The most ancient form of marriage under father-right was polygamy. Wives and children were a source of wealth in primitive communities. As a rule there was a principal wife for the procreation of legitimate children, but in addition a wealthy man had several subordinate wives or concubines. Polygamy has always been dependent on the possession of property. The position of each wife and that of her children was fixed by custom, sometimes enforced by law; in no case was a man free from obligations in regard to any woman who had “been to him as a wife”; even an unfruitful and childless woman could not be cast aside without provision being made for her. It is important to remember this. However distasteful the idea of legalised polygamy must be, and I believe it is distasteful to the majority of women and men (and this not from ethical reasons, but on account of deep and instinctive desires), it is certain that an open recognition of unions outside of marriage does prevent an escape from sexual responsibility on the part of men. I shall consider this question in fuller detail in a later chapter,[78] just now we are concerned with the development of marriage. Out of this patriarchal polygamy monogamic marriage gradually arose. The long upward process by which the change was accomplished cannot be stated here. One factor I would emphasise, as its force has never, I think, been sufficiently recognised. Polygamy tends to disappear with the development of the conception of fatherhood. As I have asserted already, the child is bound to its mother and belongs to her whatever the form of marriage, but the same force does not act in the case of the father. The child belongs to him much more closely under monogamy than under polygamy or any other form of marriage. Now men do want the possession of their children. Thus a desire to have many children by several wives gives place to the desire to have a closer connection with fewer children born of one loved wife. As the marriage relations become more firmly established the partners in each union are held more closely to each other and to their children, and are pledged to greater purity of life. There were, of course, many causes that contributed to this result. Chastity, first imposed upon the wife because she was the property of her husband and might transgress this rule only with his permission, came in time to bind men, though for a different reason. For the limits set to the sexual freedom of women acted also on them, since they were thus deprived of the means of obtaining women for themselves, without violating the rights of other men.