ever, to
consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social
inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and
developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain,
intellectually and ethically, from that patriarchal order, and what
did he give, not only in protection of wife and children but toward
their moral development in social life?

The effect of unlimited power over another is generally worse for the
one who wields than for the one who is subjected to that power, and
the faults of men have their deepest origin in the family order that
gave all its members into his complete control. Man's faults of
dogmatism, of selfish domination, of sacrifice of personal life to
further desired political or economic ends, have roots in the
patriarchal family. Man's careless misuse of his own moral ideals for
purposes of ambition was certainly fostered by this sense of ownership
of women and children with legal power to use them for pleasure or
profit.

Something else, however, came to man in and through the patriarchal
system. Society, that gave him liberty to rule the family, rigidly
required of him that such rule should be in the social interest, as
that interest was then understood.

It was obviously for the interest of society that women should be
chaste, in order not only that a man might know his own children but
that the family line and inheritance should be preserved from
insecurity. A man's infidelity to the marriage vow might seem to do no
perceptible harm if practised outside the family circle, but woe to
him if he trespassed upon the family ownership of another man.

There might be more than one wife acknowledged as secondary in status
or a mere concubine slave to help in domestic duties while giving
pleasure to the head of the family, but there was early a social
demand for one chief wife whose offspring should inherit the family
power. Although even in this fixed demand there were loopholes of
"legal fiction of adoption" by which some favorite child not of the
actual line of inheritance might be given the place of honor and
control. Again, if the father under the patriarchal system was the
recognized economic master he was also legally held to the financial
support of wife and child. In the collective family life his
obligation extended far through the line of kinship and of alliance by
marriage, and to-day in many Oriental countries the father may be
bound to