"As the basic needs of man are hunger and love, so the fundamental functions of social organization are economic provision and biological maintenance; a stream of children is as vital as a continuity of food. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] Until the state -- towards the dawn of the historic civilizations -- becomes the central an permanent source of social order, the clan undertakes the delicate task of regulating the relations between the sexes and between the generations, and even after the state has been established, the essential government of mankind remains in that most deep-rooted of all historic institutions, the family. [...] When economic relations and political mastery replaced kinship as the principle of social organization and political mastery replaced kinship as the principle of social organization, the clan lost its position as the sub-structure of society; at the bottom it was supplanted by the family, at the top it was superseded by the state. Government took over the problem of maintaining order, while the family assumed the tasks of reorganizing industry and carrying on the race."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] Throughout the animal world, fertility and destruction decrease as parental care increases; throughout the human world, the birth rate and the death rate fall together as civilization rises. Better family care makes possible a longer adolescence, in which the young receive fuller training and development before they are flung upon their own resources; and the lowered birth rate releases human energy for other activities than reproduction."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] In some existing tribes, and probably in the earliest human groups the physiological role of the male in reproduction appears to have escaped notice quite as completely as among animals, who rut and mate and breed with happy unconsciousness of cause and effect. The Trobriand Islanders attribute pregnancy not to any commerce of the sexes, but to the entrance of a baloma, or ghost, into the woman. Usually the ghost enters while the woman is bathing; 'a fish has bitten me,' the girl reports. 'When,' says Malinowski, 'I asked who was the father of an illegitimate child, there was only one answer - that there was no father, since the girl was unmarried. If, then, I asked, in quite plain terms, who was the physiological father, the question was not understood...The answer would be: 'It is a baloma who gave her this child.'' These islanders had a strange belief that the baloma would more readily enter a girl given to loose relations with men; nevertheless, in choosing precautions against pregnancy, the girls preferred to avoid bathing at high tide rather than to forego relations with men. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] Even where the function of the male was understood, sex relationships were so irregular that it was never a simple matter to determine the father. Consequently the quite primitive seldom bothered to inquire into the paternity of her child; it belonged to her, and she belonged not to her husband but to her father -- or her brother -- and the clan; it was with these that she remained, and these were the only male relatives whom her child would know. The bonds of affection between brother and sister were usually stronger than between husband and wife. The husband, in many cases, remained in the family and clan of his mother, and saw his wife only as a clandestine visitor. Even in classical civilization the brother was dearer than the husband: it was her brother, not her husband, that the wife of Intaphernes saved from the wrath of Darius; it was for her brother, not for her husband, that Antigone sacrificed herself. 'The notion that a man's wife is the nearest person in the world to him is a relatively modern notion, and one which is restricted to a comparatively small part of the human race.'
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935 (italics added)
"So slight is the relation between father and children in primitive society that in a great number of tribes the sexes live apart. In Australia and Micronesia, in Assam and Burma, among the Aleuts, Eskimos, and Samoyeds, and here and there over the earth, tribes may still be found in which there is no visible family life; the men live apart from the women, and visit them only now and then; even the meals are taken separately. In northern Papua it is not considered right for a man to be seen associating socially with a woman, even if she is the mother of his children. In Tahiti 'family life is quite unknown.' [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"The simplest form of the family, then, was the woman and her children, living with her mother or her brother in the clan; such an arrangement was a natural outgrowth of the animal family of the mother and her litter, and of the biological ignorance of primitive man.
An alternate early form was 'matrilocal marriage': the husband left his clan and went to live with the clan and family of his wife, laboring for her or with her in the service of her parents. Descent, in such cases, was traced through the female line, and inheritance was through the mother; sometimes even the kingship passed down through her raher than through the male. This 'mother-right' was not a 'matriarchate' -- it did not imply the rule of women over men. Even when property was transmitted through the woman she had little power over it; she was used as a means of tracing relationships which, through primitive laxity or freedom, were otherwise obscure.
It is true that in any system the woman exercises a certain authority, rising naturally out of her importance in the home, out of her function as the dispenser of food, and out of the need that the male has for her, ad her power to refuse him. It is also true that there have been, occasionally, women rulers among some South African tribes; that in the Pelew Islands the chief did nothing of consequence without the advice of a council of elder women; that among the Iroquois the squaws had an equal right, with the men, of speaking and voting in the tribal council; and that among the Seneca Indians women held great power, even to the selection of the chief. But these are rare and exceptional cases.
All in all the position of woman in early societies was one of subjection verging upon slavery. Her periodic disability, her unfamiliarity with weapons, the biological absorption of her strength in carrying, nursing and rearing children, handicapped her in the war of the sexes, and doomed her to a subordinate status in all but the very lowest and the very highest societies. Nor was her position necessarily to rise with the development of civilization; it was destined to be lower in Periclean Greece than among the North American Indians; it was to rise and fall with her strategic importance rather than with the culture and morals of men."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935 (Formatting and italics added)
"Most economic advances, in early society, were made by the woman rather than the man. While for centuries he clung to the ancient ways of hunting and herding, she developed agriculture near the camp, and those busy arts of the home which were to become the most important industries of later days. [...] It was she who developed the home, slowly adding man to the his of her domesticated animals, and training him in those social dispositions and amenities which are the basis and cement of civilization."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] The growth of transmissible property in cattle and in the products of the soil led to the sexual subordination of woman, for the male now demanded from her that fidelity which he thought would enable him to pass on his accumulations to children presumably his own. Gradually the man had his way: fatherhood became recognized, and property began to descend through the male; mother-right yielded to father-right; and the patriarchal family, with the oldest male at its head, became the economic, legal, political, and moral unit of society. The gods, who had been mostly feminine, became great bearded patriarchs, with such harems as ambitious men dreamed of in their solitude."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
"[...] Marriage began as a form of the law of property, as a part of the institution of slavery."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.3, Section 4, 1935
No comments:
Post a Comment