(Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society.) What, in the most elemental form, is sex? It is a difference of function which makes it necessary for two organisms to take part in the reproduction of the species. The purpose, or at any rate the effect, of this sex difference is the mixing of characteristics and qualities. If the sex relationship were unnecessary to reproduction, variations might begin, and be propagated and carried to extremes in one line of inheritance, without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them; each line of descent would fly apart, and become a group all by itself. You have perhaps heard people comment on the fact that blondes so frequently prefer brunettes, and that tall men are apt to marry short women, and vice versa. This is perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of spreading qualities widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is continually trying out the powers of every individual in every species, and by the process of sexual selection she chooses, for the reproduction of the species, the individuals which are best fitted for survival. This, of course, refers to nature, considered apart from man. In human society, as I shall presently show, sexual selection has been distorted, and partly suppressed.
Sex differentiation and sexual selection exist almost universally throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, everywhere save in the lowest forms of being. They take strange and startling forms, and like everything else in nature manifest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to prove this or that about human sex relations will advance arguments from nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing whatever from nature, except her determination to preserve the products of her activity and to keep them up to standard. Sometimes nature will give the precedence in power, speed and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the female. She is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of her purpose to destroy the individuals of either sex. She will content the most rabid feminist by causing the female spider to devour her mate when his purpose has been accomplished; or by causing the male bee to fall from his mating in the air, a disemboweled shell.
As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his greater power to combine in groups; by his more intense gregarious, or herd instincts, which enabled him to fight and destroy creatures which would have exterminated him if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society everywhere, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group, and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights. Very thorough investigations have been made into the life of primitive man in many parts of the world, and the anthropologists are now arguing over the exact meaning of the data. We shall not here attempt to decide among them, but rest content with the statement that communism and tribal ownership is a widespread social form among primitive man, so much so as to suggest that it is an early stage in social evolution.
And this communism includes, not merely property, but sex. In the very earliest days there was often no barrier whatever to the sex relationship; not even between brothers and sisters, nor between parents and children. In fact, we find savages who do not know that the sex relationship has anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge increases, sex "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From causes not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter XLVIII, there gradually evolves a widespread form of sex relationship of primitive man, the system of the "gens," as it is called. This is the Latin word for family, but it does not mean family in the narrow sense of mother and father and children, but in the broad sense of all those who have blood relationship, however far removed—uncles and aunts and cousins, as far as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not permitted to enter into the sex relationship with a woman of the same gens, but with all the women of some other gens. It is difficult for us to imagine a society in which all the men named Jones would be married to all the women named Smith; but that was the way whole races of mankind lived for many thousands of years.
In that primitive communist society, the woman was generally the equal of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery of the camp, but the man, on the other hand, faced the hardships of battle and the chase on land and sea. The woman was as big as the man, and except when handicapped by pregnancy, as strong as the man; she was as much respected, if not more so. Her children bore her name, and were under her control, and she was accustomed to assert herself in all affairs of the tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas," you may read a comical story of a journey this traveler made into the interior of one of the cannibal islands. Everywhere he was treated with courtesy and hospitality, but was embarrassed by continual offers from would-be wives. In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and he was quite helpless in her grasp; he might have been a cannibal husband today, if it had not been for the intervention of his fellow travelers.
The basis of this sex equality under primitive communism is easy to understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and were shared alike according to need. Children were the tribe's most precious possession; therefore the woman suffered little handicap from having a child to bear and feed. Primitive woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick it up in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed food, she did not have to beg for it—if there was food for anyone, there was food for her and her child. She did her share of the gathering and preparing of food, because that was the habit and law of her being; she had energies, and had never heard of the idea of not using them.
This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe progresses. We cannot be sure of all the stages of its disappearance, or of the causes, but in a general way we can say that it gives way before the spread of slavery. In the beginning primitive man does not have any slaves, he does not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for that. When he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts their flesh and eats them; and those whom he captures alive, he binds fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo gods. But as he comes to more settled ways of living, and as the tribe grows larger, it occurs to the chiefs in battle that the captives would be glad to give their labor in return for their lives, and that it would be convenient to have some people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there comes to be a class at the bottom of society, and another class at the top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at work lay claim to the products of their labor—at first better weapons and personal adornments, then separate homes for the chiefs and priests, separate gardens, separate flocks and herds, and—what more natural?—separate women.............