Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/42

 Far back in those dim ages, before the dawn of civilisation, animal-man and animal-woman lived in savage happiness, roaming the woods for the fruits and nuts with which they nourished themselves, and slaying for food such animals as came their way with the rude weapons they possessed. No knowledge was there of the inferiority of the one sex or the superiority of the other. The man pursued, the woman was pursued, and thus they came together, under no other ordinance than the sexual emotion, and with no other sanction than their sexual needs, to lose one another in the bush when Nature’s demands had been satisfied.

The savage woman, knowing her condition, was compelled to make preparation. Out of the leaves and branches of trees and such things as she could lay hold of, she constructed a rude temporary shelter for herself during the time of her helplessness, and provided beforehand such food as she might require. Unless the child died, or until it could provide for itself, she preserved the shelter, and into her life crept something withheld from her promiscuous lover, the mother-love with