Revival: Dress, Drinks and Drums (1931)

Further Studies of Savages and Sex

Ernest Crawley, Theodore Besterman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351344517
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

'Studies of Savages and Sex' are brought together by nine shorter essays. In the present Volume are assembled three longer studies, the first of which, indeed, is long and important enough to have made a volume itself. It speaks of the origins, forms and psychology of dress (with special emphasis on the sexual psychology). The psychology of drinks and drums and all three combined.

I. Dress

ITS ORIGINS, FORMS, AND PYSCHOLOGY, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THE SEXUAL PSYCHOLOGY

DRESS, DRINKS, AND DRUMS

AN analysis of the relations of man's clothing with his development in social evolution will naturally be chiefly concerned with psychological categories. When once instituted, for whatever reasons or by whatever process, dress became a source of psychical reactions, often complex, to a greater extent (owing to its more intimate connexion with personality) than any other material product of intelligence. Some outline of the historical development of dress will be suggested, rather than drawn, as a guide to the main inquiry. For formal, chronological, or regional histories of dress, the reader must look elsewhere.¹

The practical, or, if one may use the term, the biological uses and meaning of dress, are simple enough and agreed upon. These form the first state of the material to be employed by the social consciousness. Its secondary states are a subject in themselves.

¹ Among such works most warmly to be recommended are Max von Boehn, Die Mode: Menscbcn und Moden vom Untergang der alten Welt bis zum Beginn des zwanzigsten Jabrbunderts (Munich 1907-1925, 8 vols.), and the splendid series of illustrations in Paul Louis de Giafferi, The History of the Feminine Costume of the World from the year 531 B.C. to our Century (New York, Paris [1927]). Among lesser works of a general kind in English mav be mentioned Mary Evans, Costume Throughout tbe Ages (Philadelphia 1930), and Köhler² von Sichart, A History of Costume (London 1928). Curiously enough, the bibliography of drew and costume has not yet been attempted.

1. Origins

The primary significance of dress becomes a difficult question as soon as we pass from the institution in being to its earliest stages and origin. For speculation alone is possible when dealing with the genesis of dress. Its conclusions will be probable in proportion as they satisfactorily bridge the gulf between the natural and the artificial stages of human evolution. The information supplied by those of the latter that are presumably nearest to the natural state, to Protanthropus, is not in itself a key to the origin of clothing, but, on the other hand, the mere analogy of animal-life is still less helpful. An animal has a natural covering more efficient for the two uses of protection against the environment and of ornamentation as a sexual stimulus. An animal may become adapted to a change, for instance to an Arctic climate, by growing a thick fur which is white. It may be supposed that, to meet a similar change, man invents the use of artificial coverings. But this old argument is contradicted by all the facts.

It may serve, however, to point by contrast the actual continuity of the natural and the artificial stages, the physical and the psychical stages, of our evolution. If we say that man is the only animal that uses an artificial covering for the body, we are apt to forget that even when clothed he is subject to the same environmental influences as in the ages before dress. Again, there is no hint that the approach of a glacial epoch inaugurated the invention of dress. But it is an established fact that the survivors of immigrants to changed conditions of climate and geological environment become physically adapted by some means of interaction, and in certain directions of structure, which are just coming to be recognized. The British settlers in North America have assumed the aboriginal type of the Indian face and head; migrants from lowlands to uplands develop round-headedness; from the temperate zone to the tropics man develops frizzly hair, and so on. The most obvious of these natural adaptations, physiologically produced, to the environment, is pigmentation. The skin of man is graded in colour from the Equator to the Pole. The deeper pigmentation of the tropical skin is a protection against the actinic rays of the sun; the blondness of northern races, like the white colour of Arctic animals, retains the heat of the body.

If we followed the analogy of the animal, we should have to take into account the fact that a mechanical intelligence enables it to obviate certain disadvantages of its natural covering. The animal never exposes itself unnecessarily; its work, in the case of the larger animals, is done at night, not in the glare of the sun. Automatically it acquires an artificial covering in the form of shelter. If man in a natural state followed a similar principle, he would be at no more disadvantage than is the animal. A similar argument applies to the other use mentioned above, namely, sexual decoration. What these considerations suggest is that man was not forced by necessity to invent. The reason is at once deeper and simpler. Again, we get the conclusion that one primary use and meaning of dress is not so much to provide an adaptation to a climate as to enable man to be superior to weather; in other words, to enable him to move and be active in circumstances where animals seek shelter. The principle is implicit in the frequent proverbial comparison of clothing to a house.

Dress, in fact, as a secondary human character, must be treated, as regards its origins, in the same way as human weapons, tools, and machines. Dress increases the static resisting power of the surface of the body, just as tools increase the dynamic capacity of the limbs. It is an extension (and thereby an intension) of the passive area of the person, just as a tool is of the active mechanism of the arm. It is a second skin, as the other is a second hand.

Further, if we take an inclusive view of evolution, admitting no break between the natural and the artificial, but regarding the latter as a sequence to the former, we shall be in a position to accept indications that both stages, and not the former only, are subject to tbe operation of the same mechanical laws, and show (with the necessary limitations) similar results. These laws belong to the interaction of the organism and the environment, and the results are found in what is called adaptation, an optimum of equilibrium, a balanced interaction, between the two. In this connexion we may take examples from two well-marked stages in the evolution of our subject, the one showing a deficiency, the other a sufficiency, of the artificial covering of the body. A good observer remarks of the Indians of Guiana, not as a result of habituation, but as a first impression of their naked forms, that " it is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• EDITOR'S PREFACE
• Contents
• I. DRESS: its origins, forms, and psychology, with special emphasis on the sexual psychology
• II. DRINKS, DRINKERS, DRINKING
• III. DRUMS AND CYMBALS
• INDEX