Sex and Society Part 10

_A._ No one should draw water from the spring in order to supply the river.

_E._ Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

_A._ The elephant makes a dust and the buffalo makes a dust, but the dust of the buffalo is lost in the dust of the elephant.

_E._ _Duo c.u.m faciunt idem non est idem._

_A._ Ear, hear the other before you decide.

_E._ _Audi alteram partem._

On the side of number we have another test of the power of abstraction; and while the lower races show lack of practice in this, they show no lack of power. It is true that tribes have been found with no names for numbers beyond two, three, or five; but these are isolated groups, like the Veddahs and Bushmen, who have no trade or commerce, and lead a miserable existence, with little or nothing to count. The directions of attention and the simplicity or complexity of mental processes depend on the character of the external situation which the mind has to manipulate. If the activities are simple, the mind is simple, and if the activities were nil, the mind would be nil.

The mind is nothing but a means of manipulating the outside world.

Number, time, and s.p.a.ce conceptions and systems become more complex and accurate, not as the human mind grows in capacity, but as activities become more varied and call for more extended and accurate systems of notation and measurement. Trade and commerce, machinery and manufacture, and all the processes of civilization involve specialization in the apprehension of series as such. Under these conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires time and instruction for its mastery. The advance which mathematics has made within a brief historical time is strikingly ill.u.s.trated by the words with which the celebrated mathematician, Sir Henry Savile, who died in 1662, closed his career as a professor at Oxford:

By the grace of G.o.d, gentlemen hearers, I have performed my promise. I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained, according to my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms, and the first eight propositions of the _Elements_ of Euclid.

Here, sinking under the weight of years, I lay down my art and my instruments.[260]

From the standpoint of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of the science.

In respect, then, to brain structure and the more important mental faculties we find that no race is radically unlike the others. Still, it might happen that the mental activities and products of two groups were so different as to place them in different cla.s.ses. But precisely the contrary is true. There is in force a principle called the law of parallelism in development, according to which any group takes much the same steps in development as any other. The group may be belated, indeed, and not reach certain stages, but the ground patterns of life are the same in the lower races and in the higher. Mechanical inventions, textile industries, rude painting, poetry, sculpture, and song, marriage and family life, organization under leaders, belief in spirits, a mythology, and some form of church and state exist universally. At one time students of mankind, when they found a myth in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or an Aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge, were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic sources, or whether they did not afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition. But this standpoint has been abandoned, and it is recognized that the human mind and the outside world are essentially alike the world over; that the mind everywhere acts on the same principles; and that, ignoring the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar laws of growth among all peoples.

The number of things which can stimulate the human mind is somewhat definite and limited. Among them, for example, is death. This happens everywhere, and the death of a dear one may cause the living to imagine ways of being reunited. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may thus arise spontaneously and perpetually, wherever death and affection exist. Or, there may be a separation from home and friends, and the mind runs back in distress and longing over the happy past, and the state of consciousness aroused is as definite a fact among savages as among the civilized. A beautiful pa.s.sage in Homer represents Helen looking out on the Greeks from the wall of Troy and saying:

And now behold I all the other glancing-eyed Achaians, whom well I could discern and tell their names; but two captains of the host can I not see, even Kastor tamer of horses and Polydukes the skilful boxer, mine own brethren whom the same mother bare. Either they came not in the company from lovely Lakedaimon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.[261]

When this pa.s.sage is thus stripped of its technical excellence by a prose translation, we may compare it with the following New Zealand lament composed by a young woman who was captured on the island of Tuhua and carried to a mountain from which she could see her home:

My regret is not to be expressed. Tears, like a spring, gush from my eyes. I wonder whatever is Tu Kainku [her lover]

doing, he who deserted me. Now I climb upon the ridge of Mount Parahaki, whence is clear the view of the island of Tuhua.

I see with regret the lofty Tanmo where dwells [the chief]

Tangiteruru. If I were there, the shark's tooth would hang from my ear. How fine, how beautiful should I look!... But enough of this; I must return to my rags and to my nothing at all.[262]

The situation of the two women in this case is not identical, and it would be possible to claim that the Greek and Maori pa.s.sages differ in tone and coloring; but it remains true that a captive woman of any race will feel much the same as a captive woman of any other race when her thoughts turn toward home, and that the poetry growing out of such a situation will be everywhere of the same general pattern.

Similarly, to take an ill.u.s.tration from morals, we find that widely different in complexion and detail as are the moral codes of lower and higher groups, say the Hebrews and the African Kafirs, yet the general patterns of morality are strikingly coincident. It is reported of the Kafirs that "they possess laws which meet every crime which may be committed." Theft is punished by rest.i.tution and fine; injuring cattle, by death or fine; false witness, by a heavy fine; adultery, by fine or death; rape, by fine or death; poisoning or witchcraft, by death and confiscation of property; murder, by death or fine; treason or desertion from the tribe, by death or confiscation.[263] The Kafirs and Hebrews are not at the same level of culture, and we miss the more abstract and monotheistic admonitions of the higher religion--"thou shalt not covet; thou shalt worship no other G.o.ds before me"--but the intelligence shown by the social mind in adjusting the individual to society may fairly be called the same grade of intelligence in the two cases.

When the environmental life of two groups is more alike and the general cultural conditions more correspondent, the parallelism of thought and practice becomes more striking. The recently discovered a.s.syrian Code of Hammurabi (about 2500 B.C.) contains striking correspondences with the Mosaic code; and while Semitic scholars probably have good and sufficient reasons for holding that the Mosaic Code was strongly influenced by the a.s.syrian, we may yet be very confident that the two codes would have been of the same general character if no influence whatever had pa.s.sed from one to the other.

The inst.i.tutions and practices of a people are a product of the mind; and if the early and spontaneous products of mind are everywhere of the same general pattern as the later manifestations, only less developed, refined, and specialized, it may well be that failure to progress equally is not due to essential unlikeness of mind, but to conditions lying outside the mind.

Another test of mental ability which deserves special notice is mechanical ingenuity. Our white pre-eminence owes much to this faculty, and the lower races are reckoned defective in it. But the lower races do invent, and it is doubtful whether one invention is ever much more difficult than another. On the psychological side, an invention means that the mind sees a roundabout way of reaching an end when it cannot be reached directly. It brings into play the a.s.sociative memory, and involves the recognition of a.n.a.logies. There is a certain likeness between the flying back of a bough in one's face and the rebound of a bow, between a serpent's tooth and a poisoned arrow, between floating timber and a raft or boat; and water, steam, and electricity are like a horse in one respect--they will all make wheels go around, and do work.

Now, the savage had this faculty of seeing a.n.a.logies and doing things in indirect ways. With the club, knife, and sword he struck more effectively than with the fist; with hooks, traps, nets, and pitfalls he understood how to seize game more surely than with the hands; in the bow and arrow, spear, blow-gun, and spring-trap he devised motion swifter than that of his own body; he protected himself with armor imitated from the hides and scales of animals, and turned their venom back on themselves. That the savage should have originated the inventive process and carried it on systematically is, indeed, more wonderful than that his civilized successors should continue the process; for every beginning is difficult.

When occupations become specialized and one set of men has continually to do with one and only one set of machinery and forces, the constant play of attention over the limited field naturally results in improvements and the introduction of new principles. Modern inventions are magnificent and seem quite to overshadow the simpler devices of primitive times; but when we consider the precedents, copies, resources, and acc.u.mulated knowledge with which the modern investigator works, and, on the other hand, the resourcelessness of primitive man in materials, ideas, and in the inventive habit itself, I confess that the bow and arrow seems to me the most wonderful invention in the world.

Viewing the question from a different angle, we find another argument for the h.o.m.ogeneous character of the human mind in the fact that the patterns of interest of the civilized show no variation from those of the savage. Not only the appet.i.tes and vanities remain essentially the same, but, on the side of intellectual interest, the type of mental reaction fixed in the savage by the food-quest has come down unaltered to the man of science as well as to the man of the street. In circ.u.mventing enemies and capturing game, both the attention and the organic processes worked together in primitive man under great stress and strain. Whenever, indeed, a strain is thrown on the attention, the heart and organs of respiration are put under pressure also in their effort to a.s.sist the attention in manipulating the problem; and these organic fluctuations are felt as pleasure and pain. The strains thrown on the attention of primitive man were connected with his struggle for life; and not only in the actual encounter with men and animals did emotion run high, but the memory and antic.i.p.ation of conflict reinstated the emotional conditions in those periods when he was meditating future conflicts and preparing his bows and arrows, traps and poisons. The problem of invention, the reflective and scientific side of his life, was suffused with interest, because the manufacture of the weapon was, psychologically speaking, a part of the fight.

This type of interest, originating in the hunt, remains dominant in the mind down to the present time. Once constructed to take an interest in the hunting problem, it takes an interest in any problem whatever. Not only do hunting and fighting and all compet.i.tive games--which are of precisely the same psychological pattern as the hunt and fight--remain of perennial interest, but all the useful occupations are interesting in just the degree that this pattern is preserved. The man of science works at problems and uses his ingenuity in making an engine in the laboratory in the same way that primitive man used his mind in making a trap. So long as the problem is present, the interest is sustained; and the interest ceases when the problematical is removed. Consequently, all modern occupations of the hunting pattern--scientific investigation, law, medicine, the organization of business, trade speculation, and the arts and crafts--are interesting as a game; while those occupations into which the division of labor enters to the degree that the workman is not attempting to control a problem, and in which the same acts are repeated an indefinite number of times, lose interest and become extremely irksome.

This means that the brain acts pleasurably on the principle it was made up to act on in the most primitive times, and the rest is a burden. There is no brain change, but the social changes have been momentous; and the brain of each generation is brought into contact with new traditions, inhibitions, copies, obligations, problems, so that the run of attention and content of consciousness are different.

Social suggestion works marvels in the manipulation of the mind; but the change is not in the brain as an organ; it is rather in the character of the stimulations thrust on it by society.

The child begins as a savage, and after we have brought to bear all the influence of home, school, and church to socialize him, we speak as though his nature had changed organically, and inst.i.tute a parallelism between the child and the race, a.s.suming that the child's brain pa.s.ses in a recapitulatory way through phases of development corresponding to epochs in the history of the race. I have no doubt myself that this theory of recapitulation is largely a misapprehension. A stream of social influence is turned loose on the child; and if the attention to him is incessant and wise, and the copies he has are good and stimulating, he is molded nearer to the heart's desire. Sometimes he escapes, and becomes a criminal, tramp, sport, or artist; and even if made into an impeccable and model citizen, he periodically breaks away from the network of social habit and goes a-fishing.

The fundamental explanation of the difference in the mental life of two groups is not that the capacity of the brain to do work is different, but that the attention is not in the two cases stimulated and engaged along the same lines. Wherever society furnishes copies and stimulations of a certain kind, a body of knowledge and a technique, practically all its members are able to work on the plan and scale in vogue there, and members of an alien race who become acquainted in a real sense with the system can work under it. But when society does not furnish the stimulations, or when it has preconceptions which tend to inhibit the run of attention in given lines, then the individual shows no intelligence in these lines. This may be ill.u.s.trated in the fields of scientific and artistic interest.

Among the Hebrews a religious inhibition--"thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"--was sufficient to prevent anything like the sculpture of the Greeks; and the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in the early Christian church, and the teaching that man was made in the image of G.o.d, formed an almost insuperable obstacle to the study of human anatomy.

The Mohammedan att.i.tude toward scientific interest is represented by the following extracts from a letter from an oriental official to a western inquirer, printed by Sir Austen Henry Layard:

_My Ill.u.s.trious Friend and Joy of my Liver:_

The thing which you ask of me is both difficult and useless.

Although I have pa.s.sed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But above all, as to the previous history of this city, G.o.d only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were unprofitable for us to inquire into it.... Listen, O my son! There is no wisdom equal to the belief in G.o.d! He created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of his creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years? Let it go! He from whose hand it came will guide and direct it.... Thou art learned in the things I care not for, and as for that which thou hast seen, I spit upon it.

Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou seek paradise with thine eyes?...

The meek in spirit, IMAUM ALI ZADI.[264]

The works of Sir Henry Maine, who gained by his long residence in India a profound insight into the oriental character, frequently point out that the eastern pride in conservatisms is quite as real as the western pride in progress:

Vast populations, some of them with a civilization considerable but peculiar, detest that which in the language of the West would be called reform. The entire Mohammedan world detests it. The mult.i.tudes of colored men who swarm in the great continent of Africa detest it, and it is detested by that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on one side as barbarous or savage. The millions upon millions of men who fill the Chinese Empire loathe it and (what is more) despise it.... There are few things more remarkable, and in their way more instructive, than the stubborn incredulity and disdain which a man belonging to the cultivated part of Chinese society opposes to the vaunts of western civilization which he frequently hears.... There is in India a minority, educated at the feet of English politicians and in books saturated with English political ideas, which has learned to repeat their language; but it is doubtful whether even these, if they had a voice in the matter, would allow a finger to be laid on the very subjects with which European legislation is beginning to concern itself--social and religious usage. There is not, however, the shadow of a doubt that the enormous ma.s.s of the Indian population hates and dreads change.[265]

To the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern. It is known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for a short period during a history of incalculable length.[266]

The oriental att.i.tude does not argue a lack of brain power, but a prepossession hostile to scientific inquiry. The society represented does not interest its members in what, from the western standpoint, is knowledge.

The Chinese afford a fine example of a people of great natural ability letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of a scientific standpoint. As indicated above, they are not defective in brain weight, and their application to study is long continued and very severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint. They learn no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry of the T'ang Dynasty, in order to learn the Chinese characters, and in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern characters are not represented in this ancient poetry. Their attention to Chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past; but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction between fact and fiction. In general, they learn only rules and no principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own work:

Mult.i.tudes of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful.

A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming navete that he had never understood the allusions in the Trimetrical Cla.s.sic (which stands at the very threshold of Chinese study) until at the age of sixty he had an opportunity to read a Universal History prepared by a missionary, in which for the first time Chinese history was made accessible to him.[267]

Add to this that the whole of their higher learning, corresponding to our university system, consists in writing essays and always more essays on the Chinese cla.s.sics, and "it is impossible," as Mr.

Smith points out, "not to marvel at the measure of success which has attended the use of such materials in China."[268] But when this people is in possession of the technique of the western world--a logic, general ideas, and experimentation--we cannot reasonably doubt that they will be able to work the western system as their cousins, the j.a.panese, are doing, and perhaps they, too, may better the instruction.

White effectiveness is probably due to a superior technique acting in connection with a superior body of knowledge and sentiment. Of two groups having equal mental endowment, one may outstrip the other by the mere dominance of incident. It is a notorious fact that the course of human history has been largely without prevision or direction.

Things have drifted and forces have arisen. Under these conditions an unusual incident--the emergence of a great mind or a forcible personality, or the operation of influences as subtle as those which determine fashions in dress--may establish social habits and duties which will give a distinct character to the modes of attention and mental life of the group. The most significant fact for Aryan development is the emergence among the Greeks of a number of eminent men who developed logic, the experimental method, and philosophic interest, and fixed in their group the habit of looking behind the incident for the general law. Mediaeval attention was diverted from these lines by a religious movement, and the race lost for a time the key to progress and got clean away from the Greek copies; but it found them again and took a fresh start with the revival of Greek learning.

It is quite possible to make a fetish of cla.s.sical learning; but Sir Henry Maine's remark, that nothing moves in the modern world that is not Greek in its origin, is quite just.

The real variable is the individual, not the race. In the beginning--perhaps as the result of a mutation or series of mutations--a type of brain developed which has remained relatively fixed in all times and among all races. This brain will never have any faculty in addition to what it now possesses, because as a type of structure it is as fixed as the species itself, and is indeed a mark of species. It is not apparent either that we are greatly in need of another faculty, or that we could make use of it even if by a chance mutation it should emerge, since with the power of abstraction we are able to do any cla.s.s of work we know anything about. Moreover, the brain is less likely to make a leap now than in earlier time, both because the conditions of nature are more fixed or more nearly controlled by man, and hence the urgency of adjustment to sharp variations in external conditions is removed, and because the struggle for existence has been mitigated so that the unfit survive along with the fit. Indeed, the rapid increase in idiocy and insanity shown by statistics indicates that the brain is deteriorating slightly, _on the average_, as compared with earlier times.[269]

Nature is not producing a better average brain than in the time of Aristotle and the Greeks. If we have more than the wisdom of our ancestors, our advantage lies in our specialization, our superior body of knowledge, and our superior technique for its transmission. At the same time, the individual brain is unstable, fluctuating in normal persons between 1,100 and 1,500 grams in weight, while the extremes of variation are represented, on the one side, by the imbecile with 300 grams, and the man of genius with 2,000 on the other. It is therefore perfectly true that by artificial selection--Mr. Galton's "eugenism"--a larger average brain could be created, and also a higher average of natural intelligence, whether this be absolutely dependent on brain weight or not. But it is hardly to be expected that a stable brain above the capacity of those of the first rank now and in the past will result, since the mutations of nature are more radical than the breeding process of man, and she probably ran the whole gamut.

"Great men lived before Agamemnon," and individual variations will continue to occur, but not on a different pattern; and what has been true in the past will happen again in the future, that the group which by hook or by crook comes into possession of the best technique and the best copies will make the best show of intelligence and march at the head of civilization.

III

The foregoing examination of the relation of the mental faculty of the lower races to the higher places us in a position to examine to better advantage the other question of the relation of the intelligence of woman to that of man.

The differences in mental expression between the lower and the higher races can be expressed for the most part in terms of attention and practice. The differences in run of attention and practice are in this case due to the development of different habits by groups occupying different habitats, and consequently having no copies in common.

Woman, on the other hand, exists in the white man's world of practical and scientific activity, but is excluded from full partic.i.p.ation in it. Certain organic conditions and historical incidents have, in fact, inclosed her in habits which she neither can nor will fracture, and have also set up in the mind of man an att.i.tude toward her which renders her almost as alien to man's interests and practices as if she were spatially separated from them.