[137] _Das Mutterrecht_, p. 20, quoted by Starcke, _op. cit._, pp. 126-127. [138] Wilken, _Das Matriarchat bei den alten Arabern_, p. 26. These facts throw a strong light on the bond between the father and the child, which was a legal bond, not dependent, as it is with us, upon blood relationship. Fatherhood really arose out of the ownership of purchase. And for this reason the father’s right came to extend to all the children of the wife. It does not appear that the husband makes any distinction between his wife’s children, even if they were begotten by other men. Chastity is not regarded as a virtue, and in those cases where unfaithfulness in a wife is punished, it is always because the woman, who has passed from the protection of her kindred, acts without her husband’s permission. Interchange of wives is common, while it is one of the duties of hospitality to offer a wife to a stranger guest. Husbands sometimes, indeed, seek other men for their wives, believing they will obtain sons who will excel all others. Thus of the Arabs we are told, there is one form of marriage according to which a man says to his wife, “Send a message to such a one and beg him to have intercourse with you.” The husband acts in this way in order that his offspring may be noble.[139] When a Hindu marries, all the children previously born from his wife become his own; in Pakpatan, even when a woman has forsaken her husband for ten years, the children she brings forth are divided between her and her lover.[140] Similarly in Madagascar, when a woman is divorced, any children she afterwards bears belong to her husband.[141] Campbell tells us of children born out of wedlock in the Limboo tribe that the father may obtain possession of the boys by purchase and by naming them, but the girls belong to the mother.[142] [139] Wilken, _op. cit._, p. 26. [140] Wade, _Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. VI, p. 196. [141] See _Truth about Woman_, pp. 160-161, for account of Madagascar. [142] _Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal_, Vol. IX, p. 603. I am very certain that it was through property considerations and for no moral causes that the stringency of the moral code was tightened for women. It seems to me of very great importance that women should grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as chastity and purity. There is a mass of real superstition on this question--a belief in a kind of magic in chastity. But, indeed, continence had at first no connection with morals. The sense of ownership has been the seed-plot of our moral code. To it we are indebted for the first germs of the sexual inhibitions which, sanctified, by religion and supported by custom, have, under the unreasoned idealism of the common mind, filled life with cruelties and jealous exclusions, with suicides, and murders, and secret shames.[143]