BOOKS OF THE DAY
Human Relations
Male and Female. By Margaret Mead. (Gollancz. 18s.) MARGARET MEAD has written a remarkable book. Starting with the basic questions—" How are men and women to think about their maleness and their femaleness in this twentieth century " and " Are not sex differences exceedingly valuable, one of the resources of our human nature that every society has used but no society has yet begun to use to the full ? "—she discusses the role of the anthropologist (in distinction from that of the psycho- logist or the social scientist) in helping to answer such questions ; then reviews the facts concerning the role of the sexes in seven non-European cultures ; and devotes the final section of the book to the problem as it presents itself in the United States today.
Superimposed upon what Margaret Mead calls the basic regulari- ties of human sex development and reproduction we find an astonishing diversity of cultural patter ns determining the actual roles and attitudes of the two sexes in particular societies, a valuable reminder that the attitude of our own society has no special validity just because it is ours. The anthropological facts also remind us that man differs from all other organisms in having at his disposal no complex patterns of instinctive behaviour for dealing with the problems with which existence confronts him, including those of sex and reproduction. Biological individuals of Homo sapiens have to learn how to be social human beings, males and females how to be men and women. Even if it should prove that genetic differences of temperament between races, and between the sexes in different races, play some role in determining the behaviour of men and women, we can be sure that this is quite subsidiary to the effects of what they learn through the cultural pattern into which they are born.
The anthropological facts also remind us of the importance of infancy and early childhood in this fundamental process of learning to be human. it is a curious paradox that we have learnt to be what we are in virtue of experiences so many of which we do not, and often cannot, remember. However, Margaret Mead does not over-emphasise the role of the earliest years ; rather she stresses the whole pattern of development, with its succession of qualitatively different phases. ~ - All this becomes very illuminating when focused upon the contemporary American scene. Various disharmonies here threaten the pattern of family life and the relation between the sexes. A co-educational system which postulates equality between children of either sex comes up against the different develop- mental rhythms of boy and girl, and also against the social require- ments of differentiating the roles of men and women. The pattern of behaviour between the sexes in adolescence, as typified in what the Americans call " dating," is in conflict with the pattern demanded in adult life by American ideals of marriage. The ideal of woman's economic independence comes up against the ideal of the wife as " home-maker." The American idea of the one-family home comes into conflict with the possibilities of vigorous social life in a community. The ideal of individual freedom is in conflict with the ideal of stable marriage, the notion of free divorce and romantic love is up against the social obligations of the married couple, and the conflicts have pro- duced "a marriage-and-divorce code of great contradictoriness." Ultra-reticence about the physical facts of sex-difference comes up with a bump against the exaggerated emphasis on " Love." The demand for hospital births surrounded by the last words in hygiene and science is sterilising the experience of motherhood and the relations between the newborn baby and its mother. The emphasis on the future and some synthetic ideal way of life is in conflict with the attainment of a stable and satisfying way of life here and now. The " gradient" ideal of a career, the constant demands for more and more success, especially in men, are in conflict with the claims' of just being: men are valued for what they do rather than for what they are, and this conflicts with happiness in later life, when they have reached the natural plateau of their achievement.
But it must not be supposed that Margaret Mead is content merely to show up disharmonies, or believes that indiscriminate factual knowledge is a cure-all, or that all we have to do is to discover what institutions or ideas must be overthrown in order to arrive in Utopia. She knows very well that aspirations play as important a part in life as do restrictive material needs, and that transcendence must be taken into account equally with limitation. Her anthropological studies have led her beyond all simple theories of economic and social determination to a recognition of the almost unbelievable range of cultural possibili- ties open to man, each in its own way a creative work of art—a unitary presentation of how to be human. And she believes in applied anthropology and in the possibility of action, through the building up of a positive cultural pattern and ideal with its own stability and its own dynamism.
Indeed, I would say that, in spite of all the illumination her book sheds on its immediate subject of the roles of the two sexes in society, it is even more interesting as a symptom of the new humanism that seems to be emerging in all sorts of quarters, expected and unexpected, since the end of the war. Anthropology was one of the expected quarters: after all, anthropology is the Greek equivalent for the scientific aspect of the attitude expressed by the Latin term humanism. This modern humanism aims at aiding the human species to realise its possibilities more fully and more satisfactorily, both in the short term of individual lives, the intermediate term of societies and cultures, and the long term of evolution. The problem is always how to become more fully, and therefore more harmoniously, human: we have to discover and understand the potentialities of our humanity, and to realise them in concrete and satisfying patterns of life. The methods of the natural sciences can play an important role in this, but not the only role. The methods of the arts are necessary as complementary, and the methods of the human sciences are necessary as intermediate, as bridging the gap between matter and mind, between means and ends.
As Margaret Mead says, " we are just beginning to explore the properties of human relationships as the natural sciences have explored the possibilities of matter." In human relationships, values and emotions are inseparably entangled with social structure and human behaviour, so as to be an intrinsic part of the reality of man as a part of nature ; and only by adjusting human relationships so that the inherent dynamism of human emotion and conscious striving can have freest play and create the least friction, shall we be able to fulfil our evolutionary destiny, of bringing life to new heights of achievement—but achievements of being as well as of doing, of inner life as well as of action.
First, however, we have to readjust our thinking, so as to over- come the unnatural cleavage between the mental and material aspects of reality, between psychological -satisfaction and external control, which has developed owing to the rapid rise of the physico- chemical sciences and their application. Biology can help towards this readjustment ; but it is only in human relations that the mental or psychological aspects of evolving reality comes to have equal importance with the material aspects. And accordingly it is only when we take human relations as subject-matter for scientific treat- ment that we shall perforce come to readjust our habits and
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