e and perforce, but the immediate interest of the
man is in the woman, through the power of her sexual attractiveness,
and his interest in the child is secondary and mediated through her.
This relation being a constant one, having its roots in the nature
of sex rather than in the uncertainty of parentage, we may safely
conclude that the so-called "mother-right" has everywhere preceded
"father-right," and was the fund from which the latter was evolved.

But while it is natural that the children and the group should grow up
about the mother, it is not conceivable that woman should definitely
or long control the activities of society, especially on their motor
side. In view of his superior power of making movements and applying
force, the male must inevitably assume control of the life direction
of the group, no matter what the genesis of the group. It is not
a difficult conclusion that, if woman's leaping, lifting, running,
climbing, and slugging capacity is inferior to man's, by however
slight a margin, her fighting capacity is less in the same degree;
for battle is only an application of force, and there has never been
a moment in the history of society when the law of might, tempered by
sexual affinity, did not prevail. We must then, in fact, recognize
a sharp distinction between the law of descent and the fact of
authority.

The male was everywhere present in primitive society, and everywhere
made his force felt. We can see this illustrated most plainly in the
animal group, where the male is the leader, by virtue of his strength.
There is also a stage of human society which may be called the
prematriarchal stage, from the fact that ideas of kinship are so
feeble that no extensive social filiation is effected through this
principle, in consequence of which the group has not reached the
tribal stage of organization on the basis of kinship, but remains in
the primitive biological relation of male, female, and offspring. The
Botocudos, Fuegians, Eskimos, West Australians, Bushmen, and Veddahs
represent this primitive stage more or less completely; they have
apparently not reached the stage where the fact of kinship expresses
itself in maternal organization. They live in scattered bands, held
together loosely by convenience, safety, and inertia, and the male
is the leader; but the leadership of the male in this case, as among
animals, is very different from the organized and institutional
expression of the male force in