TABOO AND GENET 
 
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Cornell University Library 
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 Taboo and genetics; a study of the biolog 
 
 3 1924 013 802 412 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 A STUDY OF THE BIOLOGICAL, 
 
 SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE FAMILY 
 
Taboo and Genetics 
 
 A STUDY OF THE BIOLOGICAL, 
 
 SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE FAMILY 
 
 BY 
 
 M. M. KNIGHT, Ph.D. 
 
 IVA LOWTHER PETERS, Ph.D. 
 
 PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, Ph.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THE ADOLESCENT GIRl" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
Copyright, 1920, by 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 OUR FRIEND AND TEACHER, 
 
 FRANK HAMILTON HANKINS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Scientific discovery, especially in biology, 
 during the past two decades has made neces- 
 sary an entire restatement of the sociological 
 problem of sex. Ward's so-called "gynaecocen- 
 tric" theory, as sketched in Chapter 14 of his 
 Pure Sociology, has been almost a bible on the 
 sex problem to sociologists, in spite of the fact 
 that modern laboratory experimentation has 
 disproved it in almost every detail. While a 
 comparatively small number of people read this 
 theory from the original source, it is still being 
 scattered far and wide in the form of quota- 
 tions, paraphrases, and interpretations by more 
 popular writers. It is therefore necessary to 
 gather together the biological data which are 
 available from technical experimentation and 
 medical research, in order that its social im- 
 plications may be utilized f show the obsolete- 
 ness of this older and unscientific statement of 
 the sex problem in society. 
 
 In order to have a thoroughly comprehensive 
 survey of the institutions connected with sex- 
 ual relationships and the family and their en- 
 tire significance for human life, it is also neces-, 
 
viii PEEFACE 
 
 sary to approach them from the ethnological 
 and psychological points of view. The influence 
 of the primitive sex taboos on the evolution of 
 the social mores and family life has received 
 too little attention in the whole literature of 
 sexual ethics and the sociology of sex. That 
 these old customs have had an inestimable in- 
 fluence upon the members of the group, modern 
 psychology has recently come to recognize. It 
 therefore seems advantageous to include these 
 psychological findings in the same book with 
 the discussion of the sex taboos and other ma- 
 terial with which it must so largely deal. 
 
 These fields — biology, ethnology, and psy- 
 chology — are so complicated and so far apart 
 technically, although their social implications 
 are so closely interwoven, that it has seemed 
 best to divide the treatment between three dif- 
 ferent writers, <?ach of whom has devoted much 
 study to his special phase of the subject. This 
 leads to a very simple arrangement of the ma- 
 terial. The first part deals with the physical 
 or biological basis of the sex problem, which all 
 societies from the most primitive to the most 
 advanced have had and still have to build upon. 
 The second part deals with the various ideas 
 man has developed in his quest for a satisfac- 
 tory adaptation of this physical basis to his 
 own requirements. Part three attempts to an- 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 alyze the effect of this long history of social 
 experimentation upon the human psyche in its 
 modern social milieu. 
 
 In the social evolution of the human mind, 
 the deepest desires of the individual have been 
 often necessarily sacrificed to the needs of the 
 group. Sometimes they have been unneces- 
 sarily sacrificed, since human intelligence is, 
 unfortunately, not omniscient. Nevertheless, 
 the sum total of human knowledge has now be- 
 come great enough so that it is at least well to 
 pause and take account of its bearing on the 
 age-old problem of family life, in order that 
 our evolution henceforth may be guarded by 
 rational control rather than trial and error in 
 so far as is possible. Such a summarization of 
 our actual knowledge of the biology, sociology 
 and psychology of the foundations of the family 
 institution this book aims to present, and if it 
 can at the same time suggest a starting point 
 for a more rationalized system of social control 
 in this field, its purpose will have been accom- 
 plished. 
 
 The Authoks. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 By M. M. Knight, Ph.D. 
 
 THE NEW BIOLOGY AND THE SEX PROBLEM IN 
 SOCIETY 
 
 IAPTHB fi.t 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM DEFINED 
 
 What is sex? A sexual and mixed reproduction. 
 Origin of sexual reproduction. Advantage of sex 
 in chance of survival. Germ and body cells. Limi- 
 tations of biology in social problems. Sex always 
 present in higher animals. Sex in mammals — the 
 problem in the human species. Application of the 
 laboratory method. 
 
 II. SEX IN TERMS OF INTERNAL SECRETIONS. 21 
 
 Continuity of germ plasm. The sex chromosome. 
 The internal secretions and the sex complex. The 
 male and the female type of body. How removal of 
 sex glands affects body type. Sex determination. 
 Share of the egg and sperm in inheritance. The 
 nature of sex — sexual selection of little importance. 
 The four main types of secretory systems. Sex and 
 sex instincts of rats modified by surgery. Dual basis 
 for sex. Opposite sex basis in every individual. 
 The Free-Martin cattle. Partial reversal of sex in' 
 human species. j 
 
 IH. SEX AND SEX DIFFERENCES AS QUANTITA- ^ - . 
 TIVE 68 
 
 Intersexes in moths. Bird intersexes. Higher metab- 
 olism of males. -Quantitative difference between 
 sex factors. Old ideas of intersexuality. Modern 
 xi 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 surgery and human intersexes. Quantitative theory 
 a Mendelian explanation. Peculiar complication in 
 the case of man. Chemical life-cycles of the sexes. 
 Functional-reproductive period and the sex problem. 
 Relative significance of physiological sex differences. 
 
 IV. SEX SPECIALIZATION AND GROUP SUR- 
 VIVAL 102 
 
 Adaptation and specialization. Reproduction a 
 group — not an individual problem. Conflict between 
 specialization and adaptation. Intelligence makes 
 for economy in adjustment to environment. Re- 
 production, not production, the chief factor in the 
 sex problem. 
 
 V. RACIAL DEGENERATION AND THE NECES- 
 SITY FOR RATIONALIZATION OF THE 
 MORES 114 
 
 Racial decay in modern society. Purely "moral" 
 control dysgenic in civilized society. New machin- 
 ery for social control. Mistaken notion that repro- 
 duction is an individual problem. Economic and 
 other factors in the group problem of reproduction. 
 
 PART II 
 
 By Iva Lowthek Petebs, Ph.D. 
 
 THE INSTITUTIONALIZED SEX TABOO 
 
 I. THE PRIMITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD SEX 
 
 AND WOMANHOOD 131 
 
 Primitive social control. Its rigidity. Its neces- 
 sity. The universality of this control in the form of 
 taboos. Connection between the universal attitude 
 of primitive peoples toward woman as shown in the 
 Institutionalized Sex Taboo and the magico-religious 
 belief in Mana. Relation of Mana to Taboo. Dis- 
 cussion of Sympathetic Magic and the associated idea 
 of danger from contact. Difficulties in the way of 
 an inclusive definition of Taboo. Its dual nature. 
 Comparison of concepts of Crawley, Frazer, Marett, 
 and others. Conclusion that Taboo is Negative 
 Mana. Contribution of modern psychology to the 
 study of Taboo. Freud's analogy between the dual- 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHARTER PAGE 
 
 istic attitude toward the tabooed object and the 
 ambivalence of the emotions. The understanding 
 of this dualism together with the primitive belief in 
 Mana and Sympathetic Magic explains much in the 
 attitude of man toward woman. The vast amount of 
 evidence in the taboos of many peoples of dualism in 
 the attitude toward woman. Possible physiological 
 explanation of this dualistic attitude of man toward 
 woman found in a period before self-control had in 
 some measure replaced social control, in the reaction 
 of weakness and disgust following sex festivals. 
 
 II. FROM THE DAWN OF HISTORY: WOMAN AS 
 
 SAINT AND WITCH 175 
 
 Taboos of first chapter indicate that in the early ages 
 the fear of contamination by woman predominated. 
 Later emphasis fell on her mystic and uncanny power. 
 Ancient fertility cults. Temple prostitution, dsdica- 
 cation of virgins, etc. Ancient priestesses and 
 prophetesses. Medicine early developed by woman 
 added to belief in her power. Woman's psychic 
 quality of intuition: its origin — theories — conclusion 
 that this quality is probably physiological in origin, 
 but aggravated by taboo repressions. Transforma- 
 tion in attitude toward woman in the early Christian 
 period. Psychological reasons for the persistence 
 in religion of a Mother Goddess. Development of 
 the Christian concept. Preservation of ancient 
 woman cults as demonology. Early Christian 
 attitude toward woman as unclean and in league 
 with demons. Culmination of belief in demonic 
 power of woman in witchcraft persecutions. All 
 women affected by the belief in witches and in the 
 uncleanness of woman. Gradual development on 
 the basis of the beliefs outlined of an ideally pure and 
 immaculate Model Woman. 
 
 111. THE DUALISM IN MODERN LIFE: THE IN- 
 STITUTIONAL TABOO 210 
 
 The Taboo and modern institutions. Survival of 
 ideas of the uncleanness of woman. Taboo and the 
 family. The "good" woman. The "bad" woman. 
 Increase in the number of women who do not fit 
 into the ancient classifications. 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IV. DYSGENIC INFLUENCES OF THE INSTITU- 
 TIONAL TABOO 230 
 
 Taboo survivals act dysgenically within the family 
 under present conditions. Conventional education 
 of girls a dysgenic influence. Prostitution and the 
 family. Influence of ancient standards of "good" 
 and "bad." The illegitimate child. Effect of fear, 
 anger, etc., on posterity. The attitude of economic- 
 ally independent women toward marriage. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 By Phyllis Blanchakd, Ph.D. 
 
 THE SEX PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 I. SEX IN TERMS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 247 
 Bearing of modern psychology on the sex problem. 
 Conditioning of the sexual impulse. Vicarious ex- 
 pression of the sexual impulse. Unconscious factors 
 of the sex life. Taboo control has conditioned the 
 natural biological tendencies of individuals to con- 
 form to arbitrary standards _ of masculinity and 
 femininity. Conflict between individual desires and 
 social standards. 
 
 II. HOW OUR INSTITUTIONS FIT INDIVIDUAL 
 
 SEX PSYCHOLOGY 260 
 
 Social institutions controlling sex activities based on 
 the assumption that all Women are adapted to as 
 well as specialized for reproduction. Neurotic 
 tendencies which - unfit women for marriage — the 
 desire for domination. Sexual anaesthesia another 
 neurotic trait which 'interferes with marital harmony. 
 The conditioning of the sexual impulse to the parent 
 ideal and the erotic fetish as iactors which deter- 
 mine mating. Homosexual tendencies and their 
 part in the sex problem. The conflict between the 
 desire for marriage and egoistic ambitions. The 
 social regulations from the viewpoint of individual 
 psychology. 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 CHAPTBH PAGE 
 
 III. DYSGENIC NATURE OP CERTAIN FACTORS 
 OF SEX PSYCHOLOGY AND NECESSITY 
 FOR A SOCIAL THERAPY 281 
 
 Mating determined by unconscious psychological 
 motives instead of eugenic considerations. Some of 
 the best male and female stock refusing marriage and 
 parenthood. The race is reproduced largely by the 
 inferior and average stocks and very little by the 
 superior stock. As a therapeutic measure, society 
 should utilize psychological knowledge as a new 
 method of control. Romantic love and conjugal love 
 — a new ideal of love. The solution of the conflict 
 between individual and group interests. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE NEW BIOLOGY AND THE SEX PROBLEM 
 IN SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 M. M. KNIGHT, Ph.D. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PBOBLEM DEFINED 
 
 What is sex? Asexual and mixed reproduction; Origin of 
 sexual reproduction j Advantage of sex in chance of 
 survival; Germ and body cells; Limitations of biology 
 in social problems; Sex always present in higher ani- 
 mals; Sex in mammals; The sex problem in the human 
 species; Application of laboratory method. 
 
 Sex, like all complicated phenomena, defies 
 being crowded into a simple definition. In an 
 animal or plant individual it is expressed by 
 and linked with the ability to produce egg- or 
 sperm-cells (ova or spermatozoa). Sexual re- 
 production is simply the chain of events follow- 
 ing the union of the egg and sperm to produce a 
 new individual. Looked at from another angle, 
 it is that sort of reproduction which requires 
 two differentiated individuals : the male, which 
 produces spermatozoa, and the female, which 
 produces ova. In the case of very simple forms, 
 it would be simply the union or conjugation of a 
 male and a female individual and the repro- 
 
4 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ductive process involved. Where there is no 
 differentiation into male and female there is no 
 sex. 
 
 An individual which produces both sperm- 
 and egg-cells within its body is termed an 
 hermaphrodite. Very few hermaphrodites ex- 
 ist among the vertebrates, although they may be 
 found in one or two species (e.g., the hagfish). 
 There are no truly hermaphroditic mammals, 
 i.e., individuals in which both the male and the 
 female germ cells function, except perhaps in 
 rare instances. 
 
 Sexless or asexual reproduction assumes va- 
 rious forms. What is usually considered the 
 most primitive of these is fission or simple divi- 
 sion, in which the cell divides into two equal, 
 identical parts. There is of course no sugges- 
 tion of sex here. It is fairly safe to assume that 
 life began thus in the world, as neuter or sex- 
 less — i.e., with no suggestion of either maleness 
 or femaleness.* 
 
 *This asexual type of reproduction has been misinterpreted 
 by a whole school of non-biological writers, who have followed 
 the lead of Lester F. Ward, in his classification of these neuter 
 organisms as females. Ward says (' ' Pure Sociology, ' ' Ch. 14) : 
 "It does no violence to language or science to say that life 
 begins with the female organism and is carried on a long 
 distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 5 
 
 There are a number of other forms of asexual 
 reproduction, or the "vegetative type" (Ab- 
 bott's term, which includes fission, budding, 
 polysporogonia and simple spore formation). 
 Budding (as in yeast) and spore formation are 
 familiar to us in plants. Such forms are too 
 distant from man, in structure and function, for 
 profitable direct comparison. Especially is this 
 true with respect to sex, which they do not 
 possess. 
 
 Parthenogenesis includes very diverse and 
 anomalous cases. The term signifies the ability 
 of females to reproduce in such species for one 
 or a number of generations without males. 
 Many forms of this class (or more strictly, these 
 classes) have apparently become specialized or 
 degenerated, having once been more truly sex- 
 ual. Parthenogenesis (division and develop- 
 
 of asexual reproduction from fission to parthenogenesis, the 
 female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform 
 all the functions of life including reproduction. In a word, 
 life begins as female" (p. 313). Adding to this statement 
 the assertion that the male developed at first as a mere para- 
 site, in the actual, physical sense, Ward proceeds to build up 
 his famous Gynaecocentric Theory, which is familiar to all 
 students of social science, and need not be elaborated here. 
 It is obvious that a thorough biological knowledge destroys 
 the fundamental concept on which this theory is founded, for 
 there is no doubt that life begins as neuter or sexless, and 
 not as female. 
 
6 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ment of an egg without the agency of male 
 sperm) has been brought about artificially by 
 Jacques Loeb in species as complicated as frogs. 
 (1, 2.) All the frogs produced were males, so 
 that the race (of frogs) could not even be the- 
 oretically carried on by that method. 
 
 The origin of sexual reproduction in animals 
 must have been something as follows : The first 
 method of reproduction was by a simple divi- 
 sion of the unicellular organism to form two 
 new individuals. At times, a fusion of two in- 
 dependent individuals occurred. This was 
 known as conjugation, and is seen among Para- 
 mecia and some other species today. Its value 
 is probably a reinvigoration of the vitality of 
 the individual. Next there was probably a 
 tendency for the organism to break up into 
 many parts which subsequently united with 
 each other. Gradually some of these uniting 
 cells came to contain more food material than 
 the others. As a result of their increased size, 
 they possessed less power of motion than the 
 others, and in time lost their cilia (or flagella) 
 entirely and were brought into contact with the 
 smaller cells only by the motion of the latter. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 7 
 
 Finally, in colonial forms, most of the cells in 
 the colony ceased to have any share in repro- 
 duction, that function heing relegated to the 
 activities of a few cells which broke away and 
 united with others similarly adrift. These cells 
 functioning for reproduction continued to dif- 
 ferentiate more and more, until large ova and 
 small, motile spermatozoa were definitely de- 
 veloped. 
 
 The clearest evidence as to the stages in the 
 evolution of sexual reproduction is found in the 
 plant world, among the green algae. (5.) In the 
 lower orders of one-celled algae, reproduction 
 takes place by simple cell division. In some 
 families, this simple division results in the pro- 
 duction of several new individuals instead of 
 only two from each parent cell. A slightly dif- 
 ferent condition is found in those orders where 
 the numerous cells thus produced by simple 
 division of the parent organism unite in pairs 
 to produce new individuals after a brief inde- 
 pendent existence of their own. These free- 
 swimming cells, which apparently are formed 
 only to reunite with each other, are called zoo- 
 spores, while the organism which results from 
 
8 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 their fusion is known as a zygospore. The zygo- 
 spore thus formed slowly increases in size, until 
 it in its turn develops a new generation of zoo- 
 spores. In still other forms, in place of the 
 zoospores, more highly differentiated cells, 
 known as eggs and sperms, are developed, and 
 these unite to produce the new individuals. 
 Both eggs and sperms are believed to have been 
 derived from simpler ancestral types of ciliated 
 cells which were similar in structure and closely 
 resembled zoospores.* 
 
 Having once originated, the sexual type of 
 reproduction possessed a definite survival value 
 which assured its continuation. Sex makes pos- 
 sible a crossing of strains, which evidently pos- 
 sesses some great advantage, since the few 
 simple forms which have no sach division of 
 reproductive functions have undergone no great 
 development and all the higher, more compli- 
 cated animals are sexual. This crossing of 
 strains may make possible greater variety, it 
 may help in crossing out or weakening varia- 
 
 'This evidence, which points to the conclusion that in the 
 early origin of sexual reproduction the males and females 
 were differentiated and developed from a uniform type of 
 ancestral cell, quite controverts Ward's point that the male 
 originated as a kind of parasite. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 9 
 
 tions which are too far from the average, or 
 both. 
 
 Schafer (4) thinks that an exchange of 
 nuclear substance probably gives a sort of 
 chemical rejuvenation and very likely stimu- 
 lates division. At any rate, the groups in which 
 the reproductive process became thus parti- 
 tioned between two kinds of individuals, male 
 and female, not only survived, but they under- 
 went an amazing development compared with 
 those which remained sexless. 
 
 There came a time in the evolution of the 
 groups possessing sexual reproduction, when 
 increasing specialization necessitated the divi- 
 sion into reproductive and non-reproductive 
 cells. When a simple cell reproduces by divid- 
 ing into two similar parts, each developing into 
 a new individual like the parent, this parent no 
 longer exists as a cell, but the material which 
 composed it still exists in the new ones. The 
 old cell did not "die" — no body was left be- 
 hind. Since this nuclear substance exists in the 
 new cells, and since these generations go on 
 indefinitely, the cells are in a sense "immortal" 
 or deathless. In a one-celled individual, there 
 
10 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 is no distinction between germinal and bodily 
 functions. In the more complicated organisms, 
 however, there are innumerable kinds of cells, 
 a few (the germ cells) specialized for reproduc- 
 tion, the others forming the body which eats, 
 moves, sees, feels, and in the case of man, 
 thmks. But the germ-cells or germplasm con- 
 tinue to be immortal or deathless in the same 
 sense as in the simplest organisms. The body, 
 in a historical sense, grew up around the germ- 
 cells, taking over functions a little at a time, 
 until in the higher animals nutrition and other 
 activities and a large part even of the reproduc- 
 tive process itself is carried on by body-cells. 
 
 When we think of a man or woman, we think 
 of an individual only one of whose innumerable 
 activities — reproduction — is carried on by 
 germ-cells, and this one only at the very be- 
 ginning of the life of a new individual. Hu- 
 man societies, needless to remark, are not or- 
 ganized by germplasms, but by brains and 
 hands — composed of body cells. If these brains 
 and hands — if human bodies — did not wear out 
 or become destroyed, we should not need to 
 trouble ourselves so much about the germplasm, 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 11 
 
 whose sole function in human society is to re- 
 place them. 
 
 Since the individual human bodies and minds 
 which seek after the things to which we mor- 
 tals attach value — moral worth, esthetic and 
 other pleasure, achievement and the like — do 
 have to be replaced every few years, the germ- 
 plasms from which new individuals must come 
 have always been and always will be of funda- 
 mental importance. It is always the product 
 of the germplasm which concerns us, and we 
 are interested in the germ-cells themselves only 
 in relation to their capacity to produce indi- 
 viduals of value to society. 
 
 So let us not go erring about in the philo- 
 sophical ether, imagining that because the 
 amoeba may not be specialized for anything 
 over and above nutrition and reproduction that 
 these are necessarily the "main business" or 
 "chief ends" of human societies. Better say 
 that although we have become developed and 
 specialized for a million other activities we are 
 still bound by those fundamental necessities. 
 As to "Nature's purposes," about which the 
 older sex literature has had so much to say, the 
 
12 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 idea is essentially religious rather than scien- 
 tific. If such "purposes" indeed exist in the 
 universe, man evidently does not feel particu- 
 larly bound by them. We do not hesitate to 
 put a cornfield where "Nature" had a forest, 
 or to replace a barren hillside by the sea with 
 a city. 
 
 Necessities and possibilities, not "purposes" 
 in nature, claim our attention — reproduction 
 being one of those embarrassing necessities, 
 viewed through the eyes of man, the one evalu- 
 ating animal in the world. Thus in reasoning 
 from biology to social problems, it is fundamen- 
 tal to remember that man as an animal is tre- 
 mendously differentiated in functions, and that 
 most of the activities we look upon as distinc- 
 tively human depend upon the body rather than 
 the germ-cells. 
 
 It follows that biology is the foundation 
 rather than the house, if we may use so crude 
 a figure. The solidity of the foundation is very 
 important, but it does not dictate the details as 
 to how the superstructure shall be arranged. 
 
 Civilization would not be civilization if we 
 had to spend most of our time thinking about 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 13 
 
 the biological basis. If we wish to think of 
 "Nature's" proscriptions or plans as con- 
 trolling animal life, the anthropomorphism is 
 substantially harmless. But man keeps out of 
 the way of most of such proscriptions, has plans 
 of his own, and has acquired considerable skill 
 in varying his projects without running foul of 
 such biological prohibitions. 
 
 It is time to abandon the notion that biology 
 prescribes in detail how we shall run society. 
 True, this foundation has never received a sur- 
 plus of intelligent consideration. Sometimes 
 human societies have built so foolishly upon it 
 that the result has been collapse. Somebody 
 is always digging around it in quest of evidence 
 of some vanished idyllic state of things which, 
 having had and discarded, we should return 
 to. This little excursion into biology is made 
 in the full consciousness that social mandates 
 are not to be found there. Human projects are 
 the primary material of social science. It is 
 indispensable to check these against biological 
 fact, in order to ascertain which are feasible 
 and which are not. The biological basis may 
 help in explaining old social structures or in 
 
14 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 planning new ones ; bnt much wild social theory 
 has been born of a failure to appreciate the 
 limitations of such material. 
 
 All the so-called higher animals, mammals 
 and others, are divided into two sexes, male and 
 female. Besides the differentiation of germ- 
 cells, there are rather obvious differences in 
 the bodies of the two sexes. In common with 
 many other mammals, the human male has a 
 larger and stronger body, on an average, than 
 has the human female. This is true also of the 
 anthropoid apes, the species which most resem- 
 ble man physically and are commonly supposed 
 to be his nearest blood relatives in the animal 
 kingdom. It has been true of man himself as 
 far back as we have any records. 
 
 Such differences are only superficial — the 
 real ones go deeper. We are not so much in- 
 terested in how they originated in the world as 
 in how they do come about in the individual. 
 At least, we can come a good deal nearer ascer- 
 taining the latter than the former. In either 
 case, our real purpose is to determine as nearly 
 as possible what the unlikeness really consists 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 15 
 
 of and so help people to sensibly make up their 
 minds what can be done about it. 
 
 To define sex with rigid accuracy as the term 
 applies to human beings, it is necessary to tell 
 what it is in mammals, since man is a mammal. 
 The presence of distinct body-cells is not pe- 
 culiar to mammals, but there is one respect in 
 which these latter are quite different from non- 
 mammals : A mammalian individual, beginning 
 like a non-mammal with a fertilized egg, has a 
 period of intra-maternal development which a 
 non-mammal has not. That is, a non-mam- 
 malian is a fertilized egg plus its parental (or 
 extra-parental) environment ; but a mammalian 
 individual is a fertilized egg, phis its intra-ma- 
 ternal environment, plus its non-parental en- 
 vironment. 
 
 Here in a nutshell is the biological basis of 
 the sex problem in human sofc-aty. Human in- 
 dividuals do wear out and have to be replaced 
 by reproduction. In the reproductive process, 
 the female, as in mammals generally, is special- 
 ized to provide an intra-maternal environment 
 (approximately nine months in the human spe- 
 cies) for each new individual, and lactation or 
 
16 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 suckling afterward. The biological phase of 
 the sex problem in society consists in studying 
 the nature of that specialization. From the 
 purely sociological standpoint, the sex problem 
 concerns the customs and institutions which 
 have grown up or may grow up to meet the need 
 of society for reproduction. 
 
 The point which most concerns us is in how 
 far biological data can be applied to the sex 
 problem in society. Systematic dissections or 
 breeding experiments upon human beings, 
 thought out in advance and under control in 
 a laboratory, are subject to obvious limitations. 
 Surgical operations, where careful data are 
 kept, often answer the same purpose as con- 
 cerns some details; but these alone would give 
 us a fragmentary record of how a fertilized 
 egg becomes a conscious human being of one 
 sex or the other. The practice of medicine 
 often throws light on important points. Ob- 
 servation of abnormal cases plays its part in 
 adding to our knowledge. Carefully compiled 
 records of what does occur in inheritance, while 
 lacking many of the checks of planned and con- 
 trolled experiments, to some extent take the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 17 
 
 place of the systematic breeding possible with 
 animals. At best, however, the limitations in 
 experimentation with human subjects would 
 give us a rather disconnected record were it not 
 for the data of experimental biology. 
 
 How may such biological material be safely 
 used? Indiscriminately employed, it is worse 
 than useless — it can be confusing or actually 
 misleading. It is probably never safe to say, 
 or even to infer directly, that because of this 
 or that animal structure or behavior we should 
 do thus and so in human society. On this point 
 sociology — especially the sociology of sex — 
 must frankly admit its mistakes and break with 
 much of its cherished past. 
 
 The social problem of sex consists of fitting 
 the best possible institutions onto the biolog- 
 ical foundation as we find it in the human spe- 
 cies. Hence all our reasoning about which in- 
 stitution or custom is preferable must refer di- 
 rectly to the human bodies which compose so- 
 ciety. We can use laboratory evidence about 
 the bodies of other animals to help us in un- 
 derstanding the physical structure and func- 
 tions of the human body; but we must stop try- 
 
18 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ing to apply the sex-ways of birds, spiders or 
 even cows (which are at least mammals) to hu- 
 man society, which is not made up of any of 
 these. 
 
 It is possible to be quite sure that some facts 
 carefully observed about mammals in a biolog- 
 ical laboratory apply to similar structures in 
 man, also a mammal. Because of this relation- 
 ship, the data from medicine and surgery are 
 priceless. Thus we are enabled to check up 
 our systematic experimental knowledge of ani- 
 mals by an ascertained fact here and there in 
 the human material, and to get a fairly exact 
 idea of how great the correspondence actually 
 is. Gaps thus filled in are narrow enough, and 
 our certainty of the ground on either side suf- 
 ficiently great, to give a good deal of justifiable 
 assurance. 
 
 If we use our general biological evidence in 
 this way, merely to help in clearing up points 
 about human biology, we need not be entirely 
 limited to mammals. Some sex phenomena are 
 quite general, and may be drawn from the sex- 
 ual species most convenient to study and con- 
 trol in experiments. When we get away from 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 19 
 
 mammalian forms, however, we must be very 
 sure that the cases used for illustrations are of 
 general application, are similar in respect to 
 the points compared, or that any vital differ- 
 ences are understood and conscientiously 
 pointed out. 
 
 Too much stress cannot be laid upon the point 
 that such animal data, carefully checked up 
 with the human material, cannot safely be used 
 for any other purpose than to discover what the 
 facts are about the human body. When the 
 discussion of human social institutions is taken 
 up in Part II, the obvious assumption will al- 
 ways be that these rest upon human biology, 
 and that we must not let our minds wander into 
 vague analogies concerning birds, spiders or 
 Crustacea. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER I: 
 
 1. Loeb, Jacques. Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertili- 
 
 zation. Chicago, 1913. 
 
 2. Loeb, Jacques. The Organism as a Whole. N. Y., 1916, 
 
 p. 125 — brief summary of results of (1). 
 
 3. Bower, Kerr & Agar. Sex and Heredity. N. Y., 1919, 
 
 119 pp. 
 
20 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 4. Schafer, E. A. Nature, Origin and Maintenance of 
 
 life. Science, n. s., Vol. 36, pp. 306 f., 1912. 
 
 5. Guyer, M. F. Being Well-Born. Indianapolis, 1916. 
 
 p. 123. 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 SEX IN TEBMS OP INTERNAL. SECRETIONS 
 
 Continuity of germplasm; The sex chromosome; The in- 
 ternal secretions and the sex complex; The male and 
 the female type of body; How removal of sex glands 
 affects body type; Sex determination; Share of egg 
 and sperm in heredity ; Nature of sex — sexual selection 
 of little importance; The four main types of secretory 
 systems; Sex and sex-instincts of rats modified by 
 surgery ; Dual basis for sex ; Opposite-sex basis in 
 every individual; The Free-Martin cattle; Partial re- 
 versal of sex in man. 
 
 In Chapter I, the "immortality' ' of the proto- 
 plasm in the germ cells of higher animals, as 
 well as in simpler forms without distinct bodies, 
 was mentioned. In these higher animals this 
 protoplasm is known as germplasm, that in 
 body cells as somatoplasm. 
 
 All that is really meant by "immortality" 
 in a germplasm is continuity. That is, while 
 an individual may consist of a colony of mil- 
 lions of cells, fill of these spring from one cell 
 
 and it a gerr cell — the fertilized ovum. This 
 
 21 
 
22 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 first divides to form a new group of germ cells, 
 which are within the embryo or new body when 
 it begins to develop, and so on through indefi- 
 nite generations. Thus the germ cells in an 
 individual living today are the lineal descend- 
 ants, by simple division, of the germ cells in 
 his ancestors as many generations, or thou- 
 sands of generations, ago as we care to imag- 
 ine. All the complicated body specializations 
 and sex phenomena may be regarded as super- 
 imposed upon or grouped around this succes- 
 sion of germ cells, continuous by simple divi- 
 sion. 
 
 The type of body in each generation depends 
 upon this germplasm, but the germplasm is not 
 supposed to be in any way modified by the body 
 (except, of course, that severe enough accidents 
 might damage it). Thus we resemble our par- 
 ents only because the germplasm which directs 
 our development is a split-off portion of the 
 same continuous line of germ cells which di- 
 rected their development, that of their fathers, 
 and so on back. This now universally accepted 
 theory is called the "continuity of the germ- 
 plasm." 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 23 
 
 It wilLbe seen at once that this seems to pre- 
 clude any possibility of a child's inheriting from 
 its parents anything which these did not them- 
 selves inherit. The bodies of each generation 
 are, so to speak, mere "buds" from the con- 
 tinuous lines of germplasm. If we develop our 
 muscles or our musical talent, this development 
 is of the body and dies with it, though the physi- 
 cal basis or capacity we ourselves inherited is 
 still in the germplasm and is therefore passed 
 along to our children. We may also furnish 
 our children an environment which will stimu- 
 late their desire and lend opportunity for sim- 
 ilar or greater advancement than our own. 
 This is social inheritance, or the product of en- 
 vironment — easy to confuse with that of hered- 
 ity and very difficult to separate, especially in 
 the case of mental traits. 
 
 It will likewise become clear as we proceed 
 that there is no mechanism or relationship 
 known to biology which could account for what 
 is popularly termed "pre-natal influence." A 
 developing embryo has its own circulation, so 
 insulated from that of the mother that only a 
 few of the most virulent and insidious disease 
 
24 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 germs can ever pass the barrier. The general 
 health of the mother is of utmost importance 
 to the vitality, chances of life, constitution and 
 immunity from disease of the unborn child. 
 Especially must she be free from diseases which 
 may be communicated to the child either before 
 or at the time of birth. This applies particu- 
 larly to gonorrhoea, one of the most widely 
 prevalent as well as most ancient of maladies, 
 and syphilis, another disastrous and very com- 
 mon plague which is directly communicable. 
 As to "birth-marks" and the like being directly 
 caused by things the mother has seen or thought 
 about, such beliefs seem to be founded on a few 
 remarkable pure coincidences and a great deal 
 of folk-lore. 
 
 Eeproduction in its simplest form is, then, 
 simply the division of one cell into two parts, 
 each of which develops into a replica of the 
 original. Division is also the first stage in re- 
 production in the most complicated animal bod- 
 ies. To get an idea of what takes place in such 
 a division we must remember that a cell con- 
 sists of three distinct parts: (a) the protoplasm 
 or cytoplasm, (b) the nucleus, and (c) a small 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 25 
 
 body known as the centrosome which need not 
 be discussed here. 
 
 When a cell division takes place, the nucleus 1 
 breaks up into a number of thread-like portions 
 which are known as chromosomes. There are 
 supposed to be 24 pairs, or 48, in the human 
 cell. All the evidence indicates that these 
 chromosomes carry the "factoi " in inherit- 
 ance which produce the characters or charac- 
 teristics of the individual body. 
 
 In mitosis or ordinary cell division, these 
 chromosomes split lengthwise, so that the new 
 cells always have the same number as the orig- 
 inal one. When the germ-cells of the male and 
 female make the division which marks the first 
 step in reproduction, however, the process is 
 different. Half the chromatin material passes 
 into each of the two cells formed. This is 
 called maturation, or the maturation division, 
 and the new cells have only half the original 
 number of chromosomes. Each of these di- 
 vides again by mitosis (the chromosomes split- 
 ting lengthwise), the half or keloid number 
 remaining. The result is the gametes (liter- 
 ally "marrying cells" — from the Greek game, 
 
26 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 signifying marriage) . Those from the male are 
 called sperms or spermatozoa and those from 
 the female eggs or ova. (The divisions to 
 form ova present certain complications which 
 need not be taken up in detail here.) Of the 
 24 chromosomes in each sperm or egg we are 
 here concerned with only one, known as the 
 sex chromosome because, in addition to trans- 
 mitting other characteristics, it determines the 
 sex of the new individual. 
 
 Neither the ovum nor the spermatozoon (the 
 human race is referred to) is capable alone of 
 developing into a new individual. They must 
 join in the process known as fertilization. The 
 sperm penetrates the egg (within the body of 
 the female) and the 24 chromosomes from each 
 source, male and female, are re-grouped in a 
 new nucleus with 48 chromosomes — the full 
 number. 
 
 The chances are half and half that the new 
 individual thus begun will be of a given sex, 
 for the following reason : There is a structural 
 difference, supposed to be fundamentally chem- 
 ical, between the cells of a female body and 
 those of a male. The result is that the gametes 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 27 
 
 (sperm and eggs) they respectively produce in 
 maturation are not exactly alike as to chromo- 
 some composition. All the eggs contain what 
 is known as the "X" type of sex chromosome. 
 But only half the male sperm have this type 
 — in the other half is found one of somewhat 
 different type, known as a "Y." (This, again, 
 is for the human species — in some animals the 
 mechanism and arrangement is somewhat dif- 
 ferent.) If a sperm and egg both carrying the 
 X-type of chromosome unite in fertilization, the 
 resulting embryo is a female. If an X unites 
 with a Y, the result is a male. Since each com- 
 bination happens in about half the cases, the 
 race is about half male and half female. 
 
 Thus sex is inherited, like other characters, 
 by the action of the chromatin material of the 
 cell nucleus. As Goldschmidt (1) remarks, this 
 theory of the visible mechanism of sex distri- 
 bution "is today so far proven that the demon- 
 stration stands on the level of an experimen- 
 tal proof in physics or chemistry." But why 
 and how does this nuclear material determine 
 sex? In other words, what is the nature of the 
 
28 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 process of differentiation into male and female 
 which it sets in motion? 
 
 To begin with, we must give some account of 
 the difference between the cells of male and fe- 
 male origin, an unlikeness capable of produc- 
 ing the two distinct types of gametes, not only 
 in external appearance, but in chromosome 
 makeup as well. It is due to the presence in 
 the bodies of higher animals of a considerable 
 number of glands, such as the thyroid in the | 
 throat and the suprarenals just over the kid- 
 neys. These pour secretions into the blood 
 stream, determining its chemical quality and 
 hence how it will influence the growth or, when 
 grown, the stable structure of other organs and 
 cells. They are called endocrine glands or or- 
 gans, and their chemical contributions to the 
 blood are known as hormones. i 
 
 Sometimes those which do nothing but fur- 
 nish these secretions are spoken of as "duct- 
 less glands," from their structure. The hor- 
 momes (endocrine or internal secretions) do not 
 come from the ductless glands alone — but the 
 liver and other glands contribute hormomes to 
 the blood stream, in addition to their other 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 29 
 
 functions. Some authorities think that "every 
 cell in the body is an organ of internal secre- 
 tion" (2), and that thus each influences all the 
 others. The sex glands are especially impor- 
 tant as endocrine organs; in fact the somatic 
 cells are organized around the germ cells, as 
 pointed out above. Hence the sex glands may 
 be considered as the keys or central factors in 
 the two chemical systems, the male and the fe- 
 male type. 
 
 These various hormones or chemical con- 
 trollers in the blood interact in a nicely bal- 
 anced chemical system. Taken as a whole this 
 is often called the "secretory balance" or "in- 
 ternal secretory balance." This balance is lit- 
 erally the key to the sex differences we see, 
 because it lies back of them ; i. e., there are two 
 general types of secretory balance, one for 
 males and one for females. Not only are the 
 secretions from the male and the female sex 
 glands themselves quite unlike, but the whole 
 chemical system, balance or "complex" in- 
 volved is different. Because of this dual basis 
 for metabolism or body chemistry, centering in 
 the sex glands, no organ or cell in a male body 
 
30 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 can be exactly like the corresponding one in a 
 female body. 
 
 In highly organized forms like the mam- 
 mals (inclnding man), sex is linked np with all 
 the internal secretions, and hence is of the 
 whole body. (3.) As Bell (2, p. 5) states it: 
 "We must focus at one and the same time the 
 two essential processes of life — the individual 
 metabolism and the reproductive metabolism. 
 They are interdependent. Indeed, the individ- 
 ual metabolism is the reproductive metabol- 
 ism." 
 
 Here, then, is the reason men have larger, 
 differently formed bodies than women — why 
 they have heavier bones, tend to grow beards, 
 and so on. The sex glands are only part of 
 what we may call a well-organized chemical 
 laboratory, delivering various products to the 
 blood, but always in the same general propor- 
 tions for a given sex. The ingredients which 
 come from the sex glands are also qualitatively 
 different, as has been repeatedly proved by in- 
 jections and otherwise. 
 
 Each of these sex types, male and female, va- 
 ries somewhat within itself, as is true of every- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 31 
 
 thing living. The two are not so far apart but 
 that they may overlap occasionally in some de- 
 tails. For instance, some women are larger 
 than are some men — have lower pitched voices, 
 etc. The whole bodily metabolism, resting as 
 it does upon a chemical complex, is obviously 
 more like the male average in some women than 
 it is in others, and vice versa. But the average 
 physical make-up which we find associated with 
 the male and female sex glands, respectively, is 
 distinctive in each case, and a vast majority of 
 individuals of each sex conform nearly enough 
 to the average so that classification presents 
 no difficulty. 
 
 The extreme as well as the average body 
 types existing in the presence of the respec- 
 tive types of sex-glands are different. For ex- 
 ample, we find an occasional hen with male 
 spurs, comb or wattles, though she is a normal 
 female in every other respect, and lays eggs. 
 (4.) But we never find a functional female 
 (which lays eggs) with all the typical charac- 
 teristics of the male body. Body variation can 
 go only so far in the, presence of each type of 
 primary sexuality (i.e., sex-glands). 
 
32 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 The bodily peculiarities of each sex, as dis- 
 tinguished from the sex-glands or gonads them- 
 selves, are known as secondary sex characters. 
 To put our statement in the paragraph above 
 in another form, the primary and secondary 
 sex do not always correspond in all details. 
 We shall find as we proceed that our original 
 tentative definition of sex as the ability to pro- 
 duce in the one case sperm, in the other eggs, is 
 sometimes difficult to apply. What shall we 
 say of a sterile individual, which produces 
 neither? The problem is especially embarrass- 
 ing when the primary and secondary sex do 
 not correspond, as is sometimes the case. 
 
 Even in a fully grown animal, to remove or 
 exchange the sex glands (by surgery) modifies 
 the bodily type. One of the most familiar 
 cases of removal is the gelding or desexed horse. 
 His appearance and disposition are different 
 from the stallion, especially if the operation 
 takes place while he is very young. The rea- 
 son he resembles a normal male in many re- 
 spects is simply that sexuality in such highly- 
 organized mammals is of the whole body, not 
 of the sex-glands or organs alone. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 33 
 
 Suppose this horse was desexed at two years 
 old. Nearly three years had elapsed since he 
 was a fertilized egg. During the eleven months 
 or so he spent within his mother, he developed 
 a very complicated hody. Beginning as a male, 
 with a male-type metabolism (that is, as the 
 result of a union between an X and a Y chro- 
 mosome, not two X's), all his glands, as well 
 as the body structures they control, developed 
 in its presence. Not only the sex glands, but 
 the liver, suprarenals, thyroid — the whole body 
 in fact — became adjusted to the male type. He 
 had long before birth what we call a male sex 
 complex. Complex it is, but it is, nevertheless, 
 easy enough to imagine its nature for illustra- 
 tive purposes. It is simply all the endocrine or 
 hormone-producing organs organized into a 
 balanced chemical system — adjusted to each 
 other. 
 
 "When the horse had had this body and this 
 gland system for nearly three years (eleven 
 months within his mother's body and twenty- 
 four outside), it had become pretty well organ- 
 ized and fixed. When a single chemical ele- 
 ment (the hormones from the sex-glands) was 
 
34 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 withdrawn, the system (thus stereotyped in a 
 developed body and glands) was modified but 
 not entirely upset. The sex complex remained 
 male in many respects. It had come to depend 
 upon the other chemical plants, so to speak, 
 quite as much as upon the sex glands. The 
 later the castration is performed — the more 
 fixed the body and gland type has become — the 
 closer the horse will resemble a normal male. 
 Much laboratory experimentation now goes to 
 show that some accident while this horse was 
 still a fertilized egg or a very small embryo 
 might have upset his male type of body chem- 
 istry — perhaps even caused him to develop into 
 a female instead, if it took place early enough. 
 This is well illustrated by the so-called "Free- 
 Martin" cattle, to be described later. 
 
 For a long time a controversy raged as to 
 whether sex is determined at the time of fer- 
 tilization, before or after. Biologists now gen- 
 erally prefer to say that a fertilized egg is ' ' pre- 
 disposed" to maleness or femaleness, instead 
 of "determined." The word "determined" 
 suggests finality, whereas the embryo appears 
 to have in the beginning only a strong tendency 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 35 
 
 or predisposition toward one sex type or the 
 other. It is now quite commonly believed that 
 this predisposition arises from the quantity 
 rather than the quality or kind of factors in the 
 chemical impetus in the nuclei of the conjugat- 
 ing gametes. A later chapter will be devoted 
 to explaining the quantitative theory of sex. 
 
 Hence the modern theory of "sex determina- 
 tion" has become: 
 
 1. That the chemical factors which give rise 
 
 to one sex or the other are present in 
 the sperm and ovum before fertiliza- 
 tion; 
 
 2. That a tendency or predisposition toward 
 
 maleness or f emaleness arises at the 
 time of fertilization, depending upon 
 which type of sperm unites with the 
 uniform type of egg (in some spe- 
 cies the sperm is uniform while the 
 egg varies) ; 
 
 3. That this predisposition is : 
 
 a. Weaker at first, before it builds up 
 much of a body and gland system 
 to fix it; 
 
36 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 b. Increasingly stronger as the new body 
 
 becomes organized and developed;, 
 o. Liable to partial or complete upset in 
 
 the very early stages; 
 d. Probably quantitative — stronger in 
 some cases than in others. 
 The new definition is, then, really a combina- 
 tion and amplification of the three older points 
 of view. 
 
 The term "sex determination'' does not mean 
 to the biologist the changing or determining 
 of the sex at will on the part of the experi- 
 menter. This might be done by what is known 
 as "selective fertilization" artificially with 
 only the kind of sperm (X or T as to chromo- 
 somes) which would produce the desired result. 
 There is as yet no way to thus select the sperm 
 of higher animals. It has been authoritatively 
 claimed that feeding with certain chemicals, 
 and other methods to be discussed later, has 
 affected the sex of offspring. These experi- 
 ments (and controversies^ need not detain us, 
 since they are not applicable to the human spe- 
 cies. 
 Let us consider this fertilized egg — the con- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 37 
 
 tributions of the father and the mother. The 
 total length of the spermatozoon is only about 
 1/300 of an inch, and 4/5 of this is the tail. 
 This tail does not enter the egg, and has no 
 other known function than that of a propeller. 
 Its movement has been studied and found to be 
 about 1/8 of an inch per minute. Only the head 
 and neck enter the egg. This head consists 
 almost entirely of the nuclear material which is 
 supposed to determine the characters of the 
 future individual. 
 
 The ovum or egg contributed by the mother 
 is much larger — nearly round in shape and 
 about 1/120 of an inch in diameter. Besides its 
 nucleus, it contains a considerable amount of 
 what used to be considered as "stored nutri- 
 tive material" for the early development of 
 the individual. 
 
 In ancient times the female was quite com- 
 monly supposed to be a mere medium of de- 
 velopment for the male seed. Thus the Laws 
 of Manu stated that woman was the soil in 
 which the male seed was planted. In the Greek 
 Eumenides, Orestes' mother did not generate 
 him, but only received and nursed the germ. 
 
38 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 These quaint ideas of course originated merely 
 from observation of the fact that the woman 
 carries the young until birth, and must not lead 
 us to imagine that the ancients actually sepa- 
 rated the germ and somatic cells in their think- 
 ing. 
 
 A modern version of this old belief was the 
 idea advanced by Harvey that the ovum con- 
 sisted of fluid in which the embryo appeared by 
 spontaneous generation. Loeuwenhoek's de- 
 velopment of the microscope in the 17th cen- 
 tury led immediately to the discovery of the 
 spermatozoon by one of his students. At the 
 time, the "preformation theory" Was prob- 
 ably the most widely accepted — i.e., that the 
 adult form exists in miniature in the egg or 
 germ, development being merely an unfolding 
 of these preformed parts. With the discovery 
 of the spermatozoon the preformationists were 
 divided into two schools, one (the ovists) hold- 
 ing that the ovum was the container of the 
 miniature individual, the other (animalculists) 
 according this function to the spermatozoon. 
 According to the ovists, the ovum needed 
 merely the stimulation of the spermatozoon to 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 39 
 
 cause its contained individual to undergo de- 
 velopment, while the animalculists looked upon 
 the spermatozoon as the essential embryo con- 
 tainer, the ovum serving merely as a suitable 
 food supply or growing place. 
 
 This nine-lived notion of male supremacy in 
 inheritance was rather reinforced than re- 
 moved by the breeding of domestic animals in 
 the still more recent past. Attention has been 
 focused on a few great males. For example, 
 the breed of Am erican trotting horses all goes 
 back to one sire — Hambletonian 10. The great 
 Orloff Stud Book, registering over a million in- 
 dividuals, is in the beginning founded on a sin- 
 gle horse — a male. It is not strange that we 
 still find among some breeders vestiges of the 
 ancient belief that the male predominates in 
 inheritance. A superior male can impress his 
 characters in a single year upon 100 times as 
 mamy colts as a female of equal quality could 
 produce in her lifetime. So slight an incident 
 in his life is this reproductive process for each 
 individual that he could if he devoted his life 
 solely to reproduction stamp his characters 
 upon a thousand times as many colts as could 
 
40 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 a female. Thus under artificial breeding condi- 
 tions, the good males do have a tremendously 
 disproportionate share in improving the whole 
 breed of horses, though each single horse gets 
 his qualities equally from his male and female 
 parents. 
 
 Though Mendel knew an astonishing amount 
 about inheritance a half -century ago, it is worth 
 noting that the foundation upon which rests our 
 present knowledge of sex has been discovered 
 less than twenty years — the reference is, of 
 course, to the chromosomes as the carriers of 
 inheritance. While from the standpoint of 
 biology the opinions of two decades ago about 
 sex literally belong to a different age, some of 
 them have been so persistent in sociological 
 thought and writings that they must be briefly 
 reviewed in order that the reader may be on 
 his guard against them. Books which still have 
 a wide circulation deal with the sex problem in 
 terms of a biology now no more tenable than 
 the flatness of the earth. 
 
 On the one hand were the ancient traditions 
 of male predominance |n inheritance, reinforced 
 by the peculiar emphasis which animal breeding 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 41 
 
 places upon males. On the other hand, biol- 
 ogists like Andrew Wilson (5) had argued as 
 early as the seventies of the past century for 
 female predominance, from the general evi- 
 dence of spiders, birds, etc. Lester F. Ward 
 crystallized the arguments for this view in an 
 article entitled "Our Better Halves" in The 
 Forum, in 1888. This philosophy of sex, which 
 he christened the " Gynaeeocentric Theory," is 
 best known as expanded into the fourteenth 
 chapter of his "Pure Sociology," published 
 fifteen years later. Its publication at this late 
 date gave it an unfortunate vitality long after 
 its main tenets had been disproved in the bio- 
 logical laboratory. Germ-cell and body-cell 
 functions were not separated. Arguments from 
 social structures, from cosmic, natural and 
 human history, much of it deduced by analogy, 
 were jumbled together in a fashion which seems 
 amazing to us now, though common enough 
 thirty years ago. It was not a wild hypothesis 
 in 1888, its real date, but its repeated republica- 
 tion (in the original and in the works of other 
 writers who accepted it as authoritative) since 
 1903 has done much to discredit sociology with 
 
42 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 biologists and, what is more serious, to muddle 
 ideas about sex and society. 
 
 In 1903, Weissmann's theory of the continu- 
 ity of the germplasm was ten years old. D© 
 Vries' experiments in variation and MendePs 
 rediscovered work on plant hybridization had 
 hopelessly undermined the older notion that the 
 evolution or progress of species has taken place 
 through the inheritance of acquired characters 
 — that is, that the individuals developed or 
 adapted themselves to suit their surroundings 
 and that these body-modifications were inherit- 
 ed by their offspring. As pointed out in CI ap- 
 ter I, biologists have accepted Weissmann's 
 theory of a continuous germplasm, and that 
 this germplasm, not the body, is the carrier of 
 inheritance. Nobody has so far produced evi- 
 dence of any trace of any biological mechanism 
 whereby development of part of the body — say 
 the biceps of the brain — of the individual could 
 possibly produce such a specific modification of 
 the germplasm he carries as to result in the 
 inheritance of a similar development by his off- 
 spring. 
 
 Mendel's experiments had shown that the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 43 
 
 characters we inherit are units or combinations 
 of units, very difficult to permanently change 
 or modify. They combine with each other in all 
 sorts of complicated ways. Sometimes one will 
 "dominate" another, causing it to disappear 
 for a generation or more ; but it is not broken 
 up. These characters have a remarkable way 
 of becoming "segregated" once more — that is, 
 of appearing intact later on. 
 
 "While it follows from "Weissmann's theory 
 that an adaptation acquired by an individual 
 during his lifetime cannot be transmitted to his 
 offspring, it remained for DeVries to show 
 authoritatively that evolution can, and does, 
 take place -without this. Once this was estab- 
 lished, biologists cheerfully abandoned the 
 earlier notion. Lester Ward and the biologists 
 of his day in general not only believed in the 
 transmission of acquired characters, but they 
 filled the obvious gaps which occurred in trying" 
 to apply this theory to the observed facts by 
 placing a fantastic emphasis upon sexual selec- 
 tion. That is, much progress was accounted for 
 through the selection by the females of the 
 superior males. This, as a prime factor in evo- 
 
44 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 lution, has since been almost "wholly discred- 
 ited" (Kellogg's phrase) by the careful experi- 
 ments of Mayer, Soule, Douglass, Durigen, 
 Morgan and others. The belief in sexual selec- 
 tion involved a long string of corollaries, of 
 which biology has about purged itself, but they 
 hang on tenaciously in sociological and popular 
 literature. For instance, *Ward believed in the 
 tendency of opposites to mate (tall men with 
 short women, blonds with brunettes, etc.), al- 
 though Karl Pearson had published a statistical 
 refutation in his Grammar of Science, which 
 had run through two editions when the Pure 
 Sociology appeared. The greater variability of 
 males than females, another gynaecocentric 
 dogma, had also been attacked by Pearson on 
 statistical evidence in 1897 (in the well-known 
 essay on Variation in Man and "Woman, in 
 Chances of Death) and has become increasingly 
 unacceptable through the researches of Mrs. 
 Hollingworth (6, 7, 8). The idea of a vanished 
 age of mother-rule in human society, so essen- 
 tial to the complete theory, has long since been 
 modified by anthropologists. 
 
 DeVries' experiments showed that a mod- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 45 
 
 erately simple fact practically makes all these 
 complicated theories unnecessary. Nto two liv- 
 ing things are exactly alike — that is, all living 
 matter is more or less variable. Some varia- 
 tions are more fortunate than others, and these 
 variants are the ones which survive-^the ones 
 best adapted to their environment. Given this 
 fact of the constant variation of living matter, 
 natural selection (i.e., survival of the fittest 
 and elimination of the unfit) is the mechanism 
 of evolution or progress which best accounts 
 for the observed facts. Such variation is called 
 "chance variation," not because it takes place 
 by "chance" in the popularly accepted sense 
 of the term, but because it is so tremendously 
 varied — is evidently due to such complicated 
 and little-under stood circumstances — that it can 
 best be studied mathematically, using statis- 
 tical applications of the "theory of probabili- 
 ties." 
 
 The fine-spun, elaborate theories about sex, 
 so current twenty years ago, have fallen into 
 almost complete desuetude among scientists. 
 With the discovery of the place of the chromo- 
 somes in inheritance, biologists began to give 
 
46 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 their almost undivided attention to a rigid lab- 
 oratory examination of the cell. This has in- 
 cluded sex phenomena since McClung and Sut- 
 ton pointed out the function of the sex chro- 
 mosome in 1902 and 1903. Present-day "the- 
 ories" are little more than working hypotheses, 
 developed, not in a library or study, but with 
 one eye glued to a high-power microscope. 
 
 Besides its faulty foundation as to facts, the 
 old gynaecocentric theory involved a method 
 of treatment by historical analogy which biol- 
 ogists have almost entirely discarded. Anyone 
 interested in the relative value of different 
 kinds of biological data for social problems 
 would do well to read the opening chapter of 
 Prof. Morgan's "Critique of the Theory of 
 Evolution" (9), for even a summary of which 
 space is lacking here. College reference shelves 
 are still stocked with books on sex sociology 
 which are totally oblivious of present-day biol- 
 ogy. For example, Mrs. Gilman (Man-Made 
 World), Mrs. Hartley (Truth About Woman) 
 and the Nearings (Woman and Social Prog- 
 ress) adhere to Ward's theory in substantially 
 its primitive form, and not even sociologists 
 
JABOO AND GENETICS 4/7, 
 
 lite Professor Thomas (Sex and Society)] have 
 been able to entirely break away from it. 
 
 The old question of male or female predom- 
 inance in inheritance has been to a considerable 
 extent cleared np, to the discomfiture of both 
 sides to the controversy,; Most exhaustive ex- 
 periments failed to trace any characters to 
 any other part of either sperm or egg than 
 the nucleus.; Transmission of characteristics 
 seemed to be absolutely equal by the two 
 parents. The male nucleus enters the egg prac- 
 tically naked. Hence if the characters are trans- 
 mitted equally, there is certainly ground for 
 supposing that only the nucleus of the egg has 
 such functions, and that the remainder merely 
 provides material for early development. iYet 
 this does not seem to be strictly true. 
 
 Parthenogenesis (development of eggs with- 
 out agency of male sperm) proves that in many 
 simple forms the female nucleus alone possesses 
 all the essential determiners for a new indi- 
 vidual. Boveri's classic experiment (10); proved 
 the same thing for the male nucleus. He re- 
 moved the nuclei from sea-urchin eggs and re- 
 placed them with male nuclei. Normal individ- 
 
48 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 uals developed. To make things still more cer- 
 tain, he replaced the female nuclens with a male 
 one from a different variety of sea urchin. The 
 resulting individual exhibited the character- 
 istics of the male wx&eus only — none of those 
 of the species represented by the egg. Here, 
 then, was inheritance definitely traced to the 
 nucleus. If this nucleus is a male the characters 
 are those of the male line ; if a female those of 
 the female line, and in sexual reproduction, 
 where the two are fused, half and half. 
 
 Yet the fact remained that all efforts to de- 
 velop a spermatozoon alone (without the agency 
 of any egg material at all) into an individual 
 had signally failed. Conklin (11) had found 
 out in 1904 and 1905 that the egg cytoplasm in 
 Ascidians is not only composed of different 
 materials, but that these give rise to definite 
 structures in the embryo later on. So a good 
 many biologists believed, and still believe {12, 
 13, 14) that the egg is, before fertilization, a 
 sort of "rough preformation of the future em- 
 bryo" and that the Mendelian factors in the 
 nuclei "only impress the individual (and vari- 
 ety) characters upon this rough block." 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 49 
 
 If we look at these views from one angle, the 
 apparent conflict disappears, as Professor 
 Conklin (15) points out. We can still presume 
 that all the factors of inheritance are carried 
 in the nucleus. But instead of commencing the 
 life history of the individual at fertilization, 
 we must date it back to the beginning of the 
 development of the egg in the ovary. Whatever 
 rude characters the egg possesses at the time of 
 fertilization were developed under the influ- 
 ence of the nucleus, which in turn got them half 
 and half from its male and female parents. 
 These characters carried by the female across 
 one generation are so rudimentary that they 
 are completely covered up, in the developing 
 embryo, by those of the new nucleus formed by 
 the union of the sperm with the egg in fertiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 In case fertilization does not take place, this 
 rude beginning in the egg is lost. Since no 
 characteristic sex is assumed until after fer- 
 tilization, we may say that life begins as neuter 
 in the individual, as it is presumed to have done 
 in the world. It will occur to those inclined to 
 speculation or philosophic analysis that by the 
 
50 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 word "neuter" we may mean any one or all 
 of three things: (a) neither male nor female; 
 (b) both male and female, as yet undiffer- 
 entiated, or (c) potentially either male or fe- 
 male. Clearly, the above explanation assumes 
 a certain germinal specialization of the female 
 to reproduction, in addition to the body spe- 
 cialization for the intra-parental environment 
 /in mammals). 
 
 A tremendous amount of laboratory experi- 
 mentation upon animals has been done in late 
 years to determine the nature of sex. For ex- 
 ample, Goodale (16) castrated a brown leghorn 
 cockerel twenty-three days old and dropped 
 pieces of the ovary of a female bird of the same 
 brood and strain into the abdominal cavity. 
 These adhered and built up circulatory systems, 
 as an autopsy later showed. This 1 ^cockerel, 
 whose male sex glands had been exchanged for 
 female ones, developed the female body and col- 
 oration so completely that expert breeders of 
 the strain pronounced it a female. He found 
 that simply removing the female sex glands in- 
 variably led to the development of spurs and 
 male plumage. But simple removal of the male 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 51 
 
 sex glands did not alter plumage. To make sure, 
 he replaced the male sex glands with female, 
 and found that the former male developed fe- 
 male plumage. 
 
 This obviously signifies that in birds the 
 female is an inhibited male (4, p, 49). Either 
 sex when castrated has male feathers — the male 
 has them either with or without testes, unless 
 they are inhibited by the presence of (trans- 
 planted) ovaries. It will be remembered that 
 the sociological theory of sex held by Ward, 
 Mrs. Hartley and a host of others was founded 
 on the supposition that evolution or develop- 
 ment of a species is chiefly due to selection by 
 the females of the better males, a conclusion 
 based almost entirely on bird evidence. Ward 
 (17) states that "the change or progress, as it 
 may be called, has been wholly in the male, the 
 female remaining unchanged"; also that "the 
 male side of nature shot up and blossomed out 
 in an unnatural, fantastic way ..." Speak- 
 ing of the highly-colored males, especially 
 among birds, the same writer states that "the 
 normal color (italics ours) is that of the young 
 and the female, and the color of the male is 
 
52 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the result of his excessive variability." Good- 
 ale's results completely refute this idea, and 
 should bury forever the well-known sociolog- 
 ical notion of "male efflorescence." 
 
 The general doctrine of a stable, "race-type" 
 female and a highly variable male has been 
 widely circulated. In tracing it back through 
 voluminous literature, it appears to have been 
 founded on an article published by W. I. Brooks 
 in the Popular Science Monthly for June, 1879, 
 fourteen years before Weissmann's enuncia- 
 tion of the theory of continuity of the germ- 
 plasm. Like Wallace, Brooks continued to study 
 and experiment till the last, and finally with- 
 drew from his earlier position on sexual selec- 
 tion. However, this has not prevented others 
 from continuing to quote his discarded views— 
 innocently, of course. 
 
 Havelock Ellis (18) and G. Stanley Hall (19) 
 have applied the idea of a "race-type" female 
 with peculiar insistence to the human race. 
 Goodale has finally killed the bird evidence 
 upon which earlier workers w largely founded 
 this doctrine, by showing that the "race type" 
 toward which birds tend unless inhibited by 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 53" 
 
 the female ovarian secretion is the male type, 
 not the female. There is a great difference in 
 the way the internal secretions act in birds and 
 in man, as will be pointed out later. It is so 
 important that such a major point as general 
 variability must be supported and corroborated 
 by mammalian widence to prove anything posi- 
 tively for manfc As already noted, the statistical 
 studies of Pearson and Mrs. Hollingworth et 
 al. have yielded uniformly negative results. 
 
 In the utilization of data gathered from non- 
 human species, certain differences in the sys- 
 tems of internal secretion must be taken into 
 account. Birds differ from the human species 
 as to internal secretory action in two vital 
 particulars: (a) In the higher mammals, sex 
 depends upon a "complex" of all the glands 
 interacting, instead of upon the sex glands 
 alone as in birds; (b) The male bird instead 
 of the female is homogametic for sex — i. e., the 
 sperm instead of the eggs is uniform as to the 
 sex chromosome. 
 
 Insects are (in some cases at least) like birds 
 as to the odd chromosome — the opposite of 
 man. But as to secondary sex-characters they 
 
54 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 differ from both. These characters do not de- 
 pend npon any condition of the sex organs, bnt 
 are determined directly by the chemical factors 
 which determine sex itself (20). 
 
 In crustacea, the male is an inhibited female 
 (the exact opposite of birds), as shown by the 
 experiments of Giard and Geoffrey Smith on 
 crabs. A parasite, Sacculina neglecta, some- 
 times drives root-like growths into the spider 
 crab, causing slow castration. The females thus 
 desexed do not assume the male type of body, 
 but castrated males vary so far toward the 
 female type that some lay eggs (3, p. 143; 20). 
 It is the discovery of such distinctions which 
 makes it necessary to re-examine all the older 
 biological evidence on the sex problem, and to 
 discard most of it as insufficiently exact. 
 
 The work of Steinach (12, pp. 225f.) on rats 
 is another well-known example of changing sex 
 characters by surgery. Steinach found that an 
 ovary transplanted into a male body changed 
 its characteristics and instincts into the female 
 type. The growth of the male sex organs he 
 found to be definitely inhibited by the ovaries. 
 He went so far. as to transplant the whole 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 55 
 
 uterus and tube into the male body, where it 
 developed normally. One of the most interest- 
 ing of his results is the observation of how the 
 instincts were changed along with the type of 
 body. The feminized males behaved like nor- 
 mal females toward the other males and toward 
 females. Likewise they were treated as normal 
 females by the males. 
 
 It would be impossible to give here any just 
 idea of the vast amount of rigid scientific ex- 
 perimentation which has been carried on in 
 this field, or the certainty of many of the results. 
 Sex is really known, about as well as anything 
 can be known, to arise from the chemical causes 
 discussed above. That is, the endocrine expla- 
 nation is the correct one. 
 
 One of the most significant results of the 
 transplantation experiments is the evidence 
 that each individual carries the fundamental 
 bases for both sexes. When Goodale changed a 
 male bird into a female as to secondary charac- 
 ters and instincts by replacing one secretion 
 with another, he was faced with the following 
 problem: How can a single secretion be respon- 
 sible for innumerable changes as to feather 
 
56 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 length, form and coloring, as to spurs, comb 
 and almost an endless array of other details? 
 To suppose that a secretion could be so com- 
 plicated in its action as to determine each one 
 of a thousand different items of structure, color 
 and behavior would be preposterous. Besides, 
 we know that some of these internal secretions 
 are not excessively complicated — for instance 
 adrenalin (the suprarenal secretion) can be 
 compounded in the laboratory. We may say 
 that it cannot possibly be that the ovarian or 
 testicular secretion is composed of enough dif- 
 ferent chemical substances to produce each 
 different effect. 
 
 There remains only the supposition that the 
 female already possesses the genetic basis for 
 becoming a male, and vice versa. This is in 
 accord with the observed facts. In countless 
 experiments it is shown that the transformed 
 female becomes like the male of her own strain 
 and brood — to state it simply, like the male she 
 would have been if she had not been a female. 
 If we think of this basis as single, then it must 
 exhibit itself in one way in the presence of the 
 male secretions, in another way under the in- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 57 
 
 fluence of the female secretions. In this way a 
 very simple chemical agent in the secretion 
 might account for the whole difference — merely 
 causing a genetic basis already present to ex- 
 press itself in the one or the other manner. 
 
 This may be illustrated by the familiar case 
 of the Crustacea Artemia salina and Artemia 
 Milhattsenii. These are so unlike that they were 
 long supposed to be different species; but it 
 was later discovered that the genetic basis is 
 exactly the same. One lives in 4 to 8% salt 
 water, the other in 25% or over. If, however, 
 the fresh-water variety is put in the saltier 
 water with the salt-water variety, all develop 
 exactly alike, into the salt-water kind. Likewise, 
 if the salt-water variety is developed in fresh 
 water, it assumes all the characteristics of the 
 fresh-water kind. Thus the addition or sub- 
 traction of a single chemical agent — common 
 salt — makes all the difference. 
 
 If this basis for sex is single, it is represented 
 by the male plumage in domestic birds, the 
 secretions from the sex-glands acting as modi- 
 fiers. But a great deal of evidence has been 
 produced to show that the genetic basis, in man 
 
58 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 and some other forms at least, is double. That 
 is, we must think of two genetic bases existing 
 in each individual — each representing one of 
 the two types of secondary sex characters. The 
 primary sex (i.e., the sex glands) would then 
 determine which is to express itself. In the 
 domestic birds described above, the male type 
 of body appears in the absence of the ovarian 
 secretion, and the female type in its presence. 
 In man and the more highly organized mam- 
 mals, we must use "secretions" in the plural, 
 since a number of them, from different glands, 
 act together in a "complex." Goodale, experi- 
 menting with birds, was unable to definitely 
 decide whether the basis for sex was single 
 or double in that material, though he favored 
 the latter explanation. 
 
 Dr. Bell, the English gynecologist, using 
 human surgical cases as a basis, commits 
 himself strongly to the dual basis (2, p. 13). 
 "Every fertilized ovum," he says, "is poten- 
 tially bisexual," but has "a predominating 
 tendency . . . toward masculinity or feminin- 
 ity." But "at the same time," he remarks, "it 
 is equally obvious that latent traits of the op- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 59 
 
 posite sex are always present." After discuss^- 
 ing mental traits observed in each sex which, 
 normally belong to the other, he concludes as 
 follows: "If further evidence of this bisexual- 
 ity, which exists in everyone, were required, it 
 is to be found in the embryological remains of 
 the latent sex, which always exist in the genital 
 ducts." 
 
 In some lower forms, dual sexuality is ap- 
 parent until the animal is fairly well developed. 
 In frogs, for example, the sex glands of both 
 sexes contain eggs in early life, and it is not 
 possible to tell them apart with certainty, until 
 they are about four months old (12, p. 125). 
 Then the eggs gradually disappear in the male. 
 
 However, We need not depend upon non- 
 mammalian evidence for either the secretory 
 explanation or the dual basis. An ideal case 
 would be to observe the effects of circulating 
 the blood of one sex in a developing embryo of 
 the other. This blood-transfusion occurs in 
 mature in the "Free-Martin" eattle (21). 
 
 Two embryos (twins) begin to develop in 
 separate membranes or chorions. At an early 
 stage in this development, however, the arteries 
 
60 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 and veins of the two become connected, so that 
 the Wood of each may circulate through the 
 body of the other. "If both are males or both 
 are females no harm results from this . . . ," 
 since the chemical balance which determines 
 the bodily form in each case is of the same type. 
 But if one is a male and the other a female, 
 the male secretory balance dominates the female 
 in a very peculiar fashion. The female repro- 
 ductive system is largely suppressed. She even 
 develops certain male organs, and her general 
 bodily appearance is so decidedly masculine 
 that until Dr. Lillie worked out the case she 
 had always been supposed to be a non-functional 
 male. She is sterile. The blood transfusion not 
 only alters the sex-type of her body, but it 
 actually modifies the sex glands themselves, so 
 that the ovary resembles a testicle, though dis- 
 section proves the contrary. 
 
 "Why does not the female become a true, func- 
 tional male? Perhaps she does in some cases. 
 Such a one would not be investigated, since 
 there would be no visible peculiarity. In all 
 the cases examined, the embryo had begun its 
 female development and specialization under 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 61 
 
 the influence of a predisposition of the female 
 type in the fertilized egg, before the transfusion 
 began. There is no absolutely convincing mam- 
 malian evidence of the complete upset of this 
 predisposition, so all one can say is that it is 
 theoretically possible. Cases of partial reversal, 
 sometimes called "intersexes," are common 
 enough. In birds and insects, where the mate- 
 rial is less expensive and experimentation 
 simpler, males have been produced from female- 
 predisposed fertilized eggs and vice versa, as 
 we shall see in the next chapter. 
 
 Dr. Bell (2, pp. 133f.) points out that the so- 
 called human "hermaphrodites" are simply 
 partial reversals of the sex type from that 
 originally fixed in the fertilized egg. As has 
 been remarked earlier in these pages, there is 
 rarely if ever true hermaphroditism in higher 
 animals — i. e., cases of two fwnctional sexes in 
 the same individual. In fact, the pathological 
 cases in the human species called by that name 
 are probably not capable of reproduction at all.* 
 
 * Note on human hermaphroditism: This subject has been 
 treated in a considerable medical literature. See, for example, 
 Alienist and Neurologist for August, 1916, and New York 
 Medical Journal for Oct. 23, 1915. It has been claimed that 
 both human and higher mammalian "hermaphrodites" have 
 
62 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 Like the Free-Martin cattle, some accident has 
 resulted in a mixture of male and female char- 
 acteristics. This accident occurs after a certain 
 amount of embryonic development has taken 
 place under the influence of the original predis- 
 position of the fertilized egg. The delicate sec- 
 retory balance, so complex in man, is upset. 
 With partially developed organs of one type 
 and with a blood-chemistry of the opposite one, 
 some curious results follow, as the illustrative 
 plates in Dr. Bell's book show. 
 
 It should be remembered that sex in higher 
 mammals is of the whole body, and depends 
 upon all the secretions. Hence an accident to 
 
 actually functioned for both sexea. Obviously, absolute cer- 
 tainty about cause and effect in such cases, where human 
 beings are concerned, is next to impossible, because of lack 
 of scientific, laboratory control. If a case of complete func- 
 tional hermaphroditism in the human species could be estab- 
 lished beyond question, it would indicate that the male secre- 
 tory balance in man does not inhibit the female organs to 
 the same extent that it apparently does in the Free-Martin 
 cattle. If established, the idea of "male dominance" in the 
 human species would be undermined in a new place. Such 
 eases, if they occur at all, are exceedingly rare, but are of 
 theoretical interest. We must not rush to conclusions, as the 
 earlier sociologists used to do. Such a case would require care- 
 ful analysis. Its very uniqueness would suggest that it may 
 not be due to the ordinary causes of hermaphroditism, but 
 might arise from some obscure and unusual cause such as 
 the fusion of two embryos at a very early stage. The bio- 
 chemistry involved is so intricate and so little understood that 
 any deduction from the known facts would be purely specu- 
 lative. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 63 
 
 one of the other glands may npset the balance 
 as -well as one to the sex glands themselves. 
 For example, 15% of Neugebauer's (22) cases 
 of female tubular partial hermaphroditism had 
 abnormal growths in the suprarenals. 
 
 Thus in the human species, it is possible for 
 one type of sex glands to exist in the opposite 
 type of body, as we saw it to be in cattle — 
 though it apparently could not occur unless 
 compensated for in some way by the other 
 secretions. This is a very great. departure from 
 birds, rats and guinea pigs, whose bodies change 
 over their sex type when the gonads are trans- 
 planted. Birds take on the male appearance 
 when the sex glands are removed (or retain it, 
 if they are males). This is not true of man. 
 The chemical life processes of the two sexes 
 after puberty in the human species are quite 
 characteristic. The male and female types are 
 both very different from the infantile. When 
 it becomes necessary to desex men, the resulting 
 condition is infantile, not female (23). 
 
 The desexed man is of course the eunuch of 
 ancient literature. If desexed near maturity, 
 he might look like a normal man in many re- 
 
64 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 spects; but if the operation were performed 
 before puberty, his development is simply ar- 
 rested and remains infantile — incomplete. Only 
 in 1878 was the practice of desexing boys to get 
 the famous adult male soprano voices for the 
 Sistine Choir discontinued. 
 
 Eemoval of the ovaries in women likewise 
 produces an infantile condition, which is pro- 
 nounced only in case the operation takes place 
 very young (24). From his clinical experience, 
 Dr. Bell (2, p. 160) concludes that no very defi- 
 nite modifications can be produced in an adult 
 woman by withdrawal of the ovarian secretion 
 alone. "There must be," he says, "some gross 
 change in those parts of the endocritic system, 
 especially apart from the genital glands, which 
 normally produce masculinity — a potentiality 
 that appears to be concentrated in the supra- 
 renals, the pituitary and probably in the 
 pineal." 
 
 What, then, do we mean by "male" and 
 "female" in man? Take Dr. Russell Andrews' 
 patient: photographs (2, plate opposite p. 243)" 
 show a rounded bodily outline, hairless face, 
 well-developed mammae — the female sex c^r- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 65 
 
 acteristics in every respect which the ordinary 
 person could detect. Yet an operation proved 
 that the sex glands themselves were male. 
 
 Presumably extreme cases like the above are 
 rare. Obviously operations cannot be per- 
 formed on all those with female-type bodies 
 who do not bear children, to determine the 
 primary sex, and conversely with men. This 
 does, however, point the obvious question : Are 
 not some we classify as men more male or 
 masculine than others — some we classify as 
 women more feminine than others? Bearing in 
 luind the fact that the genetic basis for both 
 sexes exists in each individual, are not some 
 women more masculine than others, some men 
 more feminine than others? However much we 
 may object to stating it just that way, the 
 biological fact remains thus. The Greeks called 
 these intermediate types wnings — modern bi- 
 ology knows them as "intersexes." 
 
 Only within the past few years have the gen- 
 eral phenomena of intersexuality been cleared 
 up to any considerable extent— naturally on 
 the basis of the secretory explanation of sex. 
 This secretory or endocrine idea has also given 
 
66 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 us an entirely new view of sex differences. 
 These are best discussed as functional rather 
 than as structural. To correlate this material, 
 we must next give a rude sketch of the quanti- 
 tative theory of sex. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II: 
 
 1. Goldschmidt, R. Intersexuality and the Endocrine As- 
 
 pect of Sex. Endocrinology, Vol. I, p. 434, 1917. 
 
 2. Bell, Dr. Blair. The Sex Complex. London, 1916, p. 
 
 98. 
 
 3. Paton, D. Noel. Regulators of Metabolism. London, 
 
 1913, p. 146. 
 
 4. Goodale, H. D. Gonadectomy . . . Carnegie Pub. 
 
 243, 1916, pp. 43f. 
 
 5. Wilson, Andrew. Polity of a Pond (essay). Hum- 
 
 boldt Lib. of Sc, No. 88— reprint, dated 1888. 
 
 6. Hollingworth, L. S. Variability as Related to Sex 
 
 Differences in Achievement. Am. Jour, of Sociol., 
 , XIX, 1914, pp. 510-530. 
 
 7. Lowie, R. H. & Hollingworth, L. S. Science and 
 
 Feminism. Sci. Mthly., Sept., 1916, pp. 277-284. 
 
 8. Montague, Helen & Hollingworth, L. S. Comparative 
 
 Variability of the Sexes at Birth. Am. J. of So- 
 ciol. XX, 335-70. 1915. 
 
 9. Morgan, T. H. A Critique of the Theory of Evolu- 
 
 tion. N. V., 1916, pp. 1-27. 
 
 10. Loeb, Jacques. Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fer- 
 
 tilization. Chicago, 1913, pp. 3, 51f., 240f., 303. 
 
 11. Conklin, E. G. Organ-Forming Substances in the 
 
 Eggs of Ascidians. U. of Pa. Contrib. from the 
 Zool. Lab. Vol. 12. 1905, pp. 205-230. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 67 
 
 12. Loeb, J. The Organism as a Whole. N. T., 1916, 
 
 pp. 138f., 151-2. 
 
 13. Guyer, M. F. Being Weil-Born. Indianapolis, 1916, 
 
 p. 51. 
 
 14. Tower, W. L. (et al.). Heredity and Eugenics. Chi- 
 
 cago, 1912, 164, 254-5. 
 
 15. Conklin, E. G. Share of Egg and Sperm in Heredity. 
 
 Proc. Nat. Acad, of Sc, Feb., 1917. 
 
 16. Goodale, H. D. A Feminized Cockerel. Jour. Exp. 
 
 Zool. Vol. 20, pp. 421-8. 
 
 17. Ward, Lester F. Pure Sociology. N. T., 1903, pp. 
 
 322f. 
 
 18. Ellis, Haveloek. Man and Woman, 4th Ed. London, 
 
 1904. Ch. XVI. 
 
 19. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. N. Y., 1907. Vol. 
 
 II, pp. 561-2. 
 
 20. Morgan, T. H. Heredity and Sex., N. Y., 1913, 155f. 
 
 21. Lillie, F. R. Theory of the Free Martin. Science, 
 
 n. s., Vol. XLIII, pp. 611-13. 
 
 22. Neugebauer, F. L. Hermaphrodismus, Leipzig, 1908. 
 
 23. Vincent, S. Internal Secretions and the Ductless 
 
 Glands. London, 1912, p. 69. 
 24^Marshall, F. H. Physiology of Reproduction. Lon- 
 "~don^l3ie r iu314. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SEX AND SEX DIEFEKENCES AS QUANTITATIVE 
 
 Intersexes in moths; Bird intersexes; Higher metabolism 
 of males; Quantitative difference between sex factors; 
 Old ideas of intersexuality ; Modern surgery and hu- 
 man intersexes; Quantitative theory a Mendelian ex- 
 planation; Peculiar complication in the case of man; 
 Chemical life cycles of the sexes; Functional-reproduc- 
 tive period and the sex problem; Belative significance 
 of physiological sex differences. 
 
 Crossing European and Japanese gypsy 
 moths, Goldschmidt (1, 2, 3, 4) noticed that the 
 sex types secured were not pure — i.e., that cer- 
 tain crosses produced females which bore a 
 distinctly greater resemblance to the male type 
 than others, and vice versa. One of these hy- 
 brids of "intersexes," as he calls them, would 
 always possess some female and some male 
 sexual characters. He found that he could sep- 
 arate the males and females, respectively, into 
 seven distinct grades with respect to their 
 modification toward the opposite-sex type, and 
 
 68 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 69 
 
 could produce any one of these grades at will 
 by breeding. 
 
 For example, the seven grades of females 
 were roughly as follows: (1) Pure females; 
 (2) Females with feathered antennae like males 
 and producing fewer than the normal number 
 of eggs; (3) Appearance of the brown (male) 
 patches on the white female wings; ripe eggs 
 in abdomen, but only hairs in the egg-sponge 
 laid; instincts still female; (4) Instincts less 
 female ; whole sections of wings with male col- 
 oration, interspersed with cuneiform female 
 sectors; abdomen smaller, males less attracted; 
 reproduction impossible; (5) Male coloration 
 over almost the entire wing; abdomen almost 
 male, with few ripe eggs ; instincts intermediate 
 between male and female; (6) Like males, but 
 with rudimentary ovaries and show female 
 traits in some other organs; (7) Males with a 
 few traces of female origin, notably wing- 
 shape. 
 
 The males showed the same graded approach 
 to the female type. Their instincts likewise 
 became more and more female as the type was 
 
70 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 modified in that direction. That is, a moth 
 would be 12% or 35% female, and so on. 
 
 Goldschmidt watched the crosses which pro- 
 duced seven different grades of maleness in his 
 females. The moth material, like the birds and 
 mammals, suggested a dual basis for sex in 
 each individual. The grades of maleness and 
 femaleness made it seem probable that the 
 factor which determines sex must be stronger 
 in some instances than in others, i.e., that the 
 difference between two of these grades of fe- 
 male is originally quantitative, not qualitative 
 — in amount rather than in kind. 
 
 Mating European moths with European, or 
 Japanese with Japanese, produced pure, uni- 
 form sex-types, male and female. But a cross 
 of European with Japanese strains resulted in 
 intersexes. Goldschmidt concluded that (1) all 
 individuals carried the genetic basis for both 
 sexes ; and (2) that these basic factors were two 
 chemicals of enzyme nature. One of these he 
 called Andrase, enzyme producing maleness, 
 the other Gynase, enzyme producing female- 
 ness. Further, (3) since each chemical sex de- 
 terminer is present in both individuals in every 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 71 
 
 cross, there must be two chemical "doses" of 
 maleness and two of femaleness (struggling for 
 mastery in each fertilized egg. (4) If the total 
 dose of maleness exceeds the total dose of fe- 
 maleness, the sex will be male, and vice versa. 
 (5) These quantities get fixed by natural selec- 
 tion in a single race which always lives in the 
 same environment, i.e., the doses of maleness 
 and femaleness in a given sex always bear prac- 
 tically the same relation to each other. Hence 
 the types are fixed and uniform. (6) But dif- 
 ferent races are likely to have a different 
 strength of chemical sex-doses, so that when 
 they are crossed, the ratios of maleness to 
 femaleness are upset. Often they are almost 
 exactly equal, which produces a type half male 
 and half female — or 2/3, or 1/3, etc. The proof 
 of this theory is that it solved the problems. 
 Goldschmidt was able to work out the strengths 
 of the doses of each sex in his various indi- 
 viduals, and thereby to predict the exact grade 
 of intersexuality which would result from a 
 given cross. 
 
 Biddle's work on pigeons (5, 6) brings us 
 much nearer to man, and suggests the results 
 
72 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 noted by both Goldschmidt and Lillie. As in 
 the Free-Martin cattle, there is an apparent 
 reversal of the sex predisposition of the fer- 
 tilized egg. As in the gypsy moths, different 
 grades of intersexes were observed. In the 
 pigeons, it was found that more yolk material 
 tended to produce a larger proportion of fe- 
 males. The most minute quantitative measure- 
 ments were made of this factor, to eliminate 
 any possibility of error. 
 
 The chromosome mechanisms practically 
 force us to suppose that about half the eggs 
 are originally predisposed to maleness, half 
 to femaleness. A pigeon's clutch normally con- 
 sists of two eggs, one with a large yolk and 
 one with a small yolk. But the half-and-half 
 numerical relation of males to females varies 
 considerably — i.e., not all the large-yolked eggs 
 produce females or all the small-yolked ones 
 males. 
 
 "Wild pigeons begin the season by throwing 
 a predominance of males, and the first eggs of 
 the clutches also tend to produce males all 
 along. In both cases, the male-producing eggs 
 were found to be the ones with the smaller 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 73 
 
 yolks. Family crosses also produce small yolks, 
 which hatch out nearly all males. Some pairs 
 of birds, however, have nearly all female off- 
 spring. Eiddle investigated a large number of 
 these cases and found the amount of yolk ma- 
 terial to be large. In other words, there seems 
 to be a definite relation between the amount 
 of yolk and sex. 
 
 A great number of clever experiments were 
 carried out to find out if eggs originally pre- 
 disposed to one sex were actually used to pro- 
 duce the other. Selective fertilization with dif- 
 ferent kinds of sperm was impossible, since in 
 these birds there is only one type of sperm — 
 two of eggs — as to the sex chromosome. For 
 instance, by overworking females at egg-pro- 
 duction, the same birds which had been pro- 
 ducing more males than females were made to 
 reverse that relation. 
 
 One of the interesting results of the experi- 
 ments was the production of a number of inter- 
 sexual types of various grades. This was easily 
 verifiable by color and other characteristics. 
 To make sure that the instincts were corre- 
 spondingly modified, behavior was registered 
 
74 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 on moving-picture films. Where the first egg of 
 a clutch (the one with a small, normally male- 
 producing yolk) produces a female, she is usu- 
 ally found to be more masculine than her sister 
 from the second egg with the larger yolk. This 
 is true both as to appearance and as to be- 
 havior. Some of these were quite nearly males 
 in appearance and behavior, though they laid 
 eggs. 
 
 Testicular and ovarian extracts were injected. 
 The more feminine birds were often killed by 
 the testicular extract, the more masculine by 
 the ovarian extract. Finally, to make assurance 
 doubly sure, some females which should theo- 
 retically have been the most feminine were dis- 
 sected and shown to be so. That is, out-crosses 
 which produced a predominance of females in 
 the fall were mated with females which had 
 been overworked at egg production until they 
 threw nearly all females. Dissecting the fe- 
 males thus produced, they were shown to have 
 right ovaries, which means double femaleness, 
 since normally the pigeon is functional only 
 in the left ovary, like other birds. The right 
 one usually degenerates before or at hatching 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 75 
 
 and is wholly absent in the week-old squab. 
 
 In pigeons, Eiddle thinks the "developmental 
 energy" of the eggs is in an inverse ratio to 
 their size. The last and largest eggs of the 
 season develop least and produce most females. 
 The second egg of a clutch is larger than the 
 first, but develops less and the bird produced 
 is shorter-lived. Overworking and other condi- 
 tions tending to produce large eggs and females 
 also throw white mutants and show other signs 
 of weakness. Old females lay larger eggs than 
 do young ones. These eggs produce more fe- 
 males. They store more material, have a lower 
 metabolism and less oxidizing capacity than 
 do the earlier male-producing eggs. 
 
 It would be unsafe to draw specific conclu- 
 sions about mammals from these bird and in- 
 sect experiments. Both the secretory action 
 and the chromosome mechanisms are different. 
 The quantitative nature of sex, and also the 
 existence of intersexual types, between males 
 and females, would seem to be general phe- 
 nomena, requiring ratber slight corroboration 
 from the mammals themselves. We have such 
 mammalian cases as the Free-Martin cattle, 
 
76 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 and some convincing evidence of intersexuality 
 in the human species itself, which will be re- 
 viewed presently. 
 
 The notion of more "developmental energy" 
 or a higher metabolism in males is borne out 
 in the human species. Benedict and Emmes 
 (7) have shown by very careful measurements 
 that the basal metabolism of men is about 6% 
 higher than that of Women. Riddle bites the 
 work of Thury and Eussell on cattle to show 
 that a higher water value (as he found in the 
 pigeon eggs), associated with increased metab- 
 olism, helps to produce males. 
 
 In males, the secretion of the sex glands 
 alone seems to be of particular importance, 
 again suggesting this idea of "strength" which 
 comes up over and over again. Removal of 
 these glands modifies the male body much more 
 profoundly than it does the female. (<S.) It is 
 quite generally supposed that the action of this 
 one secretion may have much to do with the 
 superior size and vigor of males. For example, 
 Paton says (9): "The evidence thus seems 
 conclusive that in the male the gonad, by pro- 
 ducing an internal secretion, exercises a direct 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 77 
 
 and specific influence upon the whole soma, 
 increasing the activity of growth, moulding the 
 whole course of development, and so modifying 
 the metabolism of nerve and muscle that the 
 whole character of the animal is altered." It 
 used to be said that the male was more "kata- 
 bolio," the female more "anabolic." These 
 expressions are objectionable, inasmuch as 
 they hint that in a mature organism, with 
 metabolism rather stable, tearing down, or 
 katabolism, could go on faster than building 
 up, or anabolism, or that one of two phases of 
 the same process might go on faster than the 
 other. It seems safer to say merely that a 
 lower metabolism in the female is accompanied 
 by a tendency to store materials. 
 
 A long time will doubtless be required to work 
 out the details of differences in metabolism in 
 the two sexes. Some of the main facts are 
 known, however, and the general effects of the 
 two diverse chemical systems upon the life 
 cycles of the sexes are quite obvious. What we 
 call the "quantitative theory of sex" has, be- 
 sides a place in exact science, an interesting 
 relation to the history of biological thought, 
 
78 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 especially as applied to society. It is thus in 
 order to state as clearly as possible what it 
 now is; then, so that no one may confuse it 
 with what it is not, to run over some of the old 
 ideas which resemble it. 
 
 Experiments with transplanted sex glands, 
 with sex-gland extracts (testicular and ovarian) 
 and the observation of infusions of a male- 
 type blood-stream into a female body, as oc- 
 curs in nature in some cattle and in the so- 
 called human "hermaphrodites," indicate a 
 gross chemical difference between the respec- 
 tive determiners for femaleness and for male- 
 ness. So the chemicals involved, though not yet 
 isolated, must be presumed to be qualitatively 
 different, since they produce such different re- 
 sults. 
 
 But such experiments also indicate that both 
 determiners must be present in some propor- 
 tions in every individual of either sex. The 
 basis for both sexes being present, the one 
 which shall predominate or be expressed in the 
 individual must depend upon the quantitative 
 relation between the determiners which come 
 together at fertilization. The quantitative the- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 79 
 
 ory merely means that this predominance of 
 one factor or the other (maleness or female- 
 ness — Gynase or Andrase) is more pronounced 
 in some cases than in others. 
 
 In brief, then, the quantitative theory of sex 
 is merely the most reasonable explanation of 
 the known fact that intersexes exist — that is, 
 females with some male characteristics, or with 
 all their characters more like the female type 
 than the average, and vice versa. Laboratory 
 biology has established the phenomena of inter- 
 sexuality beyond question, and the word "inter- 
 sex" has become a scientific term. But the fact 
 that this word and the idea it represents are 
 new to exact science does not mean that it is 
 new in the world. 
 
 Intersexes in the human species — not only 
 the extreme pathological cases represented by 
 the so-called "hermaphrodites," but also mere- 
 ly masculine women and effeminate men — have 
 been the subject of serious remarks as well as 
 literary gibes from the earliest times. The 
 Greeks called these people urnings. Schopen- 
 hauer was interested in the vast ancient litera- 
 ture and philosophy on this subject. The 19th 
 
80 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 century produced a copious psychological treat- 
 ment of warped or reversed sexual impulses 
 by such men as Moll, Krafft-Ebing and Have- 
 lock Ellis. Otto Weiniger (10) collected a mass 
 of this philosophy, literature, psychology, folk- 
 lore and gossip, tied it together with such bio- 
 logical facts as were then known (1901) and 
 wove around it a theory of sex attraction* The 
 same material was popularized by Leland (11), 
 Carpenter (12) and "W. L. George (13) to sup- 
 port quite different views. 
 
 George's statement that "there are no men 
 and ... no women; there are only sexual 
 majorities" (p. 61, op. cit.) has been widely 
 quoted. The feminists, he adds, "base them- 
 
 •Note: Weiniger thought he could pick, merely by ob- 
 serving physical type, people who would be sexually attracted 
 to each other. There is much ground for skepticism about 
 this. To begin with, the biological experiments indicate that 
 intersexes are peculiarly likely to appear where two or more 
 races are mixed. So far, there is no exact knowledge about 
 the amount or kind of sex difference in each race. As Bateson 
 remarks (Biol. Fact & the Struct, of Society, p. 13), one un- 
 versed in the breeds even of poultry would experience great 
 difficulty and make many mistakes in sorting a miscellaneous 
 group of coeks and hens into pairs according to breed. If 
 this is true in dealing with pure breeds, ' ' in man, as individuals 
 pure-bred in any respect are very rare, tfle operation would 
 be fax more difficult." In the human species sexual attraction 
 also obviously depends upon many factors which are not purely 
 biological; it is rather a complicated sentiment than an in- 
 stinct. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 81 
 
 selves on "Weininger '« theory, according to 
 which the male principle may be found in 
 woman, and the female principle in man." 
 Unfortunately, George does not make clear 
 what he means by "principle," so his theory, 
 if he has one, is impossible to appraise in bio- 
 logical terms. From the embryonic idea ex- 
 pressed above, he deduces a very positive social 
 philosophy of sex. The feminists, he says, 
 "recognize no masculine or feminine 'spheres,' 
 and . . . propose to identify absolutely the 
 conditions of the sexes." So, while George 
 seems to think much more highly of women 
 than does Weininger, their philosophies come 
 together, for quite different reasons, on the 
 practical procedure of disregarding reproduc- 
 tion and letting the race go hang (10, p. 345). 
 Weininger seems to recognize the dual basis 
 for sex ; George evidently does not quite follow 
 him. Both entirely misconceived the real issues 
 involved, as well as the kind of evidence re- 
 quired to settle them, as we shall see later in 
 discussing adaptation and specialization. 
 
 Dr. Blair Bell (14, 15) has collected a mass 
 of evidence on intersexes in the human species. 
 
82 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 This includes his own surgical and other cases, 
 as well as many treated by his colleagues, and 
 a very considerable review of the medical litera- 
 ture. He not only believes in degrees of fem- 
 ininity in women, but has worked out classifica- 
 tions which he claims to have found of great 
 practical value in surgery (14, pp. 166-7). As 
 noted above, Eiddle discovered that his more 
 feminine female pigeons were often killed by a 
 dose of testicular extract which was practically 
 harmless to a partially masculinized female. 
 Sex in the human species being a matter of all 
 the glands organized into a complex, the quan- 
 titative "strength" of that complex would be 
 useful to know before removing any one secre- 
 tion from it. Dr. Bell states that the oophorec- 
 tomy operation (removal of ovaries) may be 
 performed upon a masculine type of woman 
 with "little disturbance of the metabolism ..." 
 But he thinks that the degree of masculinity 
 should always be carefully observed befpre 
 undertaking such operations, which in some 
 cases have most undesirable effects. 
 
 At one end of the scale, this surgeon places 
 the typically feminine woman in all her char- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 83 
 
 aoteristios — with well-formed breasts, menstru- 
 ating freely and feminine in instincts — he says 
 "mind." The intermediate grades consist, he 
 says, of women whose metabolism leans toward 
 the masculine type. Some have sexual desires 
 but no maternal impulse. Others desire mater- 
 nity but take no interest in sex activity, or 
 positively shun it. The physical manifestations 
 of masculine glandular activity take the form 
 of pitch of voice, skin texture, shape and weight 
 of bones, etc. Some of the inter-grades are a 
 little hard to define — the human species is such 
 an inextricable mixture of races, etc. ; but Dr. 
 Bell does not hesitate to describe the charac- 
 teristically masculine woman of the extreme 
 type, who "shuns both sexual relations and 
 maternity . . . (She) is on the fringe of femi- 
 ninity. These women are usually flat-breasted 
 and plain. Even though they menstruate, their 
 metabolism is often for the most part masculine 
 in character : indications of this are seen in the 
 bones which are heavy, in the skin which is 
 coarse, and in the aggressive character of the 
 mind. ... If a woman have well-developed 
 genitalia, and secondary characteristics, she 
 
84 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 usually is normal in her instincts. A feebly 
 menstruating woman with flat breasts and 
 coarse skin cannot be expected to have strong 
 reproductive instincts, since she is largely mas- 
 iculine in type. ..." 
 
 The glandular and quantitative explanation 
 of sex, instead of being abstruse and compli- 
 cated, brings the subject in line with the known 
 facts about inheritance generally. The dual 
 basis for f emaleness and maleness in each indi- 
 vidual simply means that both factors are 
 present, but that only one expresses itself fully. 
 The presence of such a dual basis is proved by 
 the fact that in castration and transplantation 
 experiments both are exhibited by the same 
 individual in a single lifetime. In the case of 
 the Free-Martin cattle, even the female sex- 
 glands are modified toward the male type to 
 such an extent that they were long mistaken 
 for testes. The same applies to some glands 
 found in human "hermaphrodites," as Dr. 
 Bell's plates show. 
 
 The peculiar complication of the chemical 
 complex determining sex in these mammalian 
 forms, involving all the glands and hence the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 85 
 
 entire body, makes it problematical whether a 
 complete (functional) reversal is possible, at 
 least after any development whatever of the 
 embryo has taken place. On the other hand, 
 the fact that such complete transformations 
 have not so far been observed by no means 
 proves their non-existence. Their being func- 
 tional, and hence to all external appearances 
 normal, would cause such animals to escape 
 observation. 
 
 Latent traits of the opposite sex of course 
 immediately suggest recessive or unexpressed 
 characters in the well-known Mendelian in- 
 heritance phenomena. In the bird-castration 
 cases, we saw that to remove the inhibiting sex 
 glands caused previously latent characters to 
 act like dominant or expressed ones. The case 
 of horns in sheep, investigated by Professor 
 "Wood (16), is so similar that it seems worth 
 summarizing, by way of illustration. 
 
 Both sexes in Dorset sheep have well- 
 developed horns; in the Suffolk breed both 
 sexes are hornless. If the breeds are crossed, 
 all the rams in the first (hybrid) generation 
 have horns and all the ewes are hornless. If 
 
86 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 these hybrids are mated, the resulting male 
 offspring averages three horned to one horn- 
 less; but the females are the reverse of this 
 ratio — one horned to three hornless. This is 
 an example of Mendel's principle of segrega- 
 tion — factors may be mixed in breeding, but 
 they do not lose their identity, and hence tend 
 to be sorted out or segregated again in succeed- 
 ing generations. 
 
 In the horned Dorsets, we must suppose that 
 both males and females carry a dual factor 
 for horns — technically, are homozygous for 
 horns. The hornless Suffolks, on the contrary, 
 are homozygous for absence of horns. Thus the 
 dual factor in the zygotes or fertilized eggs at 
 the basis of the first filial (hybrid) generation 
 consists of a single factor for horns and a single 
 factor for their absence. If we represent horns 
 by H and absence of horns by A, Dorsets have 
 a factor HH, Suffolks AA and the hybrids HA. 
 
 All the males in this generation have horns, 
 which means that a single "dose" of the factor 
 H will produce horns in a male, or that they 
 are dominant in males. But a single dose will 
 not produce horns in a female — that is, horns 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 87 
 
 are recessive in females — the factor is present 
 but unexpressed. 
 
 Mating two HA hybrids, the H and A of 
 course split apart in the formation of the 
 gametes, as the HH and AA did in the previous 
 generation ; so that we get an equal number of 
 single H and A factors. In reuniting in fertil- 
 ized eggs, the chance is just half and half that 
 an H will unite with another H or with an A — 
 that an A will unite with an H or another A. 
 Thus we have two chances of getting HA to 
 each chance of getting either AA or HH. Half 
 the zygotes will be HA, one-fourth HH and 
 one-fourth A A. 
 
 If we consider four average males, one will 
 have two A's (absence of the factor for horns) 
 and will thus be hornless. One will have two 
 H's, or the double factor for horns, and hence 
 will exhibit horns — as will also the two HA's 
 since a single dose of horns expresses them in 
 a male. So we have the three-to-one Mendelian 
 ratio. , 
 
 But four females with exactly the same fac- 
 tors will express them as follows : The one HH 
 (double factor for horns) proves sufficient to 
 
88 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 express horns, even in a female. The AA, lack- 
 ing the factor entirely, cannot have horns. Nor 
 ■will the two HA females have horns, a single 
 dose being insufficient to express them in a 
 female. Again we get our three-to-one Men- 
 delian ratio, but this time it is three hornless 
 to one horned. 
 
 Especially Goldschmidt's carefully graded 
 experiments point to a similar difference in 
 the strength of the dose or doses of the sex 
 factors. Instead of the two doses of horns 
 required to express them in the presence of the 
 female secretory balance in Professor Wood's 
 sheep, Groldschmidt found it took six doses of 
 maleness to completely express it on a female 
 basis in his moths. But even with three doses, 
 the female was incapable of reproduction. A 
 single dose in excess of the ordinary combina- 
 tion to produce normal females modified the 
 type of body, also reducing the number of eggs. 
 
 In the case of the horns, only two types were 
 possible, absence or presence of the character. 
 Likewise there are only two types of primary 
 sex, i.e.,.of sex glands proper. But seven dif- 
 ferent types or grades of body for each sex 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 89 
 
 were found to exhibit themselves in the moths. 
 In more complicated bodies, we should of course 
 expect many more, and where many races (in- 
 stead of two) are mixed, as in man, a classifi- 
 cation merely on the basis of physical charac- 
 teristics would be much more complicated. In- 
 deed, we may well be skeptical as to the pos- 
 sibilities of cataloguing differences of the sort 
 between men and women by body type alone. 
 
 In society, however, we are much more inter- 
 ested in the mental than the purely physical 
 qualities of the two types of bodies, especially 
 since the use of machines has so largely re- 
 placed brute strength with skill. Most employ- 
 ments do not even require a muscular skill 
 beyond that possessed by ordinary individuals 
 of both sexes. 
 
 Even this ignores the primary consideration 
 in the sex problem in society, the first of the 
 following two parts into which the whole prob- 
 lem may be divided: (1) How to guarantee the 
 survival of the group through reproduction of 
 a sufficient number of capable individuals ; and 
 (2) How to make the most economical use of 
 the remaining energies, first in winning nutri- 
 
90 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tion and protection from the environment, 
 second in pursuing the distinctly human values 
 over and above survival. The sex problem as a 
 whole is concerned with adjusting two different 
 general types of individuals, male and female, 
 to the complicated business of such group life 
 or society. The differences between these two 
 sex-types being fundamentally functional, the 
 best way to get at them is to trace the respective 
 and unlike life cycles. 
 
 We have already shown in rude outline how 
 a difference (apparently chemical) between 
 two fertilized eggs starts them along two dif- 
 ferent lines of development in the embryonic 
 stage. One develops the characteristic male 
 primary and secondary sex characters, the 
 other the female. Throughout the embryonic 
 or intra-maternal stage this differentiation goes 
 on, becoming more and more fixed as it ex- 
 presses itself in physical structures. Childhood 
 is only a continuation of this development — 
 physically separate from the mother after the 
 period of lactation. Until puberty, when sex 
 ceases to be merely potential and becomes func- 
 tional (about 12-14 in girls and 14-16 in boys), 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 91 
 
 the differences in metabolism are not very- 
 marked. Neither are they in old age, after sex 
 has ceased to be functional. It is during the 
 period when sex is functional (about 35 years 
 in women and considerably longer in men) that 
 the gross physiological differences manifest 
 themselves. 
 
 Before puberty in both sexes, calcium or lime 
 salts are retained in the tissues and go to build 
 up the bony skeleton. (A mere sketch of calcium 
 metabolism is all that can be given here — for 
 details consult such works as 15 and 17 in bibli- 
 ography; summary in 14; pp. 34f. & 161f.) Note 
 that puberty comes earlier in girls than in boys, 
 and that the skeleton therefore remains lighter. 
 During the reproductive period in women these 
 salts are heavily drawn upon for the use of the 
 reproductive system. The male reproductive 
 system draws upon them as well, though the 
 drain is. very slight as compared to that in 
 women. In old age these salts produce senility 
 through deposit in the tissues, especially in the 
 arteries. 
 
 At the pubertal age in girls begins the phe- 
 nomenon known as menstruation, in which there 
 
92 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 is a large excretion of calcium salts. In preg- 
 nancy these are needed for building the skeleton 
 of the foetus, and at delivery go to the breasts 
 to assist in lactation. Bell states that there is 
 a noticeable connection between early menstrua- 
 tion and short stature, and vice versa. What 
 is commonly known as menstruation lasts only 
 a few days, and is merely the critical period in 
 a monthly cycle or periodicity which goes with 
 the female sex specialization. This period in- 
 volves the gradual preparation of the uterus 
 or womb for a guest, together with the matur- 
 ing of the ova. Then the Graafian follicles con- 
 taining the ova break and these latter enter the 
 uterus for fertilization. 
 
 If fertilization takes place, the fertilized egg 
 buries it-self in the wall and development of the 
 embryo proceeds. Menstruation stops, the cal- 
 cium salts being required for the growing em- 
 bryo. There is likely to be no menstruation for 
 a considerable time after delivery if the child 
 is nursed, as is normal. This gives the uterus 
 time for devolution to the normal, before a 
 surplus of calcium salts sets the periodicity 
 going again. If the egg which passes from the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 93 
 
 ovary to the uterus is not fertilized, it is ex- 
 creted, the uterus goes through another monthly- 
 cycle of preparation for the period of intra- 
 maternal environment, and so on indefinitely 
 until the climacteric. 
 
 This climacteric or decay of sexuality is a 
 rather critical time, especially in women. It 
 marks the period at which the metabolism can 
 no longer support the strain of reproduction. 
 A surplus of calcium brings on senility, as noted 
 above. Withdrawal of the interests which cen- 
 ter in sex, together with the marked accom- 
 panying physical changes, involves a shift of 
 mental attitude which is also frequently serious. 
 A British coroner stated in the British Medical 
 Journal in 1900 (Vol. 2, p. 792) that a majority 
 of 200 cases of female suicide occurred at this 
 period, while in the case of younger women 
 suicide is peculiarly likely to occur during men- 
 struation. Krugelstein and Lombroso, respec- 
 tively, remark the same tendencies (18). 
 
 It is a matter of almost everyday observation 
 that men and women in the neighborhood of 
 fifty suddenly find themselves disoriented in 
 the world. Tolstoi, for example, who had writ- 
 
94 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ten passionately of passion in his earlier years, 
 suddenly awoke, according to his "Confes- 
 sions," from what seemed to him afterward 
 to have been a bad dream. In this case, the 
 result was a new version of religion as a new 
 anchorage for the man's life. It may be paci- 
 fism, prohibition, philanthropy, or any one of 
 a very large number of different interests — 
 but there must usually be something to furnish 
 zest to a life which has ceased to be a sufficient 
 excuse for itself. 
 
 If freed from worry about economic realities, 
 it is not infrequently possible for the first time 
 for these people to "balance" their fives — to 
 find in abstraction a rounded perfection for 
 which earlier in life we seek in vain as strag- 
 glers in a world of change. Thus old people are 
 often highly conservative, i.e., impatient of 
 change in their social environment, involving 
 reorientation; they wish the rules of the game 
 let alone, so they can pursue the new realities 
 they have created for themselves. 
 
 Socially, the old are of course a very impor- 
 tant factor since a changed metabolism sets 
 them somewhat outside the passionate interests 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 95 
 
 which, drive people forward, often in wrong 
 directions, in the prime of life. Hence in a 
 sense the old can judge calmly, as outsiders. 
 Like youth before it has yet come in contact 
 with complicated reality, they often see men and 
 women as "each chasing his separate phan- 
 tom." 
 
 "While such conservatism, in so far as it is 
 judicial, is of value to society, looking at it 
 from the viewpoint of biology we see also some 
 bad features. Senex, the old man, often says to 
 younger people, ' ' These things you pursue are 
 valueless — I too have sought them, later 
 abandoned the search and now see my folly;" 
 not realizing that if his blood were to resume 
 its former chemical character he would return 
 to the quest. 
 
 Elderly people, then, biological neuters, come 
 especially within the problem of the economical 
 use of the social as distinguished from the 
 biological capacities of +he race. They affect 
 the sex problem proper, which applies to a 
 younger age-class, only through their opinions. 
 Some of these opinions are hangovers from 
 the time in their own lives when they had 
 
96 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 stronger sexual interests, and some are pe- 
 culiar to people of their readjusted glandular 
 activity. Their reproductive contribution to 
 society has been made. 
 
 Pre-pubertal childhood and youth, on the 
 contrary, has its biological contributions to 
 society still before it. The glandular activity 
 of boys and girls is perhaps not so unlike as 
 to justify society in giving them a different 
 kind of education and preparation for group 
 life. The excuse for two sorts of training is 
 that the two sexes will not do the same work 
 after puberty. Hence the question of youthful 
 training is sociological almost entirely — not 
 biological — or rather, it rests upon the biology, 
 not of childhood but of the reproductive period, 
 which society anticipates. 
 
 Instead of scattering attention over the whole 
 history of the universe, then, or even over the 
 general field of biology, in dealing with sex as 
 a social problem, the emphasis must be upon 
 the human life cycle during the functional- 
 reproductive period. Other biological data than 
 that which concerns this period is merely intro- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 97 
 
 ductory or explanatory. The extent to which 
 the sociological problem involved is linked np 
 with general biological considerations like 
 natural selection, adaptation and specialization 
 will be summarized in a separate chapter. 
 
 Earlier female maturity and puberty, as well 
 as lighter structure, bave already been ac- 
 counted for by the metabolism, especially of the 
 calcium salts. These have also been shown to 
 be the key fact in the monthly periodicity of 
 the mammalian female. Nearly all of the ana- 
 tomical and physiological sex differences cata- 
 logued by such pioneer workers as Ellis, Ploss, 
 Thomas and Bucura are simply what we should 
 expect from the less active and in some ways 
 peculiar metabolism of woman. 
 
 Among such differences are the size and 
 shape of bones and other body structures, the 
 more plentiful haemoglobin in male blood dur- 
 ing the reproductive period, and such blood 
 peculiarities as the production of more car- 
 bonic acid or the higher specific gravity in the 
 male. The greater percentage of fat as com- 
 pared with muscle in women (19), if it is gen- 
 
98 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 erally true, is what we should expect from a 
 lower metabolism and a tendency to store 
 materials. The long list of diseases which are 
 more or less sex-limited (20; 14, pp. 160f. ; 18) 
 are largely endocrine. Even those which do not 
 primarily concern the internal secretory system 
 would be expected to work somewhat differently 
 in the presence of unlike blood streams. As to 
 the greater average weight of the male brain, 
 this is true of the whole body. Brain weight, 
 either absolute or relative to body weight, is 
 not positively known to be in any way corre- 
 lated (in normal people) with mental capacity. 
 A library might be stocked with the vast 
 literature devoted to summarizing and cata- 
 loguing sex differences; and most of it would 
 be useless from the standpoint of sociology. 
 Unaccompanied by the criticisms a biologist 
 would have to make on the method of their 
 ascertainment and validity, not to mention their 
 significance, such lists can easily do — and prob- 
 ably have done — more harm than good. One 
 simple and reasonable criterion, would reduce 
 this catalogue to fairly modest proportions, so 
 far as social science is concerned : Which ones 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 99 
 
 have an obvious or even probable social sig- 
 nificance? Over and above that, while such con- 
 trasts may be of speculative interest, they lead 
 imaginative people to argue from them by anal- 
 ogy and thus cloud the real issues. 
 
 What are the outstandingly significant sex 
 differences which application of the above cri- 
 terion leaves? (1) A less active and more un- 
 even metabolism of woman; (2) Associated 
 with this, less physical strength on the average 
 — hence an inferior adaptability to some kinds 
 of work, resulting in a narrower range of choice 
 of occupation, disadvantageous in competitive 
 society; (3) But the one fundamental difference, 
 to which ? II the others are as nothing, is the 
 specialization of the mammalian female body 
 and metabolism to furnish the intra-maternal 
 environment (approximately nine months in 
 the human species) for the early development 
 of the young and lactation for some months 
 afterward. 
 
 This last may be said to include the former 
 two, which were arbitrarily placed first because 
 they are always in evidence, whether reprodue- 
 
100 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tion is undertaken or not. This takes us out of 
 cell and endocrine biology and into the general 
 problem in group adjustment to environment 
 which that specialization entails. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER III: 
 
 1. Goldschmidt, R. Experimental Intersexuality and the 
 
 Sex Problem. Amer. Naturalist, 1916. Vol. 50, pp. 
 705f. 
 
 2. Goldschmidt, R. Preliminary Report on Further Ex- 
 
 periments in Inheritance and Determination of Sex. 
 Proc. Nat. Acad. So., 1916. Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 53f. 
 
 3. Goldschmidt, R. A Case of Facultative Partheno- 
 
 genesis. Biol. Bulletin, 1917. Vol. XXXII, No. 1, 
 p. 38. 
 
 4. Goldschmidt, R. Intersexuality and the Endocrine As- 
 
 pect of Sex. Endocrinology, Vol. I, p. 434. 1917. 
 Fine summary of the work done on moths, birds 
 and various forms by many biologists. 
 
 5. Riddle, Dr. Oscar. Quantitative Basis of Sex as in- 
 
 dicated by the Sex-Behavior of Doves from a Sex- 
 Controlled Series. Science, n.s., Vol. 39, p. 440, 
 1914. 
 
 6. liiddle, Dr. Oscar. Sex Control and Known Correla- 
 
 tions in Pigeons. Amer. Nat. Vol. L, pp. 385-410. 
 
 7. Benedict, F. G. & Emmes, L. E. A Comparison of 
 
 the Basal Metabolism of Men and Women. Jour. 
 Biol. Chem. Vol. 20. No. 3. 1914. 
 
 8. Schafer, Sir E. A. Endocrine Glands and Internal Se- 
 
 cretions. Stanford University, 1914, p. 91. 
 
 9. Paton, D. Noel. Regulators of Metabolism. London, 
 
 1913, p. 146. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 101 
 
 10. Weininger, Otto. Sex and Character. Lond. & N. T., 
 
 1906. Eng. trans, of Geschlecht u. Charakter, Vi- 
 enna & Leipzig, 1901 & 1903. 
 
 11. Leland, C. G. The Alternate Sex. London, 1904. 
 
 12. Carpenter, Edw. Love's Coming of Age. London, 
 
 1906. 
 
 13. George, W. L. The Intelligence of Woman, Boston, 
 
 1916. 
 
 14. Bell, Dr. Blair. The Sex Complex, London, 1916. 
 
 15. Bell, Dr. Blair. Gynaecology. London, 1919. 
 
 16. Bateson, W. Mendel's Principles of Heredity. 1909, 
 
 pp. 169-70. 
 
 17. Marshall, F. H. A Physiology of Reproduction. 
 
 Lond., 1910. 
 
 18. Ellis, Havelock. Man and Woman. 1904 ed., pp. 
 
 284f . 
 
 19. Thomas, W. I. Sex and Society. 1907, p. 19. 
 
 20. Schafer, Sir. Edw. An Introduction to the Study o£ 
 
 Internal Secretions. Lond. 1916, pp. 106f. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SEX SPECIALIZATION AND GEOUP SURVIVAL. 
 
 Adaptation and specialization; Reproduction a group not 
 an individual problem; Conflict between specialization 
 and adaptation; Intelligence makes for economy in 
 adjustment to environment; Reproduction, not pro- 
 duction, the chief factor in the sex problem. 
 
 From the facts briefly stated in the preceding 
 chapters it is quite evident that the general 
 superiority of man over woman or vice versa 
 cannot be proven by biology. Such an idea 
 arises from a careless and unscientific use of 
 language. Superiority is a term which, when 
 used to express the rather exact ideas of bi- 
 ology, is employed in a carefully limited and 
 specific, not in a general, sense. That is, superi- 
 ority, even if an apparently general idea like 
 survival value is referred to, always implies a 
 given, understood environment where such is 1 
 not specifically mentioned. Wolves, for exam- 
 ple, might be found to possess superior chances 
 
 102 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 103 
 
 for survival over foxes, beaver or partridges 
 in a given environment. A biologist would prob- 
 ably use more exact and less ambiguous terms 
 to express such a fact, and say that wolves were 
 the best adapted to the given surroundings. 
 If all these animals continued to live side by 
 side in the given environment, they could be 
 compared only as to specific details — size, 
 strength, cunning, fleetness in running, swim- 
 ming or flying, concealment from enemies, etc 
 Then the biologist would probably make his 
 meaning perfectly clear by stating that one is 
 specialised in one direction or another. 
 
 Especially is general superiority a vague idea 
 when the things compared are different but 
 mutually necessary or complementary. If their 
 functions overlap to some extent (i. e., if cer- 
 tain acts can be performed by either), we may 
 say that one is better adapted to a certain ac- 
 tivity than the other. Thus it may be that wom- 
 en are generally better adapted to caring for 
 young children than are men, or that men are 
 on the whole better adapted to riveting boiler 
 plates, erecting skyscrapers, or sailing ships. 
 Where their activities do not overlap at all, 
 
104 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 even the word adaptation hardly applies. For 
 example, women are not better "adapted" to 
 furnishing the intra-maternal environment for 
 the young, since men are not adapted to it at 
 all. It is a case of female specialisation. 
 
 Men being neither specialized nor adapted, 
 to any extent whatever, to this particular activ- 
 ity, any attempt at comparison is obviously 
 fruitless, since one term is always zero. This 
 specialization, absolutely necessary to the sur- 
 vival of human groups, is either present or it 
 is absent in a given individual. Any attempt 
 to formulate a general proposition about supe- 
 riority either attaches purely arbitrary values 
 to different kinds of activity or is absurd from 
 the standpoint of the most elementary logic. 
 
 From the standpoint of biology, reproduction 
 is not an individual but a group problem, how- 
 ever many problems of detail it may give rise 
 to in individual lives. Sex involves the division 
 of the reproductive process, without the exer- 
 cise of which any human group would perish 
 very shortly, into two complementary, mutually 
 necessary but unequal parts. (This statement 
 applies only to the reproductive process, as 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 105 
 
 obviously the male and female gametes con- 
 tribute equally to the formation of the new 
 individual.) Neither part (the male or the fe- 
 male) of this process is more necessary than 
 the other, both being absolutely necessary. But 
 the female specialization for furnishing the 
 intra-maternal environment makes her share 
 more burdensome. 
 
 Biologically considered, not even two indi- 
 viduals (male and female), together with their 
 offspring, can be more than an arbitrary "unit" 
 as concerns sex, since inbreeding eventually 
 impoverishes the stock. Hence outcrosses are 
 necessary. To intelligibly consider the sex prob- 
 lem in the human species, then, we must always 
 predicate a considerable group of people, with 
 such organization and division of activities as 
 to guarantee that all the processes necessary 
 to survival will be carried on. Sex is a group 
 problem. Considering the mutual interdepend- 
 ence and the diversity of activities in human 
 society, to make the generalization that one sex 
 is superior to the other is on a par with saying 
 that roots and branches are superior to trunks 
 and leaves. It is sheer foolishness. Yet oceans 
 
106 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 of ink have flowed in attempts to establish one 
 or the other of two equally absurd propositions. 
 
 Since the specialization to furnish the intra- 
 maternal environment for the young makes the 
 female part of the reproductive process essen- 
 tially and unavoidably more burdensome than 
 the male, it results that an economical division 
 of the extra-reproductive activities of any 
 group must throw an unequal share upon the 
 males. This specialization to carry the young 
 during the embryonic period is thus at the base 
 of the division of labor between the sexes. It 
 is the chief factor involved in the problems of 
 sex, and gives rise, directly or indirectly, to 
 most of the others. 
 
 But the sex problem as a whole is one of 
 adaptation as well as of specialization. An 
 incident of the female specialization is a type 
 of body on the average smaller, weaker and less 
 well adapted to some other activities than is 
 the male body, even when reproduction is not 
 undertaken. A great complication is added by 
 the fact that some women, and also some men, 
 are better adapted than others to nonrepro- 
 ductive activities. This is another way of say- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 107 
 
 ing that the type of body associated with either 
 type of sex glands varies a good deal, for 
 reasons and in respects already pointed out. 
 
 The most important fact about this repro- 
 ductive specialization is that beyond fertiliza- 
 tion it is exclusive in the female. Since the 
 males cannot furnish the intra-parental environ- 
 ment for the young, the entire burden must fall 
 on half the group. If this aggregation is to even 
 hold its own numerically, its women must have, 
 on an average, two children each, plus about 
 one more for unavoidable waste — death in in- 
 fancy or childhood, sterility, obvious unfitness 
 for reproduction, etc., i.e., three in all. If one 
 woman has less than her three children, then 
 another must have more than three, or the 
 group number will decrease. Group survival 
 is the fundamental postulate in a problem of 
 this hind,. 
 
 The above figure is for civilized society. In 
 primitive groups, the terrific wastage makes a 
 much higher birth-rate necessary, several times 
 as high in many cases. If we suppose such a 
 group, where child mortality, lack of sanitation, 
 etc., necessitates an average of eight children 
 
108 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 per woman (instead of three), the biological 
 origin of the division of labor between the sexes 
 is much more clearly seen than it is in civilized 
 societies. 
 
 If men are better hunters or fighters than 
 women, the latter could nevertheless hunt and 
 fight — it is a question of superior or inferior 
 adaptation to particular activities. But it is 
 more than that. Only the women are biologi- 
 cally specialized to the chief reproductive bur- 
 den (intra-parental environment and lactation). 
 If half the women should withdraw from child- 
 bearing, the remainder would be obliged to 
 average sixteen apiece. But even this is not all. 
 Unfortunately, the half of the women who would 
 be found best adapted to hunting and fighting 
 would be the more vigorous half. The new 
 generation would thus be born from the left- 
 overs, and would be poor quality. Such a divi- 
 sion of labor within a group would be fatally 
 foolish and entirely uncalled for — since there 
 are plenty of men adapted to hunting and fight- 
 ing, but entirely unspecialized to child-bearing 
 and nursing. 
 
 Group survival being the fundamental thing, 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 109 
 
 the group is obliged to develop a division of 
 labor which directs the activities of the indi- 
 viduals composing it to providing for its neces- 
 sities, regardless of any interference with their 
 own desires. That is, if group survival requires 
 that woman use her specialization to child- 
 bearing instead of any adaptation she may pos- 
 sess in other directions, one of two things in- 
 evitably result: (1) Either the group finds or 
 evolves some social control machinery which 
 meets the necessity, or (2) it must give way to 
 some other group which can do so. In either 
 case, the result is a division of labor, which we 
 see more clearly in primitive peoples. The less 
 efficient group is not necessarily exterminated, 
 but if it loses out in the competition until some 
 other group is able to conquer it and impose its 
 division of labor the result is of course the ex- 
 tinction of the conquered group as an integral 
 part of society. This is simply natural selection 
 working on groups. Natural selection works 
 chiefly in this manner on the human species, 
 beccmse that species lives in groups. Such 
 group control of the component individuals as 
 has been described has led to a division of labor 
 
110 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 between the sexes in every primitive society. 
 All this means is that the group adopting such 
 a division has greater survival value, and hence 
 is more likely to be represented in later ages. 
 
 It must not be supposed that such systems 
 of control were always logically thought out 
 or deliberately planned. Even animals which 
 live in herds or colonies have divisions of labor. 
 Through an infinite slaughter of the least fit, 
 such groups arrive at some kind of instinctive 
 adjustment to produce and protect the young. 
 The crudest human intelligence must have elim- 
 inated much of the waste involved, by com- 
 prehending obvious cause-and-effect relations 
 which animals have to arrive at through trial 
 and error methods. 
 
 For example, an intelligence capable of em- 
 ploying artificial weapons is also able to see 
 that the wielder of these for group defence can- 
 not be encumbered with baggage or children 
 when the group is in movement. Hence women 
 became the burden bearers, and took care of 
 the children, even after the nursing period. 
 War parties could not generally be mixed, for 
 the obvious reasons that such women as did 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 111 
 
 not have young children would be pregnant a 
 good deal of the time, or likely to become so. 
 Moreover, a hunter and fighter must not have 
 his courage, ferocity and physical initiative 
 undermined by unsuitable employments and 
 associations. 
 
 In a semi-settled group, the hunter and war- 
 rior cannot be relied upon to keep hearth-fires 
 burning or tend crops, even though he may 
 occasionally have time for such activities. 
 These duties are therefore relegated to the 
 women, whose child-bearing functions impose 
 upon them a more sedentary existence. Women 
 must reproduce practically up to their full 
 capacity to fill up the gaps made by war, acci- 
 dent and disease as well as death from old age. 
 To this biological service which they alone can 
 perform are added those which lie nearest it 
 and interfere least with carrying it out. 
 
 We must therefore keep in view all the activi- 
 ties of any group in which the sex problem is 
 being studied. There is a certain tendency to 
 disregard the female specialization to child- 
 bearing, and to regard the sex question as one 
 merely of adaptation to extra-biological serv- 
 
112 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ices. In every group which has survived, some 
 machinery — a "crust of custom," reinforced by 
 more arbitrary laws or regulations — has sought 
 to guarantee reproduction by keeping women 
 out of lines of endeavor which might endanger 
 that fundamental group necessity. Primitive 
 societies which got stabilized within a given 
 territory and found their birth-rate danger- 
 ously high could always keep it down by expos- 
 ing or destroying some of the unfit children, 
 or a certain per cent of the female children, 
 or both. 
 
 In primitive groups, the individual was prac- 
 tically nil. But modern civilized society is able 
 to survive without the rigid control of indi- 
 vidual activities which the old economy en- 
 tailed. Man comes to choose more and more 
 for himself individually instead of for the 
 group, uniformity weakens and individualism 
 becomes more pronounced. As control of en- 
 vironment becomes more complete and easy, 
 natural selection grows harder to deter J . We 
 turn our interests and activities toward the 
 search for what we want and take survival 
 largely for granted — something the savage can- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 113 
 
 not do. Natural selection becomes unreal to us, 
 because the things we do to survive are so 
 intricately mixed up with those we do for other 
 reasons. Natural selection in gregarious ani- 
 mals operates upon groups rather than upon 
 individuals. Arrangement of these groups is 
 often very intricate. Some have territorial 
 boundaries and some have not. Often they over- 
 lap, identical individuals belonging to several. 
 Hence it is not strange that natural selection 
 phenomena often escape attention. 
 
 But this must not lead us to suppose that 
 natural selection is wholly inoperative in civi- 
 lized society. We see some nations outbreeding 
 others, or dominating them through superior 
 organization. Within nations, some racial and 
 religious groups outbreed others and thus 
 gradually supplant them — for the future is to 
 those: who furnish its populations. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 RACIAL DEGENERATION AND THE NECESSITY FOB 
 RATIONALIZATION OF THE MORES 
 
 Eaeial decay in modern society; Purely "moral" control 
 dysgenic in civilized society; New machinery for so- 
 cial control; Mistaken notion that reproduction is an 
 individual problem; Economic and other factors in 
 the group problem of reproduction. 
 
 From the discussion in the preceding chapter, 
 it becomes apparent that for the half of the 
 female element in a savage society possessing 
 the most vigor and initiative to turn away from 
 reproduction would in the long run be fatal to 
 the group. Yet this is what occurs in large 
 measure in modern civilized society. Repro- 
 duction is a biological function. It is non-com- 
 petitive, as far as the individual is concerned, 
 and offers no material rewards. The break- 
 down of the group's control over the detailed 
 conduct and behavior of its members is accom- 
 panied by an increasing stress upon material 
 rewards to individuals. So with growing indi- 
 
 114 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 115 
 
 vidualism, in the half of the race which can both 
 bear children and compete in the social activi- 
 ties offering rewards, i.e., the women who are 
 specialized to the former and adapted to the 
 latter, there is a growing tendency among the 
 most successful, individualized strains, to 
 choose the social and eschew the biological 
 functions. 
 
 Eacial degeneration is the result. Recorded 
 history is one succession of barbarous races, 
 under strong, primitive breeding conditions, 
 swamping their more civilized, individualized 
 neighbors, adopting the dysgenic ways of civi- 
 lization and then being swamped in their turn 
 by barbarians. This is especially pronounced 
 in our own times because popularized biological 
 and medical knowledge makes it possible for 
 a tremendous class of the most successful and 
 enlightened to avoid reproduction without fore- 
 going sex activity. 
 
 In primitive groups, a "moral" control 
 which kept all women at reproduction was 
 neither eugenic nor dysgenic unless accompa- 
 nied by systematic destruction of the least fit 
 children. By "moral" control is meant the 
 
116 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 use of taboo, prejudice, religious abhorrence 
 for certain acts and the like. The carefully nur- 
 tured moral ideas about sex and reproduction 
 simply represent the system of coercion which 
 groups have found most effective in enforcing 
 the division of reproductive and other activi- 
 ties among the individual members. When this 
 social machinery grew up, to regulate sexual 
 activity was in general to regulate reproduc- 
 tion. The natural sex desire proved sufficiently 
 powerful and general to still seek its object, 
 even with the group handicaps and regulations 
 imposed to meet the reproductive necessity. 
 But contraceptive knowledge, etc., has now be- 
 come so general that to- regulate sex activity 
 is no longer to regulate reproduction. The 
 taboo or "moral" method of regulation has 
 become peculiarly degenerating to race quality, 
 because the most intelligent, rationalized indi- 
 viduals are least affected by it. 
 
 There is no turning back to control by igno- 
 rance. Even theoretically, the only way to stop 
 such a disastrous selection of the unfit would 
 be to rationalize reproduction — so that nobody 
 shall reproduce the species through sheer ig- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 117 
 
 norance of how to evade or avoid it. This done, 
 some type of social control must be found which 
 will enable civilized societies to breed from 
 their best instead of their worst stock. Under 
 the old scheme, already half broken down, 
 natural selection favors primitive rather than 
 civilized societies through decreased birth-rates 
 and survival of the unfit in the latter. Even 
 this is true only where the savage groups are 
 not interfered with by the civilized, a condition 
 rapidly disappearing through modern occiden- 
 tal imperialism and the inoculation of primi- 
 tive peoples with "civilized" diseases such as 
 syphilis, rum-drinking and rampant individ- 
 ualism. 
 
 To continually encourage the racially most 
 desirable women to disregard their sexual 
 specialization and exploit their social-competi- 
 tive adaptation must obviously destroy the 
 group which pursues such a policy. The only 
 way to make such a course democratic is to 
 carefully instruct all women, rich and poor, 
 wise and ignorant, in the methods of avoiding 
 reproduction and to inject the virus of indi- 
 vidualism in all alike. Then the group can get 
 
118 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 its population supply only by a new system of 
 control. To remove any economic handicaps to 
 child-bearing is certainly not out of harmony 
 with our ideas of justice. 
 
 In removing the economic handicaps at pres- 
 ent connected with the reproductive function 
 in women, care must also be taken that the very 
 measures which insure this do not themselves 
 become dysgenic influences. Such schemes as 
 maternity insurance, pensions for mothers, and 
 most of the propositions along this line, may 
 offer an inducement to women of the poorer 
 classes to assume the burdens connected with 
 their specialization for child-bearing. But their 
 more fortunate sisters, who find themselves so 
 well adapted to modern conditions that they 
 are even moderately successful in the compe- 
 tition for material rewards, will hardly find 
 recompense thus for turning from their social 
 to their biological functions. To these highly 
 individualized modern women must be present- 
 ed more cogent reasons for taking upon them- 
 selves the burden of reproducing the group. 
 
 It is obvious that from just this energetic fe- 
 male stock we should obtain a large part of the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 119 
 
 next generation if we are at all concerned over 
 the welfare of the group and its chances of sur- 
 vival. One suggestion is that we may be able 
 to turn their very individualism to account and 
 use it as a potent factor in the social control 
 of their reproductive activities. If we can dem- 
 onstrate on the basis of sound biological data 
 that the bearing of children is necessary for the 
 full and complete development of the individ- 
 ual woman, physically and mentally, we shall 
 have gone a long way toward securing volun- 
 tary motherhood. Only such argument will in- 
 duce the highly individualized, who may also be 
 the most vital, woman to turn of her own ac- 
 cord from competitive social activities to the 
 performance of the biological function for 
 which she is specialized. This is especially 
 true, as has been intimated above, since con- 
 traceptive knowledge now permits the exercise 
 of sexual functions without the natural conse- 
 quences, and the avoidance of motherhood no 
 longer involves the denial of expression to the 
 sexual urge. 
 
 Even if we are able to utilize this method of 
 control, it will not obtain the requisite num- 
 
120 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ber of offspring to maintain the eugenic quality 
 of the group, since the bearing of one or two 
 children would be all that individual develop- 
 ment would require. If the group must have 
 on the average three children from each of its 
 women in order to replace itself, the larger 
 part of the reproductive activities will still be 
 confined to the more ignorant, or if they also 
 make use of contraceptive knowledge, the 
 group will simply die out from the effects of 
 its own democratic enlightenment. Thus it be- 
 comes apparent that we must find some more 
 potent force than this narrow form of self-in- 
 terest to accomplish the social purposes of re- 
 production. When reproduction is generally 
 understood to be as thoroughly a matter of 
 group survival as for example the defensive 
 side in a war of extermination, the same sen- 
 timent of group loyalty which now takes such 
 forms as patriotism can be appealed to. If the 
 human race is unsocial it will perish anyway. 
 If it has not become unsocial — and it does not 
 display any such tendency, but only the use of 
 such impulses in mistaken directions — then a 
 group necessity like reproduction can be met 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 121 
 
 "Whatever is required of the individual will be- 
 come "moral" and "patriotic" — Le., it will be 
 wreathed in the imperishable sentiments which 
 group themselves around socially necessary and 
 hence socially approved acts everywhere and 
 always. 
 
 In whatever races finally survive, the women 
 of good stock as well as poor, — perhaps even- 
 tually the good even more than the poor, — will 
 reproduce themselves. Because of our ideals 
 of individual liberty, this may not be achieved 
 by taboo, ignorance or conscription for mother- 
 hood. But when it is found to be to the per- 
 sonal interest to bear children, both as a means 
 of complete physical and mental development 
 and as a way of winning social approval and 
 esteem, it will become as imperative for woman 
 to fulfill the biological function to which she is 
 specialized as it was under the old system of 
 moral and taboo control. The increasing em- 
 phasis on the necessity of motherhood for the 
 maintenance of a normal, healthy personality, 
 and the growing tendency to look upon this 
 function as the greatest service which woman 
 can render to society, are manifest signs that 
 
122 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 this time is approaching. There is little doubt 
 that woman will be as amenable to these newer 
 and more rationalized mores as human nature 
 has always been to the irrationally formed cus- 
 toms and traditions of the past. 
 
 To ignore the female specialization involved 
 in furnishing the intramaternal environment 
 for three children, on an average, to the group, 
 is simply foolish. If undertaken at maturity 
 — say from twenty-two to twenty-five years of 
 age — and a two-year interval left between the 
 three in the interest of both mother and chil- 
 dren, it puts woman in an entirely different re- 
 lation toward extra-reproductive activities than 
 man. It does imply a division of labor. 
 
 In general, it would seem socially expedient 
 to encourage each woman to have her own three 
 children, instead of shifting the burden upon 
 the shoulders of some other. If such activities 
 as nursing and caring for the very young can 
 be pooled, so much the better. Doubtless some 
 women who find them distasteful would be much 
 more useful to society at other work. But let 
 us not disregard fundamentals. It is obviously 
 advantageous for children of normal, able par- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 123 
 
 ents to be cared for in the home environment. 
 In a biologically healthy society the presump- 
 tion must be that the average woman has some 
 three children of her own. Since this obviously 
 includes nurses and governesses, we see at once 
 the futility of the oft-proposed class solution 
 of hiring single women to care for the children 
 of the fortunate. If such a servant is unde- 
 sirable, she is not hired ; if normal, in a biolog- 
 ically healthy society she would have her own 
 children. 
 
 The female handicap incident to reproduction 
 may be illustrated by the case of Hambletonian 
 10 mentioned in Chapter II. "We saw that a 
 female could not have borne the hundredth part 
 of his colts. This simple means that the ef- 
 fort or individual cost of impressing his char- 
 acters upon the new generation is less than one 
 one-hundredth that required of a female. 
 
 Among domestic animals this is made use of 
 to multiply the better males to the exclusion 
 of the others, a valuable biological expedient 
 which we are denied in human groups because 
 it would upset all our social institutions. So 
 we do the next best thing and make the males 
 
124 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 do more than half in the extra-biological activi- 
 ties of society, since they are by their struc- 
 ture prevented from having an equal share in 
 the reproductive burden. This is an abso- 
 lutely necessary equation, and there will al- 
 ways be some sort of division of labor on the 
 basis of it. 
 
 Since reproduction is a group, not an indi- 
 vidual, necessity, whatever economic burden it 
 entails must eventually be assumed by society 
 and divided up among the individuals, like the 
 cost of war or any other group activity. 
 Ideally, then, from the standpoint of democ- 
 racy, every individual, male or female, should 
 bear his share as a matter of course. This 
 attitude toward reproduction, as an individual 
 duty but a group economic burden, would lead 
 to the solution of most of the problems in- 
 volved. Negative eugenics should be an im- 
 mediate assumption — if the state must pay for 
 offspring, the quality will immediately begin 
 to be considered. A poor race-contribution, not 
 worth paying for, would certainly be prevented 
 as far as possible. 
 
 Some well-meaning radical writers mis- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 125 
 
 takenly suppose that the emancipation of 
 women means the withdrawal hy the group of 
 any interest in, or any attempt to regulate, such 
 things as the hours and conditions of female 
 labor. That would simply imply that the group 
 takes no interest in reproduction — in its own 
 survival. For if the group does not make some 
 equation for the greater burden of reproduction 
 upon women, the inevitable result will be that 
 that particular service will not be rendered by 
 those most desirable to be preserved. 
 
 Given the fundamental assumption that the 
 group is to survive — to be perpetuated by the 
 one possible means— if it withdraws all solici- 
 tude about the handicap this entails to women 
 as a whole, introducing a spirit of laissez-faire 
 competition between men and women, the 
 women with sense enough to see the point will 
 not encumber themselves with children. For 
 each one of these who has no children, some 
 other woman must have six instead of three. 
 And some people encourage this in the name 
 of democracy! 
 
 The most involved problems must inevitably 
 center around the women who, to quote Mrs. 
 
126 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 Hollingworth, "vary from the mode," but are 
 yet functional for sex. Some have no sex de- 
 sires at all, some no craving for or attachment 
 to children, some neither of these. It is a ques- 
 tion still to be solved whether some of them 
 ought, in the interest of the race, to be encour- 
 aged to reproduce themselves. In less indi- 
 vidualized primitive society, seclusion, taboo 
 and ignorance coerced them into reproduction. 
 Any type of control involving the inculcation 
 of "moral" ideas is open to the objection that 
 it may work on those who should not repro- 
 duce themselves as well as those who should. 
 In a sense, this problem will tend to solve it- 
 self. With the substitution of the more ration- 
 alized standards of self-interest and group loy- 
 alty for the irrational taboo control of repro- 
 ductive activities, there will be as much freedom 
 for women to choose whether they will accept 
 maternity as there is now, in the period of 
 transition from the old standards to the new. 
 The chief difference will be that many of the 
 artificial forces which are acting as barriers to 
 motherhood at the present time, — as for exam- 
 ple the economic handicap involved, — will be re- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 127 
 
 moved, and woman's choice will therefore be 
 more entirely in harmony with her native in- 
 stinctive tendencies. Thns those women en- 
 dowed with the most impelling desire for chil- 
 dren will, as a rule, have the largest number. 
 In all probability their offspring will inherit 
 the same strong parental instinct. The stocks 
 more poorly endowed with this impulse will 
 .tend to die out by the very lack of any tendency 
 to self -perpetuation. It is only logical to con- 
 clude, therefore, that as we set up the new 
 forces of social control outlined in this chap- 
 ter, we are at the same time providing more 
 scope for natural selection, and that the prob- 
 lem of aberrant types consequently becomes 
 only a transitory one. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE_INSTITUTIONALIZED SEX TABOO 
 
 BY 
 IVA LOWTHER PETERS. Ph.D. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PBIMITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD SEX AND 
 WOMANHOOD 
 
 Primitive social control; Its rigidity; Its necessity; Uni- 
 versality of this control in the form of taboos; Con- 
 nection between the universal attitude of primitive 
 peoples toward woman as shown in the Institutional- 
 ized Sex Taboo and the magico-religious belief in 
 Mana ; Relation of Mana to Taboo ; Discussion of Sym- 
 pathetic Magic and the associated idea of danger from 
 contact; Difficulties in the way of an inclusive defini- 
 tion of Taboo; Its dual nature; Comparison of con- 
 cepts of Crawley, Frazer, Marett and others; Conclu- 
 sion that Taboo is Negative Mana; Contribution of 
 modern psychology to the study of Taboo; Freud's 
 analogy between the dualistic attitude toward the ta- 
 booed object and the ambivalence of the emotions; 
 The understanding of this dualism together with the 
 primitive belief in Mana and Sympathetic Magic ex- 
 plains much in the attitude of man toward woman; 
 The vast amount of evidence in the taboos of many 
 peoples of dualism in the attitude toward woman. 
 Possible physiological explanation of this dualistic at- 
 titude of man toward woman found in a period be- 
 fore self-control had in some measure replaced social 
 control, in the reaction of weakness and disgust fol- 
 lowing sex festivals. 
 
 131 
 
132 TABOO AND GENETIC^ 
 
 A study of the elaborate, standardized, and 
 authoritative systems of social control found 
 among all primitive peoples gives a vivid im- 
 pression of the difficulty of the task of com- 
 pelling man to die to himself, that is, to become 
 a socius. The rigors and rituals of initiation 
 ceremonies at adolescence impressed the du- 
 ties of sociality at that impressionable period. 
 The individual who refused to bow his head 
 to the social yoke became a vagabond, an out- 
 cast, an excommunicate. In view of the fierce- 
 ness of the struggle for food and the attitude 
 toward the stranger among all primitives, the 
 outcast's life chances were unenviable. It was 
 preferable to adapt one's self to the social or- 
 der. "Bad" traits were the more easily sup- 
 pressed in return for the re-enforcement of 
 power which was the striking feature of group 
 life; power over enemies, power over nature, 
 and a re-enforcement of the emotional life of 
 the individual which became the basis on which 
 were built up the magico-religious ceremonies 
 of institutionalized religion. 
 
 It is the purpose of this study to consider a 
 phase of social life in which there can be traced 
 
TXBOO AND GENETICS 133 
 
 a persistence into modern times of a primitive 
 form of control which in a prdcational stage 
 of group life made possible tb^Rmparatively 
 harmonious interplay of antaSiistic forces. 
 This form of control is called Ttboo. A stu- 
 dent of the phenomenon, a recognized author- 
 ity on its ethnological interpretation, says of 
 it : "To illustrate the continuity of culture and 
 the identity of the elementary human ideas in 
 all ages, it is sufficient to point to the ease with 
 which the Polynesian word tabu has passed into 
 modern language." (l: p. 16.) 
 
 We shall attempt to show that at least one 
 form of taboo, the Institutionalized Sex Taboo, 
 is coextensive with human social experience, 
 and exists today at the base of family life, the 
 socialized form of sex relationship. The fam- 
 ily as a social institution has been scarcely 
 touched until a very recent historical period 
 by the rationalizing process that has affected 
 religious and political institutions. Economic 
 changes resultant upon the introduction of an 
 industrial era which showed the importance of 
 women in diverse social relations were causes 
 
134 TABOO AND GENEfTW 
 
 of this new effort at adaptation to changing 
 conditions. It became apparent that taboos 
 in the form of customs, ceremonials, beliefs, 
 and conventions, all electrically charged with 
 emotional content, have guarded the life of 
 woman from change, and with her the func- 
 tions peculiar to family life. There has doubt- 
 less been present in some of these taboos "a 
 good hard co mm on-sense element." But there 
 are also irrational elements whose persistence 
 has resulted in hardship, blind cruelty, and 
 over-standardization. 
 
 In order to comprehend the attitude of early 
 man toward sex and womanhood, and to un- 
 derstand the system of taboo control which 
 grew out of this attitude, it is only reasonable 
 to suppose that the prehistoric races, like the 
 uncivilized peoples of the present time, were in- 
 clined to explain all phenomena as the result 
 of the action of spiritistic forces partaking of 
 both a magical and religious nature. This su- 
 pernatural principle which the primitive mind 
 conceived as an all-pervading, universal es- 
 sence, is most widely known as mana, although 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 135 
 
 it has been discussed under other names.* 
 Certain persons, animals and objects t are 
 often held to be imbued to an unusual degree 
 with this mana, and hence are to be regarded 
 as holy and held in awe. Inasmuch as man 
 may wish to use this power for his own pur- 
 poses, a ceremonial cult would naturally grow 
 up by which this would become possible. 
 Otherwise, to come in contact with these ob- 
 jects directly or indirectly, besides profaning 
 their sanctity would be exceedingly dangerous 
 for the transgressor, because of this same 
 power of transmission of a dread and little un- 
 derstood force. Therefore, all such persons, 
 animals or objects are taboo and must be 
 
 * The Australians call it Arunkulta, the Iroquis Indians 
 'Orenda and other North American tribes Wakonda, the Me- 
 lanesians Mana. 
 
 t Dr. F. B. Jevons (2) says: "These things . . . are alike 
 taboo: the dead body; the new-born child; blood and the 
 shedder of blood; the divine being as well as the criminal; the 
 sick, outcasts, and foreigners; animals as well as men; women 
 especially, the married woman as well as the sacred virgin; 
 food, clothes, vessels, property, house, bed, canoes, the thresh- 
 ing floor, the winnowing fan, a name, a word, a day; all are 
 or may be taboo because dangerous. This short list does not 
 contain one-hundredth part of the things which are supposed 
 to be dangerous; but even if it were filled out and made 
 tolerably complete, it would, by itself, fail to give any idea 
 of the actual extent and importance of the institution of 
 taboo. ' ' 
 
136 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 avoided. Under these circumstances it can be 
 seen that taboos are unanalyzed, unrationalized 
 "Don'ts," connected with the use and wont 
 which have crystallized around the wish of man 
 to manipulate the mysterious and often desir- 
 able features of his environment, notably those 
 connected with possession, food, and sex. 
 
 The idea of the transmission of mama through 
 contact is concomitant with the notion of sym- 
 pathetic magic, defined as the belief that the 
 qualities of one thing can be mysteriously trans- 
 ferred to another. The most familiar illustra- 
 tion is that of the hunter who will not eat the 
 heart of the deer he has killed lest he become 
 timid like that animal, while to eat the heart 
 of a lion would be to gain all the fierce courage 
 of that beast* This belief becomes so elab- 
 orated that the qualities of one object are 
 finally thought to be transferred to another 
 which has never come into direct contact with 
 the first, the transition being accomplished 
 through the agency of a third object which has 
 been in contact with both the others and thus 
 
 * E. B. Tylor (3) has called attention to the belief that the 
 qualities of the eaten pass into the eater as an explanation 
 of the food taboos and prejudices of savage peoples. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 137 
 
 acts as the conducting medium through which 
 the qualities of- one pass into the other. 
 
 Just as the holy thing, which is to be feared 
 as the seat of a mystic, supernatural force, is 
 to be avoided lest harm befall from contact with 
 it, or lest it be denied by human touch and its 
 divine essence be affected, so the unclean thing 
 is also made taboo lest it infect man with its 
 own evil nature. Even as the savage will not 
 have his idol polluted by contact with his own 
 personality, however indirect, so he would him- 
 self avoid pollution in similar fashion by shun- 
 ning that which is unclean. Here also the 
 avoidance of the tabooed person or thing is 
 based on the principle of sympathetic magic 
 understood as a method of transference of 
 qualities, and on belief in the possibility of in- 
 fection by contact. 
 
 The dual nature of taboo as the avoidance 
 of both the sacred and the unclean is noted by 
 authorities on the subject who differ in other 
 respects as to the definition of taboo, such as 
 in the relation of taboo to the magical ceremo- 
 nies by which man undertook to mold his en- 
 vironment to his wishes. Whether the tabooed 
 
138 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 object be regarded in one light or the other, 
 the breaking of taboo is associated with dread 
 of the unknown, — besides the fear of infection 
 with the qualities of the tabooed object accord- 
 ing to the laws of sympathetic magic. There is 
 also the fear of the mysterious and supernat- 
 ural, whether conceived as the mana force or 
 as a principle of "bad magic." 
 
 Dr. J. G. Frazer has collected into the many 
 volumes of "The Golden Bough" a mass of evi- 
 dence concerning the taboos of primitive so- 
 ciety. On the basis of his definition of magic 
 as "a misapplication of the ideas of association 
 by similarity and contiguity," Dr. Frazer di- 
 vided magic into "positive magic," or charms, 
 and "negative magic," or taboo. "Positive 
 magic says, 'Do this in order that so and so may 
 happen.' Negative magic or taboo says 'Do 
 not do this lest so and so should happen.' " 
 {4: p. Ill, v.I.) 
 
 But Dr. Frazer 's conclusion, which he him- 
 self considered only tentative, was not long left 
 unassailed. Prof. E. B. Marett in his essay 
 "Is Taboo a Negative Magic?" (5) called at- 
 tention to the very evident fact that Dr. Fraz- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 139 
 
 er's definition would not cover the characteris- 
 tics of some of the best known taboos, the food 
 taboos of Prof. Tylor to which we have previa 
 ously alluded in this study, as a consequence of 
 which ' ' the flesh of timid animals is avoided by 
 warriors, but they love the meat of tigers, 
 boars, and stags, for their courage and speed." 
 (3: p. 131.) Are not these food taboos rather, 
 Dr. Marett asks, a "misapplication of the ideas 
 of association by similarity and contiguity" 
 amounting to the sympathetic taboos so care- 
 fully described by such writers on Magic as 
 MM. Hubert and Mauss of L'Annee Sociolo- 
 gique ? Still another kind of taboos mentioned 
 by Dr. Frazer but amplified by Mr. Crawley 
 in "The Mystic Eose," the taboos on knots at 
 childbirth, marriage, and death, are much bet- 
 ter described by the term "sympathetic taboo." 
 Moreover, if taboo were a form of magic as de- 
 fined by Dr. Frazer, it would be a somewhat 
 definite and measurable quantity; whereas the 
 distinguishing characteristic of taboo every- 
 where is the "infinite plus of awfulness" al- 
 ways accompanying its violation. As Dr. 
 Marett observes, there may be certain definite 
 
140 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 results, such, as prescribed punishment for vio- 
 lations against which a legal code is in process 
 of growth. There may be also social "growl- 
 ings," showing the opposition of public opin- 
 ion to which the savage is at least as keenly sen- 
 sitive as the modern. But it is the. "infinite 
 plus ' ' always attached to the violation of taboo 
 that puts it into the realm of the mystical, the 
 magical. It would seem that Dr. Frazer's defi- 
 nition does not include enough. 
 
 It is when we turn to the subject of this study 
 that we see most clearly the deficiencies in these 
 explanations — to the "classic well-nigh univer- 
 sal major taboo" of the woman shunned. Dr. 
 Marett uses her as his most telling argument 
 against the inclusiveness of the concepts of Dr. 
 Frazer and of MM. Hubert and Mauss. He 
 says: "It is difficult to conceive of sympathy, 
 and sympathy only, as the continuous, or even 
 the originally efficient cause of the avoidance." 
 Mr. Crawley had called attention to the fact 
 that savages fear womanly characteristics, that 
 is, effeminacy, which is identified with weak- 
 ness. "While noting with great psychological 
 insight the presence of other factors, such as 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 141 
 
 the dislike of the different, he had gone so far 
 as to express the opinion that the fear of ef- 
 feminacy was probably the chief factor in the 
 Sex Taboo. This is probably the weakest 
 point in Mr. Crawley's study, for he shows so 
 clearly the presence of other elements, notably 
 mystery, the element that made woman the po- 
 tential witch against whom suspicion concen- 
 trated in so tragical a fashion up to a late his- 
 torical period. 
 
 Because of the element of mystery present in 
 taboo we are led to conclude that taboo is more 
 than negative magic if we accept so definite a 
 concept as "a false association of ideas." The 
 presence of pqwer in the tabooed object turns 
 our attention to mama as giving us a better un- 
 derstanding of why man must be wary. Mana 
 must however be liberally interpreted if we are 
 to see to the bottom of the mystery. It must 
 be thought of as including good as well as evil 
 power, as more than the "black magic" of the 
 witeh-haunted England of the 17th century, as 
 is shown by the social position of the magicians 
 who deal with the Mana of the Pacific and with 
 the Orenda of the Iroquois. It implies "won- 
 
142 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 der- working," and may be shown in sheer luck, 
 in individual cunning and power, or in such a 
 form as the "uncanny" psychic qualities 
 ascribed to women from the dawn of history. 
 With this interpretation of mana in mind, taboo 
 may be conceived as negative mana; and to 
 break taboo is to set in motion against oneself 
 mystic wonder-working power. 
 
 Our study thus far has made it clear that 
 there are mystic dangers to be guarded against 
 from human as well as extra-human sources. 
 There is weakness to be feared as well as power, 
 as shown by the food and sex taboos. And 
 once again there is myster^ in the different, the 
 unusual, the unlike, that causes avoidance and 
 creates taboos. Man's dislike of change from 
 the old well-trodden way, no matter how irra- 
 tional, accounts for the persistence of many an- 
 cient folkways (6) whose origins are lost in 
 mystery.* Many of these old and persistent 
 
 * Prof. Franz Boas explains this tendency : ' ' The more fre- 
 quently an action is repeated, the more firmly it will become 
 established ... so that customary actions which are of fre- 
 quent repetition become entirely unconscious. Hand in hand 
 with this decrease of consciousness goes an increase in the 
 emotional value of the omission of these activities, and still 
 more of the performance of acts contrary to custom." (7) 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 143 
 
 avoidances have been expanded in the develop- 
 ment of social relationships until we agree with 
 Mr. Crawley that taboo shows that "man seems 
 to feel that he is treading in slippery places." 
 Might it not be within the range of possibility 
 that in the study of taboo we are groping with 
 man through the first blind processes of social 
 control? * 
 
 It is worthy of note that the most modern 
 school of analytical psychology has recently 
 turned attention to the problem of taboo. 
 Prof. Sigmund Freud, protagonist of psycho- 
 analysis, in an essay, Totem und Tabu, called 
 attention to the analogy between the dualistic 
 attitude toward the tabooed object as both sa- 
 cred and unclean and the ambivalent attitude 
 
 * No study of the tabu-mana theory, however delimited its 
 field, can disregard the studies of religion and magic made by 
 the contributors to L'Annee Soeiologique, notably MM. Durk- 
 heim and Levy-Bruhl, and in England by such writers as Sir 
 Gilbert Murray, Miss Harrison, Mr. A. B. Cook, Mr. F. M. 
 Cornford, and others. In their studies of "collective repre- 
 sentations" these writers give us an account of the develop- 
 ment of the social obligation back of religion, law, and social 
 institutions. They posit the sacred as forbidden and carry 
 origins back to a pre-logical stage, giving as the origin of the 
 collective emotion that started the representations to working 
 the re-enforcement of power or emotion resulting from gre- 
 garious living. This study is concerned, however, with a "so- 
 cial" rather than a "religious" taboo, — if such a distinction 
 can somewhat tentatively be made, with the admission that 
 the social scruple very easily takes on a religious coloring. 
 
144 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 rr 
 
 of the neurotic toward the salient objects in 
 his environment. We must agree that in addi- 
 tion to the dread of the tabooed person or ob- 
 ject there is often a feeling of fascination. 
 This is of course particularly prominent in the 
 case of the woman tabooed because of the 
 strength of the sex instinct. As Freud has very 
 justly said, the tabooed object is very often in 
 itself the object of supreme desire. This is 
 very obvious in the case of the food and sex 
 taboos, which attempt to inhibit two of the- 
 most powerful impulses of human nature. The 
 two conflicting streams of consciousness called 
 ambivalence by the psychologist may be ob- 
 served in the attitude of the savage toward 
 many of his taboos. As the Austrian alienist 
 cannily remarks, unless the thing were desired 
 there would be no necessity to impose taboo 
 restrictions concerning it. 
 
 It is by a knowledge of the mana concept and 
 the belief in sympathetic magic, clarified by 
 recognition of the ambivalent element in the 
 emotional reaction to the thing tabooed, that 
 we can hope to understand the almost univer- 
 sal custom of the "woman shunned" and the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 145 
 
 sex taboos of primitive peoples. This dualism 
 appears most strongly in the attitude toward 
 woman; for while she was the natural object 
 of the powerful sexual instinct she was quite 
 as much the source of fear because she was gen- 
 erally supposed to be endowed with spiritistic 
 forces and in league with supernatural powers. 
 During the long period when the fact of pater- 
 nity was unrecognized, the power of reproduc- 
 tion which was thus ascribed to woman alone 
 made of her a mysterious being. Her fertility 
 could be explained only on the basis of her pos- 
 session of an unusually large amount of mana 
 or creative force, or by the theory of impregna- 
 tion by demonic powers. As a matter of fact, 
 both explanations were accepted by primitive 
 peoples, so that woman was regarded not only 
 as imbued with mana but also as being in di- 
 rect contact with spirits. Many of the devices 
 for closing the reproductive organs which 
 abounded among savage tribes were imposed 
 as a protection against spirits rather than 
 against the males of the human species. The 
 tradition of impregnation by gods or demons 
 was not confined to savage tribes, but was wide- 
 
146 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 spread in the days of Greece and Eome and 
 lasted into biblical times, when we read of the 
 sons of heaven having intercourse with the 
 daughters of men. 
 
 In addition to this fear of the woman as in 
 possession of and in league with supernatural 
 powers, there was an additional motive to 
 avoidance in the fear of transmission of her 
 weakness through contact, a fear based on a be- 
 lief in sympathetic magic, and believed with all 
 the "intensely realized, living, and operative 
 assurance" of which the untutored mind is 
 capable. Crawley masses an overwhelming 
 amount of data on this point, and both he and 
 Frazer show the strength of these beliefs. In- 
 deed, in many cases violation proved to be "sure 
 death," not by the hand of man, but from sheer 
 fright. As a result, just as woman was con- 
 sidered to have both the tendency and power 
 to impart her characteristics through contact, 
 so the sexual act, the acme of contact, became 
 the most potent influence for the emasculation 
 of the male. 
 
 If we wish for proof that the primitive atti- 
 tude toward women was essentially that which 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 147 
 
 we have outlined, we have only to glance at the 
 typical taboos concerning woman found among 
 ancient peoples and among savage races of our 
 own day. Nothing could be more indicative of 
 the belief that the power to bring forth chil- 
 dren was a manifestation df the possession of 
 mana than the common avoidance of the preg- 
 nant woman. Her mystic power is well illus- 
 trated by such beliefs as those described by the 
 traveler Im Thurn, who says that the Indians 
 of Guiana believe that if a pregnant woman 
 eat of game caught by hounds, they will never 
 be able t'o hunt again. Similarly, Alfred Eus- 
 sel Wallace wrote of the aborigines of the 
 Amazon : ' ' They believe that if a woman dur- 
 ing her pregnancy eats of any meat, any other 
 animal partaking of it will suffer ; if a domes- 
 tic animal or tame bird, it will die ; if a dog, it 
 will be for the future incapable of hunting; and 
 even a man will be unable to shoot that particu- 
 lar kind of game for the future" (8). In 
 Fiji a pregnant wife may not wait upon her 
 husband (9). In the Caroline Islands men 
 may not eat with their wives when pregnant, 
 but small boys are allowed to do so (10). 
 
148 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 The avoidance of the menstruous woman is 
 an even more widespread custom than the shun- 
 ning of pregnancy, probably because this func- 
 tion was interpreted as a symptom of demonic 
 possession. Primitive man had no reason to 
 know that the phenomenon of menstruation was 
 in any way connected with reproduction. The 
 typical explanation was probably very much 
 like that of the Zoroastrians, who believed that 
 the menses were caused by the evil god Ahri- 
 man. A woman during the period was unclean 
 and possessed by that demon. She must be 
 kept confined and apart from the faithful, whom 
 her touch would defile, and from the fire, which 
 her very look would injure. To this day there 
 is in the house of the Parsee a room for the 
 monthly seclusion of the women, bare of all 
 comforts, and from it neither sun, moon, stars, 
 fire, water, nor any human being can be seen 
 
 (11). 
 
 All the ancient civilizations had such taboos 
 upon the menstruous woman. According to 
 Pliny, the Eomans held that nothing had such 
 marvelous efficacy as, or more deadly qualities 
 than, the menstrual flow. The Arabs thought 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 149 
 
 that a great variety of natural powers attached 
 themselves to a woman during the menstrual 
 period (12: p. 448). Kabbinic laws demand 
 that "a woman during all the days of her sepa- 
 ration shall he as if under a ban. ' ' The epithet 
 Niddah, applied to a woman at that time, means 
 "to lay under a ban." The reconstruction of 
 the ancient Assyrian texts shows that the law 
 of the unclean taboo on the woman in her 
 courses holds for them. Up to the present time 
 the Semitic woman is carefully segregated from 
 the rest of the tribe, often for a long time, and 
 becomes taboo again on each successive occa- 
 sion (13). Peoples in the eastern Mediterra- 
 nean region will not permit a woman in her 
 courses to salt or pickle; whatever she might 
 prepare would not keep. This belief survives 
 among the folk today in America, and was evi- 
 dently brought early in the history of the coun- 
 try, for it is common among pioneer stock. 
 
 There are very similar taboos among the sav- 
 age races. Among the Tshi peoples of West 
 Africa women are not allowed to remain even 
 in the town but retire at the period to huts 
 erected for the purpose in the neighboring bush, 
 
150 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 because they are supposed to be offensive to 
 the tribal deities at that time (14). The 
 Karoks of California have a superstition like 
 that of the Israelites. Every month the woman 
 is banished without the village to live in a booth 
 by herself. She is not permitted to partake of 
 any meat, including fish. If a woman at this 
 time touches or even approaches any medicine 
 which is about to be given to a sick man, it will 
 cause his death (15). Amongst other Indian 
 tribes of North America women at menstrua- 
 tion are forbidden to touch men's utensils, 
 which would be so defiled by their touch that 
 their subsequent use would be attended by cer- 
 tain misfortune. The Canadian Denes believe 
 that the very sight of a woman in this condi- 
 tion is dangerous to society, so that she wears 
 a special skin bonnet to hide her from the pub- 
 lic gaze (16). In western Victoria a men- 
 struous woman may not take any one's food or 
 drink, and no one will touch food that has been 
 touched by her. (17.) Amongst the Maoris, 
 if a man ate food cooked by a menstrous woman, 
 he would be ' ' tapu an inch thick. " (18.) Fra- 
 zer quotes the case of an Australian blackfel- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 151 
 
 low who discovered that his wife had lain on 
 his blanket at her menstrual period, and who 
 killed her and died of terror himself within a 
 fortnight. (19.) Australian women at this 
 time are forbidden on pain of death to touch 
 anything that men use or even to walk on a path 
 that men frequent. (20.) Among the Ba- 
 ganda tribes a menstruous woman is not permit- 
 ted to come near her husband, cook his food, 
 touch any of his weapons, or sit on his mats, 
 bed, or seat (21). 
 
 By some twist in the primitive way of think- 
 ing, some "false association by similarity and 
 contiguity," the function of childbirth, unlike 
 that of pregnancy, where the emphasis seems 
 to have been placed in most cases on the mana 
 principle, was held to be unclean and contami- 
 nating, and was followed by elaborate rites of 
 purification. It may be that the pains of de- 
 livery were ascribed to the machinations of 
 demonic powers, or possession by evil spirits, 
 — we know that this has sometimes been the 
 case. The use of charms and amulets, and the 
 chanting of sacred formulae at this dangerous 
 time all point to such beliefs. At any rate, al- 
 
152 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 though the birth of the child would seem in 
 every respect except in the presence of blood 
 to be more closely connected with the phenom- 
 ena of pregnancy than with that of menstrua- 
 tion, as a matter of fact the taboos on the 
 woman in child-bed were intimately associated 
 with those on menstruous women. 
 
 Among the ancients, the Zoroastrians consid- 
 ered the woman unclean at childbirth as at men- 
 struation. (22.) In the Old Testament, rit- 
 ual uncleanness results from contact with a 
 woman at childbirth. (23.) 
 
 Likewise among savage tribes the same cus- 
 toms concerning childbirth prevail. Among 
 the Australian aborigines women are secluded 
 at childbirth as at menstruation, and all ves- 
 sels used by them during this seclusion are 
 burned. (20.) The Ewe-speaking people think 
 a mother and babe unclean for forty days after 
 childbirth. (24.) At menstruation and child- 
 birth a Chippeway wife may not eat with her 
 husband ; she must cook her food at a separate 
 fire, since any one using her fire would fall ill. 
 (10: v. ii, p. 457.) The Alaskan explorer Dall 
 found that among the Kaniagmuts a woman 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 153 
 
 was considered unclean for several days both 
 after delivery and menstruation ; in either case 
 no one may touch her and she is fed with food 
 at the end of a stick. (25.) Amongst the tribes 
 of the Hindu Kush the mother is considered 
 unclean for seven days after the birth of her 
 child, and no one will eat from her hand nor will 
 she suckle her infant during that period. In 
 the Oxus valley north of the Hindu Kush the 
 period is extended to forty days. (26.) 
 
 This attitude which primitive man takes 
 toward woman at the time of her sexual crises 
 — menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth — are but 
 an intensification of the feeling which he has 
 toward her at all times. Conflicting with his 
 natural erotic inclinations are the emotions of 
 awe and fear which she inspires in him as the 
 potential source of contagion, for there is al- 
 ways some doubt as to ner freedom from bad 
 magic, and it is much safer to regard her as 
 unclean. (27.) Thus the every-day life of sav- 
 age tribes is hedged in by all manner of restric- 
 tions concerning the females: of their group. 
 The men have their own dwelling in many in- 
 stances, where no woman may enter. So, too, 
 
154 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 she may be barred out from the temples and ex- 
 cluded from the religious ceremonies when 
 men worship their deity. There are people 
 who will not permit the women of their nation 
 to touch the weapons, clothing, or any other pos- 
 sessions of the men, or to cook their food, lest 
 even this indirect contact result in emascula- 
 tion. The same idea of sympathetic magic is 
 at the root of taboos which forbid the wife to 
 speak her husband's name, or even to use the 
 same dialect. With social intercourse de- 
 barred, and often no common table even in fam- 
 ily life, it is veritably true that men and women 
 belong to two castes. 
 
 Of the primitive institution known as the 
 "men's house," Hutton Webster says: "Sex- 
 ual separation is further secured and perpetu- 
 ated by the institution known as the men's 
 house, of which examples are to be found among 
 primitive peoples throughout the world. It is 
 usually the largest building in a tribal set- 
 tlement. . . . Here the most precious belong- 
 ings of the community, such as trophies and re- 
 ligious emblems, are preserved. Within its 
 precincts . . . women and children . . . sel- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 155 
 
 dom or never enter. . . . Family huts serve as 
 little more than resorts for the women and chil- 
 dren." (28.) 
 
 Many examples among uncivilized peoples 
 bear out this description of the institution of the 
 men's house. Amongst the Indians of Califor- 
 nia and in some Eedskin tribes the men's club- 
 house may never be entered by a squaw under 
 penalty of death. The Shastika Indians have 
 a town lodge for women, and another for men 
 which the women may not enter. (15.) Among 
 the Fijis women are not allowed to enter a bure 
 or club house, which is used as a lounge by the 
 chiefs. In the Solomon Islands women may not 
 enter the men's tambu house, and on some of 
 the islands are not even permitted to cross the 
 beach in front of it. (29.) In the Marquesas 
 Islands the ti where the men congregate and 
 spend most of their time is taboo to women, 
 and protected by the penalty of death from the 
 pollution of a woman's presence. (30.) 
 
 Not only is woman barred from the men's 
 club house, but she is also often prohibited from 
 association and social intercourse with the op- 
 posite sex by many other regulations and cus- 
 
156 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 toms. Thus no woman may enter the house of 
 a Maori chief (31), while among the Zulus, even 
 if a man and wife are going to the same place 
 they never walk together. (32.) Among the 
 Baganda wives are kept apart from the men's 
 quarters. (21.) The Ojibway Indian Peter 
 Jones says of his people: "When traveling the 
 men always walk on before. It would be con- 
 sidered a great presumption for the wife to 
 walk by the side of her husband. (33.) In many 
 islands of the South Seas the houses of impor- 
 tant men are not accessible to their wives, who 
 live in separate huts. Among the Bedouins a 
 wife may not sit in any part of the tent except 
 her own corner, while it is disgraceful for a 
 man to sit under the shadow of the women's 
 roffe (tent covering). (34.) Among the Hin- 
 dus, no female may enter the men's apartments. 
 In the Society and Sandwich Islands the fe- 
 males were humiliated by taboo, and in their 
 domestic life the women lived almost entirely 
 by themselves. The wife could not eat the same 
 food, could not eat in the same place, could not 
 cook by the same fire. It was said that woman 
 would pollute the food. (35.) In Korea a large 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 157 
 
 bell is tolled at about 8 p. m. and 3 a. m. daily, 
 and between these hours only are women sup- 
 posed to appear in the streets. (36.) In the 
 New Hebrides there is a curious segregation 
 of the sexes, with a dread among the men of 
 eating anything female . (37.) 
 
 Among many tribes this segregation of the 
 women and the separation of the sexes begin at 
 an early age, most often at the approach of 
 puberty, which is earlier in primitive peoples 
 than in our own race. (38.) The boys usually 
 go about with the father, while the girls remain 
 with the mother. This is true in Patagonia, 
 where the boys begin to go with the father at 
 ten, the daughters with the mother at nine. (39.) 
 In Korea boys and girls are separated at seven. 
 From that time the Korean girl is absolutely 
 secluded in the inner court of her father's home. 
 Mrs. Bishop says: "Girl children are so suc- 
 cessfully hidden away that ... I never saw 
 one girl who looked above the age of six . . . 
 except in the women's rooms." (36.) Among 
 the northern Indians girls are from the age of 
 eight or nine prohibited from joining in the 
 most innocent amusements with children of the 
 
158 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 opposite sex, and are watched and guarded with 
 such an unremitting attention as cannot be ex- 
 ceeded by the most rigid discipline of an Eng- 
 lish boarding-school. (40.) Similar arrange- 
 ments are reported among the Hill Dyaks (41), 
 certain Victorian tribes (17), and many others. 
 As already instanced, the separation of the 
 sexes extends even to brothers and sisters and 
 other close relatives. Thus in Fiji brothers and 
 sisters are forbidden by national and religious 
 custom to speak to each other. (9.) In Mela- 
 nesia, according to Oodrington, the boy begins 
 to avoid his mother when he puts on clothing, 
 and his sister as soon as she is tattooed. (42.)] 
 In the exclusive Nanburi caste of Travancore 
 brothers and sisters are separated at an early 
 
 Women are more often than not excluded 
 also from religious worship on account of the 
 idea of their uncleanness. The Arabs in many 
 cases will not allow women religious instruc- 
 tion. The Ansayrees consider woman to be an 
 inferior being without a soul, and therefore 
 exclude her from religious services. (34.) In 
 the Sandwich Islands women were not allowed 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 159 
 
 to share in worship or festivals. (35.) The 
 Australians are very jealous lest women should 
 look into their sacred mysteries. It is death for 
 a woman to look into a Bora. {20.) In Fiji 
 women are kept away from worship and ex- 
 cluded from all the temples. (9.) The women 
 of some of the Indian hill-tribes may not sacri- 
 fice n»r appear at shrines, nor take part in re- 
 ligious festivals. In New Ireland women are 
 not allowed to approach the temples. (43.) 
 In the Marquesas Islands the Hoolah-hoolah 
 ground, where festivals are held, is taboo to 
 women, who are killed if they enter or even 
 touch with their feet the shadow of the trees. 
 (30.) Women are also excluded from the sacred 
 festivals of the Ahts. (44.) In the Amazon 
 region, the women are not even permitted to see 
 the objects used in important ceremonies. If 
 any woman of the Uaupes tribe happens to see 
 the masks used in the tribal ceremony she is 
 put to death. (45.) 
 
 Crawley has explained the taboos on the 
 sexes eating together and on the cooking of 
 food by women for men as due to the super- 
 stitious belief that food which has come in con- 
 
160 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tact with or under the influence of the female 
 is capable of transmitting her properties. Some 
 southern Arabs would die rather than accept 
 food from a woman. (12.) Among the old 
 Semites it was not the custom for a man to eat 
 with his wife and children. Among the Motu 
 of New Guinea when a man is helega, he may 
 not eat food that his wife has cooked. (46.) 
 South Australian boys during initiation' are 
 forbidden to eat with the women, lest they 
 "grow ugly or become grey." 
 
 It was probably some fear of the charm- 
 weaving power of woman which lay at the root 
 of the rules which forbade her to speak her 
 husband's name, the implication being that she 
 might use it in some incantation against him. 
 For instance, a Zulu woman was forbidden to 
 speak her husband's name; if she did so, she 
 would be suspected of witchcraft. (47.) Herod- 
 otus tells us that no Ionian woman would ever 
 mention the name of her husband, nor may a 
 Hindu woman do so. (48.) 
 
 Frazer says that the custom of the Kaffir 
 woman of South Africa not to speak the name 
 of her own or husband's relations has given rise 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 161 
 
 to an almost entirely different language from 
 that of the men through the substitution of 
 new words for the words thus banned. Once this 
 "women's speech" had arisen, it would of 
 course not be used by the men because of the 
 universal contempt for woman and all that per- 
 tained to her. This may have been the origin 
 of the use of different dialects in some tribes, 
 such as the Japanese, the Arawaks, some Bra- 
 zilian tribes, and others. (49.) 
 
 Although the division of labor between the 
 sexes had a natural biological basis, and indeed 
 had its beginning in the animal world long be- 
 fore man as such came into existence, the idea 
 of the uncleanness of woman was carried over 
 to her work, which became beneath the dignity 
 of man. As a result, there grew up a series of 
 taboos which absolutely fixed the sphere of 
 woman's labor, and prohibited her from en- 
 croaching on the pursuits of man lest they be 
 degraded by her use, quite as much as they 
 barred man from her specific activities. In 
 Nicaragua, for example, it is a rule that the 
 marketing shall be done by women. In Samoa, 
 where the manufacture of cloth is allotted to 
 
162 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the women, it is taboo for a man to engage in 
 any part of the process. (30.) Among the An- 
 damanese the performance of most of the 
 domestic duties falls to the lot of the women 
 and children. Only in cases of stern necessity 
 will the husband procure wood or water. (50.) 
 An Eskimo even thinks it an indignity to row 
 in an umiak, the large boat used by women. 
 They also distinguish very definitely between 
 the ofiices of husband and wife. For example, 
 when a man has brought a seal to land, it would 
 be a stigma on his character to draw it out of 
 the water, since that is the duty of the female. 
 (51.) In the Marquesas Islands, the use of 
 canoes in all parts of the islands is rigorously 
 prohibited to women, for whom it is death even 
 to be seen entering one when hauled on shore; 
 while Tapa-making, which belongs exclusively 
 to women, is taboo to men. (30.) Among the 
 Betchuanas of South Africa the men will not 
 let women touch the cattle. (52.) The Baganda 
 think that if a woman steps over a man's 
 weapons they will not aim straight or kill until 
 they have been purified. (21.) Among many 
 South African tribes, if a wife steps over her 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 163 
 
 husband's assegais, they are considered useless 
 from that time and are given to the boys to 
 play with. This superstition rings many 
 changes and is current among the natives of 
 all countries. 
 
 The taboos which have thus been exemplified 
 and reviewed are based on the feeling that 
 woman is possessed of a demonic power, or 
 perhaps of a memo, principle which may work 
 injury; or else upon the fear that she may 
 contaminate man with her weakness. It is very 
 probable that many of these taboos originated 
 even as far back as the stage of society in 
 which the line of descent was traced through 
 the mother. There seems little doubt that the 
 framework of ancient society rested on the 
 basis of kinship, and that the structure of the 
 ancient gens brought the mother and child into 
 the same gens. Under these circumstances the 
 gens of the mother would have some ascend- 
 ancy in the ancient household. On such an 
 established fact rests the assumption of a 
 matriarchate, or period of Mutterrecht. The 
 German scholar Bachofen in his monumental 
 work "Das Mutterrecht" discussed the traces 
 
164 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 of female "authority" among the Lycians, Cre- 
 tans, Athenians, Lemnians, Lesbians, and Asi- 
 atic peoples. But it is now almost unanimously 
 agreed that the matriarchal period was not a 
 time when women were in possession of polit- 
 ical or economic power, but was a method of 
 tracing descent and heritage. It is fairly well 
 established that, in the transition from metro- 
 nymic to patronymic forms, authority did not 
 pass from women to men, but from the brothers 
 and maternal uncles of the women of the group 
 to the husbands and sons. Such a method of 
 tracing descent, while it doubtless had its ad- 
 vantages in keeping the woman with her child 
 with her blood kindred, would not prevent her 
 from occupying a degraded position through 
 the force of the taboos which we have de- 
 scribed. (53.) 
 
 With the development of the patriarchal sys- 
 tem and the custom of marriage by capture or 
 purchase, woman came to be regarded as a part 
 of man's property, and as inviolate as any other 
 of his possessions. Under these circumstances- 
 virginity came to be more and more of an 
 asset, since no man wished his property to be 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 165 
 
 defiled by the touch, of another. Elaborate 
 methods for the preservation of chastity both 
 before and after marriage were developed, and 
 in many instances went so far as to consider 
 a woman defiled if she were accidentally touched 
 by any other man than her husband. Here we 
 have once more the working of sympathetic 
 magic, where the slightest contact works con- 
 tamination. 
 
 We have in other connections alluded to the 
 seclusion of young girls in Korea, among the 
 Hindus, among the North American Indians, 
 and in the South Seas. One of the most beau- 
 tiful examples of this custom is found in New 
 Britain. From puberty until marriage the 
 native girls are confined in houses with a bun- 
 dle of dried grass across the entrance to show 
 that the house is strictly taboo. The interior of 
 these houses is divided into cells or cages in 
 ■each of which a girl is confined. No light and 
 little or no air enters, and the atmosphere is 
 hot and stifling. 
 
 The seclusion of women after marriage is 
 common among many peoples. In the form in 
 which it affected western civilization it prob- 
 
166 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ably originated among the Persians or some 
 other people of central Asia, and spread to the 
 Arabs and Mohammedans. That it did not orig- 
 inate with the Arabs is attested by students of 
 their culture. It was common among the Greeks, 
 whose wives were secluded from other men 
 than their husbands. In modern Korea it is 
 not even proper to ask after the women of the 
 family. Women have been put to death in that 
 country when strange men have accidentally 
 touched their hands. (36: p. 341.) 
 
 The saddest outcome of the idea of woman as 
 property was the status of widows. In uncivi- 
 lized society a widow is considered dangerous 
 because the ghost of her husband is supposed 
 to cling to her. Hence she must be slain that 
 his spirit may depart in peace with her, as well 
 as with the weapons and other possessions 
 which are buried with him or burned upon his 
 funeral pyre. The Marathi proverb to the effect 
 that "the husband is the life of the woman" 
 thus becomes literally true. 
 
 The best known case of widow slaying is 
 of course the custom of "suttee" in India. The 
 long struggle made against this custom by the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 167 
 
 British government is a vivid illustration of 
 the strength of these ancient customs. The 
 Laws of Manu indicate that the burning of 
 widows was practised by primitive Aryans. In 
 the Fiji Islands, where a wife was strangled 
 on her husband's grave, the strangled women 
 were called ' ' the carpeting of the grave. " (54. )' 
 In Arabia, as in many other countries, while a 
 widow may escape death, she is very often 
 forced into the class of vagabonds and depend- 
 ents. One of the most telling appeals made by 
 missionaries is the condition of child widows' 
 in countries in which the unfortunates cannot 
 be killed, but where the almost universal stignia 
 of shame is attached to second marriages. A 
 remarkable exception to this, when in ancient 
 Greece the dying husband sometimes be- 
 queathed his widow to a male friend, empha- 
 sized the idea of woman as property. 
 
 Although the taboos which are based on the 
 idea of ownership are somewhat aside from the 
 main theme of our discussion, they nevertheless 
 reenforce the other taboos of the seclusion and 
 segregation of woman as unclean. Moreover, as 
 will be shown in a later chapter, the property 
 
168 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 idea has certain implications which are impor- 
 tant for the proper understanding of the status' 
 of woman and the attitude toward her at the 
 present time. 
 
 In the face of the primitive aversion to wom- 
 an as the source of contamination through 
 sympathetic magic, or as the seat of some 
 mystic force, whether of good or evil, it may 
 well be asked how man ever dared let his sexual 
 longings overcome his fears and risk the 
 dangers of so intimate a relationship. Only by 
 some religious ceremonial, some act of purifi- 
 cation, could man hope to counteract these 
 properties of woman; and thus the marriage 
 ritual came into existence. By the marriage 
 ceremonial, the breach of taboo was expiated, 
 condoned, and socially countenanced. (1: p. 
 200.) This was very evident in the marriage 
 customs of the Greeks, which were composed 
 of purification rites and other precautions. (55.) 
 The injunctions to the Hebrews given in Levit- 
 icus illustrate the almost universal fact that 
 even under the sanction of marriage the sexual 
 embrace was taboo at certain times, as for ex- 
 ample before the hunt or battle. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 169 
 
 We are now prepared to admit that through- 
 out the ages there has existed a strongly dual- 
 istic or "ambivalent" feeling in the mind of 
 man toward woman. On the one hand she is 
 the object of erotic desire: on the other hand 
 she is the source of evil and danger. So firmly 
 is the latter feeling fixed that not even the 
 sanction of the marriage ceremony can com- 
 pletely remove it, as the taboos on intercourse 
 within the marital relationship show. 
 
 There are certain psychological and physi- 
 ological reasons for the persistence of this 
 dualistie attitude in the very nature of the sex 
 act itself. Until the climax of the sexual ere- 
 thism, woman is for man the acme of supreme 
 desire ; but with detumescence the emotions tend 
 to swing to the opposite pole, and excitement 
 and longing are forgotten in the mood of repug- 
 nance and exhaustion. This tendency would be 
 very much emphasized in those primitive tribes 
 where the corroboree with its unlimited indul- 
 gence was common, and also among the ancients 
 with their orgiastic festivals. In the revulsion 
 of feeling following these orgies woman would 
 be blamed for man's own folly. In this physi- 
 
170 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ological swing from desire to satiety, the ap- 
 parent cause of man's weakness would be looked 
 upon as the source of the evil — a thing unclean. 
 There would be none of the ethical and altruistic 
 element of modern "love" to protect her. 
 Students agree that these elements in the 
 modern sentiment have been evolved, "not from 
 the sexual instinct, but from the companionship 
 of the battlefield." (56.) It is therefore prob- 
 able that in this physiological result of uncon- 
 trolled sex passion we shall find the source of 
 the dualism of the attitude toward sex and 
 womanhood present in taboo. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER I 
 
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 lan. London, 1902. 
 
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 & Co. London, 1896. 
 
 3. Tylor, E. B. Early History of Mankind, 3d ed. 388 
 
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 Art and the Evolution of Kings. 2 vols. Macmil- 
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 1907. 416 pp. The Clarendon Press. Oxford, 
 1907. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 171 
 
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 Boston, 1907. 
 
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 10. Ploss, Dr. Hermann H. Das Weib. 2 vols. Th. 
 
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 from Folkways (6), p. 513. 
 
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 13. Thompson, R. C. Semitic Magic. 286 pp. Luzac & 
 
 Co. London, 1908. 
 
 14. Ellis, A. B. Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast 
 
 of West Africa. 343 pp. Chapman & Hall. Lon- 
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 tions to North American Ethnology, Third Volume. 
 Washington, 1877. 
 
 16. Morice, Rev. Father A; G. The Canadian Denes. 
 
 Annual Archeological Report, 1905. Toronto, 1906. 
 Quoted from Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the 
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 17. Dawson, James. Australian Aborigines. Ill pp., 
 
 with Appendix. George Robertson. Melbourne, 
 Sydney, and Adelaide, 1881. Citation from Latin 
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 18. Tregear, Edward. The Maoris of New Zealand. Jour- 
 
 nal of the Anthropological Institute, v. xix, 1889. 
 
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 19. Armit, Capt. W. E. Customs of the Australian Abo- 
 
 rigines. Jour. Anthr. Inst., is, 1880, p. 459. See 
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 27. Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough : Part II, Taboo and 
 
 the Perils of the Soul. 446 pp. Macmillan. Lon- 
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 28. Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies. 227 pp. 
 
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 tives. 384 pp. Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co. 
 London, 1887. 
 
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 and Its Inhabitants. 713 pp. 2d ed. Macintosh. 
 London, 1870. 
 
 32. Shooter, Rev. Joseph. The Kaffirs of Natal and the 
 
 Zulu Country. 403 pp. E. Stanford. London, 
 1857. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 173 
 
 33. Jones, Rev. Peter. History of the Ojibway Indians. 
 
 217 pp. A. W. Bennett. London, 1861. 
 
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 kind. 5 vols. Triibner & Co. London, 1881. 
 
 35. Ellis, Rev. Wm. Polynesian Researches. 4 vols. G. 
 
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 36. Bishop, Mrs. Isabella Bird. Korea and Her Neigh- 
 
 bors. 480 pp. Fleming H. Revell Co. N. T., 1898. 
 
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 Anthr. Inst., xxiii, 1894. 
 
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 48. Crooke, W. Popular Religion and Folklore of North- 
 
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 xxiv, 1895. 
 
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 the German, 2 vols. Longmans, Green. London, 
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CHAPTER n 
 
 FB0M THE DAWN" OF HISTOBT: WOMAN AS SAINT 
 AND WITCH 
 
 Taboos of first chapter indicate that in the early ages the 
 fear of contamination by woman predominated; Later, 
 emphasis fell on her mystic and uncanny power; An- 
 cient fertility cults; Temple prostitution, dedication 
 of virgins, etc.; Ancient priestesses and prophetesses; 
 Medicine early developed by woman added to belief in 
 her power; "Woman's psychic quality of intuition: its 
 origin — theories — conclusion that this quality is prob- 
 ably physiological in origin, but aggravated by taboo 
 repressions; Transformation in attitude toward woman 
 in the early Christian period; Psychological reasons 
 for the persistence in religion of a Mother Goddess; 
 Development of the Christian concept; Preservation 
 of ancient women cults as demonology; Early Chris- 
 tian attitude toward woman as unclean and in league 
 with demons; Culmination of belief in demonic power 
 of woman in witchcraft persecutions; All women af- 
 fected by the belief in witches and in the uncleanness 
 of woman; Gradual development on the basis of the 
 beliefs outlined of an ideally pure and immaculate 
 Model Woman. 
 
 From the data of the preceding chapter, it is 
 clear that in the early ages of human life there 
 
 175 
 
176 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 was a dualistic attitude toward woman. On the 
 one hand she was regarded as the possessor of 
 the mystic mcma force, while on the other she 
 was the source of "bad magic" and likely to 
 contaminate man with her weaknesses. Alto- 
 gether, the study of primitive taboos would 
 indicate that the latter conception predominated 
 in savage life, and that until the dawn of his- 
 tory woman was more often regarded as a thing 
 unclean than as the seat of a divine power. 
 
 At the earliest beginnings of civilization 
 man's emotions seem to have swung to the 
 opposite extreme, for emphasis fell on the mys- 
 tic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. 
 Thus it was that in ancient nations there was 
 a deification of woman which found expression 
 in the belief in feminine deities and the estab- 
 lishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn 
 of the Christian era was the emphasis once 
 more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. 
 Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon 
 communication, and stripped of her divinity, 
 she became the witch to be excommunicated and 
 put to death. 
 
 All the ancient world saw something super- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 177 
 
 natural, something demoniacal, in generation. 
 Sometimes the act was deified, as in the phallic 
 ceremonials connected with nature worship, 
 where the procreative principle in man became 
 identified with the creative energy pervading 
 all nature, and was used as a magic charm at the 
 time of springtime planting to insure the fer- 
 tility of the fields and abundant harvest. (l.)[ 
 It was also an important part of the ritual in 
 the Phrygian cults, the cult of the Phoenician 
 Astarte, and the Aphrodite cults. These mys- 
 tery religions were widely current in the Gfraeco- 
 Eoman world in pre-Christian times. The cult 
 of Demeter and Dionysius in Greece and 
 Thrace; Cybele and Attis in Phrygia; Ata- 
 gartes in Cilicia; Aphrodite and Adonis in 
 Syria; Ashtart and Eshmun (Adon) in Phoe- 
 nicia; Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylonia; Isis, 
 Osiris and Serapis in Egypt, and Mithra in Per- 
 sia — all were developed along the same lines, 
 (2.) The custom of the sacrifice of virginity 
 to the gods, and the institution of temple prosti- 
 tution, also bear witness to the sacred atmos- 
 phere with which the sex act was surrounded 
 among the early historic peoples. (5.) It was 
 
178 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 this idea of the mysterious sanctity of sex which 
 did much to raise woman to her position as 1 
 divinity and fertility goddess. 
 
 The dedication of virgins to various deities, 
 of which the classic example is the institution 
 of the Vestal Virgins at Eome, and the fact that 
 at Thebes and elsewhere even the male deities 
 had their priestesses as well as priests, are 
 other indications that at this time woman was 
 regarded as divine or as capable of ministering 
 to divinity. The prophetic powers of woman 
 were universally recognized. The oracles at 
 Delphi, Argos, Epirus, Thrace and Arcadia 
 were feminine. Indeed the Sibylline proph- 
 etesses were known throughout the Mediter- 
 ranean basin.* 
 
 The widespread character of the woman-cult 
 of priestesses and prophetesses among the peo- 
 
 * Farnell (4) found such decided traces of feminine divinity 
 as to incline him to agree with Bachofen that there was at 
 one time an age of Mutterrecht which had left its impress on 
 religion as well as on other aspects of social life. As we have 
 said before, it is now fairly well established that in the 
 transition from metronymic to patronymic forms, authority 
 did not pass from women to men but from the brothers and 
 maternal uncles of the women of the group to husbands and 
 sons. This fact does not, however, invalidate the significance 
 of Farnell r s data for the support of the view herein ad- 
 vanced, i. e., that woman was at one time^universally con- 
 sidered to partake of the divine. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 179 
 
 pies from whom our culture is derived is evi- 
 denced in literature and religion. That there 
 had been cults of ancient mothers who exerted 
 moral influence and punished crime is shown 
 by the Eumenides and Erinyes of the Greeks. 
 The power of old women as law-givers survived 
 in Rome in the legend of the Cumaean Sibyl. 
 (5.) An index of the universality of the sibyl- 
 line cult appears in the Est of races to which 
 Varro and Lactantius say they belonged : Per- 
 sian, Libyan, Delphian, Cimmerian, Erythrian, 
 Trojan, and Phrygian. (6.) These sibyls were 
 believed to be inspired, and generations! of 
 Greek and Eoman philosophers never doubted 
 their power. Their carmina were a court of 
 last resort, and their books were guarded by 
 a sacred taboo. 
 
 Among the Greeks and neighboring nations 
 the women of Thessaly had a great reputation 
 for their charms and incantations. (7.) Among 
 the writers who speak of a beEef in their power 
 are : Plato, Aristophanes, Horace, Ovid, Vergil, 
 Tibullus, Seneca, Lucan, Menander, and Eu- 
 ripides. 
 
 All of the northern European tribes believed 
 
180 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 in the foresight of future events by women. 
 Strabo says of the Cimbri that when they took 
 the field they were accompanied by venerable, 
 hoary-headed prophetesses, clothed in long, 
 white robes. Scandinavians, Gauls, Germans, 
 Danes and Britons obeyed, esteemed and vener- 
 ated females who dealt in charms and incanta- 
 tions. These sacred women claimed to foretell 
 the future and to interpret dreams, and among 
 Germans, Celts and Gauls they were the only 
 physicians and surgeons. The druidesses cured 
 disease and were believed to have power su- 
 perior to that of the priests. (8.) The Germans 
 never undertook any adventure without consult- 
 ing their prophetesses. (9.) The Scandinavian 
 name for women endowed with the gift of 
 prophecy was fcmae, femes. The English form 
 is fay. The ceremonies of fays or fairies, like 
 those of the druidesses, were performed in 
 secluded woods.* 
 
 Magic and medicine went hand in hand in 
 ancient times, and remained together down to 
 the middle ages. Old herbals largely compiled 
 from the lore of ancient women form a link 
 
 * Joan of Arc was asked during her trial if she were a fay. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 181 
 
 in the chain of tradition, the first ring of which 
 may have been formed in Egypt or in Greece. 
 There is no doubt that women from an early 
 date tried to cnre disease. Homer makes men- 
 tion of Hecamede and her healing potions. 
 There seems little doubt that there were Greek 
 women who applied themselves to a complete 
 study of medicine and contributed to the ad- 
 vance of medical science. This traditional belief 
 in the power of women to cure disease survives 
 in the folk today. (10.) 
 
 In view of the widespread veneration of a 
 peculiar psychic quality of woman, a power of 
 prophecy and a property of divinity which has 
 made her an object of fear and worship, it may 
 be well to review the modern explanations of 
 the origin of this unique feminine power. Her- 
 bert Spencer was of the opinion that feminine 
 penetration was an ability to distinguish 
 quickly the passing feelings of those around 
 and was the result of long ages of barbarism 
 during which woman as the weaker sex was 
 obliged to resort to the arts of divination and 
 to cunning to make up for her lack of physical 
 force and to protect herself and her offspring. 
 
182 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 {11.) In lite vein Kathe Schirmacher, a Ger- 
 man feminist, says: "The celebrated intuition 
 of woman is nothing but an astonishing refine- 
 ment of the senses through fear. . . . Waiting 
 in fear was made the life task of the sex." (12). 
 
 Lester F. Ward had a somewhat different 
 view. (13.) He thought that woman's psychic 
 power came from the sympathy based on the 
 maternal instinct, which "though in itself an 
 entirely different faculty, early blended with 
 or helped to create, the derivative reason-born 
 faculty of altruism." With Ward's view Olive 
 Sehreiner agrees, saying: "We have no certain 
 proof that it is so at present, but woman's long 
 years of servitude and physical subjection, and 
 her experience as childbearer and protector of 
 infancy, may be found in the future to have en- 
 dowed her . . . with an exceptional width of 
 human sympathy and instinctive comprehen- 
 sion." (14.) 
 
 In all probability Lombroso came nearer to 
 the truth in his explanation of feminine pene- 
 tration. "That woman is more subject to hys- 
 teria is a known fact," he says, "but few know 
 how liable she is to hypnotic phenomena, which 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 183 
 
 easily opens up the unfoldment of spiritual 
 faculties. . . . The history of observation proves 
 that hysteria and hypnotism take the form of 
 magic, sorcery, and divination or prophecy, 
 among savage peoples. 'Women, ' say the Pisha- 
 war peoples, 'are all witches; for several rea- 
 sons they may not exert their inborn powers. ' 
 ... In the Slave Coast hysterical women are 
 believed to be possessed with spirits. The Fue- 
 gians believed that there had been a time when 
 woman wielded the empire through her posses- 
 sion of the secrets of sorcery." (8: pp. <95/.)' 
 The history of modern spiritualism has so 
 well confirmed this view of Lombroso's that we 
 are safe in accepting it as the partial explana- 
 tion of the attribute of a mysterious and un- 
 canny power which man has always given to 
 the feminine nature. The power of prophecy 
 and divination which was possessed by women 
 at the dawn of history and for some time there- 
 after was probably not different in its essen- 
 tials from the manifestations of hysterical 
 girls who have puzzled the wisest physi- 
 cians or the strange phenomena of those 
 spiritualistic mediums who have been the sub- 
 
184 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ject of research well into our own times. \lS.y 
 If we wish to push our inquiry still further 
 and ask why woman should be so much more 
 subject than man to hysterical seizures and to 
 hypnotic suggestion, we shall probably find that 
 it is an essential part of her femininity. Mod- 
 ern psychology and physiology have pointed out 
 that the menstrual cycle of woman has a vast 
 influence not only on her emotional nature but 
 on her whole psychic life, so that there are times 
 when she is more nervously tense, more apt to 
 become hysterical or to yield to the influence of 
 suggestion. Moreover, because of the emphasis 
 on chastity and the taboos with which she was 
 surrounded, any neurotic tendencies which 
 might be inherent in her nature were sure to 
 be developed to the utmost. 
 
 As Lombroso suggests, hysteria and other 
 neurotic phenomena are classed as evidence of 
 spirit possession by the untutored mind. Thus 
 it happened that observing the strange psychic 
 manifestations to which woman was periodically 
 subject, the ancient peoples endowed her with 
 spiritualistic forces which were sometimes held 
 to be beneficent and at other times malefic in 
 
L TABOO AND GENETICS 185 
 
 character. Whatever the attitude at any time, 
 whether her mana were regarded as evil or 
 benignant, the savage and primitive felt that it 
 was well to be on his guard in the presence of 
 power; so that the taboos previously outlined 
 would hold through the swing of man's mind 
 from one extreme to the other. 
 
 As goddess, priestess and prophetess, woman 
 continued to play her role in human affairs 
 until the Christian period, when a remarkable 
 transformation took place. The philosophy of 
 dualism that emanated from Persia had affect- 
 ed all the religions of the Mediterranean Basin 
 and had worked its way into Christian beliefs 
 by way of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Neo- 
 Platonism. Much of the writing of the church 
 fathers is concerned with the effort to har- 
 monize conflicting beliefs or to avoid the cur- 
 rent heresies. To one who reads the fathers it 
 becomes evident to what extent the relation of 
 man to woman figures in these controversies. 
 (16.) 
 
 The Manicheanism which held in essence Per- 
 sian Mithraism and which had so profound an 
 influence on the writings of St. Augustine gave 
 
186 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 body and soul to two distinct worlds and finally 
 identified woman with, the body. But probably 
 as a result of the teachings of Gnosticism with 
 its N|eo-Platonic philosophy which never en- 
 tirely rejected feminine influence, some of this 
 influence survived in the restatement of religion 
 for the folk. When the restatement was com- 
 pleted and was spreading throughout Europe 
 in the form which held for the next millennium, 
 it was found that the early goddesses had been 
 accepted among the saints, the priestesses and 
 prophetesses were rejected as witches, while 
 the needs of men later raised the Blessed Vir- 
 gin to a place beside her son. 
 
 Modern psychology has given us an explana- 
 tion of the' difficulty of eradicating the worship 
 of such a goddess as the Great Mother of Asia 
 Minor from the religion of even martial peo- 
 ples who fear the contamination of woman's 
 weakness; or from a religion obsessed with 
 hatred of woman as unclean by men who made 
 the suppression of bodily passions the central 
 notion of sanctity. The most persistent human 
 relationship, the one charged with a constant 
 emotional value, is not that of sex, which takes 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 187 
 
 manifold forms, but that of the mother and 
 child. It is to the mother that the child looks 
 for food, love, and protection. It is to the child 
 that the mother often turns from the mate, 
 either because of the predominance of mother 
 love over sex love or in consolation for the loss 
 of the love of the male. We have only recently 
 learned to evaluate the infantile patterns en- 
 graved in the neural tissue during the years of 
 childhood when the mother is the central figure 
 of the child's life. Whatever disillusionments 
 may come about other women later in life, the 
 mother ideal thus established remains a con- 
 stant part of man's unconscious motivations. 
 It is perhaps possible that this infantile picture 
 of a being all-wise, all-tender, all-sacrificing, 
 has within it enough emotional force to create 
 the demand for a mother-goddess in any 
 religion. 
 
 To arrive at the concept of the Madonna, a 
 far-reaching process of synthesis and reinter- 
 pretation must have been carried out before the 
 Bible could be brought into harmony with the 
 demands made by a cult of a mother goddess. 
 Just as the views brought into the church by 
 
188 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 celibate ideals spread among heathen people, 
 so the church must have been in its turn influ- 
 enced by the heathen way of looking at things. 
 (17.) One of the great difficulties was the rec- 
 onciliation of the biological process of pro- 
 creation with divinity. But there had for ages 
 been among primitive peoples the belief that 
 impregnation was caused by spirit possession 
 or by sorcery. This explanation had survived 
 in a but slightly altered form in the ancient 
 mythologies, all of which contained traditions 
 of heroes and demi-gods who were born super- 
 naturally of a divine father and a human 
 mother. In the myths of Buddha, Zoroaster, 
 Pythagoras and Plato, it was intimated that the 
 father had been a god or spirit, and that the 
 mother had been, and moreover remained after 
 the birth, an earthly virgin. These old and 
 precious notions of the supernatural origin of 
 great men were not willingly renounced by 
 those who accepted the new religion; nor was 
 it necessary to make such a sacrifice, because 
 men thought that they could recognize in the 
 Jewish traditions something corresponding to 
 the heathen legends. (18.) 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 189 
 
 The proper conditions for the development 
 of a mother cult within Christianity existed 
 within the church by the end of the second cen- 
 tury. At the Council of Nicsea (325 A. D.) it 
 was settled that the Son was of the same nature 
 as the Father. The question of the nature of 
 Mary then came to the fore. The eastern fa- 
 thers, Athanasius, Ephraim Syrus, Eusebius 
 and Chrysostom, made frequent use in their 
 writings of the term Theotokos, Mother of God. 
 When Nestorius attacked those who worshipped 
 the infant Christ as a god and Mary as the 
 mother of God rather than as the mother of 
 Christ, a duel began between Cyril of Alex- 
 andria and Nestorius "which in fierceness and 
 importance can only be compared with that be- 
 tween Arius and Athanasius." (19.) 
 
 In 431 A. D. the Universal Church Council 
 at Ephesus assented to the doctrine that Mary 
 was the Mother of God. Thus Ephesus, home 
 of the great Diana, from primitive times the 
 center of the worship of a goddess who united 
 in herself the virtues of virginity and mother- 
 hood, could boast of being the birthplace of the 
 Madonna cult. And thus Mary, our Lady of 
 
190 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 Sorrows, pure and v undefiled, "the church's 
 paradox," became the ideal of man. She was 
 "a woman, virgin and mother, sufficiently high 
 to be worshipped, yet sufficiently near to be 
 reached by affection. ... If we judge myths 
 as artistic creations we must recognize that no 
 god or goddess has given its worshippers such 
 an ideal as the Mary of Christian art and 
 poetry." {19: p. 183.) {20: v. ii, pp. 220f.) 
 
 Although Christianity thus took over and 
 embodied in its doctrines the cult of the mother- 
 goddess, at the same time it condemned all the 
 rites which had accompanied the worship of the 
 fertility goddesses in all the pagan religions. 
 The power of these rites was still believed in, 
 but they were supposed to be the work of 
 demons, and we find them strictly forbidden in 
 the early ecclesiastical laws. The phallic cere- 
 monials which formed so large a part of heathen 
 ritual became marks of the devil, and the deities 
 in whose honor they were performed, although 
 losing none of their power, were regarded as 
 demonic rather than divine in nature. Diana, 
 goddess of the moon, for example, became iden- 
 tified with Hecate of evil repute, chief of the 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 191 
 
 witches. "In such a fashion the religion of 
 Greece, that of Egypt, of Phoenicia and Asia 
 Minor, of Assyria and of Persia, became min- 
 gled and confused in a simple demonology." 
 (21.) 
 In addition to the condemnation of Pagan 
 aities and their ritualistic worship, there was 
 a force inherent in the very nature of Chris- 
 tianity which worked toward the degradation 
 of the sex life. After the death of Christ, his 
 followers had divorced their thoughts from all 
 things earthly and set about fitting themselves 
 for their places in the other world. The 
 thought of the early Christian sects was ob- 
 sessed by the idea of the second coming of the 
 Messiah. The end of the world was incipient, 
 therefore it behooved each and every one to 
 purge himself from sin. This emphasis on the 
 spiritual as opposed to the fleshly became fix- 
 ated especially on the sex relationship, which 
 came to be the symbol of the lusts of the body 
 which must be conquered by the high desires 
 of the soul. Consequently the feelings con- 
 cerning this relation became surcharged with 
 all the emotion which modern psychology has 
 
192 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 taught us always attaches to the conscious sym- 
 bol of deeply underlying unconscious complexes. 
 In such a situation man, who had come to look 
 with horror on the being who reminded him 
 that he was flesh as well as spirit saw in her 
 "the Devil's gateway," or "a fireship continu- 
 ally striving to get alongside the male man-of- 
 war to blow him up into pieces." (22.) * 
 
 With the rejection of the idea of the sanctity 
 of sex as embodied in the phallic rituals of the 
 pagan cults, the psychic power of woman be- 
 came once more a thing of fear rather than of 
 worship, and her uncleanness was emphasized 
 again more than her holiness, even as in primi- 
 tive times. The power of woman to tell the 
 course of future events which in other days had 
 made her revered as priestess and prophetess 
 now made her hated as a witch who had con- 
 trol of what the Middle Ages knew as the Black 
 Art. (23.) The knowledge of medicine which 
 she had acquired through the ages was now 
 thought to be utilized in the making of "witch's 
 
 * Dr. Donaldson, translator of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, 
 says: "I used to believe . . . that woman owes her present 
 position to Christianity . . . but in the first three centuries I 
 have not been able to see that Christianity had any favorable: 
 effect on the position of woman." 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 193 
 
 brew," and the "ceremonies and charms 
 whereby the influence of the gods might be ob- 
 tained to preserve or injure" (21: v. 1, p. 12) 
 became incantations to the evil one. In addi- 
 tion to her natural erotic attraction for the 
 male, woman was now accused of using charms 
 to lure him to his destruction. The asceticism 
 of the church made it shameful to yield to her 
 allurements, and as a result woman came to be 
 feared and loathed as the arch-temptress who 
 would destroy man's attempt to conform to 
 celibate ideals. This sex antagonism culmi- 
 nated in the witchcraft persecutions which 
 make so horrible a page of the world's his- 
 tory. 
 
 Among the pagans, witches had shared with 
 prophetesses and priestesses a degree of rev- 
 erence and veneration. Medea had taught 
 Jason to tame the brazen-footed bulls and 
 dragons which guarded the Golden Fleece. 
 Hecate was skilled in spells and incantations. 
 Horace frequently mentions with respect Ca- 
 nidia, who was a powerful enchantress. Gauls, 
 Britons and Germans had obeyed and venerated 
 women who dealt in charms and incantations- 
 
194 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 The doctrines of Christianity had changed the 
 veneration into hatred and detestation without 
 eradicating the belief in the power of the witch. 
 It was with the hosts of evil that she was now 
 believed to have her dealings, however. When 
 this notion of the alliance between demons and 
 women had become a commonplace, "the whole 
 tradition was directed against woman as the 
 Devil's instrument, basely seductive, passion- 
 ate and licentious by nature." (24.) Man's 
 fear of woman found a frantic and absurd ex- 
 pression in her supposed devil-worship. As 
 a result, the superstitions about witchcraft be- 
 came for centuries not only a craze, but a theory 
 held by intelligent people. 
 
 Among the female demons who were espe- 
 cially feared were: Nahemah, the princess of 
 the Succubi; Lilith, queen of the Stryges; and 
 the Lamiae or Vampires, who fed on the living 
 flesh of men. Belief in the Vampires still per- 
 sists as a part of the folklore of Europe. Lilith 
 tempted to debauchery, and was variously 
 known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a 
 witch who changed true offspring for fairy or 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 195 
 
 phantom children.* The figure of the child- 
 stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient 
 apocryphal book called the Testament of Solo- 
 mon, and dates probably from the first or sec- 
 ond century of the Christian Era. (25.) 
 
 Laws against the malefici (witches) were 
 passed by Constantine. In the Theodosian 
 Code (Lib. 9. Tit. 16. Leg. 3) they are 
 charged with making attempts by their wicked 
 arts upon the lives of innocent men, and draw- 
 ing others by magical potions (philtra et phar- 
 maca) to commit misdemeanors. They are fur- 
 ther charged with disturbing the elements, rais- 
 ing tempests, and practising abominable arts. 
 The Council of Laodicea (343-381. Can. 36) 
 condemned them. The Council of Ancyra for- 
 bade the use of medicine to work mischief. St. 
 Basil's canons condemned witchcraft. The 
 fourth Council of Carthage censured enchant- 
 ment. (26.) John of Salisbury tells of their 
 feasts, to which they took unbaptized children. 
 "William of Auverne describes the charms and 
 incantations which they used to turn a cane 
 
 * The name of Lilith carries us as far back as Babylon, and 
 in her charms and conjurations we have revived in Europe the 
 reflection of old Babylonian charms. 
 
196 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 into a horse. "William of Malmesbury gives an 
 account of two old women who transformed the 
 travellers who passed their door into horses, 
 swine or other animals which they sold. From 
 some of the old Teuton laws we learn that it 
 was believed that witches could take a man's 
 heart out of his body and fill the cavity with 
 straw or wood so that he would go on living. 
 
 One of the famous witchcraft trials was that 
 of the Lady Alice Kyteler (27), whose high rank 
 could not save her from the accusation. It was 
 claimed that she used the ceremonies of the 
 church, but with some wicked changes. She ex- 
 tinguished the candles with the exclamation, 
 "Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen!" She was also accused 
 of securing the love of her husbands, who left 
 much property to her, by magic charms. These 
 claims were typical of the accusations against 
 witches in the trials which took place. 
 
 By the sixteenth century, the cumulative no- 
 tion of witches had penetrated both cultivated 
 and uncultivated classes, and was embodied in 
 a great and increasing literature. "No com- 
 prehensive work on theology, philosophy, his- 
 tory, law, medicine, or natural science could 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 197 
 
 wholly ignore it," says Burr, "and to lighter 
 literature it afforded the most telling illustra- 
 tions for the pulpit, the most absorbing gos- 
 sip for the news-letter, the most edifying tales 
 for the fireside." (28.) 
 
 As a result of this belief in the diabolic power 
 of woman, judicial murder of helpless women 
 became an institution, which is thus character- 
 ized by Sumner: "After the refined torture of 
 the body and nameless mental sufferings, 
 women were executed in the most cruel man- 
 ner. These facts are so monstrous that all 
 other aberrations of the human race are small 
 in comparison. ... He who studies the witch 
 trials believes himself transferred into the 
 midst of a race which has smothered all its own 
 nobler instincts, reason, justice, benevolence, 
 and sympathy." (24.) 
 
 Any woman was suspect. Michelet, after a 
 thirty years' study, wrote: "Witches they are 
 by nature. It is a gift peculiar to woman and 
 her temperament. By birth a fay, by the regu- 
 lar recurrence of her ecstasy she becomes a 
 sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchant- 
 
198 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ress. By her subtlety ... she becomes a witch 
 and works her spells. " (29.) 
 
 Just how many victims there were of the be- 
 lief in the power of women as witches will never 
 be known. Scherr thinks that the persecutions 
 cost 100,000 lives in Germany alone. (30.) 
 Lord Avebury quotes the estimate of the in- 
 quisitor Sprenger, joint author of the "Witch 
 Hammer," that during the Christian period 
 some 9,000,000 persons, mostly women, were 
 burned as witches. (31.) Seven thousand vic- 
 tims are said to have been burned at Treves, 
 600 by a single bishop of Bamburg, 800 in a sin- 
 gle year in the bishopric of "Wurtzburg. At 
 Toulouse 400 persons perished at a single 
 burning. (29: ch. 1.) (20: v. 1. ch. 1.) One 
 witch judge boasted that he executed 900 
 witches in fifteen years. The last mass burn- 
 ing in Germany was said to have taken place 
 in 1678, when 97 persons were burned together. 
 The earliest recorded burning of a witch in 
 England is in "Walter Mapes' Be Nugis Curi- 
 aiium, in the reign of Henry II. An old black 
 letter tract gloats over the execution at North- 
 ampton, 1612, of a number of persons convicted 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 199 
 
 of witchcraft. (32.) The last judicial sentence 
 was in 1736, when one Jane Wenham was found 
 guilty of conversing familiarly with the devil 
 in the form of a cat. (33.), 
 
 The connection between the witchcraft delu- 
 sion and the attitude toward all women has al- 
 ready been implied. (34.) The dualistic teach- 
 ing of the early church fathers, with its sever- 
 ance of matter and spirit and its insistence on 
 the ascetic ideal of life, had focussed on sexu- 
 ality as the outstanding manifestation of fleshly 
 desires. The contact of the sexes came to be 
 looked upon as the supreme sin. Celibacy 
 taught that through the observance of the taboo 
 on woman the man of God was to be saved from 
 pollution. Woman was the arch temptress who 
 by the natural forces of sex attraction, rein- 
 forced by her evil charms and incantations, 
 made it so difficult to attain the celibate ideal. 
 From her ancestress Eve woman was believed 
 to inherit the natural propensity to lure man 
 to his undoing. Thus the old belief in the un- 
 cleanness of woman was renewed in the minds 
 of men with even greater intensity than ever 
 before, and in addition to a dangerous adven- 
 
200 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ture, even within the sanction of wedlock the 
 sex act became a deed of shame. The follow- 
 ing quotations from the church fathers will il- 
 lustrate this view : 
 
 Jerome said, "Marriage is always a vice; all 
 we can do is to excuse and cleanse it. . . . In 
 Paradise Eve was a virgin. Virginity is nat- 
 ural while wedlock only follows guilt." (35.) 
 
 Tertullian addressed women in these words : 
 "Do you not know that you are each an Eve? 
 The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives 
 in this age. . . . You are the devil's gateway. 
 . . . You destroy God's image, Man." (35: 
 Bk. 1.) 
 
 Thus woman became degraded beyond all 
 previous thought in the teaching of the early 
 church. The child was looked upon as the re- 
 sult of an act of sin, and came into the world 
 tainted through its mother with sin. At best 
 marriage was a vice. All the church could do 
 was to cleanse it as much as possible by sacred 
 rites, an attempt which harked back to the or- 
 igin of marriage as the ceremonial breaking 
 of taboo. Peter Lombard's Sentences affirmed 
 marriage a sacrament. This was reaffirmed at 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 201 
 
 Florence in 1439. In 1565, the Council of Trent 
 made the final declaration. But not even this 
 could wholly purify woman, and intercourse 
 with her was still regarded as a necessary evil, 
 a concession that had to be unwillingly made 
 to the lusts of the flesh. 
 
 Such accounts as we have of the lives of holy 
 women indicate that they shared in the beliefs 
 of their times. In the account of the life of a 
 saint known as the Blessed Eugenia preserved 
 in an old palimpsest (36) we read that she 
 adopted the costume of a monk, — "Being a 
 woman by nature in order that I might gain 
 everlasting life." The same account tells of 
 another holy woman who passed as a eunuch, 
 because she had been warned that it was easier 
 for the devil to tempt a woman. In another 
 collection of lives of saints is the story (37) 
 of a holy woman who never allowed herself to 
 see the face of a man, even that of her own 
 brother, lest through her he might go in among 
 women. Another holy virgin shut herself up 
 in a tomb because she did not wish to cause the 
 spiritual downfall of a young man who loved 
 her. 
 
202 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 This long period of religious hatred of and 
 contempt for woman included the Crusades, the 
 Age of Chivalry, (38) and lasted well into the 
 Eenaissance. (39.) Students of the first thou- 
 sand years of the Christian era like Donald' 
 son (22), McCabe (40), and Benecke argue 
 that the social and intellectual position of 
 women was probably lower than at any time 
 since the creation of the world. It was 
 while the position of woman as wife and 
 mother was thus descending into the slough 
 which has been termed the Dark Age 
 of Woman that the Apotheosis of the 
 Blessed Virgin was accomplished. The at- 
 titude toward human love, generation, the rela- 
 tion of the earthly mother to the human child 
 because of Eve's sin, all made the Immaculate 
 Conception a logical necessity. The doctrine 
 of the virgin birth disposed of sin through the 
 paternal line. But if Mary was conceived in 
 sin or was not purified from sin, even that of 
 the first parent, how could she conceive in her 
 body him who was without sin? The contro- 
 versy over the Immaculate Conception which 
 began as early as the seventh century lasted 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 203 
 
 until Pius IX declared it to be an article of 
 Catholic belief in 1854. Thus not only Christ, 
 but also his mother became purged of the sin 
 of conception by natural biological processes, 
 and the same immaculacy and freedom from 
 contamination was accorded to both. In this 
 way the final step in the differentiation between 
 earthly motherhood and divine motherhood was 
 completed. 
 
 The worship of the virgin by men and women 
 who looked upon the celibate life as the per- 
 fect life, and upon the relationship of earthly 
 fatherhood and motherhood as contaminating, 
 gave the world an ideal of woman as "super- 
 human, immaculate, bowing in frightened awe 
 before the angel with the lily, standing mute 
 and with downcast eyes before her Divine 
 Son." (41.) With all its admitted beauty, this 
 ideal represented not the institution of the fam- 
 ily, but the institution of the church. Chivalry 
 carried over from the church to the castle this 
 concept of womanhood and set it to the shap- 
 ing of The Lady (42), who was finally given a 
 rank in the ideals of knighthood only a little 
 below that to which Mary had been elevated by 
 
204 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the ecclesiastical authorities. This concept of 
 the lady was the result of the necessity for a 
 new social standardization which must combine 
 beauty, purity, meekness and angelic goodness. 
 Only by such a combination could religion and 
 family life be finally reconciled. By such a 
 combination, earthly motherhood could be made 
 to approximate the divine motherhood. 
 
 With the decline of the influence of chivalry, 
 probably as the result of industrial changes, 
 The Lady was replaced by a feminine ideal 
 which may well be termed the ' ' Model Woman. ' ' 
 Although less ethereal than her predecessor, 
 The Lady, the Model Woman is quite as much 
 an attempt to reconcile the dualistic attitude, 
 with its Divine Mother cult on the one hand, and 
 its belief in the essential evil of the procrea- 
 tive process and the uncleanness of woman on 
 the other, to human needs. The characteristics 
 of the Model Woman must approximate those 
 of the Holy Virgin as closely as possible. Her 
 chastity before marriage is imperative. Her 
 calling must be the high art of motherhood. 
 She must be the incarnation of the maternal 
 spirit of womanhood, but her purity must re- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 205 
 
 main unsullied by any trace of erotic passion. 
 A voluminous literature which stated the vir- 
 tues and duties of the Model "Woman blossomed 
 out in the latter part of the eighteenth and first 
 half of the nineteenth century. (43.) The 
 Puritan ideals also embodied this concept. It 
 was by this attempt to make woman conform 
 to a standardized ideal that man sought to solve 
 the conflict between his natural human instincts 
 and desires and the early Christian teaching 
 concerning the sex life and womanhood. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER II 
 
 1. Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic 
 
 and Religion. Part I. The Magic Art. 2 vols. 
 Macmillan. London, 1911. Part V. Spirits of 
 the Corn and of the Wild. 2 vols. London, 1912. 
 
 2. Farnell, L. R. Evolution of Religion. 235 pp. Wil- 
 
 liams and Norgate. London, 1905. Crown Theo- 
 logical Library, Vol. 12. 
 
 3. Frazer, J. G. Part IV of The Golden Bough; Adonis, 
 
 Attis, and Osiris. Chaps. Ill and IV. Macmillan. 
 
 London, 1907. 
 Sumner, W. G. Folkways. 692 pp. Ginn & Co. 
 
 Boston, 1907. Chap. XVI, Sacral Harlotry. 
 Lombroso, Cesare, and Lombroso-Ferrero, G. La 
 
 donna delinquente. 508 pp. Fratelli Bocca. Mil- 
 
 ano, 1915. 
 
206 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 4. Famell, L. E. Sociological Hypotheses Concerning 
 
 the Position of Woman in Ancient Eeligion. Archiv 
 fur Religionwissenschaft. Siebenter Band, 1904. 
 
 5. Fowler, W. Warde. The Religious Experience of the 
 
 Roman People. 504 pp. Macmillan. London, 
 1911. 
 
 6. For a description of these sibyls with a list of the 
 
 works in which they are mentioned, see: 
 
 Fullom, Steven Watson. The History of Woman. 
 
 Third Ed. London, 1855. 
 Rohmer, Sax. (Ward, A. S.) The Romance ,of Sor- 
 cery. 320 pp. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 
 1914. 
 
 7. Maury, L. F. La Magie et L'Astrologie dans l'An- 
 
 tiquite et au Moyen Age. Quatrieme ed. 484 pp. 
 Paris, 1877. 
 
 8. Lombroso, Cesare. Priests and Women's Clothes. 
 
 North American Review. Vol. 192, 1910. 
 
 9. For an extensive compilation of facts from ancient 
 
 literature and history concerning sacred women, see: 
 Alexander, W. History of Women from the Earliest 
 Antiquity to the Present Time. 2 vols. W. Stra- 
 han. London, 1779. 
 
 10. Mason, Otis T. Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. 
 
 295 pp. Appleton. New York, 1894. 
 
 Dyer, T. F. S. Plants in Witchcraft. Popular Sci- 
 ence Monthly. Vol. 34, 1889, pp. 826-833. 
 
 Donaldson, Rev. James. Woman, Her Position and 
 
 Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome. 278 pp. 
 Longmans, Green. London, 1907. 
 
 11. Spencer, Herbert. Study of Sociology. 431 pp. Ap- 
 
 pleton. N. Y., 1880. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 207 
 
 12. Schinnacher, Kathe. Das Ratsel: Weib. 160 pp. A 
 
 Duncker. Weimar, 1911. 
 
 13. Ward, Lester F. Psychic Factors in Civilization. 369 
 
 pp. Ginn & Co., Boston and New York, 1906. 
 Chap. XXVI. 
 Pure Sociology. 607 pp. Macmillan. N. T., 1903. 
 
 14. Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labor. 299 pp. Fred- 
 
 erick A. Stokes Co. N. Y., 1911. 
 
 15. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. Appleton. 
 
 N. Y., 1904. 
 
 Dupouy, Edmund. Psychologie morbide. Librairie 
 
 des Sciences Psychiques, 1907. 
 
 16. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translation by the Eev. 
 
 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, LL.D., 
 and others. American Reprint of the Edinburgh 
 Edition. Buffalo, 1889. 
 
 17. Hatch, Edwin. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages 
 
 upon the Christian Church. Ed. by A. M. Fair- 
 bairn. 4th ed. London, 1892. Hibbert Lectures, 
 1888. 
 
 18. Gilbert, George Holley. The Greek Strain in Our 
 
 Oldest Gospels. North American Review. Vol. 192, 
 1910. 
 
 19. Hirn, Yrjo. The Sacred Shrine. 574 pp. Macmillan. 
 
 London, 1912. 
 
 20. Lecky, W. E. H. Rationalism in Europe. 2 vols. 
 
 Appleton. N. Y. and London, 1910. Vol. II, pp. 
 220f. 
 
 21. Wright, Thomas. Narratives of Sorcery and Magic. 
 
 2 vols. R. Bentley. London, 1851. 
 
 22. Donaldson, Rev. James. The Position of Woman 
 
 Among the Early Christians. Contemporary Re- 
 view. Vol. 56, 1889. 
 
208 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 23. Bingham, Joseph. Antiquities of the Christian 
 
 Church. 2 vols. London, 1846. 
 
 24. Sumner, W. G. Witchcraft. Forum. Vol. 41, 1909, 
 
 pp. 410-423. 
 
 25. Gaster, M. Two Thousand Years of a Charm Against 
 
 the Child-stealing Witch. Folk-lore. Vol. XI, no. 
 2, June, 1900. 
 
 26. For discussion of the dates of the Church councils see 
 
 Eev. Charles J. Hefele, Councils of the Church. 
 Trans, fr. the German by C. W. Bush, 1883. 
 
 27. Alice Kyteler. A contemporary narrative of the Pro- 
 
 ceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for 
 sorcery by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, 
 1324. Edited by Thomas Wright. London, 1843. 
 
 28. Burr, George L. The Literature of Witchcraft. 
 
 Papers of the American Historical Association. 
 Vol. IV, pp. 37-66. G. P. Putnam's Sons. N. Y., 
 1890. 
 
 29. Michelet, J. La Sorciere. 448 pp. Paris, 1878. 
 
 Trans, of Introduction by L. J. Trotter. 
 
 30. Scherr, Johannes. Deutsche Frauenwelt. Band II. 
 
 31. Avebury, Right Hon. Lord (Sir John Lubbock). Mar- 
 
 riage, Totemism and Religion. 243 pp. Longmans, 
 Green. ' London, 1911. Footnote, p. 127. 
 
 32. Wood, Wm. Witchcraft. Cornhill Magazine. Vol. 
 
 V, 1898. 
 Lea, H. C. Superstition and Force. 407 pp. Phila- 
 delphia, 1866. 
 
 33. Bragge, F. Jane Wenham. 36 pp. E. Curll. Lon- 
 
 don, 1712. 
 
 34. Paulus, Nikolaus. Die Rolle der Frau in der 
 
 Geschichte des Hexenwahns. Historisches Jahrbuch. 
 XXIX. Bajid. Miinchen. Jahrgang 1918. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 209 
 
 35. Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of 
 
 the Christian Church. 2d series. Vol. 6, Letter 
 xxii, Ad Eustachium. 
 
 36. Studia Sinaitica No. IX. Select Narratives of Holy 
 
 Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimp- 
 sest as -written above the old Syriac Gospels by 
 John the Stylite, of Beth-Mari Ianun in A. D. 778. 
 Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis, M.R.A.S. London, 
 1900. 
 
 37. Lady Meux Mss. No. VI. British Museum. The Book 
 
 of Paradise, being the Histories and Sayings of the 
 Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert by 
 Palladius, Hieronymus and others. English Trans, 
 by E. A. Wallis Budge. (From the Syriac.) 
 Vol. I. 
 
 38. Gautier, fimile Theodore Leon. La Chevalerie. 850 
 
 pp. C. Delagrave. Paris, 1890. 
 
 39. Maulde la Claviere, R. de. The Women of the Renais- 
 
 sance. Trans, by G. H. Ely. 510 pp. G. P. Put- 
 nam's Sons. N. Y., 1900. 
 
 40. McCabe, Joseph. Woman in Political Evolution. 
 
 Watts & Co. London, 1909. 
 
 41. Barnes, Earl. Woman in Modern Society. 257 pp. 
 
 B. W. Huebsch. N. Y., 1913. 
 
 42. Putnam, Emily James. The Lady. 323 pp. Sturgis 
 
 & Walton Co. N. Y., 1910. 
 
 43. Excellent examples of this literature are Kenrick's 
 
 "The Whole Duty of a Woman, or A Guide to the 
 Female Sex," published some time in the eighteenth 
 century (a copy in the Galatea Collection, Boston 
 Public Library) ; and Duties oJ Young Women, by 
 E. H. Chapin. 218. pp. G. W. Briggs. Boston, 
 1848. 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 THE DUALISM IN M0DEBN LIFE : THE INSTITUTIONAL 
 TABOO 
 
 The taboo and modern institutions; Survival of ideas of 
 the uncleanness of woman; Taboo and the family; 
 The "good" woman; The "bad" woman; Increase in 
 the number of women who do not fit into the ancient 
 classifications. 
 
 With the gradual accumulation of scientific 
 knowledge and the increasing tendency of man- 
 kind toward a rationalistic view of most things, 
 it might be expected that the ancient attitude 
 toward sex and womanhood would have been 
 replaced by a saner feeling. To some extent 
 this has indeed been the case. It is surpris- 
 ing, however, to note the traces which the old 
 taboos and superstitions have left upon our 
 twentieth century social life. Men and women 
 are becoming conscious that they live in a world 
 formed out of the worlds that have passed 
 
 away. The underlying principle of this social 
 
 210 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 211 
 
 phenomenon has been called the principle of 
 "the persistence of institutions." (I.) Insti- 
 tutionalized habits, mosaics of reactions to for- 
 gotten situations, fall like shadows on the life 
 of today. Memories of the woman shunned, of 
 the remote woman goddess, and of the witch, 
 transmit the ancient forms by which woman 
 has been expected to shape her life. 
 
 It may seem a far cry from the savage taboo 
 to the institutional life of the present ; but the 
 patterns of our social life, like the infantile pat- 
 terns on which adult life shapes itself, go back 
 to an immemorial past. Back in the early life 
 of the peoples from whom we spring is the 
 taboo, and in our own life there are customs so 
 analogous to many of these ancient prohibi- 
 tions that they must be accounted survivals of 
 old social habits just as the vestigial structures 
 within our bodies are the remnants of our bio- 
 logical past. 
 
 The modern preaching concerning woman's 
 sphere, for example, is an obvious descendant 
 of the old taboos which enforced the division 
 of labor between the sexes. Just as it for- 
 merly was death for a woman to approach her 
 
212 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 husband's weapons, so it has for a long time 
 been considered a disgrace for her to attempt 
 to compete with man in his line of work. Only 
 under the pressure of modern industrialism and 
 economic necessity has this ancient taboo been 
 broken down, and even now there is some re- 
 luctance to recognize its passing. The exigen- 
 cies of the world war have probably done more 
 than any other one thing to accelerate the dis- 
 appearance of this taboo on woman from the 
 society of today. 
 
 A modern institution reminiscent of the 
 men's house of the savage races, where 
 no woman might intrude, is the men's 
 club. This institution, as Mr. Webster has 
 pointed out (2), is a potent force for 
 eexual solidarity and consciousness of kind. 
 The separate living and lack of club activity 
 of women has had much to do with a delay in 
 the development of a sex consciousness and 
 loyalty. The development of women's organ- 
 izations along the lines of the men's clubs has 
 been a powerful factor in enabling them to over- 
 come the force of the taboos which have lin- 
 gered on in social life. Only through united 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 213 
 
 resistance could woman ever hope to break 
 down the barriers with which she was shut off 
 from the fulness of life. 
 
 Perhaps the property taboo has been as per- 
 sistent as any other of the restrictions which 
 have continued to surround woman through the 
 ages. Before marriage, the girl who is "well 
 brought up" is still carefully protected 'from 
 contact with any male. The modern system of 
 chaperonage is the substitute for the old seclu- 
 sion and isolation of the pubescent girl. Even 
 science was influenced by the old sympathetic 
 magic view that woman could be contaminated 
 by the touch of any other man than her hus- 
 band, for the principle of telegony, that the 
 father of one child could pass on his charac- 
 teristics to offspring by other fathers, lingered 
 in biological teaching until the very recent dis- 
 coveries of the physical basis of heredity in 
 the chromosomes. Lawmaking was also influ- 
 enced by the idea of woman as property. For 
 a long time there was a hesitancy to prohibit 
 wife-beating on account of the feeling that the 
 wife was the husband's possession, to be dealt 
 with as he desired. 1 The laws of coverture also 
 
214 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 perpetuated the old property taboos, and gave 
 to the husband the right to dispose of his wife's 
 property. 
 
 The general attitude toward such sexual 
 crises as menstruation and pregnancy is still 
 strongly reminiscent of the primitive belief 
 that woman is unclean at those times. Mothers 
 still hesitate to enlighten their daughters con- 
 cerni ng these nat ural biolo gical functions, and 
 as a result girls are unconsciously imbued with 
 a feeling of shame concerning them. Modern 
 psychology has given many instances of the re- 
 bellion of girls at the inception of menstrua- 
 tion, for which they have been ill prepared. 
 There is little doubt that this attitude has 
 wrought untold harm in the case of nervous and 
 delicately balanced temperaments, and has even 
 been one of the predisposing factors of neu- 
 rosis. (3.) 
 
 The old seclusion and avoidance of the preg- 
 nant woman still persists. The embarrass- 
 ment of any public appearance , when pregnancy 
 is evident, the jokes and secrecy which sur- 
 round this event, show how far we are from ra- 
 tionalizing this function. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 215 
 
 Even medical men show the influence of old 
 superstitions when they refuse to alleviate the 
 pains of childbirth on the grounds that they 
 are good for the mother. Authorities say that 
 instruction in obstetrics is sadly neglected. A 
 recent United States report tells us that pre- 
 ventable diseases of childbirth and pregnancy 
 cause more deaths among women than any other 
 disease except tuberculosis. (4.) 
 
 The belief in the possession by woman of an 
 uncanny psychic power which made her the 
 priestess and witch of other days, has crys- 
 tallized into the modern concept of womanly 
 intuition. In our times, women ' ' get hunches, ' ' 
 have "feelings in their bones," etc., about peo- 
 ple, or about things which are going to happen. 
 They are often asked to decide on business ven- 
 tures or to pass opinions on persons whom they 
 do not know. There are shrewd business men 
 who never enter into a serious negotiation 
 without getting their wives' intuitive opinion 
 of the men with whom they are dealing. The 
 psychology of behavior would explain these 
 rapid fire judgments of women as having basis 
 in observation of unconscious movements, 
 
216 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 while another psychological explanation would 
 emphasize sensitiveness to suggestion as a fac- 
 tor in the process. Yet in spite of these ra- 
 tional explanations of woman's swift conclu- 
 sions on matters of importance, she is still ac- 
 credited with a mysterious faculty of intuition. 
 A curious instance of the peculiar forms in 
 which old taboos linger on in modern life is the 
 taboos on certain words and on discussion of 
 certain subjects. The ascetic idea of the un- 
 cleanness of the sex relation is especially no- 
 ticeable. A study of 150 girls made by the 
 writer in 1916-17 showed a taboo on thought 
 and discussion among well-bred girls of the fol- 
 lowing subjects, which they characterize as "in- 
 delicate," "polluting," and "things completely 
 outside the knowledge of a lady": 
 
 1. Things contrary to custom, often called 
 "wicked" and "immoral." 
 
 2. Things "disgusting," such as bodily func- 
 tions, normal as well as pathological, and all 
 the implications of uncleanliness. 
 
 3. Things uncanny, that "make your flesh 
 creep," and things suspicious. 
 
 4. Many forms of animal life which it is a 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 217 
 
 commonplace that girls will fear or which are 
 considered unclean. 
 
 5. Sex differences. 
 
 6. Age differences. 
 
 7. All matters relating to the double stand- 
 ard of morality. 
 
 8. All matters connected with marriage, 
 pregnancy, and childbirth. 
 
 9. Allusions to any part of the body except 
 head and hands. 
 
 10. Politics. 
 
 11. Eeligion. 
 
 It will be noted that most of these taboo ob- 
 jects are obviously those which the concept of 
 the Model Woman has ruled out of the life of 
 the feminine half of the world. 
 
 As might well be expected, it is in the mar- 
 riage ceremony and the customs of the family 
 institution that the most direct continuation of 
 taboo may be found. The early ceremonials 
 connected with marriage, as Mr. Crawley has 
 shown, counteracted to some extent man's an- 
 cient fear of woman as the embodiment of a 
 weakness which would emasculate him. Mar- 
 riage acted as a bridge, by which the breach 
 
218 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 of taboo was expiated, condoned, and socially 
 countenanced. Modern convention in many 
 forms perpetuates this concept. Marriage, a 
 conventionalized breach of taboo, is the begin- 
 ning of a new family. In all its forms, social, 
 religious, or legal, it is an accepted exception 
 to the social injunctions which keep men and 
 women apart under other circumstances. 
 
 The new family as a part of the social order 
 comes into existence through the social recog- 
 nition of a relationship which is considered es- 
 pecially dangerous and can only be recognized 
 by the performance of elaborate rites and cere- 
 monies. It is taboo for men and women to have 
 contact with each other. Contact may occur 
 only under ceremonial conditions, guarded in 
 turn by taboo, and therefore socially recog- 
 nized. The girl whose life from puberty on 
 has been carefully guarded by taboos, passes 
 through the gateway of ceremonial into a new 
 life, which is quite as carefully guarded. These 
 restrictions and elaborate rituals which sur- 
 round marriage and family life may appropri- 
 ately be termed institutional taboos. They in- 
 clude the property and division of labor taboos 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 219 
 
 in. the survival forms already mentioned, as 
 well as other religions and social restrictions 
 and prohibitions. 
 
 The foundations of family life go far back 
 of the changes of recent centuries. The family 
 has its source in the mating instinct, but this 
 instinct is combined with other individual in- 
 stincts and social relationships which become 
 highly elaborated in the course of social evo- 
 lution. The household becomes a complex eco- 
 nomic institution. While the processes of 
 change may have touched the surface of these 
 relations, the family itself has remained to the 
 present an institution established through the 
 social sanctions of communities more primi- 
 tive than onr own. The new family begins with 
 the ceremonial breach of taboo, — the taboo 
 which enjoins the shunning of woman as a be- 
 ing both sacred and unclean. Once married, 
 the woman falls under the property taboo, and 
 is as restricted as ever she was before marriage, 
 although perhaps in slightly different ways. 
 In ancient Eome, the wife was not mistress of 
 the hearth. She did not represent the ances- 
 tral gods, the lares and penates, sinee she was 
 
220 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 not descended from them. In death as in life 
 she counted only as a part of her husband. 
 Greek, Eoman and Hindu law, all derived from 
 ancestor worship, agreed in considering the 
 wife a minor. (5.) 
 
 These practices are of the greatest signifi- 
 cance in a consideration of the modern insti- 
 tutional taboos which surround the family. 
 Students agree that our own mores are in large 
 part derived from those of the lowest class of 
 freedmen in Rome at the time when Christian- 
 ity took over the control which had fallen from 
 the hands of the Roman emperors. These 
 mores were inherited by the Bourgeoisie of the 
 Middle Ages, and were passed on by them as 
 they acquired economic supremacy. Thus these 
 practices have come down to 'us unchanged in 
 spirit even if somewhat modified in form, to 
 fit the changed environment of our times. 
 
 The standardization of the family with its 
 foundations embedded in a series of institu- 
 tional taboos, added its weight to the formula- 
 tion of the Model Woman type referred to at 
 the close of the preceding chapter. The model 
 wife appears in the earliest literature. In The 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 221 
 
 Trojan Women, Hecuba tells how she behaved 
 in wedlock. She stayed at home and did not 
 gossip. She was modest and silent before her 
 husband. The patient Penelope was another 
 ideal wife. To her, her son Telemachus says : 
 
 "Your widowed hours apart, with female toil, 
 And various labors of the loom, beguile, 
 There rule, from palace cares remote and free, 
 That care to man belongs, and most to me." 
 
 The wifely type of the Hebrews is set forth 
 in Proverbs xxxi, 10-31. Her virtues consisted 
 in rising while it was yet night, and not eating 
 the bread of idleness. In her relation to her 
 husband, she must never surprise him by un- 
 usual conduct, and must see that he was well 
 fed. 
 
 The Eomans, Hindus, and Mohammedans de- 
 manded similar virtues in their wives and 
 mothers. The wives of the medieval period 
 were to remain little girls, most admired for 
 their passive obedience. Gautier puts into the 
 mouth of a dutiful wife of the Age of Chivalry 
 the following soliloquy: 
 
 "I will love no one but my husband. Even 
 
222 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 if he loves me no longer, I will love him always. 
 I will be humble and as a servitor. I will call 
 him my sire, or my baron, or domine. ..." (6.) 
 The modern feminine ideal combines the 
 traits demanded by the worship of the ma- 
 donna and the virtues imposed by the institu- 
 tional taboos which surround the family. She 
 is the virgin pure and undefiled before mar- 
 riage. She is the protecting mother and the 
 obedient, faithful wife afterward. In spite of 
 various disrupting influences which are tending 
 to break down this concept, and which will 
 presently be discussed, this is still the ideal 
 which governs the life of womankindT The 
 average mother educates her daughter to con- 
 form to this ideal woman type which is the 
 synthesized product of ages of taboo and re- 
 ligious mysticism. Home training and social 
 pressure unite to force woman into the mold 
 wrought out in the ages when she has been the 
 object of superstitious fear to man and also a 
 part of his property to utilize as he willed. Be- 
 ing thus the product of wholly irrational forces, 
 it is little wonder that only in recent years has 
 she had any opportunity to show what she in 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 223 
 
 her inmost soul desired, and what capabilities 
 ■were latent within her personality. 
 
 In sharp contrast to the woman who con- 1 
 forms to the standards thus created for her, is 
 the prostitute, who is the product of forces as 1 
 ancient as those which have shaped the family 
 institution. In the struggle between man's in- 
 stinctive needs and his mystical ideal of woman- 
 hood, there has come about a division of women 
 into two classes, — the good and the bad. It is 
 a demarcation as sharp as that involved in the 
 primitive taboos which set women apart as sa- 
 cred or unclean. In building up the Madonna 
 concept and requiring the women of his fam- 
 ily to approximate this mother-goddess ideal, 
 man made them into beings too spiritual to sat- 1 
 isfy his earthly needs. The wife and mother 
 must be pure, as he conceived purity, else she 
 could not be respected. The religious forces 
 which had set up the worship of maternity had 
 condemned the sex relationship and caused a 
 dissociation of two elements of human nature 
 which normally are in complete and intimate 
 harmony. One result of this divorce of two 
 
224 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 biologically concomitant functions was the in- 
 stitution of prostitution. 
 
 Prostitution is designed to furnish and regu- 
 late a supply of women outside the mores of the 
 family whose sex shall be for sale, not for pur- 
 poses of procreation but for purposes of in- 
 dulgence. In the ancient world, temple pros- 
 titution was common, the proceeds going to the 
 god or goddess; but the sense of pollution in 
 the sex relation which came to be so potent an 
 element in the control of family life drove the 
 prostitute from the sanctuary to the stews and 
 the brothel, where she lives today. She has be- 
 come the woman shunned, while the wife and 
 mother who is the center of the family with 
 its institutional taboos is the sacred woman, 
 loved and revered by men who condemn the 
 prostitute for the very act for which they seek 
 her company. Such is the irrational situation 
 which has come to us as a heritage from the 
 past. 
 
 Among the chief causes which have impelled 
 women into prostitution rather than into fam- 
 ily life are the following: (1) Slavery; (2) 
 poverty; (3) inclination. These causes have 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 225 
 
 been expanded and regrouped by specialists, 
 but the only addition which the writer sees as 
 necessary in consequence of the study of taboo 
 is the fact that the way of the woman trans- 
 gressor is peculiarly hard because of the sex 
 taboo, the ignorance and narrowness of good 
 women, and the economic limitations of all 
 women. Ignorance of the results of entrance 
 into a life which usually means abandonment 
 of hope may be a contributing cause. Bore- 
 dom with the narrowness of family life and de- 
 sire for adventure are also influences. 
 
 That sex desire leads directly to the life of 
 the prostitute is unlikely. The strongly sexed 
 class comes into prostitution by the way of ir- 
 regular relationships with men to whom they 
 have been attached, and who have abandoned 
 them or sold them out. Many authorities 
 agree on the frigidity of the prostitute. It is 
 her protection from physical and emotional ex- 
 haustion. This becomes evident when it is 
 learned that these women will receive thirty 
 men a day, sometimes more. A certain orig- 
 inal lack of sensitiveness may be assumed, es- 
 pecially since the investigations of prostitutes 
 
226 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 have shown a large proportion, perhaps one- 
 third, who are mentally inferior. It is an in- 
 teresting fact that those who are sensitive to 
 their social isolation defend themselves by 
 dwelling on their social necessity. Either in- 
 tuitively or by a trade tradition, the prostitute 
 feels that "she remains, while creeds and eivi- 
 lizations rise and fall, blasted for the sins of 
 the people. " A beautiful young prostitute who 
 had been expelled from a high grade house 
 after the exposures of the Lexow Investiga- 
 tion, once said to the writer: "It would never 
 do for good women to know what beasts men 
 are. "We girls have got to pay. ' ' 
 
 The lady, dwelling on her pedestal of isola- 
 tion, from which she commands the veneration 
 of the chivalrous gentleman and the adoration 
 of the poet, is the product of a leisure assured 
 by property. At the . other end of the social 
 scale is the girl who wants to be a lady, who 
 doesn't want to work, and who, like the lady, 
 has nothing to sell but herself. The life of the 
 prostitute is the nearest approach for the poor 
 girl to the life of the lady with its leisure, its 
 fine clothes, and its excitement. Solongas we 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 227 
 
 have a sex ethics into which are incorporated 
 the taboo c<m(^ts,<thejady^annj^exist3dth- 
 out the prostitute. The restrictions which 
 surround the lady guard her from the passions 
 of men. The prostitute has been developed to 
 satisfy masculine needs which it is not permit- 
 ted the lady to know exist. 
 
 But in addition to the married woman who 
 has fulfilled the destiny for which she has been 
 prepared and the prostitute who is regarded as 
 a social leper, there is a large and increasing 
 number of unmarried women who fall into 
 neither of these classes. For a long time these 
 unfortunates were forced to take refuge in the 
 homes of their luckier sisters who had fulfilled 
 their mission in life by marrying, or to adopt 
 the life of the religieuse. Economic changes 
 have brought an alteration in their status, how- 
 ever, and the work of the unattached woman is 
 bringing her a respect in the modern industrial 
 world that the "old maid" of the past could 
 never hope to receive. 
 
 Although at first often looked upon askance, 
 the working woman by the sheer force of her 
 labors has finally won for herself a recognized 
 
228 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 place in society. This was the first influence 
 that worked against the old taboos, and made 
 possible the tentative gropings toward a new 
 standardization of women. The sheer weight 
 of the number of unattached women in present 
 day life has made such a move a necessity. In 
 England, at the outbreak of the war, there were 
 1,200,000 more women than men. It is esti- 
 mated that at the end of the war at least 25% 
 of English women are doomed to celibacy and 
 childlessness. In Germany, the industrial cen- 
 sus of 1907 showed that only 9y 2 millions of 
 women were married, or about one-half the 
 total number over eighteen years of age. In 
 the United States, married women constitute 
 less than 60% of the women fifteen years of 
 age and over. 
 
 The impossibility of a social system based 
 on the old sex taboos under the new conditions 
 is obvious. There must be a revaluation of 
 woman on the basis of her mental and eco- 
 nomic capacity instead of on the manner in 
 which she fits into a system of institutional 
 taboos. But the old concepts are still with us, 
 and have shaped the early lives of working 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 229 
 
 women as well as the lives of those who have 
 fitted into the old grooves. Tenacious sur- 
 vivals surround them both, and are responsible 
 for many of the difficulties of mental and moral 
 adjustment which make the woman question a 
 puzzle to both conservative and radical think- 
 ers on the subject. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER ID. 
 
 1. Davis, Michael M. Psychological Interpretations of So- 
 
 ciety. 260 pp. Columbia University. Longmans, 
 Green and Co. N. Y., 1909. 
 
 2. Webster, Hutton. Primitive Secret Societies. 227 pp. 
 
 Macmillan. N. Y., 1908. 
 
 3. Blanchard, Phyllis. The Adolescent Girl. 242 pp. 
 
 Moffat, Yard, & Co. N. Y., 1920. 
 
 Peters, Iva L. A Questionnaire Study of Some of 
 
 the Effects of Social Restrictions on the American 
 Girl. Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1916, Vol. 
 XXin, pp. 550-569. 
 
 4. Report of the U. S. Children's Bureau, 1917. 
 
 5. Fowler, W. Warde. The Religious Experience of the 
 
 Roman People. 504 pp. Macmillan. London, 1911. 
 
 Pustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. The Ancient City. 
 
 Trans, from the latest French edition by "Willard 
 Small. 10th ed. Lee and Shepard. Boston, 1901. 
 529 pp. 
 
 6. Gautier, Emile Theodore Leon. La Chevalerie. 850 pp. 
 
 C. Delagrave. Paris, 1890. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DYSGENIC INFLUENCES OF THE INSTITUTIONAL 
 TABOO 
 
 Taboo survivals act dysgenically within the family under 
 present conditions; Conventional education of girls a 
 dysgenie influence; Prostitution and the family; In- 
 fluence of ancient standards of "good" and "bad." 
 The illegitimate child; Effect of fear, anger, etc., 
 on posterity; The attitude of economically independent 
 women toward marriage. 
 
 It is evident that in the working of old taboos 
 as they have been preserved in our social insti- 
 tutions there are certain dysgenie influences 
 which may well be briefly enumerated. For 
 surely the test of the family institution is the 
 way in which it fosters the production and 
 development of the coming generation. The 
 studies made by the Galton Laboratory in Eng- 
 land and by the Children's Bureau in Washing- 
 ton combine with our modern knowledge of 
 heredity to show that it is possible to cut down 
 the potential heritage of children by bad matri- 
 
 230 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 231 
 
 monial choices. If we are to reach a solution 
 of these population problems, we must learn to 
 approach the problem of the sex relation with- 
 out that sense of uncleanness which has led so 
 many generations to regard marriage as giving 
 respectability to an otherwise wicked inclina- 
 tion.. The task of devising a sane approach is 
 only just begun. But the menace of prostitu- 
 tion and of the social diseases has become so 
 great that society is compelled from an instinct 
 of sheer self-preservation to drag into the open 
 some of the iniquities which have hitherto 
 existed under cover. 
 
 I In the first place, the education of girls, 
 which has been almost entirely determined by 
 the standardized concepts of the ideal woman, 
 has left them totally unprepared for wifehood 
 and motherhood, the very calling which those 
 ideals demand that they shall follow. The 
 whole education of the girl aims at the con- 
 cealment of the physiological nature of men 
 and women. She enters marriage unprepared 
 for the realities of conjugal life, and hence in- 
 capable of understanding either herself or her 
 husband. When pregnancy comes to such a 
 
232 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like 
 a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed 
 with embarrassment at a normal and natural 
 biological process which can hardly be classi- 
 fied as ' ' romantic. ' ' Such an attitude is neither 
 conducive" to the eugenic choice of a mate nor 
 to the proper care of the child either before or 
 after its birth. 
 
 A second dysgenic influence which results 
 from the taboo system of sexual ethics is the 
 institution of prostitution, the great agency for 
 the spread of venereal disease through the 
 homes of the community, and which takes' such 
 heavy toll from the next generation in lowered 
 vitality and defective organization. 
 
 The 1911 report of the Committee on the 
 Social Evil in Baltimore showed that at that 
 time there was in that city one prostitute to 
 every 500 inhabitants. As is the case every- 
 where, such statistics cover only prostitutes 
 who have been detected. Hospital and clinic 
 reports for Baltimore gave 9,450 acute cases 
 of venereal disease in 1906 as compared with 
 575 cases of measles, 1,172 cases of diphthe- 
 ria, 577 of scarlet fever, 175 of chickenpox, 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 233 
 
 58 of smallpox and 733 cases of tuberculosis. 
 Statistics on the health of young men as 
 shown by the physical examinations of the vari- 
 ous draft boards throughout the country give us 
 a more complete estimate of the prevalence of 
 venereal disease among the prospective fathers 
 of the next generation than any other figures 
 for the United States. In an article in the New 
 York Medical Journal for February 2, 1918, 
 Dr. Isaac W. Brewer of the Medical Eeserve 
 Corps presents tables showing the percentage 
 of rejections for various disabilities among the 
 applicants for enlistment in the regular army 
 from January 1, 1912, to December 31, 1915. 
 Among 153,705 white and 11,092 colored appli- 
 cants, the rejection rate per 1,000 for venereal 
 disease was 196.7 for whites and 279.9 for col- 
 ored as against 91.3 for whites and 75.0 for 
 colored for heart difficulties, next on the list. 
 In foreshadowing the results under the draft, 
 Dr. Brewer says: "Venereal disease is the 
 greatest cause for rejection, and reports from 
 the cantonments where the National Army has 
 assembled indicate that a large number of the 
 men had these diseases when they arrived at 
 
234 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the camp. It is probably true that venereal 
 diseases cause the greatest amount of sickness 
 in our country." 
 
 Statistics available for conditions among the 
 American Expeditionary Forces must be treated 
 with great caution. Detection of these diseases 
 at certain stages is extremely difficult. Because 
 of the courtesy extended to our men by our 
 allies, cases were treated in French and English 
 hospitals of which no record is available. But 
 it is fairly safe to say that there was no such 
 prevalence of disease as was shown by the 
 Exner Eeport to have existed on the Mexican 
 Border. It may even be predicted that the 
 education in hygienic measures which the men 
 received may in time affeqt favorably the health 
 of the male population and through them their 
 wives and children. But all who came in con- 
 tact with this problem in the army know that it 
 is a long way to the understanding of the diffi- 
 culties involved before we approach a solution. 
 We do know, on the basis of the work of Neis- 
 ser, Lesser, Forel, Flexner and others, that 
 regulation and supervision seem to increase the 
 incidence of disease. Among the reasons for 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 235 
 
 this are: (1) difficulties of diagnosis; (2) diffi- 
 culties attendant on the apprehension and ex- 
 amination of prostitutes ; (3) the infrequency of 
 examination as compared with the number of 
 clients of these women ; and perhaps as impor- 
 tant as any of these reasons is the false sense 
 of security involved. 
 
 The model woman of the past has known 
 very little of the prostitute and venereal dis- 
 ease. It is often stated that her moral safety 
 has been maintained at the expense of her fallen 
 and unclean sister. But such statements 
 are not limited as they should be by the quali- 
 fication that her moral safety obtained in such 
 a fashion is often at the expense of her physical 
 safety. If the assumption has a basis in fact 
 that there is a relation between prostitution 
 and monogamic marriage, the complexity of the 
 problem becomes evident. It is further com- 
 plicated by the postponement of marriage from 
 economic reasons, hesitation at the assumption 
 of family responsibilities at a time of life when 
 ambition as well as passion is strong, when the 
 physiological functions are stimulated by city 
 life and there is constant opportunity for relief 
 
236 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 of repression for a price. It is here that the 
 demarcation between the man's and the wom- 
 an's world shows most clearly. It may well be 
 that the only solution of this problem is through 
 the admission of a new factor — the "good" 
 woman whom taboo has kept in ignorance of a 
 problem that is her own. If it be true that the 
 only solution for the double standard whose 
 evils show. most plainly here is a new single 
 standard which has not yet been found, then it 
 is high time that we find what that standard 
 is to be, for the sake of the future. 
 
 The third dysgenic influence which works 
 under cover of the institutional taboo is akin 
 to the first in its ancient standards of "good" 
 and "bad." We are only recently getting any 
 standards for a good mother except a man's 
 choice and a wedding ring. Men's ideals of 
 attractiveness greatly complicate the eugenic 
 situation. A good matchmaker, with social 
 backing and money, can make a moron more 
 attractive than a pushing, energetic girl with 
 plenty of initiative, whose contribution to her 
 children would be equal or superior to that of 
 her mate. A timid, gentle, pretty moron, with 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 237 
 
 the attainment of a girl of twelve years, will 
 make an excellent match, and bring into the 
 world children who give us one of the reasons 
 why it is "three generations from shirt-sleeves 
 to shirt-sleeves." For such a girl, the slave to 
 convention, exactly fits the feminine ideal which 
 man-has built up for himself. And she will be 
 a good wife and mother in the conventional 
 sense all her life. This following of an ideal 
 feminine type conceived in irrational processes 
 in former days inclines men to marry women 
 with inferior genetic possibilities because they 
 meet the more insistent surface requirements. 
 The heritage of our children is thus cut down, 
 and many a potential mother of great men re- 
 mains unwed. 
 
 The same survival of ancient sex taboos is 
 seen in the attitude toward the illegitimate child. 
 The marriage ceremony is by its origin and by 
 the forms of its perpetuation the only sanction 
 for the breaking of the taboo on contact be- 
 tween men and women. The illegitimate child, 
 the visible symbol of the sin of its parents, 
 is the one on whom most heavily falls the bur- 
 den of the crime. Society has for the most part 
 
238 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 been utterly indifferent to the eugenic value of 
 the child and has concerned itself chiefly with 
 the manner of its birth. Only the situation 
 arising out of the war and the need of the 
 nations for men has been able to partially rem- 
 edy this situaion. 
 
 The taboos on illegitimacy in the United 
 States have been less affected by the practical 
 population problems growing out of war condi- 
 tions than those of other countries. As com- 
 pared with the advanced stand of the Scandi- 
 navian countries, the few laws of progressive 
 states look painfully inadequate. Miss Breck- 
 inridge writes (1) : 
 
 "The humiliating and despised position of the 
 illegitimate child need hardly be pointed out. He 
 was the son of nobody, filius nullius, without name or 
 kin so far as kinship meant rights of inheritance or 
 of succession. In reality this child of nobody did in a 
 way belong to his mother as the legitimate child 
 never did in common law, for, while the right of the 
 unmarried mother to the custody of the child of her 
 shame was not so noble and dignified a thing as the 
 right of the father to the legitimate child, she had 
 
TABOO AND J&ENETICS 239 
 
 in fact a claim; at least so long as the child was of 
 tender years, not so different from his and as wide 
 as the sky from the impotence of the married mother. 
 The contribution of the father has been secured un- 
 der conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in 
 amounts totally inadequate to her and the child's 
 support. In Illinois, $550 over 5 years; Tennessee, 
 $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. 
 (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegiti- 
 macy, September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situa- 
 tion was so desperate that physicians, social workers 
 and relatives have conspired to save the girl's re- 
 spectability at the risk of the child's life and at the 
 cost of all spiritual and educative value of the ex- 
 perience of motherhood. This has mleant a greatly 
 higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher 
 crime and a higher dependency rate." 
 
 The fifth of the dysgenio influences which 
 has been fostered by the institutional taboo is 
 uncovered by recent studies of the effect of 
 certain emotions on the human organism. The 
 life of woman has long been shadowed by the 
 fact that she has been the weaker sex; that 
 even when strong she has been weighted by her 
 
240 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 child; and that throughout the period of pri- 
 vate property she has been the poor sex, de- 
 pendent on some male for her support. In an 
 age of force, fear has been her strong emotion. 
 If she felt rage it must be suppressed. Disap- 
 pointment and discouragement had also to be 
 borne in silence and with patience. Of such 
 a situation Davies says: 
 
 "The power of the mind over the body is a sci- 
 entific fact, as is evidenced by hypnotic suggestion 
 and in the emotional control over the chemistry of 
 health through the agency of the internal secretions. 
 The reproductive processes are very susceptible to 
 chemic influences. Thus the influences of the en- 
 vironment may in some degree carry through to the 
 offspring." (2.) 
 
 The studies of Drs. Crile and Cannon show 
 that the effects of fear on the ganglionic cells 
 are tremendous. Some of the cells are exhaust- 
 ed and completely destroyed by intensity and 
 duration of emotion. Cannon's experiments on 
 animals during fear, rage, anger, and hunger, 
 show that the entire nervous system is in- 
 volved and that internal and external functions 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 241 
 
 change their normal nature and activity. The 
 thyroid and adrenal glands are deeply affected. 
 In times of intense emotion, the thyroid gland 
 throws into the system products which cause 
 a quickened pulse, rapid respiration, trembling, 
 arrest of digestion, etc. "When the subjects 
 of experiments in the effect of the emotions of 
 fear, rage, etc., are examined, it is found that 
 the physical development, especially the sexual 
 development, is retarded. Heredity, age, sex, 
 the nervous system of the subject, and the 
 intensity and duration of the shock must all 
 have consideration. Griesinger, Amard and 
 Daguin emphasize especially the results of 
 pain, anxiety and shock, claiming that they are 
 difficult or impossible to treat. 
 
 To the bride brought up under the old taboos, 
 the sex experiences of early married life are 
 apt to come as a shock, particularly when the 
 previous sex experiences of her mate have been 
 gained with women of another class. Indeed, 
 so deeply has the sense of shame concerning 
 the sexual functions been impressed upon the 
 feminine mind that many wives never cease 
 to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance 
 
242 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 throughout the marital relationship. Especially 
 would this be intensified in the case of sexual 
 intercourse during the periods of gestation and 
 lactation, when the girl who had been taught 
 that the sexual functions existed only in the 
 service of reproduction would see her most 
 cherished illusions rudely dispelled. The ef- 
 fect of this long continued emotional state with 
 its feeling of injury upon the metabolism of 
 the female organism would be apt to have a 
 detrimental effect upon the embryo through 
 the blood supply, or upon the nursing infant 
 through the mother's milk. There can be no 
 doubt that anxiety, terror, etc., affect the milk 
 supply, and therefore the life of the child. 
 
 The sixth dysgenic effect of the control by 
 taboos is the rebellion of economically inde- 
 pendent women who refuse motherhood under 
 the only conditions society leaves open to them. 
 The statistics in existence, though open to 
 criticism, indicate that the most highly trained 
 women in America are not perpetijating them- 
 selves. (3.) Of the situation in England, Ber- 
 trand Russell said in 1917: "If an average 
 sample were taken out of the population of 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 243 
 
 England, and their parents were examined, it 
 would be found that prudence, energy, intellect 
 and enlightenment were less common among 
 the parents than in the population in general ; 
 while shiftlessness, feeble-mindedness, stupid- 
 ity and superstition were more common than 
 in the population in general. . . . Mutual lib- 
 erty is making the old form of marriage impos- 
 sible, while a new form is not yet developed." 
 (4.) 
 
 It must be admitted that today marriage and 
 motherhood are subject to economic penalties. 
 Perhaps one of the best explanations of the 
 strength of the present struggle for economic 
 independence among women is the fact that a 
 commercial world interested in exchange values 
 had refused to properly evaluate their social 
 contribution. A new industrial system had 
 taken away one by one their "natural" occupa- 
 tions. In the modern man's absorption in the 
 life of a great industrial expansion, home life 
 has been less insistent in its claims. His slack- 
 ening of interest and attention, together with 
 the discovery of her usefulness in industry, may 
 have given the woman of initiative her oppor- 
 
244 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tunity to slip away from her ancient sphere 
 into a world where her usefulness in other fields 
 than that of sex has made her a different crea- 
 ture from the model woman of yesterday. 
 These trained and educated women have hesi- 
 tated to face the renunciations involved in a 
 return to the home. The result has been one 
 more factor in the lessening of eugenic mother- 
 hood, since it is necessarily the less strong who 
 lose their footing and fall back on marriage 
 for support. These women wage-earners who 
 live away from the traditions of what a woman 
 ought to be will have a great deal of influence 
 in the changed relations of the sexes. The 
 answer to the question of their relation to the 
 family and to a saner parenthood is of vital 
 importance to society. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER IV 
 
 1. Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. Social Control of Child 
 
 Welfare. Publications of the American Sociological 
 Society. Vol. XII, p. 23f. 
 
 2. Davies, G. R. Social Environment. 149 pp. A. C. 
 
 McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1917. 
 
 3. Popenoe, Paul. Eugenics and College Education. 
 
 School and Society, pp. 438^441. Vol. VI, No. 146. 
 
 4. Russell, Bertrand. "Why Men Fight 272 pp. The 
 
 Century Co., N. Y., 1917. 
 
PART III 
 
 THE SEX PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OP 
 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, Ph.D. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 SEX IN TEBMS OP MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Bearing of modern psychology on the sex problem; Con- 
 ditioning of the sexual impulse; Vicarious expression 
 of the sexual impulse; Unconscious factors of the sex 
 life; Taboo control has conditioned the natural bio- 
 logical tendencies of individuals to conform to arbi- 
 trary standards of masculinity and femininity; Con- 
 flict between individual desires and social standards. 
 
 An adequate treatment of th&.sex problem in 
 society must necessarily involve a considera- 
 tion of the sexual impulse in the individual 
 members of that society. Eecent psychological 
 research, with its laboratory experiments and 
 studies of pathology has added a great deal 
 of information at this point. The lately ac- 
 quired knowledge of the warping effect of the 
 environment upon the native biological endow- 
 ment of the individual by means of the estab- 
 lishment of conditioned reflexes, the discovery 
 that any emotion which is denied its natural 
 motor outlet tends to seek expression through 
 
 247 
 
248 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 some vicarious activity, and the realization of 
 the fundamental importance of the unconscious 
 factors in shaping emotional reactions, — such 
 formulations of behavioristic and analytic psy- 
 chology have thrown a great deal of light upon 
 the nature of the individual sex life. 
 
 There are certain modifications of the erotic 
 life which are explicable only when we recollect 
 that under environmental influences situations 
 which originally did not call up an emotional 
 response come later to do so. This fact, which 
 was first noted by Setchenov, was experimen- 
 tally demonstrated by Pavlov and his students. 
 (7.) They found that when some irrelevant 
 stimulus, such as a musical tone or a piece of 
 colored paper, was presented to a dog simul- 
 taneously with its food for a sufficiently long 
 period, the presentation of the tone or paper 
 alone finally caused the same flow of saliva that 
 the food had originally evoked. The irrelevant 
 stimulus was named a food sign, and the in- 
 voluntary motor response of salivary secretion 
 was called a conditioned reflex to differentiate 
 it from the similar response to the biologically 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 249 
 
 adequate stimulus of food, which, was termed 
 an ttnconditioned reflex. 
 
 "The significance of the conditioned reflex 
 is simply this, that an associated stimulus 
 brings about a reaction; and this associated 
 stimulus may be from any receptor organ of the 
 body; and it may be formed of course not 
 merely in the laboratory by specially devised 
 experiments, but by association in the ordinary 
 environment. " ( 1.) Thus it is evident that the 
 formation of conditioned reflexes takes place in 
 all fields of animal and human activity. 
 
 Watson has recently stated that a similar sub- 
 stitution of one stimulus for another occurs in 
 the case of an emotional reaction as well as at 
 the level of the simple physiological reflex re- 
 sponse. (8.) This means that when an emo- 
 tionally exciting object stimulates the subject 
 simultaneously with one not emotionally excit- 
 ing, the latter may in time (or even after one 
 joint stimulation) arouse the same emotional 
 response as the former. Kempf considers this 
 capacity of the emotion to become thus condi- 
 tioned to other than the original stimuli "of 
 the utmost importance in determining the se- 
 
250 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 lections and aversions throughout life, such as 
 mating, habitat, friends, enemies, vocations, 
 professions, religious and political prefer- 
 ences, etc." (5.) 
 
 Just as Pavlov and his followers found that 
 almost anything could become a food sign, so 
 the study of neurotics has shown that the sex- 
 ual emotion can be fixed upon almost any love 
 object. For example, a single characteristic of 
 a beloved person (e.g., — eye color, smile, pos- 
 ture, gestures) can become itself a stimulus to 
 evoke the emotional response originally associ- 
 ated b'nly with that person. Then it happens 
 that the affection may center upon anyone pos- 
 sessing similar traits. In most psychological 
 literature, this focussing of the emotion upon 
 some particular characteristic is termed fetish- 
 ism, and the stimulus which becomes capable of 
 arousing the conditioned emotional response is 
 called an erotic fetish. In extreme cases of fet- 
 ishism, the sexual emotions can only be aroused 
 in the presence of the particular fetish involved. 
 Krafft-Ebing (6) and other psychopathologists 
 describe very abnormal cases of erotic fetish- 
 ism in which some inanimate object becomes en- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 251 
 
 tirely dissociated from the person with whom 
 it was originally connected, so that it serves 
 exclusively as a love object in itself, and pre- 
 vents a normal emotional reaction to members 
 of the opposite sex. 
 
 The development of romantic love has de- 
 pended to a great extent upon the establish- 
 ment of a wide range of stimuli capable of 
 arousing the erotic impulses. As Finck has 
 pointed out, this romantic sentiment is insep- 
 arable from the ideals of personal beauty. (5.) 
 As criteria of beauty he lists such characteris- 
 tics as well-shaped waist, rounded bosom, full 
 and red underlip, small feet, etc., all of which 
 have come to be considered standards of love- 
 liness because the erotic emotion has been con- 
 ditioned to respond to their stimulation. Lit- 
 erature is full of references to such marks* of 
 beauty in its characters ( Jane Eyre is almost 
 the only well-known book with a plain heroine), 
 and is therefore one of the potent factors in 
 establishing a conditioned emotional reaction 
 to these stimuli. 
 
 The erotic impulse may have its responses 
 conditioned in many other ways than the build- 
 
252 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ing up of erotic fetishes. Kempf lias observed 
 that the affective reactions of the individual 
 are largely conditioned by the unconscious at- 
 titudes of parents, friends, enemies and teach- 
 ers. For instance, one boy is conditioned to 
 distrust his ability and another to have confi- 
 dence in his powers by the attitude of the par- 
 ents. Similarly, the daughter whose mother is 
 abnormally prudish about sexual functions will 
 surely be conditioned to react in the same man- 
 ner toward her own sexual functions, unless 
 conditioned to react differently by the influ- 
 ence of another person. (5.) Through the 
 everyday associations in the social milieu, 
 therefore, the erotic impulse of an individual 
 may become modified in almost any manner. 
 
 Just as an emotional reaction may become 
 conditioned to almost any other stimulus than 
 the one which originally called it forth, so there 
 is a tendency for any emotion to seek a vicari- 
 ous outlet whenever its natural expression is 
 inhibited. Were any member of the group to 
 give free play to his affective life he would in- 
 evitably interfere seriously with the freedom 
 of the other members. But the fear of arous- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 253 
 
 ing the disapproval of his fellows, which is 
 rooted in man's gregarious nature, inhibits the 
 tendency to self-indulgence. "A most impor- 
 tant factor begins to exert pressure upon the 
 infant at birth and continues throughout its 
 life," says Kempf. "It is the incessant, con- 
 tinuous pressure of the herd ... to conven- 
 tionalize its methods of acquiring the gratifica- 
 tion of its needs." (5.) The emotions thus de- 
 nied a natural outlet seek other channels of ac- 
 tivity which have received the sanction of social 
 approval. 
 
 It is obvious that the rigid social regulations 
 concerning sexual activities must enforce re- 
 pression of the erotic impulses more frequently 
 than any others. The love which is thus de- 
 nied its biological expression transmutes itself 
 into many forms. It may reach out to envelop 
 all humanity, and find a suitable activity in 
 social service. It may be transformed into the 
 love of God, and find an outlet in the religious 
 life of the individual. Or it may be expressed 
 only in language, in which case it may stop at 
 the stage of erotic fantasy and day-dream, or 
 may result in some really great piece of poetry 
 
254 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 or prose. This last outlet is so common that 
 our language is full of symbolic words and 
 phrases which have a hidden erotic meaning 
 attached to them. 
 
 According to Watson, the phenomena seen 
 in this tendency of emotions inhibited at one 
 point to seek other outlets are too complex to 
 be explained on the basis of conditioned reflex 
 responses. All that we can say at present is 
 that too great emotional pressure is drained 
 off through whatever channel environmental 
 and hereditary factors make possible. (S.) 
 This vicarious mode of expression may become 
 habitual, however, and interfere with a return 
 to natural activities in a manner analogous to 
 that in which the development of the erotic 
 fetish often prevents the normal reaction to the 
 original stimulus. 
 
 Because the conditioned emotional reactions 
 and substitutions of vicarious motor outlets 
 take place at neurological and physiological lev- 
 els outside the realm of consciousness, they are 
 called unconscious activities of the organism. 
 There are many other unconscious factors 
 which also modify the sex life of the human in- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 255 
 
 dividual. The most fundamental of these are 
 the impressions and associations of the in- 
 fancy period, which may well be classed as con- 
 ditioned reflex mechanisms, but are sufficiently 
 important to receive separate consideration. 
 
 It is generally conceded by students of child 
 psychology that the social reactions of the child 
 are conditioned by the home environment in 
 which the earliest and most formative years of 
 its life are passed. It is not surprising, there- 
 fore, that the ideal of the opposite sex which 
 the boy or girl forms at this time should ap- 
 proximate the mother or father, since they are 
 the persons best loved and most frequently 
 seen. The ideals thus established in early 
 childhood are very often the unconscious influ- 
 ences which determine the choice of a mate in 
 adult life. Or the devotion to the parent may 
 be so intense as to prevent the transference of 
 the love-life to another person and thus en- 
 tirely prohibit the entrance upon the marital 
 relation. Elida Evans has given some very 
 convincing cases in illustration of these points 
 in her recent book, "The Problem of the Ner- 
 vous Child." (2.) 
 
256 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 On the other hand, in those unfortunate cases 
 where the father or mother is the object of dis- 
 like, associations may be formed which will be 
 so persistent as to prevent the normal emo- 
 tional reaction to the opposite sex in latei 
 years. This, too, results in the avoidance of 
 marriage and the establishment of vicarious 
 outlets for the sexual emotions, or less often in 
 homosexual attachments or perversions of the 
 sex life. Conditioned emotional reactions sucl 
 as these play a dominant role in the social prob- 
 lem of sex, as will become apparent in succeed- 
 ing chapters. 
 
 In addition to the influences which naturally 
 act to condition the original sexual endowment 
 of the individual, there are artificial forces 
 which still further qualify it. The system of 
 taboo control which society has always utilized 
 in one form or another as a means of regulat- 
 ing the reproductive activities of its members, 
 has set up arbitrary ideals of masculinity and 
 femininity to which each man and woman must 
 conform or else forfeit social esteem. The 
 feminine standard thus enforced has been ade- 
 quately described in Part II of this study. Dr. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 257 
 
 Hinkle has also described this approved femi- 
 nine type, as well as the contrasting masculine 
 ideal which embodies the qualities of courage, 
 aggressiveness, and other traditional male 
 characteristics. From her psychoanalytic prac- 
 tice, Dr. Hinkle concludes that men and women 
 do not in reality conform to these arbitrarily 
 fixed types by native biological endowment, but 
 that they try to shape their reactions in har- 
 mony with these socially approved standards in 
 spite of of their innate tendencies to variation. 
 (4.) 
 
 The same conclusion might be arrived at the- 
 oretically on the grounds of the recent biolog- 
 ical evidence of intersexuality discussed in 
 Part I, which implies that there are no abso- 
 lute degrees of maleness and femaleness. If 
 there are no 100% males and females, it is ob- 
 vious that no men and women will entirely con- 
 form to ideals of masculine and feminine per- 
 fection. 
 
 In addition to the imposition of these arbi- 
 trary standards of masculinity and femininity, 
 society has forced upon its members conform- 
 ity to a uniform and institutionalized type of 
 
258 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 sexual relationship. This institutionalized and 
 inflexible type of sexual activity, which is the 
 only expression of the sexual emotion meeting 
 with social approval, not only makes no allow- 
 ance for biological variations, but takes even 
 less into account the vastly complex and exceed- 
 ingly different conditionings of the emotional 
 reactions of the individual sex life. The result- 
 ing conflict between the individual desires and 
 the standards imposed by society has caused a 
 great deal of disharmony in the psychic life of 
 its members. The increasing number of di- 
 vorces and the modern tendency to celibacy are 
 symptomatic of the cumulative effect of this 
 fundamental psychic conflict. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER I 
 
 1. Burnham, W. H. Mental Hygiene and the Conditioned 
 
 Reflex. Ped. Sem. Vol. XXIV, Dec., 1917, pp. 449- 
 488. 
 
 2. Evans, Elida. The Problem of the Nervous Child. 
 
 Dodd, Mead, N. Y., 1920. 
 
 3. Finck, H. T. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. 
 
 Macmillan, N. Y., 1891. 
 
 4. Hinkle, Beatrice M. On the Arbitrary Use of the Terms 
 
 "Masculine" and "Feminine." Psychoanalyt. Rev. Vol. 
 VII, No. 1, Jan., 1920, pp. 15-30. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 259 
 
 5. Kempf, E. J. The Tonus of the Autonomic Segments 
 
 as Causes of Abnormal Behavior. Jour. Nerv. & 
 Ment. Disease, Jan., 1920, pp. 1-34. 
 
 6. Krafft-Ebing, E. Psychopathia Sexualis. Fuchs, Stutt- 
 
 gart, 1907. 
 
 7. Pavlov, J. P. L'exeitation Psyehique des Glandes Sali- 
 
 vaires. Jour, de Psychologie, 1910, No. 2, pp. 97-114. 
 
 8. Watson, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a 
 
 Behaviorist. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1919. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW OUR INSTITUTIONS FIT INDIVIDUAL SEX PSY- 
 CHOLOGY 
 
 Social institutions controlling sex activities based on the 
 assumption that all women are adapted to as well as 
 specialized for reproduction; Neurotic tendencies 
 which unfit women for marriage — the desire for domi- 
 nation; Sexual anaesthesia another neurotic trait which 
 interferes with marital harmony; The conditioning of 
 the sexual impulse to the parent ideal and the erotic 
 fetish as factors which determine mating; Homosex- 
 ual tendencies and their part in the sex problem; The 
 conflict between the desire for marriage and egoistic 
 ambitions; The social regulations from the viewpoint 
 of individual psychology. 
 
 The institutionalized forms of social control 
 into which the old sex taboos have developed 
 impose upon all members of the group a uni- 
 form type of sexual relationship. These so- 
 cially enforced standards which govern the 
 sex life are based upon the assumption that 
 men and women conform closely to the mascu- 
 line and feminine ideals of tradition. The em- 
 
 260 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 261 
 
 phasis is much more strongly placed on femi- 
 nine conformity, however; a great many sexual 
 activities are tolerated in the male that would 
 be unsparingly condemned in the female. Thus 
 the sex problem becomes in large measure a 
 woman's problem, not only because of her pe- 
 culiar biological specialization for reproduc- 
 tion, which involves an enormous responsibil- 
 ity, but also because her life has for so many 
 generations been hedged in by rigid institu- 
 tionalized taboos and prohibitions. 
 
 The traditional conception of marriage and 
 the family relation implies that all women are 
 adapted to as well as specialized for mother- 
 hood. In reality, if the biological evidence of 
 intersexuality be as conclusive as now appears, 
 there are many women who by their very na- 
 ture are much better adapted to the activities 
 customarily considered as preeminently mascu- 
 line, although they are still specialized for 
 childbearing. There is no statistical evidence 
 of any high correlation between the sexual and 
 maternal impulses. Indeed, a great many 
 traits of human behavior seem to justify the 
 inference that these two tendencies may often 
 
262 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 be entirely dissociated in the individual life. 
 Dr. Blair Bell (as noted in Part I, Chapter III) 
 believes that it is possible to differentiate 
 women possessing a maternal impulse from 
 those lacking such tendencies by the very ana- 
 tomical structure. It is obvious that a woman 
 endowed with a strong erotic nature requires a 
 kind of sexual relationship different from one 
 whose interests are predominantly in her chil- 
 dren. And both the sexual and maternal types 
 require different situations than the woman 
 who combines the two instincts in her own per- 
 sonality for a normal expression of their emo- 
 tional life. 
 
 According to social tradition, sexual activity 
 (at least in the case of women) is to be exer- 
 cised primarily for the reproduction of the 
 group. Thus the institutions of marriage and 
 the family in their present form provide only 
 for the woman who possesses both the sexual 
 and maternal cravings. Contraceptive knowl- 
 edge has enabled a small number of women 
 (which is rapidly growing larger) to fit into 
 these institutions in spite of their lack of a de- 
 sire for motherhood. There have been a few 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 263 
 
 hardy theorists who have braved convention to 
 the extent of suggesting the deliberate adop- 
 tion of unmarried motherhood by women who 
 are consumed by the maternal jpassion but have 
 no strongly erotic nature. "Whether their prob- 
 lem will be solved in this manner, only the 
 course of social evolution in the future can 
 show. 
 
 Besides the differences in natural instinctive 
 tendencies which make it difficult for many 
 women to fit into a uniform type of sexual re- 
 lationship, modern society, with its less rigid 
 natural selection, has permitted the survival 
 of many neurotic temperaments which find mar- 
 riage a precarious venture. The neurotic con- 
 stitution, as Adler (1, 2) has pointed out, is an 
 expression of underlying structural or func- 
 tional organic deficiency. It is a physiolog- 
 ical axiom that whenever one organ of the body 
 because of injury, disease, etc., becomes inca- 
 pable of properly discharging its functions, its 
 duties are taken over by some other organ or 
 group of organs. This process of organic com- 
 pensation, whereby deficiency in one part of the 
 body is atoned for by additional labors of other 
 
264 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 parts, necessarily involves the nervous mechan- 
 ism in ways which need not be discussed in de- 
 tail here. 
 
 In children the process of compensation, with 
 its formation of new nervous coordinations, is 
 manifest in the inability to cope with their com- 
 panions who have a better biological endow- 
 ment. This gives rise to a feeling of inferi- 
 ority from which the child tries to free itself 
 by every possible means, ordinarily by surpass- 
 ing in the classroom the playmates whom it 
 cannot defeat on the playground. The feeling 
 of inferiority continues throughout life, how- 
 ever, although the mechanism of physiological 
 compensation may have become so perfected 
 that the functioning of the organism is quite 
 adequate to the needs of the environment. As 
 a result, the ruling motive of the conduct be- 
 comes the desire to release the personality from 
 this torturing sense of inability by a constant 
 demonstration of the power to control circum- 
 stances or to dominate associates. 
 
 This abnormal will to power finds expression 
 in the marital relationship in the desire for su- 
 premacy over the mate. The domineering hus- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 265 
 
 band is a familiar figure in daily life. The wife 
 who finds it more difficult to rule her husband 
 by sheer mastery achieves the same ends by 
 developing a fit of hysterical weeping or having 
 a nervous headache when denied her own way 
 in family affairs. 
 
 By far the easiest way for the woman to sat- 
 isfy her craving for power is the development 
 of an interesting illness which makes her the 
 center of attention. The history of nervous 
 disease furnishes many cases of neurosis where 
 this uncontrollable longing for domination is 
 the chief factor in the etiology of the illness. 
 It is not at all unusual to meet wives who hold 
 their husbands subservient to every whim be- 
 cause of "delicate nervous organizations" 
 which are upset at the slightest thwarting of 
 their wishes so that they develop nervous head- 
 aches, nervous indigestion, and many other 
 kinds of sickness unless their preferences meet 
 with the utmost consideration. This tendency 
 often becomes a chronic invalidism, which, at 
 the same time that it brings the longed- 
 for attention, incapacitates the individual 
 for sexual and maternal activities and makes 
 
266 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the married life an abnormal and unhappy on©. 
 
 Another more or less neurotic trait which 
 acts as a cause of disharmony in the marital 
 relationship is the sexual anaesthesia which is 
 not at all uncommon in modern women. The 
 absence of any erotic passion is held to be a 
 matter of physiological makeup by many au- 
 thorities, but it is probably more often due to 
 the inhibition of natural tendencies in accord- 
 ance with concepts built up by social tradition. 
 In order to understand how social suggestion 
 can have so powerful an effect upon the reac- 
 tions of the individual, we must revert once 
 more to the principles of behavioristic psychol- 
 ogy. 
 
 According to "Watson (4), whenever the en- 
 vironmental factors are such that a direct ex- 
 pression of an emotion cannot occur, the indi- 
 vidual has to have recourse to implicit motor 
 attitudes. The best example in everyday life 
 is probably seen in the case of anger, which can 
 seldom be permitted to find an outlet in the nat- 
 ural act of striking, etc. It is apparent, how- 
 ever, in the facial expression and in a certain 
 muscular posture which can best be described 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 267 
 
 as a "defiant" attitude. Another good exam- 
 ple is the submissive attitude which often ac- 
 companies the emotion of fear. It is manifest 
 in shrinking, avoiding movements, sometimes 
 of the whole body, but more often of the eyes 
 or some other special organ. 
 
 "In the sphere of love," Watson remarks, 
 "there are numerous attitudes as shown by the 
 popular expressions lovelorn, lovesick, tender- 
 ness, sympathy. More fundamental and promi- 
 nent attitudes are those of shyness, shame, em- 
 barrassment, jealousy, envy, hate, pride, sus- 
 picion, resentment, anguish, and anxiety." (4.) 
 
 The significant fact is that these attitudes 
 function by limiting the range of stimuli to 
 which the person is sensitive. The attitude of 
 shame concerning their sexual functions, which 
 has been impressed upon women as a result of 
 ages of thinking in harmony with taboo stand- 
 ards, thus is able to prevent the normal biolog- 
 ical response to a situation which should call 
 out the emotion of love. In women who have 
 an unstable nervous system this shameful feel- 
 ing often results in a definite physiological 
 shrinking from the physical manifestations of 
 
268 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 sexuality and renders the individual insensi- 
 tive to all erotic stimulation. 
 
 This attitude of shame in connection with the 
 love life came into existence as a socially con- 
 ditioned emotional reaction set up under the 
 influence of the traditional ideal of the "model 
 woman" who was pictured as a being of un- 
 earthly purity and immaculacy. It has been 
 passed on from generation to generation 
 through an unconscious conditioning of the 
 daughter's attitude by suggestion and imitation 
 to resemble that of the mother. Thus it hap- 
 pens that although an increasing amount of 
 liberty, both social and economic, and a more 
 rational and scientific understanding of the 
 womanly nature, have quite revoked this ideal 
 in theory, in actual practice it still continues to 
 exert its inhibitory and restrictive influence. 
 
 Because the standardized family relationship 
 involves so much more radical a readjustment 
 in the life of woman than of man, it has almost 
 always been the feminine partner who has taken 
 refuge in neurotic symptoms in order to escape 
 the difficulties of the situation. After the mar- 
 riage ceremony, the man's life goes on much as 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 269 
 
 before, so far as his social activities are con- 
 cerned, but woman takes up the new duties con- 
 nected with the care of the home and her child- 
 bearing functions. Moreover, the sexual life of 
 woman is in many ways more complex than that 
 of man. She has been subjected to more re- 
 pressions and inhibitions, and as a result there 
 has been more modification of her emotional 
 reactions in the field of love. This greater com- 
 plexity of her love life makes adaptation to 
 marriage more problematical in the case of 
 woman. 
 
 Although the neurotic tendencies of modern 
 women have been an important factor for the 
 production of disharmony in the family life, 
 there are certain variations of the individual 
 sex life which are more universally significant. 
 The conditioned emotional reactions which en- 
 vironmental influences have built up around the 
 sexual impulse of each member of society in- 
 variably determine the choice of the mate and 
 give rise to extremely complicated problems by 
 the very nature of the selective process. It is 
 largely a matter of chance whether the mate 
 chosen in accordance with the ideals of roman- 
 
270 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tic love and because of some fascinating trait 
 which acts as an erotic fetish or in conformity 
 with a parental fixation will prove a congenial 
 companion through life. 
 
 But the complexity of the situation lies in the 
 fact that the erotic impulses may become con- 
 ditioned to respond to an indefinite number of 
 substituted stimuli. For example, the parental 
 fixation may become reconditioned by focus- 
 sing upon some special characteristic of the 
 father or mother, which becomes an erotic fet- 
 ish. If the mate is selected on the basis of this 
 fetishistic attraction, he (or she) may prove to 
 be so unlike the parent in other respects as to 
 lose all the affection which was originally in- 
 spired. A concrete illustration of these con- 
 flicting emotional reactions is the case of the 
 girl who declared that she feared her fiance as 
 much as she loved him, but felt that she must 
 marry him nevertheless. An investigation 
 showed that her almost compulsive feeling 
 about her lover was due to the fact that his ges- 
 tures and manner of regarding her, in fact his 
 whole bearing, reminded her of her dead father, 
 while in other respects he was totally repug- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 271 
 
 nant to her because Ms character traits were 
 so far removed from those of her father ideal. 
 The conflict between the parental ideal and 
 other phases of the sexual impulse is even more 
 pronounced in men than in women, for two rea- 
 sons. In the first place, the mother plays by 
 far the largest part in the life of her children, 
 so that the son's fixation upon her is necessa- 
 rily more intense than the daughter's affection 
 for the father. Yet on the other hand, the sex- 
 ual desire of the male is more easily aroused 
 than that of the female, and is more apt to cen- 
 ter upon some member of the opposite sex who 
 possesses certain physical attractiveness but is 
 not at all like the mother ideal. Thus it hap- 
 pens that men often enshrine on their hearth- 
 stone the woman who approximates the wor- 
 shipped mother, while they seek satisfaction for 
 their erotic needs outside the home. In other 
 words, in the masculine psyche there is often 
 a dissociation of the sexual impulse in its di- 
 rect manifestations and the sentiment of love 
 in its more idealistic aspects. This partially 
 explains the fact that it is possible for a man 
 
272 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 to be "unfaithful" to his wife while actually 
 loving her devotedly all the time. 
 
 A different solution of the unconscious con- 
 flict between the mother fixation and the sex- 
 ual desires at lower levels is seen in those cases 
 in which the man impulsively marries the 
 woman who has this transient attraction for 
 him. When the first passion of such an al- 
 liance has worn away, there is no lasting bond 
 to take its place, and the man must find solace 
 in some such way as an intimate friendship 
 with a woman who recalls the maternal impres- 
 sions of his childhood. A famous example of 
 this is found in the beautiful affection of Au- 
 guste Comte for his idolized Clotilde de Vaux. 
 Although Comte was bound to a woman whom 
 he had married in the flush of erotic desire and 
 whom he found entirely uncongenial, Clotilde 
 became the inspiration of his later life, and 
 held his affection without the aid of any ma- 
 terial bond because she so closely resembled 
 the dead mother whom he adored. (5.) 
 
 It is evident that the selection of a mate who 
 is erotically attractive, but proves to be very 
 similar to a parent who was disliked instead of 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 273 
 
 loved, is as unfortunate as the choice of a part- 
 ner who is utterly unlike a beloved father or 
 mother. Indeed, when all the possible compli- 
 cations are clearly visualized, taking into ac- 
 count the numerous ways in which the sexual 
 emotions can be modified, it is plain that these 
 unconscious factors which determine the choice 
 of a mate are not always conducive to a happy 
 married life. 
 
 Quite recently the tendency to homosexuality 
 has been emphasized as an important factor in 
 the psychological problem of sex. At the In- 
 ternational Conference of Medical Women 
 (New York, 1919) it was stated that homosex- 
 ual fixations among women are a frequent cause 
 of female celibacy and divorce. This view was 
 upheld by such authorities as Dr. Constance 
 Long of England, and other prominent women 
 physicians. Although a certain percentage of 
 female homosexuality is congenital, it is prob- 
 able that by far the largest part is due to a con- 
 ditioning of the sexual impulse by the substi- 
 tution of members of the same sex as the erotic 
 stimulus in place of the normal response to the 
 opposite sex. 
 
274 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 This substitution is facilitated by certain 
 facts in the social life of women. The frequent 
 lack of opportunity to be with men during 
 adolescent school days, and a certain amount of 
 taboo on male society for the unmarried 
 woman, are in direct favor of the establishment 
 of homosexual reactions. There is also an in- 
 creasing sex antagonism, growing out of 
 woman's long struggle for the privilege of par- 
 ticipating in activities and sharing preroga- 
 tives formerly limited to men, which acts as an 
 inhibitory force to prevent the transference of 
 the sexual emotion to its normal object in the 
 opposite sex. Moreover, the entrance of 
 woman into a manner of living and lines of ac- 
 tivity which have heretofore been exclusively 
 masculine, has brought out certain character 
 traits which in other times would have been re- 
 pressed as incompatible with the social stand- 
 ards of feminine conduct, but which are con- 
 ducive to the formation of homosexual attach- 
 ments, since the qualities admired in men can 
 now be found also in women. 
 
 In this connection the term homosexuality is 
 used very loosely to denote any type of emo- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 275 
 
 tional fixation upon members of the same sex 
 which is strong enough to prevent a normal love 
 life with some individual of the opposite sex. 
 Among American women, at least, this tendency 
 is seldom expressed by any gross physical 
 manifestations, but often becomes an idealized 
 and lofty sentiment of friendship. It is ab- 
 normal, however, when it becomes so strong as 
 to prevent a happy married life. 
 
 The tendency of emotions to seek a vicari- 
 ous outlet must also be considered in any in- 
 clusive attempt to explain the homosexual at- 
 tachment of women. The woman who, on ac- 
 count of lack of attraction for men or for any 
 other reason, is denied the normal functioning 
 of the love life in marriage, is forced to find 
 some other expression for her erotic emotions, 
 and it is only natural that she should find it 
 in an affection for other women. Again, the 
 voluntary celibacy of a large class of modern 
 women, who prefer to retain their economic in- 
 dependence rather than to enter into family 
 life, also necessitates finding vicarious emo- 
 tional activities. Whenever their work throws 
 a number of these women into constant associ- 
 
276 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 ation, it is almost inevitable that homosexual 
 attachments will spring up. 
 
 We meet all these types of homosexual fixa- 
 tions in daily life. The college girl who is iso- 
 lated from men for four years has her sworn 
 comrade among the girls, and is sure that she 
 will never marry but will love her chum al- 
 ways. Very often it is some time after she 
 leaves college before she begins to take an in- 
 terest in male companionship. The young pro- 
 fessional woman looks up to the older woman 
 in her line of work with the same admiration 
 for her courage and brilliancy that used to be 
 reserved for the husband alone in the days when 
 women were permitted only a strictly femi- 
 nine education and occupation. The business 
 woman refuses to give up her high salaried po- 
 sition for marriage, and consoles herself with 
 her feminine friends. These are the common 
 manifestations characteristic of female homo- 
 sexuality. As has been suggested, the term is 
 loosely applied to such cases as these, but the 
 tendency of recent psychological literature is 
 to consider them as highly sublimated expres- 
 sions of this tendency. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 277 
 
 As lias been intimated, the modern woman 
 who has entered into the economic competition 
 is often reluctant to abandon this activity for 
 the responsibilities of wifehood and mother- 
 hood, which involve a withdrawal from the busi- 
 ness world. Just as the materialistic rewards 
 of economic activities often prove more attrac- 
 tive than the emotional satisfactions of family 
 life, so, too, the intellectual ambitions of the 
 professional woman may deter her from the ex- 
 ercise of her reproductive functions. Thus the 
 egoistic and individualistic tendencies which 
 modern social organization fosters in the per- 
 sonality of its feminine members makes them 
 unwilling to sacrifice their ambitious plans in 
 the performance of their natural biological 
 functions. 
 
 In the present speeding up of competition, 
 the entrance upon family life becomes almost 
 as burdensome to man as to woman, although 
 in a different manner. Free as he is from the 
 biological responsibilities connected with child- 
 bearing which fall to a woman's lot, he finds 
 the economic responsibilities which the care of 
 children entails equally grilling. His choice of 
 
278 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 a profession can no longer be decided by his 
 own preferences, but must be determined by 
 the economic returns. He can never afford to 
 sacrifice financial gain for personal recognition, 
 because of his obligation to provide for his fam- 
 ily. Thus it happens that marriage often pre- 
 sents a situation in which no outlet for per- 
 sonal ambitions is possible and the egoistic de- 
 sires and emotions must be sternly repressed. 
 There is therefore an increasing hesitancy on 
 the part of the men of today to assume respon- 
 sibilities so grave and involving so much per- 
 sonal sacrifice. 
 
 It is evident from even such a casual inquiry 
 as this, that there are many facts of individual 
 psychology which have not been taken into ac- 
 count by society in the development of the 
 mores which govern the sexual relationships 
 of its members. The traditional institution of 
 the family, which would shape all women into 
 model wives and mothers, has neglected to con- 
 sider the fact that not all women are biolog- 
 ically adapted for these particular activities. 
 The choice of a mate which is determined by 
 irrational and unconscious motives may or may 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 279 
 
 not prove to be a wise selection, as we have 
 seen in the course of our discussion. Most sig- 
 nificant of all for the social problem of sex, 
 is the overwhelming tendency to individuation 
 which is making both men and women frankly 
 question whether marriage and parenthood are 
 worth while when they involve so much per- 
 sonal sacrifice. 
 
 From the viewpoint of psychology, we may 
 briefly summarize the whole situation by say- 
 ing that society has imposed upon its members 
 a uniform and inflexible type of sexual rela- 
 tionships and reproductive activities with a 
 total disregard of individual differences in its 
 demand for conformity to these traditions. 
 When the infinite number of variations and 
 modifications possible in the sexual life of dif- 
 ferent individuals is taken into consideration, 
 it is obvious that there must be a certain dis- 
 harmony between personal inclinations and so- 
 cial standards. Because the power of the 
 group control is very great, its members usually 
 repress emotions which are not in accord with 
 its regulations, and shape their conduct to meet 
 with its approval. If such a restriction of the 
 
280 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 personality and emotional life of the individual 
 is necessary for the welfare of the whole race 
 and for social progress, its existence is entirely 
 justified. It is our next task, therefore, to de- 
 termine in what respects a rigid and irrational 
 social control is conducive to human better- 
 ment, and wherein, if at all, it fails to achieve 
 this purpose. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOE CHAPTER H 
 
 1. Adler, Alfred. The Neurotic Constitution. Moffat, 
 
 Yard, N. Y., 1917. 
 
 2. Adler, Alfred. A Study of Organic Inferiority and Its 
 
 Psychic Compensation. Nervous & Mental Disease 
 Pub. Co., N. Y., 1917. 
 
 3. Blanchard, P. A Psychoanalytic Study of Auguste 
 
 Comte. Am. Jour. Psy., April, 1918. 
 
 4. Watson, J. B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a. 
 
 Behaviorist. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1919. 
 
CHAPTER ni 
 
 DYSGENIC NATTJEE OF CERTAIN FACTOBS OF SEX PSY- 
 CHOLOGY AND NECESSITY FOB A SOCIAL THEBAPY 
 
 Mating determined by unconscious psychological motives 
 instead of eugenic considerations; Some of the best 
 male and female stock refusing marriage and parent- 
 hood; The race is reproduced largely by the inferior 
 and average stocks and very little by the superior 
 stock; As a therapeutic measure, society should util- 
 ize psychological knowledge as a new method of con- 
 trol; Romantic love and conjugal love — a new ideal 
 of love; The solution of the conflict between individual 
 and group interests. 
 
 From the viewpoint of group welfare, the 
 present psychological situation of human re- 
 productive activities undoubtedly has its det- 
 rimental aspects. As we have seen, the choice 
 of a mate is determined by irrational motives 
 which lie far below the levels of consciousness. 
 These unconscious factors which govern sexual 
 selection far outweigh the more rational con- 
 siderations of modern eugenic thought. The 
 
 281 
 
282 ,TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 marks of personal beauty around which ro- 
 mantic love centers and which therefore play a 
 prominent part in mating are not necessarily 
 indicative of physical and mental health that 
 will insure the production of sound offspring. 
 The modern standards of beauty (at least in 
 so far as feminine loveliness is concerned) have 
 gone far from the ancienti Grecian type of 
 physical perfection. Influenced perhaps by the 
 chivalric ideals of "the lady," the demand is 
 rather for a delicate and fragile prettiness 
 which has come to be regarded as the essence 
 of femininity. The robust, athletic girl must 
 preserve this "feminine charm" in the midst 
 of her wholesome outdoor life, else she stands 
 in great danger of losing her erotic attraction. 
 Surface indications of the truth of this state- 
 ment are easily discovered. The literature 
 which before the war ran riot with athletic 
 heroines pictured them with wind-blown hair 
 and flushed cheeks receiving the offer of their 
 male companion's heart and hand. The golf 
 course or the summer camp was simply a 
 charming new setting for the development of 
 the eternal love theme. Even fashion has con- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 283 
 
 spired to emphasize the feminine charm of the 
 girl who goes in for sports, as a glance at the 
 models of bathing costumes, silken sweaters, 
 and graceful "sport" skirts plainly reveals. 
 
 Just as the love which is directed in accord- 
 ance with an emotional reaction conditioned to 
 respond to some erotic fetishism or to a parent 
 ideal may be productive of individual unhap- 
 piness, so it is also entirely a matter of chance 
 whether or not it leads to a eugenic mating. 
 Like romantic love, it is quite as apt to focus 
 upon a person who does not conform to eugenic 
 ideals as upon one who does. The mate se- 
 lected upon the basis of these unconscious mo- 
 tives is very likely to bequeath a neurotic con- 
 stitution or an otherwise impaired physical or- 
 ganism to the offspring of the union, since those 
 possibilities were not taken into consideration 
 in making the choice. 
 
 It becomes apparent that while certain forces 
 in the life of the individual and in the social 
 inheritance have united to condition the emo- 
 tional reactions of the sex life, these condition- 
 ings have not always been for the benefit of the 
 race. Indeed, it would almost seem that society 
 
284 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 i 
 
 has been more concerned with the manner of 
 expression of the love life in the individual 
 members than in its effects upon the next gen- 
 eration. In its neglect or ignorance of the sig- 
 nificance of artificial modifications of the emo- 
 tions, it has permitted certain dysgenic influ- 
 ences to continue in the psychic fife of genera- 
 tion after generation, regarding with the utmost 
 placidity a process of sexual selection deter- 
 mined by irrational and irresponsible motives. 
 The most potent dysgenic influence in the 
 present phase of the sex problem is the conflict 
 between the interests of the individual and the 
 group regulations. The traditional type of mar- 
 riage and family life has a cramping effect upon 
 the personal ambitions which lessen its attrac- 
 tiveness materially. The enterprising young 
 business or professional man has no desire to 
 restrict his opportunities by the assumption of 
 the responsibilities that accompany family fife. 
 He must be free to stake all his resources on 
 some favorable speculation without the thought 
 that he cannot take chances on impoverishing 
 his wife and children. Or if he has professional 
 aspirations, he must be able to take the long, 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 285 
 
 difficult pathway of scientific research with no 
 anxiety about the meagre salary that is insuffi- 
 cient for the support of a home. Thus the most 
 vital and aggressive male stocks as well as the 
 most highly intelligent tend to avoid the ham- 
 pering effects of family life, and their qualities 
 are often lost to the next generation, since even 
 if they marry they will feel that they cannot 
 afford offspring. 
 
 As women enter more and more into the 
 competition for economic and social rewards, 
 this becomes equally applicable in their case. 
 Indeed, it would be strange were there not an 
 even greater tendency to shun the ties of family 
 life on the part of ambitious women than of 
 men, since it involves greater sacrifices in their 
 case on account of their biological specializa- 
 tion for motherhood. It appears, therefore, 
 that we are losing the best parental material 
 for the coming generations on both the paternal 
 and maternal sides. Thus the conflict between 
 the egoistic desires and the social institution 
 of the family is segregating just those ener- 
 getic, successful individuals from whom the 
 race of the future should spring if we hope to 
 
286 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 reproduce a social organism capable of survival 
 in the inter-group struggle. 
 
 If it be true that the best stock, both male and 
 female, for various reasons refuses to assume 
 the duty of reproduction, the group will neces- 
 sarily be replaced from individuals of average 
 and inferior (but not superior) eugenic value. 
 Even within these limits there is at present no 
 conscious eugenic selection, and the irrational 
 and unconscious motives which govern sexual 
 selection at the present time may induce the 
 choice of a mate from among the weaker indi- 
 viduals. Once again it becomes a matter of 
 chance whether or not the matings prove to 
 be for the welfare of the group and of the race. 
 
 It might be contended that the very fact that 
 certain individuals withdraw from reproductive 
 activities is sufficient proof of their lack of 
 normal emotjonal reactions adapting them to 
 the performance of those functions. But a 
 clearer insight shows that the group standards 
 permit the exercise of the reproductive activi- 
 ties only in accord with arbitrary regulations 
 which have coalesced in the institutions of mar- 
 riage and the family. These institutions have 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 287 
 
 been developed to fit a definite ideal of man- 
 hood and womanhood which grew up out of a 
 manner of thinking in accord with taboo con- 
 trol and ignorant superstitions rather than in 
 harmony with the actual facts of the situation. 
 Now that we are facing reality and trying to 
 rationalize our thinking, we find that the varia- 
 tion from these masculine and feminine ideals 
 does not necessarily imply biological or psycho- 
 logical abnormality, since the ideals were them- 
 selves established without reference to biolog- 
 ical and psychological data. 
 
 The traditional marriage and family arrange- 
 ment tends to enforce a selection of individuals 
 who conform most nearly to these artificial 
 types as parents for the succeeding generations. 
 It is not at all certain that such a selection is 
 advantageous to the group. It would seem 
 rather that in so complex a social system as 
 that of the present day with its increasing divi- 
 sion of labor on other than purely sexual dis- 
 tinctions, we need a variety of types of indi- 
 viduals adapted to the varied activities of 
 modern life. 
 
 If society is to successfully meet the present 
 
288 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 situation it must utilize its psychological in- 
 sight to remedy conditions which are obviously 
 dysgenic and detrimental to the welfare of the 
 race. If the egoistic and highly individualized 
 modern man and woman are induced to sacri- 
 fice personal ambitions in the interests of re- 
 production, for instance, it will only be because 
 society has learned to turn those same egoistic 
 impulses to its own ends. This will never be 
 accomplished by the forces of tradition or by 
 any such superimposed method of control as 
 conscription for parenthood. There is too much 
 of a spirit of freedom and individual liberty in 
 the social mind today for any such measure to 
 meet with success. The same spirit of freedom 
 which formerly burst the bonds of superstition 
 and entered into the world of science is now as 
 impatient of restraint of its emotional life as 
 it formerly was of restriction of its intellectual 
 search for the truth. 
 
 Therefore society can no longer depend upon 
 taboo standards crystallized into institutiona- 
 lized forms as a means of control. It must ap- 
 peal to more rational motives if it expects to 
 have any degree of influence over its most in- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 289 
 
 telligent and energetic members. Only when 
 the production of eugenic offspring brings the 
 same social approval and reward that is meted 
 out for other activities will the ineradicable 
 and irrepressible egoistic desires that now pre- 
 vent individuals from assuming the responsi- 
 bilities of family life be enlisted in the very 
 cause to which they are now so hostile. When 
 the same disapproval is manifested for the 
 shirking of reproductive activities by the eu- 
 genically fit that is now directed toward lack of 
 patriotism in other lines, the number of volun- 
 tary celibates in society will be materially de- 
 creased. 
 
 The greatest triumph of society in the manip- 
 ulation of the sexual and reproductive life of its 
 members will come when it is able to condition 
 the emotional reaction of the individual by the 
 substitution of the eugenic ideal for the pa- 
 rental fixation and to focus the sentiment of 
 romantic love upon eugenic traits. "When this 
 is accomplished, the selection of the mate will 
 at least be favorable for racial regeneration 
 even if individual disharmonies are not entirely 
 eliminated. That there are great difficulties in 
 
290 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 the way of this accomplishment may be ad- 
 mitted at the outset. The conditioned responses 
 to be broken down and replaced are for the 
 most part formed in early childhood, and have 
 had a long period in which to become firmly 
 impressed upon the organism. But psycho- 
 logical experiments have proven that even the 
 best established conditioned reactions can be 
 broken down and others substituted in their 
 place, so that the situation is not so hopeless. 
 When we recollect that for ages the traditional 
 >als of masculinity and femininity have been 
 conditioning the emotional lif e of men and wom- 
 en to respond to their requirements with a 
 remarkable degree of success, there is ground 
 for the belief that the same forces of suggestion 
 and imitation may be turned to more rational 
 ends and utilized as an effective means of 
 social therapy. 
 
 If we are to have a more rationalized form 
 of social control, then, it will undoubtedly take 
 into consideration the necessity of forming the 
 socially desirable conditionings of the emo- 
 tional life. The importance of the emotional 
 reactions for social progress has been very well 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 291 
 
 summarized by Burgess, who says that emotion 
 can be utilized for breaking down old customs 
 and establishing new ones, as well as for the 
 conservation of the mores. Society can largely 
 determine around what stimuli the emotions 
 can be organized, this author continues, and the 
 group has indeed always sought to control the 
 stimuli impinging upon its members. One pol- 
 icy has been to eliminate objectionable stimuli, 
 as in the outlawing of the saloon. The other is 
 to change the nature of the affective response 
 of the individual to certain stimuli in the en- 
 vironment where the natural or organic re- 
 sponses would be at variance with conduct con- 
 sidered socially desirable. (3.) 
 
 Modern psychological knowledge enables us 
 to understand the mechanism of this last meth- 
 od of social control as the building up of the 
 conditioned emotional response. If our civili- 
 zation is to endure it must learn to apply this 
 method of control to the sex life of the indi- 
 vidual so that reproduction will fall to the lot 
 of the most desirable eugenic stock instead of 
 being left to the workings of chance as it is 
 at the present time. 
 
292 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 From the viewpoint of individual psychology, 
 one of the principal problems of the erotic life 
 is to find a smooth transition from the romantic 
 love of the courtship period to the less ethereal 
 emotions of the married state. Indirectly, this 
 is also socially significant, because of the over- 
 whelming effect of the home environment in 
 shaping the reactions of the next generation. 
 As a rule, only the children who have grown 
 up in a happy and wholesome atmosphere of 
 sincere parental comradeship and affection can 
 have an entirely sane and healthy reaction to 
 their own erotic functions in later years. 
 
 Although romantic love in its present expres- 
 sion may often lead to uncongenial marriages 
 and even involve dysgenic mating, its aesthetic 
 and refining influences are such as to make it 
 desirable in spite of these drawbacks. Its in- 
 fluence upon literature has been noted by 
 Bloch (2) while its potency in the formation of 
 a deep and tender feeling between men and 
 women has been elaborately discussed by Finck 
 ,(4). Thus it is evident that its individual and 
 social advantages more than balance its disad- 
 vantages. 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 293 
 
 Unfortunately, with the entrance into the 
 marital relationship and the release of the 
 erotic emotion into natural channels so that it 
 no longer seeks the vicarious outlets which were 
 partly supplied in the idealization of the lovers, 
 there is a tendency for this romantic element 
 to fade from their affection. The conjugal af- 
 fection which replaces it is built on quite other 
 foundations. It is not composed of daydreams 
 about the beloved, but is wrought out of mutual 
 interests, of joys and sorrows shared together, 
 of the pleasure of unrestricted companionship, 
 and of the common care of offspring. The 
 danger lies in the possibility that these founda- 
 tions for conjugal love will not have been lain 
 by the time that romantic sentiments begin to 
 grow dim. It is this crisis in the married life 
 which seems disappointing in the afterglow of 
 the engagement and honeymoon. 
 
 Of late there have been attempts to build up 
 a new conception of love which shall incor- 
 porate the best features of romantic love and 
 at the same time make the transition to the 
 conjugal affection less difficult. This new con- 
 ception has grown up through the increasing 
 
294 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 freedom of women and the constant association 
 of the sexes in the educational and business 
 world as well as. in the social life. This free 
 companionship of men and women has done 
 much to destroy the illusions about each other 
 which were formerly supposed to be so neces- 
 sary a component of romantic love, but it has 
 also created the basis for a broader sympathy 
 and a deeper comradeship which is easily car- 
 ried over into the married relation. 
 
 The new ideal of love which is being thus 
 developed combines complete understanding 
 and frankness with erotic attraction and the 
 tenderness of romanticism. It implies a type 
 of marital relationship in which there is pres- 
 ervation of the personality and at the same 
 time a harmony and union of interests that was 
 often absent from the old-fashioned marriage, 
 when the wife was supposed to be more limited 
 in her interests than her husband. It may well 
 be that the evolution of this new ideal of love, 
 which grants personal autonomy even within 
 the marriage bond, will solve a great deal of 
 the present conflict between the individualistic 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 295 
 
 impulses and the exercise of the erotic functions 
 as permitted by the group. 
 
 It is, of course, an open question as to how 
 far the interests of the individual and the group 
 can be made to coincide. Group survival de- 
 mands that the most vital and intelligent mem- 
 bers shall be those to carry on the reproductive 
 functions. Therefore from the social viewpoint, 
 it is quite justified in setting up the machinery 
 of social approval and in establishing emotional 
 attitudes by this means that will insure that 
 this takes place. On the other hand, it may be 
 that the individuals who will be thus coerced 
 will be as rebellious against new forms of so- 
 cial control as they are restless under the pres- 
 ent methods of restraint. 
 
 If we free ourselves from a manner of think- 
 ing induced by inhibitions developed through 
 ages of taboo control, and look at the problem 
 rationally, we must admit that the chief interest 
 of society should be in the eugenic value of the 
 children born into it. At the present time, 
 however, the emphasis seems to be chiefly upon 
 the manner of birth, that is, the principal con- 
 cern is to have the parents married in the cus- 
 
296 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 tomary orthodox fashion. Only in view of the 
 necessities of the recent war have the European 
 nations been forced to wipe out the stain of 
 illegitimacy, and in America we are still blind 
 to this necessity. Only Scandinavia, under the 
 leadership of such minds as Ellen Key's, was 
 roused to this inconsistency in the mores with- 
 out external pressure, and enacted legislation 
 concerning illegitimacy which may well serve as 
 a model to the wholo world. The main points 
 of the Norwegian Castberg bill are as follows: 
 The child whose parents are unmarried has a 
 right to the surname of the father, and the right 
 of inheritance from a propertied father j the 
 court has full power to clear up the paternity 
 of the child; the man is held responsible for 
 the child's support even if other men are known 
 to have had intercourse with the mother. In 
 order to discourage immorality in women for 
 the purpose of blackmailing wealthy men, the 
 mother is also compelled to contribute to the 
 child's support. (1.) 
 
 No psychologist of discernment, in insisting 
 on eugenic standards rather than a marriage 
 certificate as the best criterion for parenthood, 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 297 
 
 would encourage any tendency to promiscuous 
 mating. The individual suffering involved in 
 such a system of sexual relationships would be 
 too great to permit its universal adoption even 
 if it should be found to have no deleterious, 
 social effects. But the very fact that transient 
 mating does involve so much human agony, 
 especially on the part of the woman, is all the 
 more reason why it is needless to add artificial 
 burdens to those already compelled by the very 
 nature of the emotional life. 
 
 The study of child psychology, too, would 
 tend to discourage any general tendency to tem- 
 porary sexual relationships. Modern research 
 has shown that nothing is more necessary for 
 the normal development of the child's emotional 
 life than a happy home environment with the 
 presence of both father and mother. Only in 
 these surroundings, with the love of both pa- 
 rents as a part of the childhood experience, can 
 the emotional reactions of the child be properly 
 conditioned to respond to the social situations 
 of adult life. 
 
 In one respect, at least, society can do a 
 great deal to better the existing situation, and 
 
298 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 to solve the straggle between the individual and 
 group interests. At the same time that it en- 
 deavors to set up emotional responses that shall 
 be conducive to eugenic mating and to a happy 
 love life, as well as for the welfare of the child, 
 it should also leave a wide margin of personal 
 liberty for the individuals concerned to work 
 out a type of sexual relationship which is in 
 harmony with their natural inclinations. The 
 institution of monogamy is too deeply founded 
 in the needs of the individual and of the child 
 to suffer from this increase in freedom and 
 responsibility. "Were it so frail a thing as to 
 need the protection of the church and state as 
 well as public opinion to insure its survival, it 
 would be so little adapted to the needs of hu- 
 manity that it might better disappear. 
 
 There are no indications that there would be 
 any wider deviation from the monogamous 1 re- 
 lationship were variations frankly recognized 
 that now take place in secret. By its present 
 attitude, society is not accomplishing its pur- 
 pose and preventing all sexual relationships 
 except those which conform to its institution- 
 alized standards. It is merely forcing what 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 299 
 
 should be always the most dignified of human 
 relationships into the shamefulness of conceal- 
 ment and furtiveness. Moreover, because it 
 visits its wrath on the child born of unions 
 which are not strictly conventionalized, it pre- 
 vents the birth of children from mothers who 
 might be of great eugenic value, but whom fear 
 of social disapproval keeps from the exercise 
 of their maternal functions but not of their 
 sexual activities. 
 
 In the final analysis, it will probably be dem- 
 onstrated that for a certain type of personality 
 there can be no compromise which will resolve 
 the conflict between the egoistic inclinations 
 and the interests of the group. For those whose 
 deepest desires are so out of harmony with the 
 social life of the times there is no alternative 
 but to sacrifice their personal desires or to for- 
 feit the pleasure of feeling in complete rapport 
 with their fellows. In such natures, the ulti- 
 mate course of conduct will be determined by 
 the relative strengths of the individualistic and 
 gregarious impulses, other things being equal. 
 In some instances this will mean the choice of 
 a line of conduct out of harmony with the gen- 
 
300 TABOO AND GENETICS 
 
 eral trend of group life ; in others, it will mean 
 the repression of personal inclinations and con- 
 formity to social standards. 
 
 For the majority of people, however, it is 
 likely that a more rational form of social con- 
 trol, freed from the long ages of taboo restric- 
 tions, and based npon accurate biological and 
 psychological knowledge, will solve the dis- 
 harmony between the individual and the group 
 to a great extent. Such a rationalization will 
 take into account the value of a new ideal of 
 love which shall be built up from a sane relation- 
 ship between the sexes and in accordance with 
 eugenic standards. It will also grant a great 
 deal of personal autonomy in the determina- 
 tion of sexual relationships in so far as this 
 can be correlated with the welfare of the chil- 
 dren of the race. Last of all, it will attempt to 
 condition the emotional reactions to respond to 
 stimuli which shall insure eugenic mating 
 naturally and without the intervention of legis- 
 lation. 
 
 Unless modern civilization can set up some 
 such form of rational control for the sexual 
 and reproductive life of its members, the pres- 
 
TABOO AND GENETICS 301 
 
 ent conflict between individuation and social- 
 ization will continue and the dysgenic factors 
 now operative in society will steadily increase. 
 In the end, this internal conflict may become 
 so powerful as to act as an irresistible disin- 
 tegrating force that will shatter the fabric of 
 modern social organization. Only the evolu- 
 tion of a rationalized method of control can 
 avert this social catastrophe. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER HI 
 
 1. Anthony, Katharine. Feminism in Germany and Scan- 
 
 dinavia. Henry Holt, N. Y., 1915. 
 
 2. Bloch, Ivan. Sexual Life of Our Time. Rebman, 
 
 Lond., 1908. 
 
 3. Burgess, E. W. The Function of Socialization in Social 
 
 Evolution. Univ. Chicago Press, 1916. 
 
 4. Finek, H. T. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. 
 
 Macmillan, N. Y., 1891.