ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE 275 



live with his wife does not, indeed, take his 

 meals with her : he visits her, more or less 

 stealthily, at night, and has no concern with 

 the upbringing of the children. In these circum- 

 stances woman, not man, is the pivot of society, 

 and we have the conditions of the matriarchate. 

 Children belong to their mother's family ; women 

 are the titular holders of property, and succession 

 to property tends to go through the female line. 

 We find traces of the matriarchate, subsisting 

 throughout the world, in the cult of female 

 divinities. 



Conditions of warfare introduced momentous 

 changes. Men who captured women in inter- 

 tribal conflicts could hardly be denied the 

 exclusive possession of them, and might retain 

 them as their particular share of the booty. Life 

 elaborates beauty from the humblest origins, and 

 we need not shrink from believing that marriage 

 has sprung from conditions of slavery. There are 

 (ao has already been mentioned) some curious 

 survivals in marriage customs which seem to 

 indicate that the wife was originally a captive 

 woman, who, belonging to an alien tribe, was not 

 subject to the claims of her captor's tribesmen. 

 A leading warrior might not content himself with 

 a single wife : to possess a number of wives might 

 indeed become a sign of dignity. The conditions 

 of peace were reversed, and a multiplicity of wives 

 took the place of a multiplicity of husbands. Man 

 became the pivot of society : the matriarchal 

 gave way to the patriarchal system, and the 

 foundation was laid for family life as we now 

 know it. 



Woman's rule was, then, born of peace, man's 

 rule of war ; and it is amongst warlike races that 

 we find the most despotic developments of the 

 power of the husband and father. Marriage 



