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I wish to emphasise this point. Much of the discredit that has fallen on the matriarchate has arisen, I am certain, through the impossibility of accepting Bachofen’s mythical account of its origin. This great supporter of women was a dreamer, rather than a calm and impartial investigator. Founding his main theory on assumptions, he asks us to accept these as historical facts.
In Bachofen’s opinion this triumph of fatherhood was the final salvation. This is what he says “It was the assertion of fatherhood which delivered the mind from natural appearances, and when this was successfully achieved, human existence was raised above the laws of natural life.
My aim throughout has been to establish mother-right, not mother-rule. I believe it is only by an extraordinary power of illusion that we can recognise, in the favourable position of women under mother-descent Bachofen’s view of an Amazonian gynæcocracy. But this does not weaken at all my position.
Hence it has been necessary first to clear the way of the old errors. Bachofen’s interpretation is too fanciful to find acceptance. Will any one hold it as true that the change came because women willed it?
It will be my aim to give a quite simple, and even commonplace, explanation of the rise of mother-descent and mother-right in place of the spiritual hypothesis of Bachofen. The History of Human Marriage, p. 105. It will be well, however, to examine further Bachofen’s own theory. It is his opinion that the first Amazonian revolt and period of women’s rule was followed by a second movement
He affirms that these groups can have had no idea of kinship, and that the men would hold their women, like their other goods, in common, which is, of course, equal to a general promiscuity. There he agrees with Bachofen’s belief in unbridled hetaïrism, but a very different explanation is given of the change which led to regulation, and the establishment of the maternal family. According to Mr.
He regards this early condition of hetaïrism as a law of nature, and believes that after its infraction by the introduction of individual marriage, expiation was required to be made to the Earth Goddess, Demeter, in temporary prostitution. Hence he explains the widespread custom of religious prostitution. This fanciful idea may be taken to represent Bachofen’s method of interpretation.
I have taken much of this passage from Mr. McLennan’s criticism of Bachofen’s theory, Studies in Ancient History, pp. 319-325. The authority for this remarkable theory is sought, with great ingenuity and patience, in the fragmentary accounts of barbarous people, and in an exhaustive study of heroic stories and religious myths. Bachofen argues powerfully for the acceptance of these myths.
Bachofen’s way of applying mythical tales has no scientific method; for one thing, abstract ideas are added to primitive legends which could only arise from the thought of civilised peoples.
This little book of fascinating reading is the best and easiest way of studying Bachofen’s theory. Bachofen strongly insists on the religious element in all early human thought. He believes that the development of the primitive community only advanced by means of religious ideas. “Religion,” he says, “is the only efficient lever of all civilisation.
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