Читать книгу The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization - Iwan 1872-1922 Bloch - Страница 20

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The difference between the sexes is the original cause of the human sexual life, the primeval preliminary of all human civilization. The existence of this difference can be proved, alike in physical and psychical relations, already in the fundamental phenomenon of human love, in which, because here the relations are simple and uncomplicated, it is most easily visible.

Waldeyer, in his notable address on the somatic differences between the sexes, delivered in 1895 at the Anthropological Congress in Kassel, drew attention to the fact that the higher development of any particular species is notably characterized by the increasing differentiation of the sexes. The further we advance in the animal and vegetable world from the lower to the higher forms, the more markedly are the male and the female individuals distinguished one from another. In the human species also, in the course of phylogenetic development, this sexual differentiation increases in extent.

In the development of these sexual differences, the antagonism first shown by Herbert Spencer to exist between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency plays an important part. Among the higher species of animals the males exhibit a stronger evolutionary tendency than the females, owing to the fact that their share in the work of reproduction has become less important. The more extensive organic expenditure demanded by the reproductive functions limits the feminine development to a notably greater extent than the masculine. In the human species this retardation of growth in the female is especially increased in consequence of menstruation, and this affords a striking example of the truth of Spencer’s law. I quote also in this connexion the remarks of the Würzburg anatomist Oskar Schultze, in his recently published valuable monograph on “Woman from an Anthropological Point of View,” pp. 55, 56 (Würzburg, 1906);

“The undulatory periodicity of the principal functions of the feminine organism, which depends on the processes of ovulation and menstruation, and is invariable in the females of the human species, does not occur in the other mammalia (with the exception of apes). In these latter, as far as we have been able to observe, the secondary sexual characters, in the matter of differences in muscular development and in strength, are not so developed, or sometimes are not so developed, as in the human species. We must in this connexion exclude the differences which appear in domestic animals as a result of domestication (for example, the difference between the cow and the bull). In the human female, the periodicity, which begins to act even on the youthful, still undeveloped body, has during thousands of years increased the secondary sexual differences. Periodicity is, in my opinion, an important cause of the fact that woman is inferior to man, more especially in the development of the muscular system and in strength, and that her organs, for the most part, are more closely approximated to the infantile type.

“The sexually mature body of a woman has always during the intermenstrual period to make good the loss undergone during menstruation. Hardly has this been effected and the climax of vital energy been once more attained, when a new follicle ruptures in the ovary, and the menstrual hæmorrhage recurs; thus continually, month after month, the vital undulation and the vital energy rises and falls. The energy periodically expended in woman’s principal function has for thousands of years ceased to be available for her own internal development. The actual loss on each occasion is so trifling that numerous women hardly find it disagreeable. The effect depends upon summation. The earnings are almost immediately spent, not for the purpose of her own domestic economy, but for the sake of another, in the service of reproduction; this comes first, for the species must be preserved. To accumulate capital for her personal needs has been rendered more difficult for woman than it is for man.”

The previously quoted biological law of Spencer (regarding the antagonism between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency), of which menstruation affords so interesting an illustration, explains also the fact pointed out by Milne Edwards, Darwin, Brooks, Lombroso, Alfons Bilharz, and other investigators—to wit, the greater simplicity and primitiveness of woman as compared with the more complicated and more variable nature of man—more variable, because it oscillates within wider boundaries. Paracelsus long ago enunciated the profound saying, “Woman is nearer to the world than man.”

It would be fundamentally erroneous to deduce from these considerations any inferiority or comparative inutility of woman. Rather, indeed, the nature of her bodily structure in relation to the purposes it has to fulfil is comparatively nearer perfection; and this admirable adaptation has undergone an increase in the course of the evolution of civilization. We have already noted the fact that under the influence of the continually increasing predominance of the brain in the male, certain retrogressive processes have also made themselves manifest (as, for example, the increasing loss of hair); and these processes in woman have gone farther than in man, because in her case the progressive development is in its very nature less extensive. Hence recent investigators, such as Havelock Ellis, have actually come to the conclusion that the ideal type, towards which the bodily development of mankind is striving, is represented by the feminine—that is, by a youthful type.[19]

It is, however, very doubtful if this evolution will ever go so far that the primitive difference between man and woman, founded as it is in the very nature of the sexual, will ever pass away. On the contrary, notwithstanding the retrogressive changes associated with the excessive development of the brain, we find that there is an increasing differentiation of the sexes induced by civilization. To this fact, which possesses great importance in connexion with the discussion of the woman’s question and the problem of homosexuality, W. H. Riehl, the historian of civilization, in his work on the family, published in 1885, was the first to draw attention. He devotes the second chapter of this book to the differentiation of the sexes in the course of civilized life. He was astonished by the fact that in almost all the portraits of celebrated beauties of previous centuries the heads appeared to him too masculine in type when compared with the ideal of feminine beauty which now appeals to us.

“The medieval painters, when representing the general type of angels and saints, van Eyck and Memmling in their Madonnas and female saints, paint heads exhibiting the most clearly defined individual characteristics, but into these feeling representations of delicate virginity there intrude certain harsh lineaments, so that the heads strike us as masculine, or as a little too old. Van Eyck’s Madonnas, with the Christ-child at their breast, frequently look to us like women of thirty years old. But the painter must have followed Nature; it is Nature which since his time has changed. The tender virgin of three hundred years ago had more masculine lineaments than she has at the present day, and he who in the portrait of a Maria Stuart expects to find a face like one he would meet in a modern journal of fashion will find himself greatly disappointed by certain traits in the pictures of this celebrated beauty, traits which to the nineteenth century would seem almost masculine.”

The contrast between the sexes becomes with advancing civilization continually sharper and more individualized, whereas in primitive conditions, and even at the present day among agricultural labourers and the proletariat, it is less sharp and to some extent even obliterated. Let the reader familiarize himself with the likenesses of modern women of the working classes; they seem to us almost to resemble disguised men. In the stature, also, of the sexes among savage peoples, and among the lower classes of the civilized nations, the sexual differences are much less marked than in our cultivated large towns. Very characteristic of the differentiating influence of civilization is, moreover, the effect on the voice. Riehl remarks on this subject:

“The tone of the voice even, in simpler conditions of civilization, is generally far more alike in the two sexes. The high tenor, the feminine man’s voice, and the deep alto, the masculine woman’s voice, are among civilized peoples far rarer than among savage races, in whom masculine and feminine varieties sometimes seem hardly distinguishable. Our bandmasters travel to Hungary and Galicia to find clear high tenors, whilst deep alto voices are now increasingly difficult to find, for the reason that among the civilized peoples the masculine-feminine contraltos die out. Dominant, on the other side, is the distinct contrast between the two sexual tones of voices—soprano and bass. This fact has already had a determining influence in our school of song; it affects our vocal tone-teaching—to such a hidden, out-of-the-way path have we been led by our recognition of the continually increasing contrast between man and woman.”

Certain phenomena and aberrations of the movement for the emancipation of women, such as the adoption of a masculine style of dress and the use of tobacco, are no more than relapses into a primitive condition, which among the common people has persisted unaltered to the present day. We need merely allude to the man’s hat, the short coat, and the high-laced boot of the Tyrolese women, and to the tobacco-smoking of the women at the wedding festivals among the German peasantry. A false “emancipation” of this kind is frequently encountered among peasants, vagabonds, and gipsies, to which, moreover, the neuter designation of the women of this class as das Mensch and “woman-fellow,” etc., bears witness; we have herein characteristic indications of the fact that “peculiar to the woman of the people is a self-conscious, actively progressive masculine nature.”

That the comparative obliteration of sexual contrasts among the lower orders of modern society is a vestigial relic of primitive conditions, is shown also by the primeval history of the nations. The idea appearing already in the Biblical creation myth, and the thought later expressed by Plato, and recently by Jacob Böhme, that the first human being was originally both man and woman, and that the woman was subsequently formed out of this primeval human being Adam—this pregnant thought merely expresses the fact of the indifference of the sexes among savage people and in the primitive history of mankind. The hermaphrodite of ancient art is, like the man-woman of the modern woman’s movement, an atavism, a retrogression to these long-past stages, of which we have only the above-mentioned vestiges to remind us.[20]

Friedrich Ratzel, in the introduction to his great work on “The Races of Man,” also alludes to this primitive obscuration of sexual contrasts in earlier stages of civilization, and draws therefrom interesting conclusions regarding the existence of a primordial gynecocracy, a “regiment of women.” I have myself discussed this question in the second volume of my book, “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” and shall return to the subject when dealing with masochism.

W. H. Riehl, and after him Heinrich Schurtz, have laid stress on the dangers to civilization involved in the obliteration of sexual differences. Sexual differentiation stands and falls with civilization. The former is the indispensable preliminary of the latter. Destroy it, and the whole course of development will be reversed.

Sexual differences comprise for the most part the diverse development of the so-called “secondary sexual characters”—that is to say, all the differential characteristics which distinguish man from woman, over and above those strictly related to the work of sex—for instance, stature, skeleton, muscles, skin, voice, etc.

The masculine body has evolved to a greater extent than the feminine body as a force-producing machine, for in man the bones and the muscles have a larger development, whereas in woman we observe a greater development of fat, whereby the plasticity of the body is enhanced, but its mechanical utility and energy are impaired.

According to the most recent scientific representation of sexual differences, as we find them enumerated in the monograph of Oskar Schultze, based upon his own observations, and also on the earlier works of Vierordt, Quetelet, Topinard, Pfitzner, Waldeyer, C. H. Stratz, J. Ranke, E. von Lange, Havelock Ellis, Merkel, Bischoff, Rebentisch, Welcker, Schwalbe, Marchand, and others, the most important physical differentiæ between man and woman are the following:

The supporting framework of the body, the osseous skeleton, exhibits important differences in man and woman. The bones of women are on the whole smaller and weaker. Especially extensive sexual differences are noticeable in the pelvis. Wiedersheim regards these sexual differences of the woman’s pelvis as a specific characteristic of the human species. In all the anthropoid apes they are far less strongly marked than in man. Moreover, these differences exhibit a progressive development, which is to an important extent dependent upon advancing civilization. For this reason, as G. Fritsch, Alsberg, and others, point out, among the majority of savage races the differences between the male and the female pelvis are far less extensive than among civilized nations. The characteristic peculiarities of the pelvis of the European woman, which can be distinguished from the male pelvis at a glance—namely, its greater extent in transverse diameter, the greater depression and the wider opening of the anterior osseous arch—are far less marked among women of the South African races and among the South Sea Islanders.

The enlargement of the female pelvis in the course of human evolution is dependent upon the most important of all the factors of civilization, the brain. Even in the human fœtus the great size of the brain gives rise to a far greater proportionate development of the skull than we find in the fœtus of any other mammal. This influences the pelvic inlet and the sacrum, but also the large pelvis, since, in consequence of the adoption by man of the upright posture, the pregnant uterus expands more laterally, and thus opens out the iliac fossæ. In the lower races of man, it is precisely this plate-like expansion of the iliac fossæ which is so much less developed than in the case of civilized races.

Another physical difference between the sexes concerns stature and body-weight.

The mean stature of woman is somewhat less than that of man. Among Europeans it is about 1·60 metres (5 feet 3 inches), as compared with 1·72 metres (5 feet 7³⁄₄ inches) for the average stature of the male. According to Vierordt, the new-born boy is already on the average from ¹⁄₂ to 1 centimetre (¹⁄₅ to ²⁄₅ inch) longer than the new-born girl. Johannes Ranke characterizes the individual factors which give rise to these differences in the following manner:

“The typical bodily development of the human male is characterized by a trunk relatively shorter in relation to the whole stature; but in relation to the length of the trunk, the upper and the lower extremities are longer, the thighs and the legs longer, the hand and the foot also longer; relatively to the long upper arm and to the long thigh respectively, the forearm and the leg are still longer; and relatively to the entire upper extremity, the entire lower extremity is also longer.

“On the other hand, the feminine proportions, remaining more approximate to those of the youthful state, as compared with those of the fully developed male, are distinguished by the following characteristics: comparatively greater length of the trunk; relatively to the length of the trunk, comparatively shorter arms and lower extremities, shorter upper arm and forearm, shorter thigh and leg, shorter hands and feet; relatively to the shorter upper arm, still shorter forearm, and relatively to the shorter thigh, still shorter leg; finally, relatively to the entire upper extremity, shorter lower extremities.”

This difference in the stature is found also in primitive peoples. Among the savage races of Brazil, who are still living in the stone age, Karl von den Steinen found that the average height of the men was 162 centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches), whilst that of the women was 10·5 centimetres (4·14 inches) less. This difference corresponds exactly with that given in Topinard’s figures as corresponding to the average male height of 162 centimetres (5 feet 3·8 inches).

In relation to the greater length of the body, the other proportions of the male body also exhibit greater figures. More particularly, the width of the shoulders is greater in man as compared with woman.

The body-weight of man is likewise notably greater than that of woman. According to Vierordt, the average weight of a new-born boy in middle Europe is 3,333 grammes (7·348 pounds), as compared with that of a new-born girl 3,200 grammes (7·055 pounds). The difference, therefore, is 133 grammes (0·293 pounds = about 4¹⁄₂ ounces). In the case of adults, the mean difference amounts to 7 kilogrammes (15 pounds), since the average weight of man is 65 kilogrammes (143 pounds), that of woman 58 kilogrammes (128 pounds).

Corresponding with the slighter development of the skeleton, the muscular system in woman is also less strongly developed; the muscles contain a larger percentage of water than those of man, and in this point also we find a resemblance to the juvenile state.

On the other hand, the development of fat in woman is much greater than in man. Bischoff investigated the relations between muscle and fat in man and woman, and found that in the entire body in the male there was 41·8 per cent. muscle and 18·2 per cent. fat; in the female 35·8 per cent. muscle and 28·2 per cent. fat. In the female two regions of the body are distinguished by a specially abundant deposit of fat, the breast and the buttocks, whereby both parts receive the stamp of extremely prominent secondary sexual characters. Upon this greater deposit of fat depends the softer, more rounded form of the feminine body; whilst the muscular system is less developed than in man. Man, on the other hand, is especially powerful in the head, neck, breast, and upper extremities. The contrast between the typical beauty of man and woman, respectively, is mainly explicable by the differences just enumerated.

Woman’s skin is clearer and more delicate than that of man.

More important is the fact that the blood of man contains a notably larger quantity of red blood-corpuscles (erythrocytes) than that of woman. Woman’s blood is richer in water. Welcker found in a cubic millimetre of man’s blood 5,000,000, and in the same quantity of woman’s blood 4,500,000 blood-discs. In correspondence with this, the hæmoglobin content and the specific weight of woman’s blood are both less than those of man’s. Since the red blood-corpuscles play a very important part in the human economy as oxygen-carriers, this sexual difference in the corpuscular richness of the blood is very important, and influences to a high degree the bodily organization of both sexes.

Larynx and voice remain infantile in woman. Woman’s larynx is notably smaller than man’s. After puberty woman’s voice is, on the average, in the deep tones an octave, in the high tones two octaves, higher than man’s.

According to the investigations of Pfitzner, the measurements of the head (length, breadth, height, circumference) are smaller in woman than in man. Woman’s skull remains, in respect of numerous peculiarities of structure, strikingly like the skull of the child.[21] This infantile quality of a woman’s skull, we must again point out, justifies no conclusion regarding the inferiority of woman. Schultze, when presenting these data for our consideration, rightly reminds us of the well-known fact that the man of genius is also frequently distinguished by infantile peculiarities.

Woman’s skull is absolutely smaller than man’s; hence, of course, her brain is also absolutely smaller. Waldeyer gives as the mean weight of a man’s brain 1,372 grammes (44·12 ounces), and of a woman’s brain, 1,231 grammes (39·58 ounces); Schwalbe’s figures are respectively 1,375 grammes (44·21 ounces) and 1,245 grammes (40·03 ounces).

In this connexion O. Schultze remarks:

“The question immediately arises, whether we are justified in speaking of the mental ‘inferiority’ of woman, because her brain weighs less than that of man.

“Now, in the first place, it is obvious that the greater body-weight of man demands a greater weight of brain. And there is nothing remarkable about the fact that the greater size exhibited by many organs of the male should be exhibited also by the brain. It seems very natural that the unquestionably greater functional activity which has distinguished the masculine brain for many thousand years should be manifested by the notably greater size of that organ, just as a larger muscle generally performs more work than a small one.

“As a matter of fact, among the numerous investigators occupied with this question, many have assumed that differences in the psychical power of human brains are dependent upon differences in their size. But this is an assumption merely, and with Bischoff, who as long as forty years ago conducted an exhaustive investigation into the problem of the relations between brain-weight and intellectual capacity, we must say also to-day that ‘the proof of any such connexion has not yet been offered us.’”

Whether the study of the finer structure of the brain in man and woman will enable us to form more trustworthy conclusions regarding their respective intellectual valuation, is a question whose answer must for the present be postponed. According to Rüdinger and Passet, in new-born boys and girls there exist very remarkable differences in the formation and development of the brain. In the male fœtal brain the frontal lobes are larger, wider, and higher; the convolutions, especially those of the parietal lobe, are better formed than in the female fœtal brain. Waldeyer was able to confirm this observation, and he considers it of great importance, especially in view of the large share which the frontal lobes have in the performance of purely intellectual functions. Broca, however, was unable to detect a lesser development of the frontal lobes in woman. Eberstaller and Cunningham even believed that they could establish that this portion of the brain was more powerfully developed in woman! Finally, the great Swedish cerebral anatomist, G. Retzius, made an exact investigation of the sexual differences between the brains of man and woman in the adult state. According to O. Schultze, his results can be regarded as authoritative. Retzius stated that hitherto no specific invariably recurrent peculiarity had been found by which the female brain could always with certainty be distinguished from the male; still, he was inclined to attribute to woman’s brain a greater simplicity of structure; it showed less divergence from the fundamental type.

This coincides with the fact to which we have already alluded, that woman as compared with man possesses less variability, that she is the simpler, more primitive being. Similarly, experience teaches ethnologists that the men of a race differ from one another to a much greater extent than the women.[22]

If we wish to sum up in a word the nature of the physical sexual differences, we must say: Woman remains more akin to the child than man.

This, however, in no way constitutes an inferiority, as Havelock Ellis and Oskar Schultze have convincingly shown. It is only the expression of a primitive difference in nature, brought about by the adaptation of the female body to the purposes of reproduction. This is the cause of the more infantile habitus of women (according to the above-quoted biological law of Herbert Spencer).

The observation of the physical differences between man and woman also teaches us the futility of the old dispute as to whether man’s body or woman’s was the more beautiful.[23] The different tasks which lie before the male and female bodies respectively give rise to different development of individual parts. If this development is complete in its kind, the body is beautiful. Stratz, in the introduction to his book on “The Beauty of the Female Body,” has rightly identified perfect beauty with perfect health. Man’s body and woman’s will alike be beautiful if all secondary sexual characters are developed in a harmonious and not excessive degree, if the idea of “manliness in man” and “womanliness in woman” have attained full expression, and have not been unduly limited by isolated peculiarities and variations.

Masculine and feminine beauty are different. There can be no question regarding the superiority of one or the other.

[19] Another author—H. Quensel—goes even farther than this in his book (in some respects most fantastic), “Do We Advance? An Ideal Philosophical Hypothesis of the Evolution of the Human Psyche based upon Natural Science,” pp. 152, 153 (Cologne, 1904). He writes: “When we compare the position in civilization of man and woman, we find that man unquestionably takes the higher position in respect of those intellectual impulses which serve as the basis of the higher and the highest stages of civilization, especially the impulse of building and construction, of the collection and the elaboration of scientific facts, in regard to the science of statesmanship and social activities, in respect also of the study of the connexion between cause and effect, and in respect of art. When, however, we apply to the problem before us the data I have obtained concerning the details of physical retrogression and of psychical advance, it appears that woman in many relations stands unquestionably higher than man; for woman, in her development, not alone in bodily relations, as regards the retrogression of the skeletal and muscular systems and the delicacy of constitution dependent thereon, as regards the cutaneous covering of the body, and as regards speech and voice, has advanced much farther than man on the path of bodily retrogression necessary for the progress of civilization. Positively, also, in all that concerns the development of the highest psychical impulses, the development of general nervous sensibility, of a finer discrimination of moral values and of idealism, of general charity and capacity for self-sacrifice in association with diminishing egoism, of transcendental piety and religious sentiment, and also of clearness of vision, and, finally, in all that concerns the development of an adaptability disclosing supreme psychical differentiation—associated, indeed, with deficient fixity of purpose—woman has advanced far beyond man on the forward path of civilization; that is to say, in respect of civilization, woman unquestionably excels man.”

[20] W. Havelburg, in his essay, “Climate, Race, and Nationality in Relation to Marriage,” published in “Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State,” by Senator and Kaminer, p. 127 (London, Rebman, Limited, 1904), also alludes to the significance of progressive sexual differentiation in the process of civilization, and draws attention to the increase in feminine beauty.

[21] We may refer also to Paul Bartel’s valuable work, “Ueber Geschlechtsunterschiede am Schädel”—“Sexual Differences in the Skull” (Berlin, 1898). The author concludes: “We are unable to recognize any important difference between man’s skull and woman’s—probably, indeed, no such difference exists.”

[22] We must not ignore the fact, that other distinguished anthropologists, such as Manouvrier, Pearson, Frassetto, and especially Giuffrida-Ruggieri, have recently contested the slighter variability and the infantile character of woman. Cf. Giuffrida-Ruggieri, “Anthropological Considerations regarding Infantilism, and Conclusions regarding the Origin of the Varieties of the Human Species” (Italian Zoological Review, 1903, vol. xiv., Nos. 4, 5). Cf. also the interesting remarks of Näcke in the “German Archives for Criminal Anthropology,” 1903, vol. xiii., pp. 292, 293.

[23] Konrad Lange—“Das Wesen der Kunst” (“The Nature of Art”), pp. 361-364; Berlin, 1901—has ably exposed the subjective grounds of this ancient dispute, and has shown their untenability.