ith one
another for mutual protection. Such conditions of primitive socialism
were specially favourable for women. As I have again and again
affirmed, the collective motive was more considered by the mothers,
and must be sought in the organisation of the maternal clan. But since
individual desires can never be wholly subdued, and the male nature is
ever directed towards self-assertion, the clan, organised on the
rights of the mothers, had always to contend with an opposing force.
At one stage the clan was able to absorb the family, but only under
exceptional conditions could such a system be maintained. The social
organisation of the clan was inevitably broken up as society advanced.
With greater security of life the individual interests reasserted
their power, and this undermined the dominion of the mother.

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. When a man marries, he is expected to live in his wife's
village, and his first conjugal duties are to build a house for her,
and hoe a garden for her mother. This gives the woman a very important
position, and it is she, and not the man, who usually proposes
marriage.[107]

[107] Alice Werner, "Our Subject Races", _National Reformer_,
Aug. 1897, p. 169.

In Africa descent through the mother is the rule, though there are
exceptions, and these are increasing. The amusing account given by
Miss Kingsley[108] of Joseph, a member of the Batu tribe in French
Congo, strikingly illustrates the prevalence of the custom. When asked
by a French official to furnish his own name and the name of his
father, Joseph was wholly nonplussed. "My fader!" he said. "Who my
fader?" Then he gave the name of his mother. The case is the same
among the negroes. The Fanti of the Gold Coast may be taken as
typical. Among them an intensity of affection (accounted for partly by
the fact that the mothers have exclusive care of the children) is felt
for the mother, while the father is almost disregarded as a parent,
notwithstanding the fact that he may be a wealthy and powerful man.
The practice of the Wamoimia, where the son of a sister is preferred
in legacies, "because a man's own son is only the son