|
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
|
|
stating that "the family life of mammals always lasts beyond the birth of offspring… We know that the male is indispensable there, because, owing to long pregnancy, lactation, and the education of the young, the female and her offspring need a strong and interested protector[1]". But anthropomorphic natural history is no longer so uncritically accepted as to admit the promulgation of such extravagant inexactitudes. No instance of paternal behaviour is known among mammals. The male, which is usually driven away by the pregnant and suckling female, and is neither stronger nor interested, never protects her, or provides for her.
The social state differs, in humanity, so profoundly from any form of animal aggregation that notwithstanding a whole literature on "animal societies", any analogy between the two is profoundly invalid and misleading. The most distinctive characters of human societies, are division of labour in the procuring of subsistence, and the existence of a social tradition by which cultural products, ideas and sentiments are transmitted. Neither of those characters occurs in any animal assemblage. The supplying of food to an animal by another occurs only in the feeding of immature young, either by means of maternal secretions or by the procuring of nourishment. In certain insects such parental care leads to elaborate physiological and genuinely instinctive division of labour. But among vertebrate animals there exists no division of labour among adults. Even among the anthropoid apes every adult individual, male or female, fends for itself as regards the procuring of the means of existence. Of social tradition there exists no analogue among infra-human animals.
There is, however, one character of social grouping which is common to both human and animal groups, namely a certain solidarity between members of the group and a much more pronounced antagonism toward other individuals or groups. Animals which live together, whether in large herds or smaller groups, almost invariably resent the intrusion of a stranger. Carnivorous animals live either solitary or in very small groups, consisting sometimes of a pair, in a given territory, and the presence of a stranger in that territory is resisted. Even their offspring are driven away as soon as they reach maturity. An intruder in a herd of ruminants, wild horses, or elephants is attacked and driven away. This happens even though the apparent intruder is a stray member of the herd which is attempting to rejoin his former companions. Wild dogs, in cities like Cairo and Constantinople,
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 365. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/47&oldid=- (Version vom 5.6.2022)
- ↑ Sex and Repression in Savage Society, p. 197.
