With a system, however, under which for six thousand years every womanly instinct has been smothered, and under which female activity has been utilized in the service of the strong sex instinct developed in males, the outward expression of female delicacy has doubtless diminished; and, in their weakened mental and physical condition, women, dependent not only for all the luxuries but the necessities of life as well, upon pleasing the men, have doubtless given them, blinded as they have become by the conditions of their own peculiar development, some reason for believing that within the female as within the male, passion has been the ruling characteristic.
Sir John Lubbock, as well as other writers who have dealt with this subject, should bear in mind the fact that female delicacy is a subject which can be satisfactorily discussed only in relation to free and independent women; hence the degree of its manifestation at any time during the past six thousand years may bear little testimony concerning the natural tendencies of women, or the condition of society under a system where female influence was in the ascendency.
To those individuals whose minds are not clouded by prejudice, the fact will doubtless be apparent, that the valuable information which has been presented by three of the foremost writers on the subject of the early relations of the sexes and the origin of marriage, instead of serving as evidence to substantiate the fallacious theories which they have propounded, is found to lie in a direct line with the facts and principles which have been put forward by scientists in the theory of natural development.
A review of the theories set forth by these three writers shows that about the only point on which they agree is the lawlessness, or promiscuity, of early races. As they have all started out with a false premise, it is not singular that none of them has succeeded in setting forth a consistent and reasonable hypothesis to account either for the symbol of wife-capture, or for the early supremacy of women.
EARLY HISTORIC SOCIETY FOUNDED ON THE GENS
The result of recent research into the early organization of society, the growth of the governmental idea, and the development of the family, among tribes in the ascending scale, serve to throw new and unexpected light upon the customs, ideas, institutions, and legends of early historic peoples. Upon investigation it is observed that the construction of Greek and Roman society corresponds exactly with that of existing tribes occupying a lower plane in the scale of development, and that all the institutions of these nations, although in a higher state of advancement, involve the same original principles and ideas.