A social grouping which is not the product of forces more active in their nature than the reproductive force may be expected to yield before male motor activities, when these are for any reason sufficiently formulated. The primitive warrior and hunter comes into honor and property through a series of movements involving judgments of time and space, and the successful direction of force, aided by mechanical appliances and mediated through the hand and the eye. Whether directed against the human or the animal world, the principle is the same; success and honor and influence in tribal life depend on the application of violence at the proper time, in the right direction, and in sufficient measure; and this is pre-eminently the business of the male. The advantage of acting in concert in war and hunting, and under the leadership of those who have shown evidence of the best judgment in these matters, is felt in any body of men who are held together by any tie; and the first tie is the tie of blood, by which we should understand, not that primitive man has any sentimental feeling about kinship, but that he is psychologically inseparable from those among whom he was born and with whom he has to do. Though the father's sense of kinship and interest in his children is originally feeble, it increases with the growth of consciousness in connection with various activities, and, at the point in race development when chieftainship is hereditary in the clan and personal property is recognized, the father realizes the awkwardness of a social system which reckons his children as members of another clan and forces him to bequeath his rank and possessions to his sister's children, or other members of his own group, rather than to his children. The Navajoes[148] and Nairs,[149] and ancient Egyptians[150] avoided this unpleasant condition by giving their property to their children during their own lifetime; and the Shawnees, Miamis, Sauks, and Foxes avoided it by naming the children into the clan of the father, giving a child a tribal name being equivalent to adoption.[151] The cleverest bit of primitive politics of which we have record is the device employed in ancient Peru, and surviving in historical times in Egypt and elsewhere in the East, by which the ruler married his own sister, contrary to the exogamous practice of the common folk. The children might then be regularly reckoned as of the kin of the mother, indeed, but they were at the same time of and in the group of the father, and the king secured the succession of his own son by marrying the woman whose son would traditionally succeed.
As we should expect, the desirability of modifying the system of descent and inheritance through females is felt first in connection with situations of honor and profit. At the time of the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands the government was a brutal despotism, presenting many of the features of feudalism; the people prostrated themselves before the king and before objects which he had touched, and a man suffered death whose shadow fell upon the king, or who went uncovered within the shadow of the king's house, or even looked upon the king by day.[152] But descent was in the female line, with a tendency to transfer to the male line in case of the king, and among chiefs, priests, and nobility.[153] This assertion of the male authority was sometimes resented, however, and was a source of frequent trouble. Wilkes states that there was formerly no regularly established order of succession to the throne; the children of the chief wife had the best claim, but the king often named his own successor, and this gave rise to violent conflicts.[154]
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 rôle also in the development of societies. Through movements the individual or the group is able to pick and choose advantageous relations, and by changing its location adjust itself to changes in the food conditions. That the success of the group is definitely related to its motor capacity is revealed by the following law of population, worked out by statisticians for the three predominant races of modern Europe: In countries inhabited jointly by these three races, the race possessing the smallest portion of wealth and the smallest representation among the more influential and educated classes constitutes also the least migratory element of the population, and tends in the least degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile regions of the country; and in countries inhabited jointly by the three races, the race possessing the largest portion of wealth and the largest representation among the more influential and educated classes is also the most migratory element of the population, and tends in the greatest degree to concentrate in the cities and the more fertile portions of the country.[156] The primitive movements of population necessitated by climatic change, geological disturbances, the failure of water or exhaustion of the sources of food, were occasions for the expression of the superior motor disposition of the male and for the dislodgment of the female from her position of advantage.
We know that the migrations of the natural races are necessary and frequent, and the movements of the culture races have been even more complex. The leadership of these mass-movements and spatial reaccommodations necessarily rests with the men, who, in their wanderings, have become acquainted with larger stretches of space; and whose specialty is motor co-ordination. The progressive races have managed the space problem best. At every favorable point they have pushed out their territorial boundaries or transferred their social activities to a region more favorable to their expansion. Under male leadership, in consequence, territory has always become the prize in every conflict of races; the modern state is based not on blood but on territory, and territory is at present the reigning political ideal.
In the process of coming into control of a larger environment through the motor activities of the male, the group comes into collision with other groups within which the same movement is going on, and it then becomes a question which group can apply force more destructively and remove or bring under control this human portion of its environment. Military organization and battle afford the grand opportunity for the individual and mass expression of the superior force-capacity of the male. They also determine experimentally which groups and which individuals are superior in this respect, and despotism, caste, slavery, and the subjection of women are concrete expressions of the trial.
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.