connection between father and child, though the economic conditions of
primitive life tended powerfully to continue the maternal family long
after intellectual conditions had changed. Again, it has been said that
the patriarchal family owed its existence entirely to a form of
industry, namely, pastoral industry, but, as we have seen, other factors
also operated to produce the patriarchal type of the family, such as
war, religion, and perhaps man's inherent desire to dominate. Moreover,
religion continued the patriarchal family in many cases long after
pastoral industry had ceased to be the chief economic form.

So too with the forms of marriage. While polygyny has been claimed to be
due entirely to economic causes, we have seen that these so-called
economic causes have only been the opportunities for the polygynous
instincts of man to assert themselves. These polygynous instincts of man
have asserted themselves more or less under all conditions of society,
but under certain conditions, when there was an accumulation of wealth,
and especially with the institution of slavery, they had greater
opportunity to assert themselves than elsewhere. Thus the basic cause of
polygyny is not economic, but psychological; and given certain moral and
economic conditions of society, these polygynous tendencies assert
themselves. Monogamy, on the other hand, has in no sense been determined
by economic conditions but is fundamentally determined by the biological
fact of the numerical equality of the sexes. This is doubtless the main
reason why monogamy has been the prevalent form of the family
everywhere. Certain moral and psychological factors which go along with
the development of higher types of culture have, however, powerfully
reenforced monogamy. It is doubtful if economic conditions can to any
extent be shown to have equally reenforced the monogamic life.

Our conclusion must be, then, that while the form of the family and the