This may be taken as a picture of the human brute-family. It is clear that the relation of the father to the other group members was not one of kinship, but of power. “Every female in my crowd is my property,” says--or feels--Mr. Atkinson’s patriarchal anthropoid, “and the patriarch gives expression to his sentiment with teeth and claws, if he has not yet learned to double up his fist with a stone in it. These were early days.”[31] [31] _Social Origins and Primal Law_, pp. 4, 21. Westermarck, pp. 13, 42. _Primal Law_, pp. 209-212. We may conclude that there would be many of these groups, each with a male head, his wives and adult daughters, and children of both sexes. It is probable that they lived a nomadic life, finding a temporary home in a cave, rock, or tree-shelter, in some place where the supply of food was plentiful. The area of their wanderings would be fixed by the existence of other groups; for such groups would almost certainly be mutually hostile to each other, watchfully resenting any intrusion on their own feeding ground. A further, and more powerful, cause of hostility would arise from the sexual antagonism of the males. Around each group would be the band of exiled sons, haunting their former hearth-homes, and forming a constant element of danger to the solitary paternal tyrant. This I take to be important as we shall presently see. For, the most urgent necessity of these young men, after the need for food, must have been to obtain wives. This could be done only by capturing women from one or other of the groups. The difficulties attending such captures must have been great. It is, therefore, probable the young men at first kept together, sharing their wives in polyandrous union. But this condition would not continue, the group thus formed would inevitably break up at the adult stage under the influence of jealousy; the captured wives would be fought for and carried off by the strongest males to form fresh groups. In this matter I have given the opinion of Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Lang. They hold that no permanent peaceful union could have been maintained among the groups of young men and their captive wives. Mr. Atkinson gives the reason-- “Their unity could only endure as long as the youthfulness of the members necessitated union for protection, and their immaturity prevented the full play of sexual passion.” And again: “The necessary Primal Law which alone could determine peace within a family circle by recognising a _distinction between female and male_ (the indispensable antecedent to a definition of marital rights) could never have arisen in such a body. It follows if such a law was ever evoked, it must have been from _within the only other assembly in existence_, viz. that headed by the solitary polygamous patriarch.”[32]