446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



race, religious beliefs, surviving customs and traditions, degree of 

 culture, etc. ; and doubtless the many cooperating causes give rise to 

 incongruities which qualify somewhat the conclusion drawn. But, on 

 summing up the several arguments, we shall, I think, see that conclu- 

 sion to be substantially true. 



The least entangled evidence is that which most distinctly forces 

 this conclusion upon us. Remembering that nearly all simple un- 

 civilized societies, having chronic feuds with their neighbors, are mili- 

 tant in their activities, and that their women are extremely degraded 

 in position, the fact that in the exceptional simple societies which are 

 peaceful and industrial there is an exceptional elevation of women 

 almost alone suffices as proof: neither race, nor creed, nor culture, 

 being in these cases an assignable cause. 



The connections which we have seen exist between militancy and 

 polygyny, and between industrialness and monogamy, present the 

 same truth under another aspect ; since polygyny necessarily implies 

 a low status of women, and monogamy, if it does not necessarily im- 

 ply a high status, is an essential condition to a high status. 



Further, that approximate equalization of the sexes in numbers 

 which results from diminishing militancy and increasing industrial- 

 ness, conduces to the elevation of women ; since, in proportion as the 

 supply of males available for carrying on social sustentation increases, 

 the labor of social sustentation falls less heavily on the females. And 

 it may be added that the societies in which the surplus of males thus 

 made available undertakes the harder labors, and so, relieving the 

 females from undue physical tax, enables them to produce more and 

 better offspring, will, other things equal, gain in the sti'uggle for ex- 

 istence with societies in which the women are not thus relieved by the 

 men : whence an average tendency to the spread of societies in which 

 the status of w^omen is improved. 



There is the fact, too, that the despotism distinguishing a com- 

 munity organized for war, is essentially connected with despotism in 

 the household ; while, conversely, the freedom which characterizes pub- 

 lic life in an industrial community, naturally characterizes also the ac- 

 companying private life. In the one case compulsory cooperation pre- 

 vails in both ; in the other case voluntary cooperation prevails in both. 



By the moral contrast we are shown another face of the same fact. 

 Habitual antagonism with, and destruction of, foes, sears the sym- 

 pathies ; while daily exchange of products and services among citi- 

 zens, puts no obstacle to increase of fellow-feeling. And the altruism 

 which grows with peaceful cooperation, ameliorates at once the life 

 without the household and the life within the household.' 



' Too late to be inserted in its proper place, and so late that I have canceled stereo- 

 type plates to bring it in, I have met vrith a striking verification in the just-issued work 

 of Mr. W. Mattieu Williams, F. R. A. S., F. C. S., "Through Norway with Ladies." He 

 ~ says, " There are no people in the world, however refined, among whom the relative posi- 



