A final consideration needs to be stated. This is that the customs determined by the views of woman (above outlined) fall into line, in a rough-and-ready fashion, with the biological tendency to consecrate the female to the function of motherhood and conserve her energies to that end, leaving other kinds of work to the male. It would be an obvious advantage to a tribe in which woman, relieved from the necessity of physical struggle for food and defence, was able to attend to children and the more peaceful side of family life. Children would not only benefit thereby, but the home with all its civilising, humanising influences would develop more rapidly. Assuming variations in tribal life in this direction, there is no question as to which tribe that would stand the better chance of survival. The development of life has proceeded here as elsewhere by differentiation and specialisation; and while the tasks demanding the more sustained physical exertions were left to man, and to the performance of which his sexual nature offered no impediment, woman became more and more specialised for maternity and domestic occupations. This, I hasten to add, is not at all intended as a plea for denying to women the right to participate in the wider social life of the species. I am trying to explain a social phase, and neither justifying nor condemning its perpetuation. FOOTNOTES: [65] Dr. Iwan Bloch, _The Sexual Life of Our Time_, p. 97. [66] E. D. Starbuck, _The Psychology of Religion_, p. 401. [67] _The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity_, p. 419. [68] _Primitive Paternity_, 2 vols., 1909-10. [69] _The Mystic Rose_, p. 191. [70] See Frazer's _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, pp. 145-63, and Crawley's _Mystic Rose_. [71] _Man and Woman_, p. 15. [72] _Taboo_, pp. 163-4. [73] _Religion of the Semites_, p. 142. [74] A long list of animals that were sacred to various Semitic tribes has been compiled by Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, pp. 194-201. [75] Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, pp. 306-7. [76] _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 427-9. For a fuller discussion of the subject, see _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, by Havelock Ellis, 1901. [77] Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, p. 666. [78] Westermarck, p. 666. [79] Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 150. [80] See the Rev. Principal Donaldson's _Woman: her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome, and among the Early Christians_, bk. iii. [81] For the general influence of these beliefs about woman in determining her social position, see note at the end of this chapter. [82] _The Worship of Priapus_, Pref. p. 9. [83] _The River Congo_, p. 405. [84] A description of the Sakti ceremony is given by Major-General Forlong, _Faiths of Man_, iii. pp. 228-9. [85] Westropp, _Primitive Symbolism_, p. 30. [86] _Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought_, p. 256. [87] Forlong, _Faiths of Man_, iii. p. 66.