inquirers, who have sought the
truth in this matter. Probably the explanation is to be found in this:
they have been interested mainly in one side of the family--the male
side; I am interested in the other side--in the women members of the
group. The position of women has seemed of primary importance to very
few. Bachofen is almost alone in placing this question first, and his
mystical far-fetched hypothesis has failed to find acceptance.

Let me now, in order to make the position clearer, continue a rough
grouping of the supposed conditions in this primordial family, with
all its members in subjection to the common father. It may be argued
that we can know nothing at all about the family and the position of
the two sexes at this brute period. This is true. The conditions are,
of course, conjectural, and any suggested conclusions to be drawn from
them must be still more so. Yet some hypothesis must be risked as a
starting-point for any theory that attempts to go so far back in the
stream of time.

We may suppose, then, that mankind aboriginally lived in small
families in much the same way as the great monkeys: we see the same
conditions, for instance, among the families of gorillas, where the
group never becomes large. The male leader will not endure the rivalry
of the young males, and as soon as they grow up a contest takes place,
and the strongest and eldest male, by killing or driving out the
others, maintains his position as the tyrant head of the family.[30]

[30] Darwin, _Descent of Man_. Wallace, _The Malay
Archipelago_, and Brehm, _Thierleben_.

This may be taken as a picture of the human brute-family. It is clear
that the relation of the father to the other group members was not one
of kinship, but of power. "Every female in my crowd is my property,"
says--or feels--Mr. Atkinson's patriarchal anthropoid, "and the
patriarch gives expression to his sentiment with teeth and claws, if
he has not yet learned to double up his fist with a stone in it. These
were early days."[31]

[31] _Social Origins and Primal Law_, pp. 4, 21. Westermarck,
pp. 13, 42. _Primal Law_, pp. 209-212.

We may conclude that there would be many of these groups, each with a
male head, his wives and adult daughters, and children of both sexes.
It is probable that they lived a nomadic life, finding a temporary
home in a cave, rock, or tree-shelter, in some place where the supply
of food was plentiful. The area of their wan