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We are animals.  Some think we are more than that, animals with souls, but for the present purpose,  it’s enough to accept that we are at least animals; animals of the class, Mammalia; of the Order, Primate; and of the Species, Homo sapiens. ‘Sapiens’ means that we think. Cynics and those close to young boys might pause at that, and although we don’t know exactly what the word means or how many animals think, we may in general say we humans are thinking animals.

Thinking is more than just brain activity. Thinking is being aware of a situation and choosing a course of action, and it is pretty clear that not just humans but a lot of animals seem to think. The smallest mammals are bats and shrews, and they, like monkeys, dogs, some birds, other mammals have provided us with instance after instance of thinking, of choosing, and we should think a little about what that might mean.

Whether there is choosing, whether there is a real choice anywhere is a question that is earnestly debated in some circles. Some think there is in the universe no such thing as choice and therefore no such thing as thinking,  that everything is a matter of cause and effect, that A causes B and that B is a result of A. That view is called determinism. In some religious circles it is called ‘pre-destination’,  and there are significant implications.

For most of those who accept determinism, it is still only a mental exercise, for it is not possible to believe and act as if you were a robot even if you think you are, and those who think they are determinists  do indeed think and behave like they are making choices. As Dorothy Sayers put it, “the most committed determinist in the world will blame the cook for burning the toast.”

However, though determinism is logical, it brings difficulties, one of which is that it rules out the idea of responsibility, and that in turn rules out the whole idea of morality. For example, rotating machines are not morally responsible for their rotation. They are not virtuous as they spin nor bad and wicked when they grind to a halt. We do not say that an unavoidable sniffle or cough is immoral or that healthy people are morally superior to sick people, and while we believe that a man who kills another man (outside the law)  is doing a bad thing, we do not always believe that a  tiger that kills a lamb is doing a bad thing. (See Whisper #28.) And there is, further, for those who are theistically inclined, the issue of whether God is involved in the whole picture. If God made the world, why is it such a mess? We cannot answer that question nor can we explain the mystery of free choice. As Milton put it in Paradise Lost, the fallen angels in hell argued about “Fixed fate, free will, [and]  foreknowledge absolute,” profound matters that mortals could never resolve. But however important and puzzling those issues might be, there is something else to think about, for what we do or not do, for what happens or does not happen, does involve something else, something that is connected to determinism, choice, and our animal nature. That something is sex.

We are not just thinking (or non-thinking) animals, we are sexual animals, all of us, and that affects our thinking all of the time, except probably in the first or seventh ages of man that Jaques talks about in As You Like It  (11,7), except as infants in the first age, “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” and except as those in the “last scene of all, /That ends this strange eventual history,  /Second childishness and mere oblivion.” Other than in the beginning and the end, though, always, we are driven by some form of sexual desire. We—all creatures—would not have lived and survived if it were not so. Desire causes and permits us to mate and have offspring. We are all objects of sexual desire. It may be a little uncomfortable  to put it this way, but we not only seek, we are ‘sex objects’. All of us.

And that has shaped not only our biological, but our cultural history. Of the beginnings we know nothing except that sex was all. Probably hunger was stronger, but if the body was fed and bodily functions taken care of, sexual attraction was next. Attraction, mating, birth, death; for eons. In our history one mammal was attracted to another one to mate and breed. If and when two mammals competed for one, the one that had the greater power of some kind  pushed aside the weaker one. There developed practices, then habits, then rituals that permitted groups of mammals (the same with all living creatures) to differentiate responsibilities. Societies were thus formed, and our species, Homo sapiens, formed societies which we now call ‘Civilizations.’

It is hard to say when human societies were up and running, when we may begin to speak of ‘The Family of Man.’  Anthropologists look at cave paintings, bits of pottery, flint arrowheads, and guess when the earliest societies were functioning .  Some guesses go back 70,000 years, but a common guess is that the cave paintings in France which go back to 35,000 B.C. mark the presence of modern man. There probably were hunters and gatherers before that, but those dates give us an idea of a timeline from prehistoric to modern. But there are still questions. What is modern? How close to us, in intellect and temperament, would a prehistoric man have to be to paint those cave pictures? To join into a conversation? To play games with the children, to tenderly hold a baby? How did they think?

We may assume that as time passed, different groups, either abruptly or gradually, worked out ways to stabilize their cultures, and some of these ways had to do with

how men and women worked out their own situation when driven by sexual desire which, by the way, varies greatly between the male and female.  Polygamy was a natural option.  The men with the most power  had the most mates or wives and therefore the most offspring and therefore the strongest tribe.  The records go way back and all over. There was polygamy in The Old Testament. Think of Abraham. Think of Solomon. And there are still little spots of polygamy here and there.

But as we enter our modern era, after Christ rather than before Christ, the system of modern marriage begins to take shape, and thinking and sexual desire are constrained and modified by social norms. Sexual desire is still there, still basic, but marriage becomes more than just mating. Marriages satisfy many different social and economic needs.

Marriages stabilize family lines. Arranged marriages stabilize parts of countries, countries, and international relations.  Romance begins to have a place in marriage. though strength is still a factor.  Woman are limited in many ways and sometimes called “The weaker sex”, but social   order is stabilizing. A male and female  become  a husband and wife and the two and their offspring are a family. The animal world fades into the primitive but historical past, and the modern world emerges into our experience. There is a family now, a mother and a father until ”death do us part.”

Then in modern times, after WW II was over, the traditional family begins to change. Men and women take jobs far away from their family roots. People live different life styles. Death is no longer the only respectable option to staying in a marriage. Divorce becomes socially and legally acceptable. Parents separate, remarry, and children go back and forth, first to new legal parents, then to a legal parent living with an unmarried partner, then to unmarried partners, then to a single responsible party. We think differently today about marriage. The idea of a permanent marriage bond has weakened. Today marriage, significant as a legally binding contract, has become at times just a social convenience. Formerly, if a relationship was strained, one or both spouses worked at making it work, and often it did work. Now it doesn’t have to.  Now just turn the page. And now sex is coming into the open again, everywhere: movies, television, advertising, fashions, social and private  discourse. This time sex is a major presence in Jaques’ other five ages, from the second age “Whining school-boy” to the sixth age, the old man “With spectacles on nose and pouch on side.”

And who knows what is ahead? Presently there are all sorts of things to think about for  all the other roles in the  ‘Seven ages of Man.’  There is he Lover, “Sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’s eyebrow.” There is “the soldier, full of strange oaths;” and “the justice /in fair round belly with good capon lined.” All of the them face threats unimaginable a few years ago. Today all the world is still a stage, and we are all still playing our roles, but the script is always changing. We must constantly improvise, and there are ominous sounds coming from behind the scenes and in the streets outside there are gunshots and sirens.