ition of polygamy and subjection; all
this she painted with a passion and intensity I have not known equalled;
and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I went on to question
her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness against life
and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her conditions as they
were, there was not one word of bitterness against the individual man,
nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a stern and
almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life and the
conditions of her race being what they were. It was this conversation
which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to regard as
almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever rise in
revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their
relation to their society, however intense their suffering and however
clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their
society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general
attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their
position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or
changing conditions of that society have made woman's acquiescence no
longer necessary or desirable.

Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of
the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that
woman's physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other
directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the
passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the
erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist
(this of course was dealt with by a physiological study of woman's
structure); and also, to deal with the highly probable, though unproved
and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, that it was largely the necessity
which woman was under of bearing her helpless young in her arms while
procuring food for them and herself, and of carrying them when escaping
from enemies, that led to the entirely erect position being forced on
developing humanity.

These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later
development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the
subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing
with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood.

When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the