Why Monogamy Matters
The book that predicts cultural collapse in 2060
In 1934, Unwin published Sex and Culture, an exploration of the relationship between sexual freedom and cultural development:
When I started these researches I sought to establish nothing, and had no idea of what the result would be. With care-free open-mindedness I decided to test, by a reference to human records, a somewhat startling conjecture that had been made by the analytical psychologists. This suggestion was that if the social regulations forbid direct satisfaction of the sexual impulses the emotional conflict is expressed in another way, and that what we call 'civilization' has always been built up by compulsory sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.
Because of what Unwin discovered, his book has been almost universally neglected by academia: ‘Any human society is free to choose, either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.'
What is energy? Unwin explains:
‘If we observe the human organism, we notice that it possesses at least three attributes that appear to be lacking in all other mammals. ... Its exclusive possession of three attributes, however, is attested and undeniable. These are the power of reason, the power of creation, and the power of reflecting upon itself. I define the cultural process as the series of events for which these powers are responsible. Human energy, as I use the term, consists of the use of these powers, which are potential in all human organisms.’ (417: these numbers refer to Unwin’s numbered paragraphs)
Placing ‘the cultural process in what seems to be its proper relation to the biological and universal processes,’ (xiii) he found ‘a close relation between sexual opportunity and cultural condition’. He mentions a modern parallel: ‘psychological researches reveal that the placing of a compulsory check upon the sexual impulses, that is, a limitation of sexual opportunity, produces thought, reflection, and energy.’ (317)
‘Any human society is free to choose, either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.'
Monogamy produces social energy; sexual freedom leads to social collapse:
‘In the records of history, indeed, there is no example of a society displaying great energy for any appreciable period unless it has been absolutely monogamous. Moreover, I do not know of a case in which an absolutely monogamous society has failed to display great energy. In the past different societies have risen up in different parts of the earth, flourished greatly, and then declined. In every case the society started its historical career in a state of absolute monogamy, manifested great energy while it preserved its austere regulations, and relaxed after a less rigorous tradition had been inherited by a complete new generation.’ (369)
These were his main findings:
Sexual constraints always lead to cultural flourishing, whereas sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later.
The most important factor is pre-nuptial chastity.
Pre-nuptial chastity coupled with absolute monogamy is the most energising. Cultures that sustained this for three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area. Only three ever managed it.
Abandoning prenuptial chastity leads - within three generations - to abandoning absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking.
Embracing total sexual freedom produces an “inert” culture at a “dead level of conception”: people focus only on their own wants and needs. Such cultures are conquered by others with with greater social energy.
There is a time lag: a generation can live off the energy generated by the previous monogamous one but won’t pass energy on to the third generation.
Unwin acknowledges that ‘to a mind that is unaccustomed to the methods of scientific research, the facts, as presented, may appear over-simplified.’ But he warns ‘the reason is that I have refused to publish them until I felt that I understood them. ... If an alleged truth appears complicated, the probability is that we understand it imperfectly.’ (xiv)
His 600-hundred page magnum opus, rarely read today, predicts cultural collapse for the West by 2060. In this article, necessarily fairly lengthy, I will outline his main ideas and add some commentary of my own in the hope of winning him more readers.
II: The Four Patterns of Human Culture
The truths he presents are indeed simple - and hard. According to Unwin, societies can be reliably classified according to their behaviour, and there are four “great patterns of human culture”:
zoistic: a “dead culture” or “inert” culture with no interest in understanding nature
manistic: superstitious and marked by special treatment of the dead
deistic: attributes the powers of nature to a god or gods
rationalistic: uses rational thinking in understanding nature and daily decisions
The zoistic society displays the least amount of mental and social energy; the rationalistic, the most. ‘Only a few civilized societies have been in the rationalistic cultural condition. All uncivilized societies can be placed in one or other of the remaining three classes.’ (13)
Societies with the least amount of energy don’t impose pre-nuptial continence. They give the greatest opportunities for sexual indulgence after marriage. Unwin found that all the deistic societies insisted on pre-nuptial chastity; conversely all the societies which insisted on pre-nuptial chastity were in the deistic condition.
The cultural condition of a society, then, rises in exact proportion as it imposes pre-nuptial and post-nuptial restraints upon sexual opportunity. Unwin defines 'sexual opportunity' as
‘opportunity which is afforded to a man or a woman to gratify a sexual desire. Sometimes the sexual regulations prevent such satisfaction; the impulse must be checked or the offender will be punished. The sexual opportunity has then been limited.’
The sexual opportunity of uncivilized men and women can be assessed by the answers which are received to eight questions:
Was there a demand for the tokens of virginity when a girl was married?
Was a betrothed girl compelled to confine her sexual qualities to her future husband?
Was pre-nuptial fatherhood punished?
Were the boys and girls sexually free (outside the exogamic regulations and /or the prohibited degrees)?
Did other men share the sexual qualities of a man's wife?
Was a wife compelled to confine her sexual qualities to one man
through her life ?Was a husband granted access to his wife's sisters?
Was a widow sexually free?
He asks ‘is there any causal relationship between the compulsory continence and the thought, reflection and energy which produced the change from one cultural condition to another?’ He found that 'one thing is certain: if a causal relation exists, the continence must have caused the thought, not the thought the continence’.
This is because ‘neither mental nor social energy can be manifested except under certain conditions.' And reducing sexual opportunity to a minimum produces these conditions. In his study of the 80 societies, he found that ‘the three great patterns of uncivilized culture invariably accompanied the three patterns of prenuptial sexual opportunity.’
If a society permitted pre-nuptial sexual freedom, it was in the zoistic cultural condition. Conversely, all the zoistic societies permitted prenuptial sexual freedom.
If a society adopted such regulations as imposed an irregular or occasional continence, it was in the manistic cultural condition. Conversely, all the manistic societies had adopted such regulations as imposed an irregular or occasional continence.
If a society insisted on pre-nuptial chastity, it was in the deistic cultural condition. Conversely, some of the members of all the deistic societies demanded the tokens of virginity as proof that a girl was virgo intacta when she was married.
According to the continence they compelled, the sexual regulations adopted by human societies in the past may be divided into seven classes. Three refer to pre-nuptial, four to post-nuptial, conduct. (341)
Pre-nuptial
men and women may be sexually free
they may be subject to regulations which compel only an irregular or occasional continence
under pain of punishment and even death the women may have to remain virgins until they are married.
Post-nuptial
Modified monogamy—the practice or circumstance of having one spouse at one time, the association being terminable by either party in accordance with the prevailing law or custom;
Modified polygamy—the practice or circumstance of having more than one wife at one time, the wives being free to leave their husbands on terms laid down by law and custom;
Absolute monogamy—the practice or circumstance of having one spouse at one time, but presupposing conditions whereby legally the wife is under the dominion of her husband and must confine her sexual qualities to him, under pain of punishment, for the whole of his or her life;
Absolute polygamy—the practice or circumstance of having more than one wife at one time, these wives being compelled to confine their sexual qualities to their husband for the whole of their lives.
Unwin then explains that ‘the post-nuptial regulations adopted in the past by any human society, civilized or uncivilized, fall into one of these categories’ (342):
Modified monogamy or polygamy—neither party is compelled to confine his or her sexual qualities to the other for his or her whole life;
Absolute polygamy—the female knows only her husband, but the male is free to have other sexual partners.
Absolute monogamy—the female knows no man but her husband, the male is confined to one woman for so long as she obeys the social ordinances. (343)
‘The evidence is that post-nuptial regulations are not a productive factor unless the society insists on pre-nuptial chastity. Thus in the past the compulsory continence suffered by human societies has been of six different intensities, according as they
permitted pre-nuptial sexual freedom (outside the exogamic regulations and prohibited degrees)
insisted on an irregular or occasional pre-nuptial continence,
compelled a woman to be virgo intacta when she joined her husband,
permitted a modified monogamy or polygamy
insisted on absolute polygamy,
instituted an absolute monogamy.
Only one stratum of a society needs to impose pre-nuptial continence and limit post-nuptial sexual opportunity by means of strict monogamy for the society as a whole to behave as a civilized society.
‘The cultural state of any human society depends not on the behaviour of the majority (who often are almost completely controlled by their unconscious minds) but on that of a small minority who display their inherent powers.’
The dominating group then determines the behaviour of the society as a whole: 'the group within the society which suffers the greatest continence displays the greatest energy and dominates the society.'
The resulting energy starts as 'expansive energy,’ leading to conquest, colonisation and commerce. But there is a subsequent phase: 'when the rigorous tradition (of sexual restraint) is inherited by a number of generations, the energy becomes productive.' Productive energy isn’t exclusively expansive. It goes into speculation, science and reform.
‘Absolutely monogamous Teutons overran the Western Roman Empire’
After this persists for some time, what Unwin terms ‘human entropy’ occurs: 'No society can display productive social energy unless a new generation inherits a social system under which sexual opportunity is reduced to a minimum. If such a system be preserved a richer and yet richer tradition will be created, refined by human entropy.’
When pre-nuptial continence and monogamous marriage are relaxed, the society is overtaken by another one made energetic by practising sexual continence. Unwin understands the attitude of sexual utopian reformers well:
'a man has been heard to declare that he wishes both to enjoy the advantages of high culture and to abolish compulsory continence. The inherent nature of the human organism, however, seems to be such that these desires are incompatible, even contradictory. . . . Any human society is free to choose, either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.'
III: The Female Foundation
Overall, ‘the evidence is that a cultural advance has been caused by a factor which produces thought, reflection, and social energy and that it occurs only when the sexual opportunity has been limited.' Therefore, he adds, ‘the limitation of the sexual opportunity must be regarded as the cause of the cultural advance.’
Consequently, ‘compulsory continence must be regarded as the immediate cause of a cultural advance. Any extension of sexual opportunity must always be the immediate cause of a cultural decline.’ From these facts, Unwin formulated two primary laws:
The cultural condition of any society in any geographical environment is conditioned by its past and present methods of regulating the relations between the sexes. This is the first primary law which operates in all human societies. (340)
Any society in which complete pre-nuptial sexual freedom (outside the exogamic regulations and prohibited degrees) has been permitted for at least three generations will be in the zoistic cultural condition. It will also be at a dead level of conception if previously it has not been in a higher cultural condition. (347)
Such reformers, Unwin makes clear, live on the energy accumulated by a previous generation of monogamists while dissipating it for future generations. He emphasises that, ‘if pre-nuptial freedom has been permitted only for one generation, some members of the society may have inherited a different tradition.’
‘We must always remember that the social energy which is displayed at any time by any society depends not only upon the sexual opportunity it enjoys but also upon that enjoyed by the two preceding generations. It takes at least three generations for an extension or a limitation of sexual opportunity to have its full cultural effect ; and if we happen to observe a society which is beginning, or has just begun, to extend its sexual opportunity, the full effects of the change have not yet been felt. The society still displays an energy which corresponds in some part to its old regulations.’
Two points are important:
the extension or limitation of sexual opportunity, either in society as a whole or in a class within the society, cannot have its full cultural effect for a hundred years;
culturally the sexual opportunity of the females is a more important factor than that of the males.
Indeed, 'in human records there is no instance of female emancipation which has not been accompanied by an extension of sexual opportunity.’ This loss of social energy isn’t due to the emancipation but to the increased sexual opportunity it results in.
He gives an example. ‘If the male members of an absolutely polygamous society mate with the females of an absolutely monogamous society, the new generation display a greater energy than that displayed by the sons of women born into a polygamous tradition. That is why, I submit, the Moors in Spain achieved such a high culture. Their fathers were born into a polygamous tradition; but their mothers were the daughters of Christians and Jews, and had spent their early years in an absolutely monogamous environment.’
‘The greatest energy has been displayed only by those societies which have reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum by the adoption of absolute monogamy’
‘The sons of these women laid the foundations of rationalistic culture ; but soon the supply of Christian and Jewish women was insufficient, so the incipient rationalism failed to mature greatly. The Moors in Spain, however, could never have advanced up the cultural scale if they had not mated with women who had been reared in a more rigorous tradition than their own. They would simply have remained deistic, as other Mohammedans have done.’
So 'it is historically true to say that in the past social energy has been purchased at the price of individual freedom.’ And within societies ‘the group…which suffered the greatest continence displayed the greatest energy, and dominated the society.’
‘Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.’
IV: The Seven Classes and The Six States
Unwin illustrates his concepts using some helpful diagrams. Starting with an inactive, inert human society, he energises it to show the six states of energy historically produced by the seven classes of sexual regulations.
State 1
This inert society is the nucleus: the zoistic cultural condition, at a dead level of conception. Diagrammatically, it is a black circle or a thick black line (Fig. A):
State 2
But what if this society begins to place restrictions on the satisfaction of prenuptial impulses? Some energetic individuals will ‘credit a newly dead magician with still possessing the same magic power as he had possessed when he was alive’. The tombs of these powerful dead men will be decorated; offerings will be made to their ghosts; huts will be built over their graves. And eventually similar huts will be built where the power in the universe is manifest.
These individuals will then separate themselves from their zoistic brethren, forming a manistic belt around the zoistic nucleus, a cultural state that can also be shown as a manistic cone, with a level zoistic base (Fig. B):
State 3
The next state involves making sure ‘the pre-nuptial sexual impulses of the females are not satisfied at all’. This produces even greater energy. The huts become temples; ‘to uprising generations the powers manifest therein appear as gods who have charge of all human and natural activities, and rule them in an arbitrary and personal manner.’
In the consciousness of the most developed stratum of people a sense of the past develops. They then separate themselves, forming a deistic belt outside the manistic belt, so that the society now consists of three cultural strata (Fig. C):
That is what Unwin says gradual energisation looks like.
State 4
But introducing pre-nuptial chastity suddenly means there is no manistic stratum. ‘The most energetic individuals think of one power only; their temples are erected to that power alone’. Separating themselves from their zoistic brethren, these people ‘form a deistic belt around the zoistic nucleus’ (Fig. D):
It is very important to realise that ‘all these processes are reversible.’ For example, ‘if a deistic society, with a manistic stratum, ceases to insist on pre-nuptial chastity but retains such regulations as compel an irregular or occasional continence, its deistic stratum disappears; but in the cultural tradition there probably remain some cultural items which were produced during the period of greater energy.’ (428)
‘The Roman woman enjoyed a greater sexual liberty under the ius gentium than under the ius civile…Absolute monogamy was modified; sexual opportunity was extended; sexual desires were expressed in a direct manner; the marriage institution fell out of fashion; women were emancipated; the marital and parental authorities were qualified; Roman gravitas disappeared.’
This can go one step further as well. The disappearance of irregular or occasional continence will mean the manistic stratum disappears. The society will become zoistic again. But some cultural items produced during the manistic period will remain. (428)
So far, Unwin has energised the experimental society ‘to such an extent as to bring it into the deistic cultural condition.’ To advance it further, post-nuptial sexual opportunity must be reduced, introducing some post-nuptial dissatisfaction.
State 5
A modified form of polygamy will mean it stays deistic as long as it retains pre-nuptial chastity. ‘But if the male as well as the female is compelled to confine himself to one sexual partner the society begins to display some expansive energy.’ The society then expands and explores, conquering less energetic peoples.
‘The sexual opportunity of the English was reduced to a minimum, the stringent law being accompanied by the same marital and parental authorities as among the early Babylonians, Athenians, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons. The English were deistic and monarchical. Soon they began to display tremendous social energy. They founded the greatest empire which the world had ever seen, established a large foreign commerce, sent out colonists to every part of the world…’
This expansive energy does not ‘create a cultural change’. It is simply ‘the form of behaviour adopted by societies which have reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum.’ It results in ‘a number of lusty individuals’ forming ‘an expansive belt outside the deistic and manistic belts, but the cultural condition remains the same’ (Fig. E):
Suppose the males are then permitted to have more than one sexual partner. The society will then cease to display expansive energy. But continuing to demand pre-nuptial chastity will mean it remains deistic.
‘If a man's wives are compelled to confine their sexual qualities to their husband for the whole of their lives’, the society is ‘likely to preserve its conquests as well as its culture.’ But if it relaxes its sexual regulations further, it collapses.
There will be a time lag. ‘No change in the sexual opportunity of a society produces its full effect until the third generation (157, 162, 167).’ A society, Unwin says, ‘appears in the pages of history…displaying an energy produced in the two previous generations.’ But ‘to see the effect of the sexual opportunity it enjoys when we first hear of it, we must search the records of the next century.’ (429)
State 6
But suppose it doesn’t relax its sexual regulations. Instead, it keeps sexual opportunity ‘at a minimum for at least three generations.’ There are only ‘three indisputable instances’ of this: the Athenians, Romans, and English. (430)
The cultural effect of this energising far exceeds anything achieved so far:
The energy increases, indeed, in what seems to be geometrical progression. The society expands in all its multifarious activities, exhibits a terrific mental energy that is manifest in the arts and sciences, refines its craftsmanship, changes its opinions on every conceivable subject, exerts considerable control over its environment, and manifests its potential powers in the loftiest forms yet known.
Not only is ‘its inherited tradition…augmented by the products of its abundant energy’, but it is also ‘refined by human entropy.’ Consequently, ‘a rationalistic stratum separates itself from the main body and forms another belt outside the deistic one (Figs. F, G):
V: Life Flows Backwards
That, Unwin’s research revealed, is how human energy is produced and exerted. But he notes that ‘in the past no human society has displayed great energy for an extended period.’
Why is this? Unwin concludes that ‘it was the unequal fate of the women, not the compulsory continence, that caused the downfall of absolute monogamy.’ Making women mere appendages of the male estate if not legal non-entities or chattel meant they longed to be freed from their disadvantages.
But relaxing the regulations meant sexual opportunity was increased. ‘Sexual desires could then be satisfied in a direct or perverted manner; no dissatisfaction demanded an outlet; no emotional stress arose. So the energy of the society decreased, and then disappeared.’
Thus ‘if any society should desire to control its cultural destiny, it may do so by decreasing or increasing the amount of its energy. Such decrease or increase will appear in the third generation after the sexual opportunity has been extended or reduced.’
Only legal equality between the sexes and minimum sexual opportunity will make possible the achievement of higher culture: such a society’s ‘inherited tradition would be continually enriched’.
But we must remember that rationalistic civilisations are rare: there have only been three. By contrast, ‘a lesser energy is easily secured, for the force of life seems to flow backwards, and the members of the society will not be slow to take advantage of any relaxation in the regulations.’
Accordingly, Unwin warns of the ‘amazing alacrity with which, after a period of intense compulsory continence, the human organism seizes the earliest opportunity to satisfy its innate desires in a direct or perverted manner.’ Unwin, a secular liberal, falls short of a full analysis here, but according to the Catholic tradition, by the sin of Adam,
human nature was deprived of both its preternatural and supernatural gifts and graces, the lower appetite began to lust against the spirit, and evil habits, contracted by personal sins, wrought disorder in the body, obscured the mind, and weakened the power of the will, without, however, destroying its freedom.
In other words, ‘sin crouches at the door’. Unwin reminds us that ‘no society has ever aimed at displaying energy for its own sake’, and ‘no man has yet proved that human energy is a desirable thing’. Although chastity produces energy, it can’t direct this energy without the other virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.
Unwin warns that ‘the notion of an ever-increasing cultural process has been encouraged by our own attitude to our own peculiar culture’. We are ‘convinced that the cultural process is a progressive development’. We assume that ‘our own culture is the most developed of all cultures’ and that ‘every change in our cultural condition is evidence of higher cultural development.’
This, he says, is ‘a quaint and comfortable doctrine’, and ‘until it is dispelled we shall understand neither our own culture nor that of any other society.’
VI: CODA
Some of the characteristic changes of our cultural condition are in fact evidence of regression, and the fundamental concepts of Unwin’s work explain them. Here I want to focus on George Gilder’s Men and Marriage (1986) - another work that academia hasn’t given the consideration it deserves, and for similar reasons. Although he doesn’t mention Unwin at all, Unwin’s ideas underpin his.
Homosexuality
According to Gilder, ‘civilised and productive societies reflect the long-term disciplines of female nature, upheld by religious and marital codes’. That is exactly what Unwin found. Women are more important than men, and pre-nuptial chastity is the decisive factor. In this sense, civilisation represents ‘a heroic transcendence of the most powerful drives of men’.
Insightfully, Gilder describes homosexuality as ‘merely the most vivid and dramatic manifestation of the breakdown of monogamy - an extreme expression of the sexuality of single men’ (p.69). This is because ‘as the longer horizons of female sexuality give way to the short-term compulsions of masculinity, civilised societies break down into polygynous and homosexual formations, with related outbreaks of feminism and pornography.’ (p.77)
Research confirms Gilder’s views. University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann found that “typical gay city inhabitants spend most of their adult lives in ‘transactional’ relationships, or short-term commitments of less than six months.”
In Cruise Control, Robert Weiss writes that
‘for some gay men fully committed to open sexual choices and experiences, modifying their sexual behavior and restricting their sexual freedoms is like going back in time and surrendering to homophobic attitudes often found in conservative culture. It just doesn’t feel right.’
As William Aaron put this in his autobiographical book Straight,
‘In the gay life, fidelity is almost impossible. Since part of the compulsion of homosexuality seems to be a need on the part of the homophile to “absorb” masculinity from his sexual partners, he must be constantly on the lookout for [new partners]. Constantly the most successful homophile “marriages” are those where there is an agreement between the two to have affairs on the side while maintaining the semblance of permanence in their living arrangement.’ [p. 208]
Homosexuality, then, is primarily a consequence rather than the cause of cultural decay. Whenever monogamy breaks down, polygyny produces homosexuality. As George Murdock showed, this is one of the strongest examples of correlation in all of anthropology. The streets of falling Rome were rife with male prostitutes because marriage had become so unpopular.
‘Tacitus says that the Teutons did not laugh at vice, nor regard it as the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted. For a woman to limit the number of her offspring, he adds, was accounted 'infamous', 'good habits here being more effectual than good laws elsewhere'.
The Black Family
As early as 1965, the Moynihan report identified the problem of black ghetto culture: female jobs and welfare payments had usurped the man’s role as provider. In this sense, the black family - and the black man - has been the canary in the coal mine. Gilder identifies the ultimate source of the ‘tangle of pathology’ as ‘the dissolution of the ties that bind men to their children’ (p.80).
Remember that Unwin found women’s sexual behaviour is more important than men’s. Pre-nuptial chastity is the decisive factor. Without mentioning Unwin, Gilder touches on Unwin’s fundamental insight:
‘taming the barbarians of any race requires not only that work be made available but also that women be largely unavailable without marriage. It requires not only jobs but jobs and upward mobility linked to the deepest drives of young men, channeling their sexuality into families and their aggression into the provider role’ (p.82).
To be civilised and productive, society must reflect the long-term disciplines of female nature; without this, men never achieve what Gilder describes as ‘the latter stages of socialisation: love, marriage, and family responsibility’ (p.81). In contrast, ghetto culture provides 'easy women who succumb to the rhythms of young men’ (p.82). And this is a vicious cycle because fatherless men score higher on indices of femininity.
Pre-nuptial chastity is the decisive factor.
Hence the Black Muslims, for example, saw that ‘the first step in restoring a poor community is to reinforce moral codes by religious observances and to rectify the sexual imbalance bred by poverty’ (p.83). Being ‘clearly dominant in a Black Muslim group,’ the males ‘can afford to submit to long-term patterns of female sexuality’. And the upshot is ‘they identify with their children and hence with the community and its future.’ (p.83)
Instead, ‘in any disintegrating society, the family is reduced to the lowest terms of mother and child’, and ‘it is quite simply impossible to sustain a civilised society if the men are constantly disrupting it’. For men, ‘socialisation through love, family and work is indispensable to social peace and prosperity’ (p.85).
Tragically, as Professor Hagedorn notes in his study of black gang culture, ‘loss of even the capacity to play the role of breadwinner has reinforced historic feelings of powerlessness for black men and has led to exaggerated, defensive notions of masculinity.’
And this has a political component, too: Gilder notes that ‘fascism is the political counterpart of the social breakdown of monogamy into the disorders of polygyny, homosexuality, and female-headed families’ (p.110) because ‘all politics is on one level sexual politics’ (p.112).
Unwin illuminates many other elements of contemporary culture, too. For example, he showed how a rationalistic society regresses to superstition and irrationality when loosens its sexual restrictions, and women today are increasingly identifying as witches. And will an energetic, self-confident Islam, with its higher fertility rate, conquer a spent post-Christian West? If so, Unwin will have predicated that as well.
The reason Unwin is so neglected is that he was right. And truth hurts.
Great article on an unearthed classic.
Sadly his assertion that 'the group within the society which suffers the greatest continence displays the greatest energy and dominates the society‘,
does not seem to be true nowadays. At least not in the cultural realm. Possible that our rich and powerful constrain themselves, but they certainly preach differently.
Had the book a few years still not completed it Great Stuff Will!