to set up any claim for,
because I do not believe in, the superiority of one sex over the other
sex. Character is determined by the conditions of living. If, as I
conceive, progress came through savage women, rather than through
savage men, it was because the conditions were really more favourable
to them, and drove them on in the right path. However strange it may
appear, their sexual subjection to the fierce jealousy of the
patriarch acted as a means to an end in advancing peace.

The strongest force of union between the women would grow out of the
consciousness of an ever-threatening and common danger. Not only had
the young to be fed and cared for during infancy and childhood, but,
as they grew in years, they had to be guarded from the father, whose
relation to his offspring was that of an enemy. It has been seen how
the sons were banished at puberty from the family group to maintain
the patriarch's marital rights. Doubtless the strength of maternal
love gained in intensity through the many failures in conflicts, that
must have taken place with the tyrant fathers. Would not this
community of suffering tend to force the women to unite with one
another, at each renewed banishment of their sons? May they not, after
the banishment, have assisted their sons in the capture of their
wives? I think it must be allowed that this is possible. And there is
another point to notice. The exiled sons and their captured wives
would each have a mother in the groups they had left. May it not be
conceived that, as time brought progress in intelligence, some
friendly communication might have been established between group and
group, in defiance of the jealous guardianship of the patriarchs?
Thus, through the danger, ever to be feared in every family, there
might open up a way by sympathy to a possible future union.

It is part of my supposition that every movement towards friendship
must have arisen among the women. This is no fanciful idea of my own.
Mr. Atkinson, one of the strongest supporters of the patriarchal
theory, agrees with this view, though he does not seem to see its
origin, and does not follow up its deep suggestion. By him the
movement in advance is narrowed to a single issue of peace between the
father and his sons, but this great step is credited to the influence
of the mothers. I must quote the passages that refer to this--[33]

[33] _Primal Law_, pp. 231-232.

"At the renewed banishment of each of her ma