It is evident that Herr Bachofen’s confusion arises from a misconception of the early importance of women. Although perhaps more than any other writer upon this subject he has been able to recognize the true bias of the female constitution, yet, as he has mistaken the relative positions of women and men at the outset of the human career, and as he has been unable to perceive the previously developed influences which governed these relations, he has failed to furnish a satisfactory solution of the problem of the early supremacy of women, which from the evidence adduced, not only by the traditions and mythologies of past ages, but by later developments in ethnology, may not be doubted. Prior to the appearance of mankind on the earth, had there been developed within the female no higher element than that which characterized the male, and had she appeared on the scene of human action as the willing and natural tool of her less-developed male mate, it is plain that she would have been unable to elevate herself to the position of dignity which Bachofen assigns her, and which, until a comparatively recent period in the human career, she had occupied. As among the orders of creation below mankind the structural organism of the male has been materially changed through his efforts to please the female and secure her favours, it is evident that under earlier and more natural conditions of human life, the appetites developed within him were still largely controlled by her will. From logical conclusions to be drawn from the hypotheses of naturalists, it is not likely that at the outset of human life those restrictions on the nature of the male imposed by the female throughout the animal kingdom were suddenly withdrawn, or that the destructive elements which all along the line of progress had been in abeyance to the higher powers developed in organized matter, were immediately and without good cause put in absolute command over the constructive forces of life. With a better knowledge of the past history of mankind, comes the assurance that such was not the case, but, on the contrary, that for thousands of years women were the ruling spirits in human society; that the cohesive quality—sympathy, which is the result of the maternal instinct, and which conserves the highest interests of offspring, was the underlying principle which governed human groups—in fact, that it was the principle which made organization possible and progress attainable. CHAPTER VI THEORIES TO EXPLAIN WIFE-CAPTURE