that of difference. She is
different from man, and this difference involves consequences of the
gravest character, and against which due precautions must be taken.
Superiority and inferiority are much later conceptions; they belong to a
comparatively civilised period, and their development offers an
admirable example of the way in which customs based on sheer
superstitions become transformed into a social prejudice, with the
consequent creation of numerous excuses for their perpetuation. What
that initial prejudice is--a prejudice so powerful that it largely
determines the future status of woman--has already been pointed out. Her
place in society is marked out in uncivilised times by the powerful
superstitions connected with sexual functions. Not that she is
weaker--although that is, of course, plain--nor that she is inferior, a
thought which scarcely exists with uncivilised peoples, but that she is
dangerous, particularly so during her functional crises and in
childbirth. And being dangerous, because charged with a supernatural
influence inimical to others, she is excluded from certain occupations,
and contact with her has to be carefully regulated. I agree with Mr.
Andrew Lang that in the regulations concerning women amongst uncivilised
people we have another illustration of the far-reaching principle of
taboo (_Social Origins and Primal Law_, p. 239) she suffers because of
her sex, and because of the superstitious dread to which her sex nature
gives birth.

Of course, at a later stage other considerations begin to operate.
Where, for example, as amongst the Kaffirs, women are not permitted to
touch cattle because of this assumed spiritual infection, and where a
man's wealth is measured by the cattle he possesses, it is easy to see
that this would constitute a force preventing the political and social
equality of the sexes. The pursuits from which women were primarily
excluded for purely religious reasons would in course of time come to be
looked upon as man's inalienable possessions. And here her physical
weakness would play its part; for she could not take, as man could
withhold, by force. Even when the primitive point of view is discarded,
the social prejudices engendered by it long remains. And social
prejudices, as we all know, are the hardest of all things to destroy.

A final consideration needs to be stated. This is that the customs
determined by the views of woman (above outlined) fall into line, in a
rough