As a matter of fact, we know very little about mankind before the beginning of recorded history. It is true we have various examples of primitive culture existing at the present time, and to a considerable degree they illustrate the different stages of culture through which civilization has passed; but there is no proof that different types of social development have not existed in the earlier periods. These different types may have been out of harmony with the existing environment, and hence were eliminated by the struggle for existence. It does not follow that the eliminated types were inferior to the surviving one, but that they proved less fit in a conflict of certain forces. For instance, a peaceable race has often been at a disadvantage when contending with a warlike and aggressive one, and its institutions have been overthrown in the struggle. What has been true in the conflict of races may be equally true in a conflict for authority between the sexes, if such a conflict ever existed. In a period of history when severe struggles between peoples were common, feminine rule was not compatible with such struggle. The commonly accepted theory is that men hold their position of recognized superiority over women by virtue of an inherent superiority; that sexual differences as measured by world achievements are characteristic of all races. This is the androcentric theory which is described by Ward as “the view that the male sex is primary and the female sex secondary in the organic scheme, that all things center, as it were, about the male, and that the female, though necessary to carrying out the scheme, is only the means of continuing the life of the globe, but it is otherwise an unimportant accessory, and incidental factor in the general result.”[1] This theory has been accepted as a fact for ages; it has been sanctioned by all religions and by custom. In the minds of many people it had been established as one of the certainties removed from the province of doubt. Indeed, so many facts have been brought forth in proof of this theory that in the past to question it simply invited ridicule. According to the androcentric theory man alone is responsible for the development of our social institutions, and woman’s progressive evolution has been one of constant adaptation; never one of innovation. “Woman is the lesser man” and her achievements have always been measured by masculine standards.