Sex and Society by William I. Thomas

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Blood-brotherhood, blood-vengeance, secret societies, tribal marks
(totemism, circumcision, tattooing, scarification), and religious
dedication are devices by which, consciously or unconsciously, the
men escape from the tyranny of the maternal system. We cannot assume
that these practices originate solely or largely in dissatisfaction,
for the men would feel the advantage of a combination of interests
whenever brought into association with one another; but these
artificial bonds and their display to the eye are among the first
attempts to synthetize the male forces of the group, and it is quite
apparent that such unions are unfavorable to the continuance of the
influence of women and of the system which they represent. In West
Africa and among some of the negro tribes the initiatory ceremony
is apparently deliberately hostile to the maternal organization. The
youth is taken from the family of his mother, symbolically killed
and buried, resurrected by the priests into a male organization, and
dedicated to his father's god.[155]

Spatial conditions have played an important role also in the
development of societies. Through movements the individual or the
group is able to pick and choose advantageous relations, and by
changing its location adjust itself to changes in the food conditions.
That the success of the group is definitely related to its motor
capacity is revealed by the following law of population, worked out
by statisticians for the three predominant races of modern Europe: In
countries inhabited jointly by these three races, the race possessing
the smallest portion of wealth and the smallest representation among
the more influential and educated classes constitutes also the least
migratory element of the population, and tends in the least degree
to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile regions of the
country; and in countries inhabited jointly by the three races,
the race possessing the largest portion of wealth and the largest
representation among the more influential and educated classes is
also the most migratory element of the population, and tends in the
greatest degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile
portions of the country.[156] The primitive movements of population
necessitated by climatic change, geological disturbances, the failure
of water or exhaustion of the sources of food, were occasions for the
expression of the superior motor disposition of the male and for the
dislodgment of the female from her position of advantage.

We know that the migrations of the natural races are necessary and
frequent, and the movements of the culture races have been even
more complex. The leadership of these mass-movements and spatial
reaccommodations necessarily rests with the men, who, in their
wanderings, have become acquainted with larger stretches of space;
and whose specialty is motor co-ordination. The progressive races have
managed the space problem best. At every favorable point they have
pushed out their territorial boundaries or transferred their social
activities to a region more favorable to their expansion. Under male
leadership, in consequence, territory has always become the prize in
every conflict of races; the modern state is based not on blood but on
territory, and territory is at present the reigning political ideal.

In the process of coming into control of a larger environment through
the motor activities of the male, the group comes into collision with
other groups within which the same movement is going on, and it then
becomes a question which group can apply force more destructively and
remove or bring under control this human portion of its environment.
Military organization and battle afford the grand opportunity for
the individual and mass expression of the superior force-capacity of
the male. They also determine experimentally which groups and which
individuals are superior in this respect, and despotism, caste,
slavery, and the subjection of women are concrete expressions of the
trial.

The nominal headship of woman within the maternal group existed only
in default of forms of activity fit to formulate headship among the
men, and when chronic militancy developed an organization among the
males, the political influence of the female was completely shattered.
At a certain point in history women became an unfree class, precisely
as slaves became an unfree class--because neither class showed a
superior fitness on the motor side; and each class is regaining its
freedom because the race is substituting other forms of decision for
violence.

SEX AND SOCIAL FEELING

An examination of the early habits of man and an analysis of the
instincts which persist in him show that he has been essentially a
predaceous animal, fighting his way up at every step of the struggle
for existence. It therefore becomes a point of considerable interest
to determine what influences have contributed to soften his behavior
and make it possible for him to dwell in harmony and co-operation with
large groups of his fellows.

We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors
of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more
pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with
us, ready to burst at any moment into flame, the smouldering
and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived
through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves
unharmed.... If evolution and the survival of the fittest
be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals
must have been among the most important of man's primitive
functions, the fighting and the chasing instincts _must_ have
become ingrained. Certain perceptions _must_ immediately,
and without the intervention of inferences and ideas, have
prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both the latter
must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and
therefore when unchecked of an intensely pleasurable

kind. It is just because bloodthirstiness is such a primitive
part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a
fight or a hunt is promised as a part of the fun.... No! those
who try to account for this from above downwards, as if it
resulted from the consequences of the victory being rapidly
inferred, and from the agreeable sensations associated with
them in the imagination, have missed the root of the matter.
Our ferocity is blind and can only be explained from _below_.
Could we trace it back through our lines of descent, we
should see it taking more and more the form of a fatal reflex
response, and at the same time becoming more and more the pure
and direct emotion that it is.[157]

If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of
elation and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to
instincts developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates.
We can perhaps best get at the meaning of the conflict interest to the
organism in terms of the significance to itself or the organism's own
movements. Locomotion, of whatever type, is primarily to enable the
animal to reach and grasp food, and also to escape other animals
bent on finding food. The structure of the organism has been built
up gradually through the survival of the most efficient structures.
Corresponding with a structure mechanically adapted to successful
movements, there is developed on the psychic side an interest in the
conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the structure itself.
The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations for action,
corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or retreat, and a
connection has even been made out between pleasurable states and the
extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor muscles. We can
have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the experiments made in
nature before the development of these types of structure and interest
of the conflict pattern, but we know from the geological records that
the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so
sharp, that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes
of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working
perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life
of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been
developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements
for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or
precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been
defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.

There has been comparatively little change in human structure or human
interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and
cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts;
but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric
times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that
types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed;
and while objects of attention and interest in different historical
periods are different, we shall never get far away from the original
types of stimulus and reaction. It is, indeed, a condition of normal
life that we should not get too far away from them.

The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in
situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations
which arouse them most readily. War is simply an organized form of
fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses
the interests powerfully. With the accumulation of property, and the
growth of sensibility and intelligence, it becomes apparent that war
is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests
lead us to avoid it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war
may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders
in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the
aristocracy of England, went to war from motives of patriotism, no
doubt; but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded
it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a
lifetime. And there is evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude
of women toward war is no less intense. Grey[158] relates that half a
dozen old women among the Australians will drive the men to war with
a neighboring tribe over a fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out
with music and dancing, and sang that Saul had slain his thousands,
but David his ten thousands. Two American women who passed through the
horrors of the siege of Pekin were, on their return, given a reception
by their friends, and the daily press reported that they exhibited
among other trophies "a Boxer's sword with the blood still on the
blade, which was taken from the body of a Boxer killed by the legation
guards; and a Boxer spear with which a native Christian girl was
struck down in Legation Street." It is not necessary to regard as
morbid or vulgar the action of these ladies in bringing home reminders
of their peril. On the contrary, it is a sign of continued animal
health and instinct in the race to feel deep interest in perilous
situations and pleasure in their revival in consciousness.

"Unaccommodated man" was, to begin with, in relations more hostile
than friendly. The struggle for food was so serious a fact, and
predaceousness to such a degree the habit of life, that a suspicious,
hostile, and hateful state of mind was the rule, with exceptions only
in the cases where truce, association, and alliance had come about
in the course of experience. This was still the state of affairs in
so advanced a stage of development as the Indian society of North
America, where a tribe was in a state of war with every tribe with
which it had not made a treaty of peace; and it is perhaps true,
generally speaking, of men today, that they regard others with a
degree of distrust and aversion until they have proved themselves good
fellows. What, indeed, would be the fate of a man on the streets of
a city if he did otherwise? There has, nevertheless, grown up an
intimate relation between man and certain portions of his environment;
and this includes, not only his wife and children, his dog and his
blood-brother, but, with lessening intensity, the members of his clan,
tribe, and nation. These become, psychologically speaking, a portion
of himself, and stand with him against the world at large. From
the standpoint here outlined, prejudice or its analogue is the
starting-point, and our question becomes one of the determination of
the steps of the process by which man mentally allied with himself
certain portions of his environment to the exclusion of others.

If we look for an explanation of the hostility which a group feels
for another group, and of the sympathy which its members feel for one
another, we may first of all inquire whether there are any conditions
arising in the course of the biological development of a species
which, aside from social activities, lead to a predilection for those
of one's own kind and a prejudice against different groups. And we do,
in fact, find such conditions. The earliest movements of animal life
involve, in the rejection of stimulations vitally bad, an attitude
which is the analogue of prejudice. On the principle of chemiotaxis,
the micro-organism will approach a particle of food placed in the
water and shun a particle of poison; and its movements are similarly
controlled by heat, light, electricity, and other tropic forces.[159]
The development of animal life from this point upward consists in
the growth of structure and organs of sense adapted to discriminate
between different stimulations, to choose between the beneficial and
prejudicial, and to obtain in this way a more complete control of the
environment. Passing over the lower forms of animal life, we find in
the human type the power of attention, memory, and comparison highly
developed, so that an estimate is put on stimulations and situations
correspondent with the bearing of stimulations or situations of this
type on welfare in the past. The choice and rejection involved in this
process are accompanied by organic changes (felt as emotions) designed
to assist in the action which follows a decision.[160] Both the
judgment and the emotions are thus involved in the presentation to the
senses of a situation or object involving possible advantage or hurt,
pleasure or pain. It consequently transpires that the feelings called
out on the presentation of disagreeable objects and their contrary
are very different, and there arise in this connection fixed mental
attitudes corresponding with fixed or habitually recurrent external
situations--hate and love, prejudice and predilection--answering to
situations which revive feelings of pain on the one hand, and feelings
of pleasure on the other. And such is the working of suggestion that,
not alone an object or situation may produce a given state of feeling,
but a voice, an odor, a color, or any characteristic sign of an object
may produce the same effect as the object itself. The sight or smell
of blood is an excitant to a bull, because it revives a conflict state
of feeling, and even the color of a red rag produces a similar effect.

When we come to examine in detail the process by which an
associational and sympathetic relation is set up between the
individual and certain parts of the outside world to the exclusion
of others, we find this at first, on a purely instinctive and reflex
basis, originating in connection with food-getting and reproduction,
and growing more conscious in the higher forms of life. One of the
most important origins of association and prepossession is seen in
the relation of parents, particularly of mothers, to children. This
begins, of course, among the lower animals. The mammalian class, in
particular, is distinguished by the strength and persistence of the
devotion of parents to offspring. The advantage secured by the form
of reproduction characteristic of man and the other mammals is that
a closer connection is secured between the child and the mother. By
the intra-uterine form of reproduction the association of mother and
offspring is set up in an organic way before the birth of the latter,
and is continued and put on a social basis during the period of
lactation and the early helpless years of the child. By continuing the
helpless period of the young for a period of years, nature has made
provision on the time side for a complex physical and mental type,
impossible in types thrown at birth on their own resources. Along
with the structural modification of the female on account of the
intra-uterine form of reproduction and the effort of nature to secure
a more complex type and a better chance of survival, there is a
corresponding development of the sentiments, and maternal feeling,
in particular, is developed as the subjective condition necessary
to carrying out the plan of giving the infant a prolonged period of
helplessness and play through which its faculties are developed.[161]
The scheme would not work if the mother were not more interested
in the child than in anything else in the world. In the course
of development every variational tendency in mothers to dote on
their children was rewarded by the survival of these children, and
the consequent survival of the stock, owing to better nutrition,
protection, and training. Of course, this inherited interest in
children is shared by the males of the group also, though not in the
same degree, and there is reason to believe also that the interest of
the male parent in children is acquired in a great degree indirectly
and socially through his more potent desire to associate with the
mother.

This interest and providence on the score of offspring has also a
characteristic expression on the mental side. All sense-perceptions
are colored and all judgments biased where the child is in question,
and affection for it extends to the particular marks which distinguish
it. Not only its physical features, but its dress and little shoes,
its toys and everything it has touched take on a peculiar aspect.

On the organic side, therefore, there is developed a tendency, both in
connection with reactions to stimulations in general and in connection
with reproductive life in particular, to seize on particular aspects
and to be obsessed by them to the exclusion or disparagement of other
aspects. The feelings of love and hate, and the broader feelings of
race-prejudice and patriotism are consequently based first of all in
the instincts.

Perhaps the most particular and interesting expression of the general
fact of susceptibility is seen in the sensitiveness of man to the
opinion in which he is held by others. Social life in every stage of
society is characterized by an eagerness to make a striking effect.
A bare reference to the ethnological facts in this connection will
suffice: The Kite Indians have a society of young men so brave and so
ostentatious of their bravery that they will not fight from cover nor
turn aside to avoid running into an ambuscade or a hole in the ice.
The African has the privilege of cutting a gash six inches long in
his thigh for every man he has killed. The Melanesian who is planning
revenge sets up a stick or stone where it can be seen; he refuses to
eat, and stays away from the dance; he sits silent in the council and
answers questions by whistling and by other signs draws attention to
himself and has it understood that he is a brave and dangerous man,
and that he is biding his time.[162]

This bidding for the good opinion of others has plainly a connection
with food-getting, and with the conflict side of life. High courage is
praised and valued by society, and a man of courage is less imposed on
by others, and comes in for substantial recognition and the favor of
women. It is thus of advantage to act in such a way as to get public
approval and some degree of appreciation; and a degree of sensibility
on the score of the opinion of others, or at least a reckoning upon
this, is involved in the process of personal adjustment.

But the problem of personal adjustment at this point would seem
to call for more of intelligence than emotion; and we find, on the
contrary, an excess of sensibility and a mania for being well thought
of hardly to be explained as originating in the exigencies of tribal
organization, nor yet on the score of its service to the individual in
getting his food and living out his life. Why could not primitive man
live in society, be of the war-parties, plan ambuscades, develop his
fighting technique and gear, be a blood-brother to another man, show
his trophies, set a high value on his personality, and insist on
recognition and respect, without this almost pathological dependence
on the praise and blame of others?

Or if we approach the question from another standpoint and inspect our
states of consciousness, we find signs that we have a greater fund of
sensibility than is justified in immediate activity. We have the same
mania to be well thought of; we are unduly interested when we hear
that others have been talking about us; we are annoyed, even furious,
at a slight criticism, and are childishly delighted by a compliment
(without regard to our deserts); and children and adults alike
understand how to put themselves forward and get notice, and equally
well how to get notice by withdrawing themselves and staying away or
out of a game. We have a tendency to show off which is not apparently
genetically connected with exploit or organization, and we recognize
that this form of vanity is not consistent with the ordinary run of
our activities when we argue with ourselves that the opinion of this
or that person is of no consequence and attempt to think ourselves
into a state of indifference. Intellectually and deliberately our
attitude toward criticism from others would often be, if we could
choose, represented by Tweed's query: "What are you going to do about
it?" But actually it puts us to bed.

All of this seems to indicate that there is an element in sensibility
not accounted for on the exploit or food side, and this element is, I
believe, genetically connected with sexual life. Unlike the struggle
for existence in the ordinary sense of the phrase, the courtship of
the sexes presents a situation in which an appeal is made for the
favor of another personality, and the success of this appeal has a
survival value--not for the individual, but for the species through
the individual. We have, in fact, a situation in which the good
opinion of another is vitally important. On this account the means
of attracting and interesting others are definitely and bountifully
developed among all the higher species of animals. Voice, plumage,
color, odor, and movement are powerful excitants in wooing and aids
both to the conquest of the female and the attraction of the male. In
this connection we must also recognize the fact that reproductive life
must be connected with violent stimulation, or it would be neglected
and the species would become extinct; and, on the other hand, if the
conquest of the female were too easy, sexual life would be in danger
of becoming a play interest and a dissipation, destructive of energy
and fatal to the species. Working, we may assume, by a process of
selection and survival, nature has both secured and safeguarded
reproduction. The female will not submit to seizure except in a high
state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing
of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to
manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a
marvelous display of technique for this purpose. This is offset by the
coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and
fascinates the male and practices upon him to induce a corresponding
state of nervous excitation.[163]

This is the only situation in the life of the lower animals, at
any rate, where the choice of another is vitally important; and
corresponding with the elaborate technique to secure this choice we
have in wooing pleasure-pain reactions of a violent character. In a
word, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of another answers on
the subjective side to technique for the conquest of a member of the
opposite sex. It seems, therefore, that we are justified in concluding
that our vanity and susceptibility have their origin largely in sexual
life, and that, in particular, our susceptibility to the opinion of
others and our dependence on their good will are genetically referable
to sexual life.

This view would be completely substantiated if we could show that the
qualities of vanity and susceptibility in question are present in any
species where it is impossible to assume that they were developed
in connection with the struggle for food and as the result of the
survival of types showing a tendency to combine and co-operate in
the effort to get food. And we do, in fact, have cases of this kind
among some of the lower animals. It cannot be said that the dog, for
instance, has survived in the struggle for existence because of his
sensitiveness to public opinion in his species nor on account of an
interest in being well thought of by the community of dogs at large
which would lead him to behave in a public-spirited or moral manner.
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.

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