cted by sexual interest to which is later added
social custom and religious sanction. Early civilization centers around
the woman, so that she becomes in some degree the center of the
home-staying group. In primitive civilization man takes over woman's
most important activities; but she gains a fixed position, protected,
though still further enslaved, by political necessities.

But with the increase of wealth, whether in terms of money, slaves, or
trade, woman found herself subject to a fourth form of enslavement more
subtly dangerous than brute force, lust, or political and religious
institutionalism. This was the desire of man to protect her and make her
happy because he loved her. He put golden chains about her neck and
bracelets on her arms, clothed her in silks and satins, fed her with
dainty fare, gave her a retinue of attendants to spare her fatigue, and
put her in the safest rear rooms of the habitation. But it is foolish to
talk of conscious enslavement in this connection. Rich men and luxurious
civilizations have always enslaved women in the same way that rich,
fond, and foolish mothers have enslaved their children, by robbing them
of opportunity, by taking away that needful work and that vital
experience of real life which alone can develop the powers of the soul.

Thus in the Periclean age in Greece, in the Eastern Kingdoms established
by Alexander, in Imperial Rome, in the later Italian Renaissance, in
France under Louis XIV and Louis XV, in England under the Stuart kings,
and in many centers of our own contemporary world, women have given up
their legitimate heritage of work and independent thought for trinkets,
silks, and servants, and have quickly degenerated, like the children of
rich and foolish mothers, into luxury-loving parasites and
playthings.[18]

[18] OLIVE SCHREINER, _Woman and Labor_, Chapters on Parasitism. New
York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1911.

To maintain this luxurious setting for their mistresses, whether wives
or irregular concubines, men of the Occident have generally been driven
to ever fiercer struggle with their fellows. Thus a Pericles, at the
zenith of his powers, facing difficulties which strained and developed
all his forces, had for his legitimate wife a woman, bound hand and
foot by conventions and immured in her house in Athens. But a man is
only half a complete human being, and the other half cannot be furnished
by a weak and ignorant kept-woman, no matter how legal the