“In addition to many other objections which may be urged against the common allegation that the legal disabilities of women are merely part of the tyranny of sex over sex, it is historically and philosophically valueless, as indeed are most propositions concerning classes so large as sexes. What really did exist is the despotism of groups over members composing them.”[104] In the early history of civilization group life was an advantage over individual struggle, and implied the subordination of the interests of the individual to that of the group.[105] This was especially applicable to women. Protection was essential to women in prehistoric times, and the protection afforded by the group gave greater security than that of a single individual. Protection of the female and her offspring was necessary for a rapid increase of population, and numbers were no small element in determining the success of a tribe in competing with enemies. Those individuals most adaptable to group life had the best chance of surviving and of leaving offspring to whom they transmitted those qualities of character which made subordination no hardship. In ancient societies we have instances of women exercising the highest function of the state without affecting the status of women in general. They exercised these functions not as a concession to a sex, but because they represented a group which would lose its prestige unless the right to hold the office in question was granted women. Some of the most conservative nations in respect to the advancement of women, and in which the position of women has been least affected by modern radical tendencies, recognize, or have recognized in the past the right of women to the throne.[106] Whatever rights women possessed as a class grew out of the rights of property. Just as soon as women held property in their own names we find them possessing powers in at least a degree which were attached to the land. “The German custom, which in general was hostile to women, did not interfere in the matters of property and of heredity. The person having no existence proper in the society of that epoch, and social order being summed up in property alone, the claims of land were always weightier than the claims of person.”[107] And what was true of Germany was true to a considerable extent of all the countries of Europe. After giving examples of women taking part in the communal assemblies, Ostrogorski asks the question, “Property having in this way become the exclusive basis of the right, and the personality of the owner being henceforth completely disregarded, is not the difference between the sexes an idle distinction?”[108]