But this theory, like the entire doctrine of secondary sex characters, stands upon a doubtful basis. It has grown up out of a comparison of men and women in very unequal situations. The bodies of men and women whose field of work and type of occupation differ widely have been compared. The man attends to the extra-domestic activities, while the woman is chiefly occupied at home. Bachofen writes: “If a man sits at a spinning-wheel a weakening of body and of soul will inevitably follow.” Charles de Coster in his “Wedding Journey” makes the significant remark: “Work in the fields had given Liska hips like a robust man’s.” Certain of the physical differences between men and women may therefore be sociologically determined rather than due to inborn differences. One may object that the division of labor between the sexes, in which the woman takes the domestic and the man the extra-domestic sphere, is itself determined by inborn sex differences. Even in Socrates’s time it was believed that the nature of the sexes fixed their fields of activity. Man was unquestionably intended for matters which must be attended to outside the house, “while the weak and timid woman was by divine order assigned to the inner work of the home.” After thorough investigation it appears that this hoary theory, which still persists, is false. The division of labor between man and woman corresponds not to an innate difference but to their power-relation. If man dominates he says that woman’s place is the home, and that work outside the home is fit only for men. If woman is dominant then she has the opposite opinion, takes care of business outside the home, and leaves the man to take care of the family and the housekeeping. The ruling sex, whether male or female, always puts the domestic duties on the subordinate sex and takes to itself work outside the home. To-day man is dominant, but there have been many peoples among whom woman was dominant and the rôle of man and woman was the reverse of that common to-day. In ancient Egypt there was a period when women ruled. Herodotus reports that they unnaturally performed “masculine” activities, carried on commerce in the market-place, while the men stayed at home, sewed, and attended to domestic difficulties. To Herodotus, who came from a state where men were dominant, the work of the Egyptian women naturally seemed “male.” In the Talmud Herodotus’s report is confirmed. The children of Israel, it tells us, were disturbed because their men were forced to do women’s work and their women men’s work. In Sophocles’s “Œdipus Kolonos” Œdipus says to his two daughters: “Ha, how they imitate the Egyptians in the manner and meaning of life. There the men stay home and sit at the spinning-wheel, and the women go out to meet the needs of life.” Œdipus also mentions the fact reported also by Herodotus, that only the daughters, not the sons, were compelled in Egypt to support their parents.