rial as well as a
kinship basis, and have proved the existence of an "economic
matriarchy." And further even than this, we have found women the sole
possessors of accumulated wealth, and noted that, under the favourable
conditions of such a "pecuniary matriarchy," they are able to obtain a
position in learning and the arts excelling that of the men. We have
even seen goddesses set above the gods, and women worshipped as
deities.

Now I submit to the judgment of my readers--what do these examples of
mother-right show, if not that, broadly speaking, women were the
dominant force in this stage of the family. No doubt too much
importance may be attached to the idea of women ruling. This is an
error I have tried to guard against. 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 gynaecocracy. But this does not weaken at all my position.
I maintain that such customs of courtship, marriage and divorce, of
property inheritance and possession, and of the domestic and social
rights, as those we have seen in the cases examined, afford conclusive
proof of women's power in the maternal family. If this is denied, the
only conclusion that suggests itself to me is that, those who seek to
diminish the power of mother-right have done so in reinforcement of a
preconceived idea of the superiority of the man as the natural and
unchanging order in the relationships of the sexes. One suspects
prejudice here. To approach this question with any fairness, it is
absolutely essential to clear the mind from the current theories
regarding the family. The order is not sacred in the sense that it has
always had the same form. It is this belief in the immutability of our
form of marriage and the family which accounts for the prejudice with
which this question is approached. The modern civilised man cannot
easily accustom himself to the idea that in the maternal family the
dominion of the mother was regarded as the natural, and, therefore,
the right and accepted order of the family. It is very difficult for
us even to believe in a relationship of the mother and the father that
is so exactly opposite to that with which we are accustomed.

CHAPTER VIII

MOTHER-RIGHT CUSTOMS AND THE TRANSITION TO FATHER-RIGHT

Endeavour has been made in the previous chapt