Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/20

Rh origins and with what they may perhaps consider exotic forms of social life, but also those who are concerned with the present or the future, and the forms of social life at home.

We often overlook the fact, which Is yet well established, that the rate and level of evolution are not at every point equal. We do not place the negro at the summit of human development; but at some points he is further evolved in physical form than the white man. Or, if we take a wider range, it has long been clear that the forefoot of the horse has reached a higher stage of evolution than that of other animals in general much higher in the scale. So, also, on the psychic side, we are accustomed to regard the civilization of classic antiquity as in some respects higher than our own which yet has progressed much further along other lines.

In the life of sex we are concerned with an impulse of profound interest to mankind from the first. It occupies a field, one may note, which may be cultivated even by peoples whose level of culture is, in many important respects, far from high. It may even be said that an absorption in other fields of culture is actually detrimental to culture in the sexual field, and, as we know, a marvellous expansion of the mechanical arts and exalted achievements in the intellectual sphere may co-exist with a sexual culture thrust back into conventions and routines which are scarcely even regarded as open to discussion. It is possible to be sensitive and alive to achievement in the more complex human arts and yet, at the same time, remain Rh