ve arisen, affecting the conduct and
character of the women: conditions, moreover, that would bring them
inevitably more and more into a position of power.

It remains for me to suggest what I believe these conditions to have
been. Meanwhile let us keep one fact steadily before our minds. The
fierce sexual jealousy of the males had by some means to be
controlled. It is evident that the way towards social progress could
be found only by the peaceful aggregation of these solitary hostile
groups; and this could not be done without breaking down the rule that
strength and seniority in the male conferred upon him marital right
over all the females. In other words, the tyrant patriarch had in some
way to learn to tolerate the presence of other adult males on friendly
terms within his own group. We have to find how this first, but
momentous, step in social progress was taken.

Let us concentrate now our attention on the domestic life of the
women. And first we must examine more carefully the exact conditions
that we may suppose to have existed in these hostile groups. The
father is the tyrant of the band--an egoist. Any protection he affords
the family is in his own interests, he is chief much more than father.
His sons he drives away as soon as they are old enough to give him any
trouble; his daughters he adds to his harem. We may conceive that the
domination of his sexual jealousy must have chiefly occupied his time
and his attention. It is probable that he was fed by his women; at
least it seems certain that he cannot have provided food for them and
for all the children of the group. Sex must have been uninterruptedly
interesting to him. In the first place he had to capture his wife, or
wives, then he had to fight for the right of sole possession.
Afterwards he had to guard his women, especially his daughters, from
being carried off, in their turn, by younger males, his deadly rivals,
who, exiled by sexual jealousy from his own and the other similar
hearth-homes, would come, with each returning year, more and more to
be feared. An ever-recurring and growing terror would dog each step of
the solitary paternal despot, and necessitate an unceasing
watchfulness against danger, and even an anticipation of death. For
when old age, or sickness decreased his power of holding his own, then
the tables would be turned, and the younger men, so hardly oppressed,
would raise their hands against him in parricidal strife.

You will see