In woman, with almost all creatures which give suck to their young, and unlike birds of prey and many orders of insects and sea creatures, the human female tends to be less heavy in build than her male equivalent; and with an equal vitality and a strength of endurance and persistent activity greater than that of the male in some directions, she is not yet as a rule his equal in muscular strength. In a society in which physical force ruled exclusively, and the most muscularly powerful males were of necessity dominant even over their weaker fellow males, woman, less powerful to hold, to strike, and to kill, was also of necessity almost everywhere under the physical control of the male, and often more or less enslaved. But the part she played in the communal life was all important: as a social labourer she often, if not always, exceeded the male in value. As far as physical activity can expand the mind and body, everything tended to increase her vitality and intelligence; and undoubtedly in the primitive societies of the past, as in those still existing at our own day, the woman was found in thoughtfulness and general intelligence the equal or superior of man to an extent surprising to those accustomed to the wide division between the male and female in those classes of modern societies where the male absorbs the larger portion of social labour and the mental training required by it. Undoubtedly woman suffered, and often suffered heavily, in those primitive societies, but she must always have been clearly conscious, as was the Bantu woman quoted, of the inevitableness of her position. She may have cried out against fate in moments of bitterness, but she must always have recognized her own social importance, and even the anti-sociality of attempting to shirk her obligations, upon the fulfilment of which depended the very life of the society. Had there arisen a Woman's Movement in any tribe, and had it been successful, that tribe would have become instantly extinct. The labours of war and the chase were inconsistent with the incessant child-bearing and rearing essential where life is precarious; she could not generally have competed on equal terms with men in war and the chase, when these depended on strength of arm and muscle in wielding spear and axe; she would have forsaken the higher and equally essential labours of society for those for which she was less fitted, and the result must have been the destruction of her society. Not only was a Woman's Movement impossible, but had it been possible it would have been anti-social. Her labour formed the solid superstructure on which her society rested; her submission to her condition was the condition of social health and even national and tribal survival. She suffered and knew she suffered, but she knew also that her condition was inevitable and her society was upheld by her toil.