DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS: AN ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE MOTHER-RIGHT WITH THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY. The foundation of the Patriarchal theory is the jealous sexual nature of the male. This is important; indeed profoundly significant. The strongest argument against promiscuity is to be gained from what we know of this factor of jealousy in the sexual relationships. “The season of love is the season of battle,” says Darwin. Such was the law passed on to man from millions of his ancestral lovers. The action of this law[29] may be observed at its fiercest intensity among man’s pre-human ancestors. Courtship without combat is rare among all male quadrupeds, and special offensive and defensive weapons for use in these love-fights are found; for this is the sex-tragedy of the natural world, the love-tale red-written in blood. [29] The reader is referred to _The Truth about Woman_, pp. 87-114. In the courtships and perfect love marriages of many birds we find jealous combats replaced by the peaceful charming of the female by the male. This factor of sexual jealousy--the conflict of the male for possession of the female--has not been held in sufficient account by those who regard promiscuity as being the earliest stage in the sexual relationships. That jealousy is still a powerful agent even in the most civilised races is a fact on which it is unnecessary to dwell. This being so, and since the action of jealousy is so strong in the animal kingdom, it cannot be supposed to have been dormant among primitive men. Rather, in the infancy of his history this passion must have acted with very great intensity. Thus it becomes impossible to accept any theory of the community of women in the earliest stage of the family. For inevitably such peaceful association would be broken up by jealous battles among the males, in which the strongest member would kill or drive away his rivals. Great stress is laid, by the supporters of promiscuity, on the danger that such conflicts must have been to the growing community. It is, therefore, held that in order to prevent this check on their development, it was necessary for the male members not to give way to jealousy, but to be content with promiscuous ownership of women. But this is surely to credit savage man with a control of the driving jealous instinct that he could not then have had? What we do not find in the sexual conduct of men, as they now are, cannot be credited as existing in the infancy of social life. We fall into many mistakes in judging these questions of sex; we under-estimate the strength of love-passion--the uncounted ancestral forces dating back to the remote beginnings of life. Doubtless conflicts over the possession of women were frequent from the beginning of man’s history. But these disputes would not lead to promiscuous intercourse, only to a change in the tyrant male, who ruled over the women in the group.