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And it is necessary to say at once that there can be no doubt his view of women’s supremacy is greatly exaggerated. Such a rule of women, at the very early stage of society when mother-kin is supposed to have arisen, is not proved, and does not seem probable. Even if it existed, it could not have originated in the way and for the reasons that are credited by the Swiss writer.
Even when descent through the mother is accepted as a phase in social development, it is denied that such descent confers any special rights to women. One reason of this prejudice must be sought in the persistence of the puritan spirit: the objection to mother-kin rests mainly on the objection to loose sexual relationships.
To put it in technical language, the succession to the kingship at Rome and probably in Latium generally would seem to have been determined by certain rules which have moulded early society in many parts of the world, namely exogamy, beena marriage, and female kinship or mother-kin.
Was the foundation of the family based on the authority of the father, or of the mother? If on that of the father, how is mother-kin and mother-right to be explained? These are among the questions that must be answered. Not till this is done, can we establish any theory of mother-descent, or estimate its effect on the status of women. The whole subject is a very wide and complicated one.
McLennan then shows the stages by which the savage would gradually, by reflection, reach a knowledge of the other relationships through the mother, sister and brother relationships, mother’s brother and mother’s sister, and all the degrees of mother-kin, at a time before the father’s relation to his children had been established.
We have here what appears to be a much more reasonable explanation of mother-kin and mother-right than that of Bachofen. Yet many have argued powerfully against it. Westermarck especially, has shown that belief in an early stage of promiscuous relationship is altogether untenable. It is needless here to enter into proof of this.
Thus it appears that descent through the mother was founded on social rights, by which the organisation of the family, such as membership in the group or clan, succession and inheritance were dependent on the mothers. In this sense it is clear that the term mother-power is fully justified; it is nearer to the facts than the term mother-kin.
Whatever the causes of the origin of polyandry, it has no direct connection with mother-kin, although it is sometimes practised by peoples who observe that system. History of Human Marriage, pp. 51-133. It is on this question that my own opinion has been changed, compare The Truth about Woman, p. 120. See next chapter on the Patriarchal Theory.
Doubtless this theory of a higher feminine spirituality is a pleasing one for women but is it true? The insuperable difficulty to its acceptance arises, in the first place, from the fact that we can know nothing at all of the spiritual condition of the human beings among whom mother-kin was held first to have been practised. But we must go further than this in our doubt.
The widespread custom of naming a father after his child has sometimes been supposed to spring from a desire on the father's part to assert his paternity, apparently as a means of obtaining those rights over his children which had previously, under a system of mother-kin, been possessed by the mother.
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