There is, indeed, a point of difference in the application of
standards of morality to men and to women. Morality as applied to man
has a larger element of the contractual, representing the adjustment
of his activities to those of society at large, or more particularly
to the activities of the male members of society; while the morality
which we think of in connection with woman shows less of the
contractual and more of the personal, representing her adjustment to
men, more particularly the adjustment of her person to men.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXOGAMY
Perhaps the most puzzling questions which meet the student of early
society are connected with marriage and kinship; and among these
questions the practice of exogamy has provoked a very large number of
ingenious theories. These are, however, I believe, all unsatisfactory,
either because they are too narrow to cover the facts completely,
or because they assume in the situation conditions which do not
exist.[211] But quite aside from the facts and the interpretation
of the facts, all theories in the field have failed to reckon
sufficiently with the natural disposition and habits of man in early
society, particularly with his attitude toward sexual matters; and it
seems entirely feasible to get some light on the question why man went
outside his immediate family and clan for women through an examination
of the nature of his sexual consciousness, and of the operation of
this in connection with the laws of habit and attention.
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