If we pause for a moment to seek the reason why the Egyptians had, as Herodotus so strikingly states, established in their domestic relationships laws and customs different from the rest of mankind--the answer is easy to find. The Egyptians were an agricultural and a conservative people. They were also a pacific race. They would seem not to have believed in that illusion of younger races--the glory of warfare. I have seen it stated that in battle they were known for the habit of running away. This may, of course, be thought to count against them as a people. It depends entirely on the point of view that is taken. But if, as I believe, the fighting activities belong to an early and truly primitive stage of social development, then the view would be very different. Races begin with the building up of society, then there follows the period of warfare--the patriarchal period which leads on to a later stage, much nearer in its working to the first--a final period, as Havelock Ellis says, "the stage of fruition." Woman's place and opportunity for the true expression of the powers that are hers belong to the first and last of these stages; in the middle stage she must tend to fall into a position of more or less complete dependence on the fighting male. Here is, I think, the explanation of the power and privilege of the Egyptian women. The Egyptians, due to their pacific and conservative temperament, seem to have escaped the patriarchal stage, and passed on from the first to final stage. Through the long centuries of their civilisation they devoted their energies to the building up and preserving of their social organisation. Thus, it may be, came about that solving of the problem of the sexes, which they among all races seem to have accomplished. The relationships of their family life and domestic administration were entirely civilised and humane.