Although the facts relative to existing undeveloped races, which have been laid before the reading public through the patience and industry of investigators in this particular branch of inquiry, have been of incalculable value as furnishing a foundation for a correct understanding of the origin of the customs, manners, ceremonies, governments, languages, and systems of consanguinity and affinity of a primitive race, and although without these efforts little knowledge of the early history of mankind could be obtained, yet, as a majority of the theories built upon these observations have been based on long-established prejudices relative to the earliest conditions surrounding human society and the forces by which it was controlled, many false conclusions have been the inevitable result. We have seen that owing to the ascendency which the masculine element in human society gained during the period designated as the Latter Status of barbarism, the popular ideas evolved since that time concerning the origin and development of government, social usages, religion, and law, have been in accordance with the then established assumption that within the male organism lies not only the active, aggressive element, but the progressive principle as well. It is not, therefore, singular that at the present time all the lines of investigation which are being directed toward man in a primitive state, or which are being conducted for the avowed purpose of ascertaining the successive steps by which our social, civil, and religious institutions have been reared, should continue to be carried on under the _a priori_ assumption that the male organism is by nature superior to that of the female. As in all the theories relative to the development of species the male is the principal factor, so in the theories brought forward to explain the development of human institutions the female has played only an insignificant part; but, as all later facts bearing upon this subject furnish indisputable evidence of the early importance of the female element, not only among the lower orders of life but under earlier human conditions as well, we may reasonably expect from these data the establishment, in the not distant future, of a complete chain of evidence in support of a more rational and consistent theory of development than has yet been put forth, not only of the origin of the higher faculties, but of the organization of human society and the growth of its various institutions.