Without discussing the theory that woman is by nature conservative while man is variable, it is evident that only the women who clung most tenaciously to custom left offspring. The women who varied from the established order by their radical or individualistic characteristics devoted their lives to a cause, usually of a religious nature, and left no offspring. On the other hand, the most aggressive men were most successful in winning wives and were able to transmit their variable qualities, while less aggressive natures tended to leave no descendants. Therefore, much that is attributed to sexual differentiation may be due in part to an environment favorable to a type; to social institutions more favorable to the survival of conservative females and variable males; to the elimination of those females in whom inherited variable tendencies did not remain dormant. It is reasonable to believe that in the primitive horde there existed a degree of equality between the sexes, but “at the beginning of the historical period woman was under the complete subjection of man. She had so long been a mere slave and drudge that she had lost all the higher attributes she originally possessed.”[3] Many forces have played an important part in the evolution of the social status of women. The mother instinct which prompted women to prefer the interests of their children to their own prevented them from concentrating their attention on activities not directly concerned with the care of the children and made it possible to subject a whole sex to an inferior position, irrespective of their numbers, and to make them apparently contented with their lot. The beginning of the race was associated with a keen struggle for subsistence. If promiscuity was the earliest form of mating, the greatest burden of support would naturally devolve upon woman and would handicap her when it came to meeting or evading enemies. But if the father of her children remained as a protector, at least while the child was helpless, this handicap would be removed. Whether she was actually provided with subsistence or protected from enemies in the beginning, we know she did receive protection by virtue of her sex before the race advanced very far in its social development. This protection largely exempted her from warlike struggle, but it also deprived her almost entirely of the communal authority that had its basis in such a struggle. What was a gain to the individual woman was a loss to her sex in social position. The supremacy that one sex, class or race gains over another, does not necessarily arise out of far sighted action, having in view a definite goal. In the early struggle of our race, the loss of power by woman and the gain by man was incidental and not the result of a struggle for authority between the sexes.