Sex and Society eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 234 pages of information about Sex and Society.

Sex and Society eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 234 pages of information about Sex and Society.

But checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct.  Approval is expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery, promotions, and other rewards; but in general the moral side of life gets no such definite notice as the immoral side.  Practices which are disliked by all may be forbidden, while there is no equally summary way of dealing with practices approved by all.  In consequence, practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited, and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty, resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment.  An analysis of the following crimes and punishments among the Kafirs, for instance, indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of activity and punishments is present at a comparatively early period of development: 

Theft:  restitution and fine.  Injuring cattle:  death or fine, according to the circumstances.  Causing cattle to abort:  heavy fine.  Arson:  fine.  False witness:  heavy fine.  Maiming:  fine.  Adultery:  fine, sometimes death.  Rape:  fine, sometimes death.  Using love philters:  death or fine, according to circumstances.  Poisoning, and practices with an evil intent (termed “witchcraft"):  death and confiscation.  Murder:  death or fine, according to circumstances....  Treason, as contriving the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy:  death and confiscation.  Desertion from the tribe:  death and confiscation.[197]

Similarly among the Kukis: 

Injuring the property of others, or taking it without payment; using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to the aged; marrying an elder brother’s wife; putting your foot on, or walking over, a man’s body; speaking profanely of religion—­are acts of impiety.[198]

As the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male.  The establishment of moral standards is mediated through the sense of strain—­strain to the personal self, and strain to the social self.  Whether a man is injured by an assault upon his life or upon his property, he suffers violence, and the first resort of the injured individual or group is to similar violence; but this results in a vicious tit-for-tat reaction whereby the stimulus to violence is reinstated by every fresh act of violence.  Within the group this vicious action and reaction is broken up by the intervention of public opinion, either in an informal expression of disapproval, or

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Sex and Society from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.