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Updated: May 8, 2025
As we have already seen, Bachofen, Morgan, and others discovered a condition of human society in which relationship was traced through mothers only, and in which property or authority descended along the female line rather than along the male line.
It is, of course, impossible to accept this statement, as Bachofen does, as an historical account of what happened through the agency of women at the time of which he is treating. Yet, we can find a suggestion of truth that is eternal.
Bachofen here suggests a pre-matriarchal period in which the elementary family-group was founded on and held together by a common subjection to the oldest and strongest male. This is the primordial patriarchal family. Then come the questions: Can we accept mother-right? Are there any reasonable causes to explain the rise of female dominance?
Bachofen believes that this formed a fresh basis for a second gynæcocracy. He compares the Amazonian period of these later days with that in which marriage was first introduced, and finds that “the deep religious impulse being absent, it was destined to fail, and give place to the spiritual Apollonic conception of fatherhood.” Ibid., p. 85.
This mystical religious element, which is the essential part of Das Mutterrecht, is closely connected by Bachofen with the power of women.
Much of his work and his belief in women must be regarded as the rhapsodies of a poet. And yet, it is the poet who finds the truth. The poetic spirit is, in one sense, the most practical of all. Bachofen saw the fact of mother-power, though not why it was the fact, and he enfolded his arguments in a garment of pure fiction.
McLennan, on the other hand, regarded the custom as due to uncertainty of paternity the children were called after the mother because the father was unknown. Let us concentrate our attention on the Das Mutterrecht of Bachofen, whose work as the great champion of matriarchy claims our most careful consideration.
McLennan brought forward his theory almost simultaneously with that of Bachofen. The basis of his view is a belief in an ancient communism in women. He holds that the earliest form of human societies was the group or horde, and not the family.
No two ways could well be further apart than those by which these two men arrived at the same conclusion. Both accept an early period of promiscuous sexual relationships. But Bachofen found the explanation of mother-descent in the supremacy of women, and believed a matriarchate to have been established by them in a moral revolt against such hetaïrism. Mr.
One great source of confusion has arisen through the acceptance by the supporters of the matriarchate of the view that men and women lived originally in a state of promiscuity. This is the opinion of Bachofen, of McLennan, of Morgan, and also of many other authorities, who have believed maternal descent to be dependent on the uncertainty of fatherhood. It will be remembered that Mr.
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