Note 29 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

The Australian woman discharges the duties of a wife and a mother, and besides, to some extent, the work that among other peoples falls to the share of the slave; therefore she is not a slave. If she were, her place, in a slave-keeping society, would be entirely occupied by the slave; but no one will doubt whether in any such society there are wives. In an evolutionary sense the slave and the Australian wife differ in this: the Australian wife is a not-yet-differentiated organ, performing two functions, which at a later stage of development will be incumbent on two quite distinct organs: the peculiar function of a wife, and the labour of a slave. This reasoning is not an assertion a priori, by a biological parallelism, of a development that must actually have taken place; it is only intended to show the fundamental difference existing between wives, however abject their condition, and slaves29.