of the moral code was tightened
for women. It seems to me of very great importance that women should
grasp firmly this truth: the virtue of chastity owes its origin to
property. Our minds fall so readily under the spell of such ideas as
chastity and purity. There is a mass of real superstition on this
question--a belief in a kind of magic in chastity. But, indeed,
continence had at first no connection with morals. The sense of
ownership has been the seed-plot of our moral code. To it we are
indebted for the first germs of the sexual inhibitions which,
sanctified, by religion and supported by custom, have, under the
unreasoned idealism of the common mind, filled life with cruelties and
jealous exclusions, with suicides, and murders, and secret
shames.[143]

[143] This passage is quoted from _The Truth about Woman_, p.
171. I give it here, because its importance seems to me to be
very great.

This brings me to summarise the point we have reached. Father-right
was dependent on purchase-possession and had nothing to do with actual
fatherhood. The payment of a bride-price, the giving of a sister in
exchange, as also marriage with a slave, gained for the husband the
control over his wife and ownership of the children. I could bring
forward much more evidence in proof of this fact that property, and
not kinship, was the basis of fatherhood, did the limits of my space
allow me to do so; such cases are common in all parts of the world
where the transitional stage has been reached. The maternal clan, with
its strong social cohesion is then broken up by the growing power of
individual interests pushing aside the old customs, and bringing about
the restoration of the family. I believe that the causes by which the
father gained his position as the dominant partner in marriage must be
clear to every one from the examples I have given. Fatherhood
established in the first stage of the family on jealous authority,
now, after a period of more or less complete obscuration, rises again
as the dominant force in marriage. The father has bought back his
position as patriarch. On the other hand the mother has lost her
freedom that came with the protection of her kindred, under the social
organisation of the clan. Looking back through the lengthening record,
we find that another step has been taken in the history of the family.
This time is it a step forward, or a step backward? This is a question
I shall not try to answer, for,