In such period and condition the sex-relationship itself had not attained its present spiritual quality.

There was apparently required the sense of ownership on the part of one man to safeguard those women most generally desired from exploitation by all men.

Some legal order in the oppression of women by society had to precede, apparently, the abolition of oppression of women itself; just as to-day the effort is to "humanize war" before we can become wise and strong enough to abolish it.

No social device that the imagination can conceive could be so well fitted to protect motherhood, in an age before justice could give power of self-protection, as was that of the patriarchal family.

The religious aspect of ancestor-worship, the political aspect of the building up of great families from which the state could derive its power and the economic necessity of having the industrial system develop more highly all vocations, combined in the patriarchal system to make the family the main expression of social order and the chief heir of social privilege.