The spirit of the time has corresponded to masculine achievement and women’s progress has been measured by their success in adaptation. It is of little consequence that women excel in industry in a period of military precedence, or socially in an epoch of industrialism, since the standard of measurement is fixed by masculine performance. The ideal to be attained by either sex is always a masculine one. FOOTNOTES: [4] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, I, pp. 10-11. Ed. 4. [5] Ward, _Pure Sociology_, p. 360. [6] Quoted by Thomas, _Sex and Society_, p. 125. [7] Mason, _Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture_, pp. 2-3. [8] Thomas, _Sex and Society_, p. 134. [9] Westermarck, _The Position of Women in Early Civilization_, _The American Journal of Sociology_, Nov., 1904, p. 410. [10] Westermarck, _The Position of Women in Early Civilization_, The American Journal of Sociology, Nov., 1904, p. 411. [11] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, I, p. 747. [12] Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_, p. 96. CHAPTER II THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES The world furnishes many examples of the rise and decline of civilizations before our era. Their art and literature often show social institutions comparing favorably with those of modern times. Almost without exception their decline can be traced to the invasion of people of less culture but greater warlike propensities. The institutions of these warlike peoples are the ones which survived, and upon which rest our modern institutions. As we have seen the primitive society, militancy favors a greater differentiation of sex status and of work than industrialism. In the primarily industrial nations, men’s and women’s work often overlap, and although we can recognize a sex division of work, the line constantly shifts to the economic advantage of women. In a militant society, the women of the higher classes are often shown a deference unknown in the lower classes, but this deference is not shown them as a sex alone, but because of their relation to those who stand highest in the state. Where the women of the higher classes enjoy rights and privileges other than those reserved to them by the state, they are bestowed upon the individual alone, and not upon the sex in general. They have their basis in family ties making the family a unit in its economic interests, as well as in its social and political interests. No matter how conservative men may be in their attitude toward the political, social, and industrial equality of men and women, their prejudices do not weigh against family interests, or apply to the females of their own families. Militant types of society have not recognized the political rights of women as women. But for all that their women have often played important roles in history by virtue of the power coming to them through some male relative who was more anxious to delegate his power to them than to see it pass to strangers, or to men of remoter blood relationship.