Chapter 11

THE MOTHER-AGE CIVILISATION

I.--_Progress from Lower to Higher Forms of the Family Relationship_

"The reader who grasps that a thousand years is but a small period in the evolution of man, and yet realises how diverse were morality and customs in matters of sex in the period which this essay treats of" (_i.e._ _Mother-Age Civilisation_), "will hardly approach modern social problems with the notion that there is a rigid and unchangeable code of right and wrong. He will mark, in the first place, a continuous flux in all social institutions and moral standards; but in the next place, if he be a real historical student, he will appreciate the slowness of this steady secular change; he will perceive how almost insensible it is in the lifetime of individuals, and although he may work for social reforms, he will refrain from constructing social Utopias."--Professor KARL PEARSON.

Our study of the sexual associations among animals has brought us to understand how large a part the gratification of the sex-instincts plays in animal life, equalling and, indeed, overmastering and directing the hunger instinct for food. If we now turn to man we find the same domination of sex-needs, but under different conditions of expression.[97] Man not only loves, but he knows that he loves; a new factor is added, and sex itself is lifted to a plane of clear self-consciousness. Pathways are opened up to great heights, but also to great depths.

We must not, therefore, expect to take up our study of primitive human sexual and familial associations at the point where those of the mammals and birds leave off.[98] We have with man to some extent to begin again, so that it may appear, on a superficial view, that the first steps now taken in love's evolution were in a backward direction. But the fact is that the increased powers of recollection and heightened complexity of nervous organisation among men, led to different habits and social customs, separating man radically in his love from the animals. Man's instincts are very vague when compared, for instance, with the beautiful love-habits of birds; he is necessarily guided by conflicting forces, inborn and acquired. Thus precisely by means of his added qualities he took a new and personal, rather than an instinctive, interest in sex; and this after a time, even if not at first, aroused a state of consciousness in love which made sex uninterruptedly interesting in contrast with the fixed pairing season among animals. Hence arose also a human and different need for sexual variety, much stronger than can ever have been experienced by the animals, which resulted in a constant tendency towards sexual licence, of a more or less pronounced promiscuity, in group marriage and other forms of sexual association which developed from it.

This is so essential to our understanding of human love, that I wish I could follow it further. All the elaborate phenomena of sex in the animal kingdom have for their end the reproduction of the species. But in the case of man there is another purpose, often transcending this end--the independent significance of sex emotion, both on the physical and psychical side, to the individual. It seems to me that women have special need to-day to remember this personal end of human passion. This is not, however, the place to enter upon this question.

I have now to attempt to trace as clearly as I can the history of primitive human love. To do this it will be necessary to refer to comparative ethnography.[99] We must investigate the sex customs, forms of marriage and the family, still to be found among primitive peoples, scattered about the world. These early forms of the sexual relationship were once of much wider occurrence, and they have left unmistakable traces in the history of many races. Further evidence is furnished by folk stories and legends. In peasant festivals and dances and in many religious ceremonies we may find survivals of primitive sex customs. They may be traced in our common language, especially in the words used for sex and kin relationships. We can also find them shadowed in certain of our marriage rites and sex habits to-day. The difficulty does not rest in paucity of material, but rather in its superabundance--far too extensive to allow anything like adequate treatment within the space of a brief and necessarily insufficient chapter. For this reason I shall limit my inquiry almost wholly to those cases which have some facts to tell us of the position occupied by women in the primitive family. I shall try to avoid falling into the error of a one-sided view. Facts are more important here than reflections, and, as far as possible, I shall let these speak for themselves.

In order to group these facts it may be well to give first a rough outline of the periods to be considered--

1. A very early period, during which man developed from his ape-like ancestors. This may be called the pre-matriarchal stage. With this absolutely primitive period we are concerned only in so far as to suggest how a second more social period developed from it. The idea of descent was so feeble that no permanent family groups existed, and the family remains in the primitive biological relation of male, female and offspring. The Botocudos, Fuegians, West Australians and Veddahs of Ceylon represent this primitive stage, more or less completely. They have apparently not reached the stage where the fact of kinship expresses itself in maternal social organisation.[100] A yet lower level may be seen among certain low tribes in the interior of Borneo--absolutely primitive savages, who are probably the remains of the negroid peoples, believed to be the first inhabitants of Malaya. These people roam the forests in hordes, like monkeys; the males carry off the females and couple with them in the thickets. The families pass the night under the trees, and the children are suspended from the branches in a sort of net. As soon as the young are capable of caring for themselves, the parents turn them adrift as the animals do.[101]

It was doubtless thus, in a way similar to the great monkeys, that man first lived. With the chimpanzee these hordes never become large, for the male leader of the tribe will not endure the rivalry of the young males, and drives them away. But man, more gregarious in his habits, would tend to form larger groups, his consciousness developing slowly, as he learnt to control his brute appetites and jealousy of rivals by that impulse towards companionship, which, rooted in the sexual needs, broadens out into the social instincts.

It is evident that the change from these scattered hordes to the organised tribal groups was dependent upon the mothers and their children. The women would be more closely bound to the family than the men. The bond between mother and child, with its long dependence on her care, made woman the centre of the family. The mother and her children, and her children's children, and so on indefinitely in the female line, constituted the group. Relationship was counted alone through them, and, at a later stage, inheritance of property passed through them. And in this way, through the woman, the low tribes passed into socially organised societies. The men, on the other hand, not yet individualised as husbands and fathers, held no rights or position in the group of the women and their children.

2. This leads us to the second period of mother-descent and mother-rights. It is this phase of primitive society that we have to investigate. Its interest to women is evident. Just as we found in our first inquiry that, in the beginnings of sexuality the female was of more importance than the male, so now we shall find society growing up around woman. It is a period whose history may well give pride to all women. Her inventive faculties, quickened by the stress of child-bearing and child-rearing, primitive woman built up, by her own activities and her own skill, a civilisation which owed its institutions and mother-right customs to her constructive genius, rather than to the destructive qualities which belonged to the fighting male.

3. But again we find, as in the animal kingdom, that step by step the forceful male asserts himself. We come to a third transitional period in which the male relatives of the woman--usually the brother, the maternal uncle--have usurped the chief power in the group. Inheritance still passes through the mother, but her influence is growing less. The right to dispose of women and the property which goes with them is now used by the male rulers of the group. The sex habits have changed; endogamous unions, or kin marriages within the clan, have given place to exogamy, where marriage only takes place between members of different groups. But at first the position of the husband and father is little changed; he marries into the wife's group and lives with her family, where he has no property rights or control over his wife's children, who are now under the rule of the uncle.

4. It is plain that this condition would not be permanent. The male power had yet to advance further; the child had to gain a father. We reach the patriarchal period, in which descent through the male line has replaced the earlier custom. Woman's power, first passing to her brother or other male relative, has been transferred to the husband and father. This change of power did not, of course, take place at once, and even under fully developed father-right systems many traces of the old mother-rights persist.

What it is necessary to fasten deeply in our minds is this: the father as the head of the woman and her children, the ruler of the house, was not the natural order of the primitive human family. Civilisation started with the woman being dominant--the home-maker, the owner of her children, the transmitter of property. It was--as will be made abundantly clear from the cases we shall examine--a much later economic question which led to a reversal of this plan, and brought the rise of father-right, with the father as the dominant partner; while the woman sank back into an unnatural and secondary position of economic dependence upon the man who was her owner--a position from which she has not even yet succeeded in freeing herself.

The maternal system of descent is found in all parts of the world where social advance stands at a certain level. This fact, added to the widespread traces the custom has left in every civilisation, warrants the assumption that mother-right in all cases preceded father-right, and has been, indeed, a stage of social growth for all branches of the human race.[102]

I shall not attempt to give the numerous traces of mother-descent that are to be found in the early histories of existing civilised nations, for to do this would entail the writing of the whole chapter on this subject. For the same reason I must reluctantly pass over the abundant evidence of mother-right that is furnished in folk-lore, in heroic legends, and in the fairy stories of our children. These stories date back to a time long before written history; they are known to all of us, and belong to all countries in slightly different forms. We have regarded them as fables; they are really survivals of customs and practices once common to all society. Wherever we find a king ruling as the son of a queen, because he is the queen's husband, or because he marries a princess, we have proof of mother-descent. The influence of the mother over her son's marriage, the winning of a bride by a task done by the wooer, the brother-sister marriage so frequent in ancient mythologies, the interference of a wise woman, and the many stories of virgin-births--all are survivals of mother-right customs. Similar evidence is furnished by mother-goddesses, so often converted into Christian local saints. I wish it were possible to follow this subject,[103] whose interest offers rich rewards. Perhaps nowhere else can we gain so clear and vivid a picture as in these ancient stories and legends of the early powerful position of woman as the transmitter of inheritance and guardian of property.

It may interest my readers to know that mother-descent must once have prevailed in Britain. Among the Picts of Scotland kingship was transmitted through women. Bede tells us that down to his own time--the early part of the eighth century--whenever a doubt arose as to the succession, the Picts chose their king from the female rather than from the male line.[104] Similar traces are found in England: Canute, the Dane, when acknowledged King of England, married Emma, the widow of his predecessor Ethelred. Ethelbald, King of Kent, married his stepmother, after the death of his father Ethelbert; and, as late as the ninth century, Ethelbald, King of the West Saxons, wedded Judith, the widow of his father. Such marriages are intelligible only if we suppose that the queen had the power of conferring the kingdom upon her consort, which could only happen where matrilineal descent was, or had been, recognised.[105] In Ireland (where mother-right must have been firmly established, if Strabo's account of the free sexual relations of the people[106] is accepted) women retained a very high position and much freedom, both before and after marriage, to a late period. "Every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and after marriage "she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or English common law."[107]

Similar survivals of mother-right customs among the ancient Hebrews are made familiar to us in Bible history. To mention a few examples only: when Abraham sought a wife for Isaac, presents were taken by the messenger to induce the bride to leave her home; and these presents were given to her mother and brothers. Jacob had to serve Laban for fourteen years before he was permitted to marry Leah and Rachel,[108] and six further years of service were given for his cattle. Afterwards when he wished to depart with his children and his wives, Laban made the objection, "these daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children."[109] Such acts point to the subordinate position held by Jacob, which is clearly a survival of the servitude required from the bridegroom by the relatives of the woman, who retain control over her and her children, and even over the property of the man, as was usual under the later matriarchal custom. The injunction in Gen.