"The patriarchal society, of which the Bible and the Oriental monuments offer the model, was the first combination of men. The chief of a tribe lived with his children, his relations, the different generations who have assembled around him. This was the situation of Abraham--of the patriarchs: it is still that of the Arab tribes which perpetuate their manners. The _clan_, of which remains still exist in the mountains of Scotland, and the _sept_ of Ireland, is a modification of the patriarchal society: it is the family of the chief, expanded during a succession of generations, and forming a little aggregation of dependents, still influenced by the same attachments, and subjected to the same authority. But the feudal community was very different. Allied at first to the clan, it was yet in many essential particulars dissimilar. There did not exist between its members the bond of relationship; they were not of the same blood; they often did not speak the same language. The feudal lord belonged to a foreign and conquering, his serfs to a domestic and vanquished race. Their employments were as various as their feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle, with his wife, his children, and relations: the serfs on the estate, of a different race, of different names, toiled in the cottages around. This difference was prodigious--it exercised a most powerful effect on the domestic habits of modern Europe. It engendered the attachments of home: it brought women into their proper sphere in domestic life. The little society of freemen, who lived in the midst of an alien race in the castle, were all in all to each other. No forum or theatres were at hand, with their cares or their pleasures; no city enjoyments were a counterpoise to the pleasures of country life. War and the chase broke in, it is true, grievously at times, upon this scene of domestic peace. But war and the chase could not last for ever; and, in the long intervals of undisturbed repose, family attachments formed the chief solace of life. Thus it was that WOMEN acquired their paramount influence--thence the manners of chivalry, and the gallantry of modern times; they were but an extension of the courtesy and habits of the castle. The word _courtesy_ shows it--it was in the _court_ of the castle that the habits it denotes were learned."--(_Lecture_ iv. 13, 17; _Civilization Européenne._)