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It is time now to turn to the actual subject of this investigation, in order to see how far the theory of mother-right has been helped by the lengthy examination of the patriarchal group. Since the publication of Das Mutterrecht much has been written that has tended to raise doubts as to the soundness of the matriarchal theory, at least in the form held by its early supporters.
The connection is so completely in accordance with law, that the form taken by the sexual relation in any period may be inferred from the predominance of one or other of these universal ideas in the worship of a people.” Ibid., Intro., p. xxix. Such, in outline, is Bachofen’s famous matriarchal theory.
Strictly speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage. We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through mothers only?
That, however, seems scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. It would seem that we may fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that based on the ambil anak marriage of Sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife's family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate position.
This is evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any circumstances, be as great with the male as with the female. Therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic morality is comparative.
Their civilisation represented the matriarchal stage; their marriage customs expressed the survival of polyandric union; they were tenacious of the lives of their women, and even invested the money which they gained on military service in the purchase of female captives.
The term “matriarchal” takes too much for granted that women at one period ruled. Such a view is far from the truth.
The matriarchal state of society, in which the mother alone ruled the family, came before the patriarchal, and so the reign of the goddess came before that of the god.
The element of reverence in the early German attitude towards women and the privileges which even the married woman enjoyed, so far as Tacitus can be considered a reliable guide, seem to have been the surviving vestiges of an earlier social state on a more matriarchal basis. They are most distinct at the dawn of German history. Cf. Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 231.
To bring these facts home, we must now consider some further examples of mother-right, in order to show how closely these customs are connected with the conditions of the maternal familiar clan. The Yaos of Africa have what may be regarded as a matriarchal organisation. Kinship is reckoned and property is inherited through the mother.
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