The development of the personal relationship in marriage is intimately dependent on patriarchy. Again I am compelled to assert this truth. The establishment of paternity as a working and acknowledged fact was comparatively a late achievement. Under the conditions of the maternal clan, the family was incomplete; it consisted only of the mother and children. This was not a natural condition, and therefore was not permanent. The new stage was ushered in by what may perhaps be called “the social annunciation of paternity.” And this led eventually to the establishment of marriage in the form in which we understand it to-day. Now for the first time the home was firmly founded. The father was the head of the domestic hearth: he was the priest of sacrifice at the domestic altar. His ancestors were present in the spirit and all the members of the family honoured them. And in their presence nothing unclean was tolerated. The wife at the moment when, as a bride, she crossed the threshold of the home, or was carried across it, gave up her own kindred and her own gods. Her husband’s home was now her home, his gods were her gods.[77] So strong an insistence has been made on the evils of the wife’s subjection to the husband, which arose under this system of marriage, that we have lost sight of the enduring benefits that from the beginning to the end must be connected with it. There is much nonsense talked and written about the patriarchal home. Its conditions and rules were slowly established for the workable happiness of all its members, not, as is too often assumed, arbitrarily imposed by the will of men. The duties of the husband and the wife were regulated by tradition, and all the service in the home was a holy service. By fixing the father to the family and securing his protection and toil for the children a future stability as well as fuller happiness was made possible. I do not see that this advantage could have been gained, or can now be maintained, under any other form of marriage. Nature herself seems to condemn man in his capacity as father. So delicate is the bond which binds him to the child compared with the bond which binds the mother, so readily can he be pushed outside the circle of the family, where, as a member apart, he will inevitably seek his own interests and pleasure.