogamy is the system actually favored on sentimental grounds as well
as on grounds of expediency by a large proportion of any civilized
population. On the other hand, speaking from the biological
standpoint, monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of
highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements
disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so
familiar in consciousnes that the emotional reactions are qualified.
This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and
women frequently become interested in others than their partners in
matrimony. I may also just allude to the fact that the large body of
the literature of intrigue, represented by the tales of Boccaccio and
Margaret of Navarre, is based on the interest in unfamiliar women.

Familiarity with women within the group and unfamiliarity with
women without the group is the explanation of exogamy on the side of
interest; and the system of exogamy is a result of exchanging familiar
women for others. We have seen that capture was not an important
means of securing wives outside the group, and that exogamy was fully
developed before property and media of exchange were developed to any
extent, and consequently before the purchase of women had become a
system. We have seen also that the Australian who wants a woman at
the present time gets her by exchanging another woman for her. Social
groups were necessarily small in the beginning. Before invention and
co-operation have advanced far, the group must remain small in order
to pick up enough food to sustain life on a given area.

Starting out with a single pair, when the family increases in size a
separation is necessary; and clans are an outcome of the process of
division and redivision, the bond between the clans and their union
in a tribe resulting from their consciousness of kinship. Now, it is
a well-known condition of exogamy that, while a man must marry without
his clan, he must not marry without his tribe, and for the most part,
in fact, the clan into which he shall marry is designated. In other
words, allied clans gave their women in exchange mutually. This was
a natural arrangement, both because the two groups were neighbors and
because they were friendly, and at the same time the psychological
demand for newness was satisfied. When a family was divided into
two branches, Branch A had a property interest in its own women, but
preferred the women of Branch B because of their unfamiliarity. The
exchange took place at first occasionally and not systematically, and
the women parted with in each case were not, perhaps, in all cases the
youngest, and we may assume that they had in all cases been married
before they were given up. But gradually, and when the habit of
exchange had been established, men came to look forward to the
exchange and to desire to secure the girl at the earliest possible
moment, until finally young women were exchanged at puberty, and
virgins. When for any reason there is established in a group a
tendency toward a practice, then the tendency is likely to become
established as a habit, and regarded as right, binding, and
inevitable: it is moral and its contrary is immoral. When we consider
the binding nature of the food taboos, of the _couvade_, and of the
regulation that a man shall not speak to or look at his mother-in-law
or sister, we can understand how the habit of marrying out, introduced
through the charm of unfamiliarity, becomes a binding habit.

I think, therefore, we have every reason to conclude that exogamy is
one expression of the more restless and energetic habit of the
male. It is psychologically true that only the unfamiliar and
not-completely-controlled is interesting. This is the secret of the
interest of modern scientific pursuit and of games. States of high
emotional tension are due to the presentation of the unfamiliar--that
is, the unanalyzed, the uncontrolled--to the attention. And although
the intimate association and daily familiarity of family life produce
affection, they are not favorable to the genesis of romantic
love. Cognition is so complete that no place is left for emotional
appreciation. Our common expressions "falling in love" and "love at
sight" imply, in fact, unfamiliarity; and there can be no question
that men and women would prefer at present to get mates away from
home, even if there were no traditional prejudice against the marriage
of near kin.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODESTY AND CLOTHING

No altogether satisfactory theory of the origin of modesty has been
advanced. The naïve assumption that men were ashamed because they were
naked, and clothed themselves to hide their nakedness, is not tenable
in face of the large mass of evidence that many of the natural races
are naked, and not ashamed of their nakedness; and a much stronger
case can be made out for the contrary view, that clothing was first
worn as a mode of attraction, and modesty then attached to the act
of removing the clothing; but this view in turn does not explain an
equally large number of cases of modesty among races which wear no
clothing at all. A third theory of modesty, the disgust theory, stated
by Professor James[237] and developed somewhat by Havelock Ellis,[238]
makes modesty the outgrowth of our disapproval of immodesty in
others--"the application in the second instance to ourselves of
judgments primarily passed upon our mates."[239] The sight of
offensive behavior is no doubt a powerful deterrent from like
behavior, but this seems to be a secondary manifestation in the
case of modesty. The genesis of modesty is rather to be found in the
activity in the midst of which it appears, and not in the inhibition
of activity like the activity of others. It appears also that it has
primarily no connection with clothing whatever.[240]

Professor Angell and Miss Thompson have made an investigation of the
relation of circulation and respiration to attention, which advances
considerably our knowledge of the nature of the emotions. They say:

    When the active process runs smoothly and uninterruptedly,
    these bodily activities [circulation and respiration] progress
    with rhythmic regularity. Relatively tense, strained
    attention is generally characterized by more vigorous bodily
    accompaniments than is low-level, gentle, and relatively
    relaxed attention (drowsiness, for instance); but both
    agree, so long as their progress is free and unimpeded, in
    relative regularity of bodily functions. Breaks, shocks, and
    mal-co-ordinations of attention are accompanied by sudden,
    spasmodic changes and irregularities in bodily processes, the
    amount and violence of such changes being roughly proportioned
    to the intensity of the experiences.

    Now, emotions represent psychological conditions of great
    instability. Especially is this true when the emotion is
    profound. The necessity is suddenly thrown upon the organism
    of reacting to a situation with which it is at the moment able
    to cope only imperfectly, if at all. The condition is one in
    which normal, uninterrupted, coordinated movements are for a
    time checked and thrown out of gear.[241]

And again, in concluding their admirable study:

    All the processes with which we have been dealing are cases of
    readjustment of an organism to its environment. Attention is
    always occupied with the point in consciousness at which the
    readjustment is taking place. If the process of readjustment
    goes smoothly and evenly, we have a steady strain of
    attention--an equilibrated motion in one direction. The
    performance of mental calculation is a typical case of
    this sort of attention. But often the readjustment is more
    difficult. Factors are introduced which at first refuse to
    be reconciled with the rest of the conscious content. The
    attentive equilibrium is upset, and there are violent shifts
    back and forth as it seeks to recover itself. These are the
    cases of violent emotion. Between these two extremes comes
    every shade of difficulty in the readjustment, and of
    consequent intensity in emotional tone. We have attempted to
    show in the preceding paper that the readjustment of organism
    to environment involves a maintenance of the equilibrium of
    the bodily processes, which runs parallel with the maintenance
    of the attentive equilibrium, and is an essential part of the
    readjustment of the psycho-physical organism.

The more motile organisms are constantly, by very reason of their
motility, encountering situations which put a strain upon the
attention. The quest for food leads to encounters with members of
their own and of different species; the resulting fight, pursuit, and
flight are accompanied by the powerful emotions of anger and fear.
The emotion is, as Darwin has pointed out, a part of the effort to
reaccommodate, since it is a physiological preparation for action
appropriate to the type of situation in question.[242] The strain upon
the attention, the affective bodily condition, and the motor activity
appear usually in the same connection, and, from the standpoint
of biological design, the action concluding the series of bodily
activities is of advantage to the organism.

In animal life the situation is simple. Whether the animal decides to
fight for it or to run for it, he has at any rate two plain courses
before him, and the relation between his emotional states and the
type of situation is rather definitely fixed racially, and relatively
constant. Even in the associated life of animals the type of reaction
is not much changed, and is here also instinctively fixed. But in
mankind the instinctive life is overshadowed or rivaled by the freedom
of initiative secured through an extraordinary development of the
power of inhibition and of associative memory, while, at the same
time, this freedom of choice is hindered and checked by the presence
of others. The social life of mankind brings out a thousand situations
unprovided for in the instincts and unanticipated in consciousness.
In the midst, then, of a situation relatively new in race experience,
where advantage is still the all-important consideration, and where
this can no longer be secured either by fighting or running, but by
the good opinion of one's fellows as well, we may look for some new
strains upon the attention and some emotions not common to animal
life.

I do not think we can entirely understand the nature of these
emotional expressions in the race unless we realize that man is, in
his savage as well as his civilized state, enormously sensitive to the
opinion of others.[243] The longing of the Creek youth to "bring in
hair" and be counted a man; the passion of the Dyak of Borneo for
heads, and the recklessness of the modern soldier, "seeking the bubble
reputation at the cannon's mouth;" the alleged action of the young
women of Kansas in taking a vow to marry no man who had not been to
the Philippine war, and of the ladies of Havana, during the rebellion
against Spain, in sending a chemise to a young man who stayed at home,
with the suggestion that he wear it until he went to the field--all
indicate that the opinion of one's fellows is at least as powerful a
stimulus as any found in nature. To the student of ethnology no point
in the character of primitive man is more interesting and surprising
than his vanity. This unique susceptibility to social influence is,
indeed, essential to the complex institutional and associational
life of mankind. The transmission of language, tradition, morality,
knowledge, and all race experience from the older to the younger,
and from one generation to another, is accomplished through mental
suggestibility, and the activity of the individual in associational
life is mediated largely through it.

Now, taking them as we find them, we know that such emotions as
modesty and shame are associated with actions which injure and shock
others, and show us off in a bad light. They are violations of modes
of behavior which have become habitual in one way and another. In an
earlier paper[244] have indicated some of the steps by which approvals
and disapprovals were set up in the group. When once a habit is fixed,
interference with its smooth running causes an emotion. The nature of
the habit broken is of no importance. If it were habitual for _grandes
dames_ to go barefoot on our boulevards or to wear sleeveless dresses
at high noon, the contrary would be embarrassing. Psychologically the
important point is that, when the habit is set up, the attention is
in equilibrium. When inadvertently or under a sufficiently powerful
stimulus we break through a habit, the attention and associative
memory are brought into play. We are conscious of a break, of what
others will think; we anticipate a damaged or diminished personality;
we are, in a word, upset. We may consequently expect to find that
whatever brings the individual into conflict with the ordinary
standards of life of the society in which he is living is the
occasion of a strain on the attention and of an accompanying bodily
change.[245]

A minimum expression of modesty, and one having an organic rather than
a social basis, is seen in the coyness of the female among animals.
In many species of animals the female does not submit at once to the
solicitations of the male, but only after the most arduous wooing.

    The female cuckoo answers the call of her mate with an
    alluring laugh that excites him to the utmost, but it is long
    before she gives herself up to him. A mad chase through tree
    tops ensues, during which she constantly incites him with that
    mocking call, till the poor fellow is fairly driven crazy. The
    female kingfisher often torments her devoted lover for half
    a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. But
    she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as
    she flies, and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he
    suddenly gives up the pursuit.[246]

There is here a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse
to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached,
which is not essentially different from the case, in human society,
of that woman who, "whispering, 'I will ne'er consent,' consented." In
either case, the minimum that it is necessary to assume is an organic
hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even
the greater rôle. Pairing is in its nature a seizure, and the coquetry
of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being
seized.

Our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted
by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same
reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in
totally contrary effects. A show of fight may produce either anger or
fear; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us
from another; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today
and please us tomorrow. Mere movement is, to take another instance,
one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life; and, if we examine
its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have
different meanings in terms of sex. If the female runs, the movement
attracts the notice of the male, and the movement is a sexual
stimulus. Or the movement may be a movement of avoidance--a
running-away; and in this way the female may secure contrary
desires by the same general type of activity. Or, on the other hand,
not-running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding
the attention of the male. Similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in
sexual life. In appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and
at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the
case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only
a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch
necessary for pairing.

But without going farther into the question of the psychology of
wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is
necessary to be always attractive and never disgusting to the opposite
sex, and even the most serious attention to this problem is not always
successful.[247] Sexual association is a treacherous ground, because
our likes and dislikes turn upon temperamental traits rather than
on the judgment, or, at any rate, upon modes of judgment not clearly
analyzable in consciousness. An openness of manner in the relations
of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness,
or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is
charming, but too much modesty is prudery. Under these circumstances,
when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is realized, but the
effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and
when, at the same time, the effect produced by the action is felt to
be very important to happiness, it is to be expected that there should
often be a conflict between the tendency to follow a stimulus and
the tendency to inhibit it, a hovering between advance and retreat,
assent and negation--a disturbed state of attention, and an organic
hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the
act is realized or thought as improper.

But, however thin and movable the partitions between attraction and
disgust, every person is aware of certain standards of behavior,
derived either from the strain of personal relationship or by
imitation of current modes of behavior. The girl of the unclothed
races who takes in sitting a modest attitude is acting on the result
of experience. She may have been often annoyed by the attentions of
men at periods when their attention was not welcome, and in this case
the action is one of shrinking and avoidance. She doubtless has in
mind also that all females are not at all times attractive to all
males, that female boldness sometimes excites disgust, and that the
concealment of the person may be more attractive than its exposure.

This more or less instinctive recognition of the suggestive power
of her person and her corresponding attitude of modesty have been
assisted also by her observation of the experiences of other women,
and by the talk of the older women. I may add the following instances
to make it plain that the sexual relation is the object of much
attention from both sexes in primitive society, and furnishes occasion
for the interruption of the smooth flow of the attention and the
bodily activities. Describing the use of magic by the male Australians
in obtaining wives, Spencer and Gillen add:

    In the case of charming, however, the initiative may be taken
    by the woman, who can, of course, imagine that she has been
    charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man,
    whose vanity is flattered by the response to the magic
    power which he can soon persuade himself that he did really
    exercise.[248]

If this attempt at suggestion failed, we should have a case of lively
embarrassment in the woman, and her discomfiture would be heightened
if the other women and men of the community were aware of her attempt.
Similarly on Jervis Island in Torres Straits, if an unmarried woman
was interested in a man, she accosted him, but the man did not address
the woman "for, if she refused him, he would feel ashamed, and maybe
he would brain her with a stone club, and so 'he would kill her for
nothing.'"[249]

A wholesale unsettling of habit is seen when a lower culture is
impinged upon by a higher. The consciousness of other standards of
behavior causes new forms of modesty in the lower race. Haddon reports
of the natives of Torres Straits:

    The men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf
    petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now
    both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before
    me--only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only
    when they were diving.... Amongst themselves they are, of
    course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming
    more so.... I have not noticed any reticence in their
    speaking about sexual matters before the young, but missionary
    influence has modified this a great deal; formerly, I imagine,
    there was no restraint in speech, now there is a great deal
    of prudery;... and I had the greatest possible difficulty
    in getting the little information I did about the former
    relationships between the sexes. All this, I suspect, is not
    really due to a sense of decency _per se_, but rather to a
    desire on their part not to appear barbaric to strangers; in
    other words, the hesitancy is between them and the white man,
    not as between themselves.[250]

Bonwick says also:

    I have repeatedly been amused at observing the Australian
    natives prepare for their approach to the abode of
    civilization by wrapping their blankets more decently around
    them and putting on their ragged trousers or petticoats.[251]

There are numerous cases found among the lower races where the wearing
of clothing and ornament are not associated with feelings of modesty.
Von den Steinen reports that the women of Brazil wore a small,
delicately made and ornamented covering or _uluri_, which evidently
had an attractive as well as protective value; but the women showed no
embarrassment, but rather astonishment, when he asked them to remove
them and give them to him. When they understood that he really wanted
them, they removed them and gave them to him with a laugh.[252] This
is a case, in fact, of the beginning of clothing without a beginning
of modesty. But while we find cases of modesty without clothing and of
clothing without modesty the two are usually found together, because
clothing and ornament are the most effective means of drawing the
attention to the person, sometimes by concealing it and sometimes by
emphasizing it.

The original covering of the body was in the nature of ornament rather
than clothing. The waist, the neck, the wrists, and the ankles are
smaller than the portion of the body immediately below them, and are
from this anatomical accident a suitable place to tie ornaments, and
the ornamentation of the body results incidently in giving some degree
of covering to the body. The most suggestive use of clothing is the
use of just a sufficient amount to call attention to the person,
without completely concealing it. I need not refer to the fact that
in modern society this is accomplished by, or perhaps we should better
say transpires in connection with, diaphanous fabrics and décolleté
dresses; and the same effect was doubtless accomplished by a typical
early form of female dress, of which I will give one instance in
Australia and one in America:

    Among the Arunta and Luricha the women normally wear nothing,
    but amongst tribes farther north, especially the Kaitish and
    Warramunga, a small apron is made and worn, and this sometimes
    finds its way south into the Arunta. Close-set strands of
    fur-string hang vertically from a string waist-girdle. Each
    strand is about eight or ten inches in length, and the breadth
    of the apron may reach the same size, though it is often not
    more than six inches wide.[253]

Mr. Powers says:

    A fashionable young Wittun woman wears a girdle of deer skin,
    the lower edge of which is slit into a long fringe, with the
    polished pine-nut at the end of each strand, while the upper
    border and other portions are studded with brilliant bits of
    shell.[254]

If we recall the psychological standpoint that the emotions are an
organic disturbance of equilibrium occurring when factors difficult
of reconciliation are brought to the attention, and if we have in
mind that the association of the sexes has furnished so powerful an
emotional disturbance as jealousy, it seems a simple matter to explain
the comparatively mild by-play of sexual modesty as a function
of wooing, without bringing either clothing or ornament into the
question.

We saw a minimum expression of modesty in the courtship of animals,
where the modesty of the female was a form of fear on the organic
side, but the accompanying movements of avoidance were, at the same
time, a powerful attraction to the male. And we have in this, as
in all expressions of fear--shame, guilt, timidity, bashfulness--an
affective bodily state growing out of the strain thrown upon the
attention in the effort of the organism to accommodate itself to its
environment. The essential nature of the reaction is already fixed
in types of animal life where the operation of disgust is out of the
question, and in relations which imply no attention to the conduct of
others. If any separation between the bodily self and the environment
is to be made at all, it is putting the cart before the horse to make
out that modesty is derived from our repugnance at the conduct of
others, more immediately than through attention to the meaning of our
own activities. The fallacy of the disgust theory lies, in fact, in
the attempt to separate the copies for imitation derived from our own
activities from those derived from our observation of the activities
of others.

When habits are set up and are running smoothly, the attention is
withdrawn; and nakedness was a habit in the unclothed societies, just
as it may become a habit now in the artist's model. But when, for any
of the reasons I have outlined, women or men began to cover the body,
then putting off the covering became peculiarly suggestive, because
the breaking-up of a habit brings an act clearly into attention. And
when dress becomes habitual in a society whose sense of modesty has
also developed to a high degree, the suggestive effect is so great
that the bare thought of unclothing the person becomes painful, and we
have the possibility of such a phenomenon as mock modesty. But, so far
as sexual modesty is concerned, the clothing has only reinforced the
already great suggestive power of the sexual characters.

In animal society the coyness of the female is the analogue of
modesty. The male is always aggressive, and in both animal and human
society used ornament as a means of interesting and influencing the
female. In the course of time, however, man's activities became his
main dependence, and woman's person and personal behavior became
more significant, especially in a state of society where she became
dependent on man's activities, and both ornament and modesty were
largely transferred to her.

In speaking of the relation of sex to morality,[255] I have already
shown that the morality of man is peculiarly a morality of prowess and
contract, while woman's morality is to a greater degree a morality of
bodily habits, both because child-bearing, which is a large factor
in determining sexual morality, is more closely connected with her
person, and in consequence also of male jealousy. Physiologically and
socially reproduction is more identified with the person of woman than
of man, and it has come about that her sexual behavior has been more
closely looked after, not only by men, but by women--for it would not
be difficult to show that women have been always, as they are still,
peculiarly watchful of one another in this respect.

In the course of history woman developed an excessive and scrupulous
concern for the propriety of her behavior, especially in connection
with her bodily habits; and this in turn became fixed and
particularized by fashion, with the result that not only her physical
life became circumscribed, but her attention and mental interests
became limited largely to safeguarding and enhancing her person.

The effect of this and of other similar restrictions of behavior on
her character and mind is indicated in following chapters.

THE ADVENTITIOUS CHARACTER OF WOMAN

There is more than one bit of evidence that nature changed her
plan with reference to some organism at the very last moment, and
introduced a feature which was not contemplated at the outset. This
change of plan is carried out through the specialization of some
organ, sense, or habit, to such a degree as to make practically a new
type of the organism. In the human species, for example, the atrophied
organs distributed through the body are evidence that the physical
make-up of the species was well-nigh definitely fixed before the
advantage of free hands led to an erect posture, thereby throwing
certain sets of muscles out of use; and the specialization of the
voice as a means of communicating thought was, similarly, a device
for relieving the hands of the burden of communication, and was not
introduced systematically until a gesture language had been so
well established that even now we fall back into it unconsciously,
especially in moments of excitement, and attempt to talk with our
hands and bodies.

But perhaps the most interesting modification or reversal of plan to
be noted in mankind is connected with the relation of the two sexes.
As will presently be indicated, life itself was in the beginning
female, so far as sex could be postulated of it at all, and the
life-process was primarily a female process, assisted by the male. In
humankind as well, nature obviously started out on the plan of having
woman the dominant force, with man as an aid; but after a certain
time there was a reversal of plan, and man became dominant, and woman
dropped back into a somewhat unstable and adventitious relation to
the social process. Up to a certain point, in fact, in his physical
and social evolution man shows an interesting structural and mental
adaptation to woman, or to the reproductive process which she
represents; while the later stages of history show, on the other
hand, that the mental attitude of woman, and consequently her forms
of behavior, have been profoundly modified, and even her physical life
deeply affected, by her effort to adjust to man.

The only attitude which nature can be said to show toward life is the
design that the individual shall sustain its own life, and at death
leave others of its kind--that it shall get food, avoid destruction,
and reproduce. In pursuance of this policy it naturally turns out that
those types showing greater morphological and functional complexity,
along with freer movement and more mental ingenuity, come into the
more perfect control and use of their environment, and consequently
have greater likelihood of survival. Failing of this greater
complexity, their chance of life lies in occupying so obscure a
position, so to speak, that they do not come into collision with more
dominant forms, or in reproducing at such a rate as to survive in
spite of this. The number of devices in the way of modification of
form and habit to secure advantage is practically infinite, but all
progressive species have utilized the principle of sex as an accessory
of success. By this principle greater variability is secured, and
among the larger number of variations there is always a chance of the
appearance of one of superior fitness. The male in many of the lower
forms is very insignificant in size, economically useless (as among
the bees), often a parasite on the female, and, as many biologists
hold, merely a secondary device or afterthought of nature, designed
to secure greater variation than can be had by the asexual mode of
reproduction. In other words, he is of use to the species by assisting
the female to reproduce progressively fitter forms.

When, in the course of time, sexual reproduction eventuated in a
mammalian type, with greater intimacy between mother and offspring and
a longer period of dependence of offspring on the mother, the
function of the male in assisting the female became social as well as
biological; and this was pre-eminently so in the case of man,
because of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child.[256]
The characteristic helplessness of the child, which at first
thought appears to be a disadvantage, is in fact the source of human
superiority, since the design of nature in providing this condition of
helplessness is to afford a lapse of time sufficient for the growth
of the very complex mechanism, the human brain, which, along with free
hands, is the medium through which man begins that reaction on his
environment--inventing, exterminating, cultivating, domesticating,
organizing--which ends in his supremacy.

It is plain, therefore, that species in which growth is slow are at an
advantage, if to the care and nourishment of the female are added the
providence and protection of the male; and this is especially true in
mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years.
In this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater
variability of the male. Instead of an insignificant addendum to the
reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful,
jealous, a fighting specialization--still an attaché of the female,
but now a defender and provider. This is the general condition among
mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results
in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate association of the
parents, which we denominate marriage. For Westermarck is quite right
in his view that children are not the result of marriage, but marriage
is the result of children. From this point of view marriage is a union
favored by the scheme of nature because it is favorable to the rearing
and training of children, and the groups practicing marriage, or its
animal analogue, have the best chance of survival.

But the evolution of a courageous and offensive disposition naturally
did not result in an eminently domestic disposition. Man did the
hunting and fighting. He was attached to the woman, but he was not
steady. He did not stay at home. The woman and the child were the core
of society, the fixed point, the point to which man came back. There
consequently grew up a sort of dual society and dual activity. Man
represented the more violent and spasmodic activities, involving
motion and skillful co-ordinations, as well as organization for
hunting and fighting; while woman carried on the steady, settled life.
She was not able to wander readily from a fixed point, on account of
her children; and, indeed, her physical organization fitted her for
endurance rather than movement. Consequently her attention was turned