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Page 6
So thoroughly have modern men fastened their attention upon the problems
of the immediate present, that one feels driven to justify oneself in
taking up an historical investigation of any subject presented in a
popular manner. And yet it takes little argument to show that what we
shall be depends in large measure on what we are; and that what we are
rests back on what we have been. In anything we try to think or feel or
do, we quickly reach a limit; and this limit is determined by the
original quality of our nervous system plus the training it has
received. For here is the curious fact about this instrument of thought
and feeling which at once takes it away from comparison with mechanical
instruments. Whatever it does, becomes a part of itself, and then helps
to determine what it will do the next time and how it will do it. With
the making easy of mental operations through repetition, and with the
formation of associations based on our choices, it may be truly said
that we become whatever we habitually think and feel and do.
Every choice we make is thus literally built into our character and
becomes a part of ourselves. After that, the old choice will help
determine the new, and we shall find ourselves being directed by all of
our past choices, and even by the choices of our ancestors. Since, then,
all our earlier selves are continued in us and make us what we are, we
are simply studying ourselves when we study the history of our
ancestors. If we would go forward, we must first look backward; for we
must rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves.
But history is not merely the story of the past. To relate that, would
take as long as it took to live it, and the result would be but
weariness of spirit. History, to be significant, must select the events
with which it will deal; it must arrange these in series that are in
accord with the constitution of things; and then it must use the
generalizations it reaches to interpret the present, and even to
forecast the future. It is obvious that this interpretation will depend
on the point of view held by the interpreter.
Hence we must ask in what fundamental beliefs this presentation rests.
These are, first, that life tends to move along certain lines that
constitute the law of human nature. Just as the infant tends first to
wriggle, then creep, then walk, then run and dance, so human nature
tends to move upward from savagery through primitive settled life to the
complex forms of larger settled units. In this progress, material or
economic forces play a large part; but ideas, originally born out of
circumstances, but sometimes borrowed from other people, sometimes
degenerate remnants of past utilities, also play a large part. The
progress we finally make is thus directed by this human tendency, by
material circumstances, and by ideas. Sometimes it keeps pretty closely
to what seems to us to be upward human growth; sometimes it stagnates;
sometimes it gives us perverted products; and sometimes it destroys
itself.
Thus it becomes necessary to trace the past experiences of woman that we
may see with what heritage she faces the future. She is all that she
has felt and thought and done. She started with at least half of the
destiny of the race in her keeping. Handicapped in size and agility, and
periodically weighted down by the burdens of maternity, she still
possessed charms and was mistress of pleasures which made her, for
savage man, the dearest possession next to food; and for civilized man,
the companion, joy and inspiration of his days.
Of woman's position in early savage times we know only what we can learn
from fragmentary prehistoric remains, from the structure of early
languages, from records of travelers and students among savages of more
recent times; or what can be inferred from human nature in general. Most
of this data is difficult to interpret, but it is probable that woman's
position was not much worse than man's. It is a bad beast that fouls its
own food or its own nest; and the female had always the protection of
the male's desire. If she could not entirely control her body, she could
still control her own expressions of affection and desire; and, without
these, mere possession lost much of its charm.
As keeper of the cave, cultivator of the soil, and guardian of the
child, woman, rather than her more foot-loose mate, probably became the
center of the earliest civilization. The jealousy of men formed tribal
rules for her protection; and to these, religion early gave its powerful
sanctions. Thus there came a day when the woman took her mate home to
her tribe and gave her children her own name. Even if the matriarchal
period was not so important as has sometimes been assumed, woman
certainly had large influence over tribal affairs in early savage life.
With the increase in population, and the consequent disappearance of
game, man was forced to turn his attention to the crude agriculture
which woman had begun to develop. The superior qualities which he had
acquired in war and the chase, enabled him slowly to improve on these
beginnings and to shape a body of custom which made settled society
possible. With man's leadership in the family the patriarchal form of
government developed, and man's power over woman was sanctioned by
custom and law. The woman was stolen, or bought; and while sexual
attraction did not play the continuous part which it plays in developed
society, it must have done much to protect women from abuse and neglect,
at least during the years of girlhood and child-bearing. It is at this
point that our historical records begin.
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