Woman in the Past, Present, and Future

The possession of wife and children taught primaeval man to regard a fixed abode as desirable. Hitherto he had ranged through the woods, sleeping by night on trees or in caves, when not driven away by wild beasts. Now he built himself a hut, to which he returned after hunting and fishing. The division of labor began. The man hunted, fished and fought, the woman did the housework, if the expression may be applied to this primitive age. The uncertain returns of the chase, the inclemency of the seasons, forced the family, when it increased in numbers, to tame animals and use their milk and flesh for nourishment. The hunter became a herdsman. The children grew up, intermarried (the conception of incest belongs to a very much later period), and thus gave rise successively to the patriarchal family, the village community, the tribe'r The tribe became divided into many smaller tribes, which, when their numbers increased, quarreled with each other about pasture land. This quarrel for pasture land, the desire to remain in a fruitful and pleasant district, in spite of a thickening population, was the origin of agriculture.

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