Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE PATRIARCHAL OR PATRONYMIC FAMILY Society, in passing from a metronymic to a patronymic social organization, was deeply influenced by the economic struggle for foods. In the earlier period humanity existed on what nature spontaneously furnished, and progress consisted in securing foods through increasing cunning and invention. In the transition to the later period there was a fierce struggle for existence, finally changing to a more peaceful civilization as man acquired the art of multiplying foods through domestication of animals and then through agriculture. In the transitional period human savagery had full expression. Ruthless wars of extermination and cannibalism marked the period and surplus population within the group was put to death. Social regulations placed a ban on the marriage of young men, resulting in polyandry,1 prostitution, and in polygyny2 among the older powerful 1 A marriage system in which a female has several husbands. 1 A marriage system in which a male has several wives. chiefs. Women began to lose their importance in the social order and to become subordinated to the males. This pressure of population on food supplies might easily have become more severe, social regulations far more rigorous, and cruelty more terrible, had not civilization taken the decisive step that ushered in patriarchal civilization. The principle that brought about this ' social "mutation" was the intrusion of intellectual guidance over nature in its production of foods. When man had become familiar with a reasonable explanation of fatherhood and birth, it was but a step, though a long one, to apply this knowledge to the more rapid multiplication of animals, suitable for foods, by selecting and taming species capable of domestication. Henceforth man, ...