[245] In this connection, see K. Pearson in the essay already quoted, p. 85 et seq.
[246] “Ancient Irish Sagas,” Century, Jan. 1907.
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUDING REMARKS
My investigation of the mother-age might fitly have terminated with the preceding chapter; but the immense interest which attaches to the subject, and the amount of misconception which prevails regarding the origin and conditions of the maternal family, as well as my own special views upon it, induce me to devote a brief final chapter to a few observations that to me seem to be important.
In my little book (which must be regarded rather as a sketch or design than as a finished work) an attempt has been made to approach the problem of the primitive family from a new and decisive standpoint. I am well aware that in certain directions I have crossed the threshold only of the subjects treated. I hope that at least I have opened up suggestions of many questions on which I could not dwell at length. All this may bring the hesitation that leads to further inquiry. And I believe that those of my readers who will follow out an investigation for themselves in any direction—either in the collecting of maternal customs among existing primitive peoples, or in noting the relics of such customs to be met with in historical records and in folk-lore, will find an ever increasing store of evidence, and that then the discredited mother-age, with its mother-right customs, will become for them what it is for me, a necessary and accepted stage in the evolution of human societies.
Many of the conclusions to which I have come are so completely opposed to those which generally have been accepted as correct, that now, I am at the end of my inquiry it will be well to sum up briefly its result.
The facts I have so rapidly enumerated have a very wide bearing; they serve to destroy the accepted foundations on which the claim for mother-right has hitherto been based. The first stage of the family was patriarchal. All the evidence we possess tends to show that tracing descent through the mother was not the primitive custom. Throughout my aim has been to bring into uniformity the opposing theories of the primeval patriarchate and the maternal family. The current view, so often asserted, and manifestly inspired by a Puritanical ideal, insists that mother-descent arose through uncertain fatherhood, and was connected with an early period of promiscuous relationships between the two sexes. This view has been proved to be entirely wrong. The system of maternal descent was a system framed for order, and had in its origin, at least, no connection with sexual disorder. Further than this, it is certain that marriage in some form has always existed, and that the sexual relationships have never been unregulated. We must renounce any theory of primitive promiscuity. And there is more than this to be said. Such freedom in love and in marriage as we do find in barbarous societies is so strong a proof of friendly feeling and security that it is certain it could not have existed in the first stage of the jealous patriarchate; rather it must have developed at a subsequent period with the growth of the social-tribal spirit, and the liberty of women from the thrall of sexual ownership. In these particulars my opinion differs from all other writers who have sought to establish a theory of matriarchy. I venture to claim that the position of the mother-age has been strengthened, and, as I hope, built up on surer foundations.
Let us cast a brief glance backward over the way that we have travelled.
Our most primitive ancestors, half-men, half-brutes, lived in small, solitary and hostile family groups, held together by a common subjection to the strongest male, who was the father and the owner of all the women, and their children. There was no promiscuity, for there could be no possible union in peace. Here was the most primitive form of jealous ownership by the male, as he killed or drove off his rivals; his fights were the brutal precursors of all sexual restrictions for women. These customs of brute ownership are still in great measure preserved among the least developed races. This explains how there are many rude peoples that exhibit no traces at all of the system of mother-descent. In the lowest nomad bands of savages of the deserts and forests we find still these rough paternal groups, who know no social bonds, but are ruled alone by brute strength and jealous ownership. With them development has been very slow; they have not yet advanced to the social organisation of the maternal clan.