BOOK REVIEWS

419

OTHER
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. MARGARET
MEAD.(xi, 477
pp., $5.00. William Morrow, New York, 1949.)
In this volume Dr. Mead has resumed and greatly expanded the theme of her earlier
study on Sex and Temperament. The ethnographical material is now much richer,
being derived from seven Pacific communities and, to a good third, from modem
America. A brilliant discussion on HOWthe Anthropologist writes sets the stage for
the analysis proper. And here the search for causal connections is added to the mere
juxtaposition of the contrasted ways in which different societies phrase the relationship of the sexes. To some extent, too, Dr. Mead now admits more fully the weight of
physiological factors, which appear to lead to a divergent orientation, upon acting
and doing in the male and, in the female, upon simply being and fuldlling herself
in maternity. As this is the h e d point in all cultural solutions of the problem of sex,
so it is also the fixed measure of the price societies have to pay whenever they ignore
or misconstrue this inherent dichotomy.
The crucial set of causes, however, lies in the earliest relationship of mother and
child. This may be of three kinds-symmetrical, when the mother treats the infant as
another individuality similar to herself; complementary, when the mother responds to
the helplessness in the child; and reciprocal, when the mother gives and the child is
understood to give in return, as though they were exchanging some commodity
(pp. 64-65). The varying attention paid either to the childs mouth or genitals, to its
gastro-intestinal tract or whole body, and the emphasis, now on grasping and demanding, and now on passive receptivity, further mold the growing personality. So does the
attitude of the father, who may see in the infant a creature to be protected, a playmate,
or a future rival. Since the character of the parents, which so deeply impinges upon
the child, is in the last resort the end-result of their own infantile experiences, the demands and gratifications stimulated in infancy will tend to reproduce a particular personality, or rather the twin personalities of the sexes, And these in turn account in
great measure for the make-up of the given culture.
Just how great is this measure, is a question we are not apparently encouraged to
ask. Indeed a great deal in Dr. Meads evidence requires to be taken on trust, based as
it is on nothing more solid than private impressions and unverifiable intuitions as to
what things mean, really or symbolically. I may be obtuse, but I simply cannot see
how Dr. Mead knows that when small children put their fingers in their mouths exploringly, the emphasis seems to be on the sensation on the surface of the finger rather
than upon the sensations from the lips (p. 73), or that anything is proved by saying
that a small boy who trips and then touches his penis does so as if assuring himself
that it is still there (p. 85). Nor can I make anything of the elliptic statements in which
Dr. Mead couches many of her conclusions, to wit-Mouths are not a way of being
with some one but rather a way of meeting an impersonal environment (p. 272).
However, Dr. Mead also advances certain precise and important hypotheses-e.g.,
that the prohibition of incest represents a social mechanism protecting the sexually
immature (p. 198), and the belief in female witches, a rejection of the woman who
denies child-bearing (p. 233). The h a 1 chapters on America seem to me the most convincing. Significantly, I think, they make little use of the ammunition carefully pre-

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AMERICAN A NTHROPOLDCIST

[52,1950

pared in the earlier part of the book. Thus, while in Samoa, Manus, Arapesh, and
the other cultures treated almost every feature seems to spring from infantile experiences, American society reveals quite other determinants, such as the effects of immigration, of social mobility and the creed of success, and of the great equalizers,
film and advertisement. Surely there is a moral in this. I would read it thus-That
greater caution is necessary, even in primitive cultures, when crediting wombenvying patterns and what not with an all-powerful efficacy.
S. F. NADEL
UNIVERSITY
OF DURHAM
ENGLAND

Confucius, the Man and the Myth. H. G. CREEL.(xi, 363 pp., $5.00. John Day Co.,
New York, 1949.)
The main purpose of the book is explained by the author in his preface. Confucian
philosophy and ideas have been of great importance not only to China but also to the
development of some of the most basic social and political conceptions of the modern
West. Yet the Confucius in the accounts of his life so far has been depicted as a man
of little personal force, whose actions often failed signally to embody the ideals he
preached to others. The author, feeling that something must be wrong, proceeded
on the hypothesis that tradition does not accurately portray the Confucius who lived.
He has done a very thorough job of it. He shows that as a man, Confucius had a pleasant personality; as a teacher, hewas well rounded; as a scholar, his aim was practical;
as a philosopher, he was revolutionary; as a reformer, he was fully aware of the contemporary social pathology in which he lived and worked.
This work is a first rate piece of research in the Chinese classics and an excellent
anthropological study as well. For in seeking answers to many of the basic questions
about the life and work of the great sage, Creel has not only tackled the Confucian
texts, he has also examined the utterances and actions of Confucius in the light of the
social, economic and political climate of the time. For example, many modern scholars
have criticized Confucius for his idea of government by gentlemen, and that he never
conceived of any way in which the mass of the people could control the government.
Yet by realizing that the idea of voting seems to have been unknown in ancient
China and that rejection of universal suffrage was thought to be justifiable when the
1791 French constitution was propounded, on the ground that the proletariat was illiterate and without training and experience, one will almost be compelled to agree
with the author that it is not remarkable that Confucious did not propose that the
government of China be turned over to the peasantry of 500 B.c. (p. 165).
This book, though centered around Confucius, thus does not only tell us about
Confucius. I t is a comprehensive treatise on some of the most important aspects of
the development of the Feudal Period of Chinese history in particular, and of Chinese
society in general. For in the latter part of the book the author has shown the wider
influences of Confucius; how the Confucian myth developed; and how Confucianism
was related to Western democracy and the Chinese revolution of 1911 under Dr.
Sun Yat-Sen.
Not every student of Chinese history will entirely agree with Dr. Creels last conclusion, namely that Confucian thought was to a considerable degree behind the