W.H.R.Rivers

“ This book consists of republished essays and its reissue in book form is fully justified by the thread of connection which runs through the whole in the idea that many features of human society are to be explained by a fundamental difference in the constitution of men and women, a difference of which the most summary expression is that man is more motor and woman more stationary. ”

“ The author's treatment raises many interesting questions as to the part which psychological explanations are to play in primitive sociology, and the factors discussed by him must be taken into account by sociologists, though it is very doubtful whether they alone can have brought into existence the institutions of exogamy and mother-right. ”

“ The most important parts of the book are those dealing with the influence of this difference on forms of social organisation, and the author refers the origin of exogamy and the wide prevalence of matrilineal descent to the greater restlessness of man and the more stationary habits of woman. ”