ation than among the
animals, on account of the pre-eminent helplessness of the
human child, which entailed a more prolonged infancy.

3. The women and their children would form the group, to
which the father was attached by his sexual needs, but
remained always a member apart--a kind of jealous fighting
specialisation.

4. The temporary hearth-home would be the shelter of the
women; and it was under this shelter that children were born
and the group accumulated its members. Whether cave, or
hollow tree, or some frail shelter, the home must have
belonged to the women.

5. And this state would necessarily attach the mothers to
the home, much more closely than the father, whose desire
lay in the opposite direction of disrupting the home.
Moreover this attachment always would be present and acting
on the female children, who, unless captured, would remain
with the mothers, while it could never arise in the case of
the sons, whose fate was to be driven from the home. Such
conditions must, as time went on, have profoundly modified
the women's outlook, bending their desires to a steady,
settled life, conditions under which alone the germ of
social organisation could develop.

6. Again, the daily search for the daily food must have been
undertaken chiefly by the women. For it is impossible that
one man, however skilful a hunter, could have fed all the
female members and children of the group. We may conceive
that his attention and his time must have been occupied
largely in fighting his rivals; while much of his strength,
as sole progenitor, must have been expended in sex. It is
therefore probable that frequently the patriarch was
dependent on the food activities of his women.

7. The mothers, their inventive faculties quickened by the
stress of child-bearing and child-rearing, would learn to
convert to their own uses the most available portion of
their environment. It would be under the attention of the
women that plants were first utilised for food. Seeds would
be beaten out, roots and tubers dug for, and nuts and fruits
gathered in their season and stored for use. Birds would
have to be snared, shell-fish and fish would be caught;
while, at a later period, animals would be tamed for
service. Primitive domestic ves