what religion had caused them to be."[13] And again: "We
cannot fail to see that of the two forms of gynaecocracy in
question--religious and civil--the former was the basis of
the latter. Ideas connected with worship came first, and the
civil forms of life were then the result and
expression."[14]

[13] _Ibid._, Intro., p. xiv.

[14] _Ibid._, Intro., p. xv.

We may note in passing, the greater affectability of woman's nature,
which would seem always to have had a tendency to expression in
religio-erotic manifestations. But to build up a theory of matriarchy
on this foundation is strangely wide of the facts. Bachofen adduces
the spirituality of women as the cause of their power. But on what
grounds can such a claim be supported?

It is on the evidence of licentious customs of all kinds and on
polyandry, that he bases his belief in a period of promiscuity. He
regards this early condition of _hetairism_ as a law of nature, and
believes that after its infraction by the introduction of individual
marriage, expiation was required to be made to the Earth Goddess,
Demeter, in temporary prostitution. Hence he explains the widespread
custom of religious prostitution. This fanciful idea may be taken to
represent Bachofen's method of interpretation. There is an
intermediate stage between _hetairism_ and marriage, such as the
group-marriage, held by him to have been practised among barbarous
peoples. "Each man has a wife, but they are all permitted to have
intercourse with the wives of others."[15]

[15] _Das Mutterrecht_, p. 18.

Great stress is laid on the acquisition by women of the benefits of a
marriage law. In the families founded upon individual marriage, which
grew up after the Amazonian revolt, the women, and not the men, held
the first place. Bachofen does not tell us whether they assigned this
place to themselves, or had it conceded to them. Women were the heads
of the families, the children were named after the mother, and not
the father, and all the relations to which rights of succession
attached were traced through women only. All property was held by
women. Moreover, from this headship, women assigned to themselves, or
had conceded to them, the social and political power as well as the
domestic supremacy.[16]

[16] I have taken much of this passage from Mr. McLennan's
criticism of Bachofen's theory, _Studies in Ancient History_,
pp. 319-325.

The auth