The love and care of a parent for his offspring is, after all, ethically speaking, the normal condition. Habitual desertion at too early an age would be fatal. Their dissociation, the abnormal and only one, took place under the influence of the strongest passion in nature, again largely exaggerated in primitive man. But in such an era purely physical characteristics would undoubtedly have also a vast influence in the development of the incident we have tried to depict. The fiercely solitary patriarch who first consented to the intrusive presence within his family circle of another adult male was, as I think we can prove, a being of abnormal physical power as compared with his fellows. For we have assumed satiety in desire to have been a powerful factor in the _innovatory_ struggle we have witnessed. But such satiety implies extensive polygamy, and yet again a large harem composed exclusively of unwilling outside captives is incredible, escape for them in the primeval forest being too facile. Thus the harem would certainly be formed of the female offspring of the tyrant himself. These alone would need no watch or guard, for them the unknown outside world was hostile ground. But again very many adult daughters imply a father stricken in years. That one of such advanced age, in an epoch when force was all in all, could, defiant of rivals, still retain possession of his female kind, presupposes vast enduring physical power, or at least the protective tradition of past exceptional strength, still enduring in terror. If, again, at so early a date in the history of man we may be permitted to surmise any development of the faculty of psychogenesis, then we may again perceive how extreme physical qualities might have facilitated the solution of the problem of the admission of the intrusive male. For it is credible that long undisputed supremacy of power as the result of personal vigour might, in its incredulous contempt of a possible rivalry, show a tolerance of a situation utterly impossible to a weaker nature. [Footnote 1: See Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, ch. ii., 1891. The subject is obscure.] CHAPTER IV EARLIEST EVOLUTION OF LAW Trace between semi-human sire and son.--Consequent distinction taken between female and female, as such--Consequent rise of habit of Brother and Sister Avoidance.--Result, son seeks female mate from without Note by the editor. In what, then, we are willing to concede, must have been exceptional circumstances, may thus have been taken that first step in progress which was to lead to such vast advance. In a development of the _social_ qualities depended the whole future of mankind, and here we seem to see their germ and birth.