And the governing—worse governed or better under theocratic queens than under kings or under mobs? Not worse, I think. Executive ability seems woman’s in surprising degree where she has had the opportunity to exercise it; often where the exercise of it has been unrecognized, because attributed to the male—her man—who stood before the world, or who sat upon the throne.
As executive and ruler in miniature—executive in the household and ruler over the children, since house, in any form, has existed or maternal responsibility, however elementary, been recognized—executive ability seems to have been developed in women; just as through child-bearing and rearing—or psycho-physical potentiality for this—intellectual creative faculty has, with the normal woman, remained dormant.
So much for wondering over possible might-have-beens in connection with matriarchal government, if this system in some supposititious long-ago ever existed in Europe.
As for the general standards of right and wrong—standards as they exist among the aborigines of Formosa, compared with standards which exist to-day in Europe: Would it be more agreeable to be in danger of losing one’s head, if one went for a sunset stroll and ventured too near enemy territory—provided oneself were not the first to secure the enemy head—yet to know that a word once given, by friend or enemy, would never be broken; that no lock would be needed to guard one’s possessions; that life-insurance had not to be taken into consideration, because, in case of one’s untimely demise, one’s wife and children would, as a matter of course, be given equal provender with the other members of the community; that not only was no special plea for mercy needed for “fatherless children and widows,” but that, as a matter of fact, these usually fared somewhat better than other members of the community, because the widow generally became a priestess, and as such wielded greater power and influence in the community than a mere wife could do?
Also to know that fire-insurance might equally be left out of the reckoning, as in case one’s house were destroyed by fire, all one’s neighbours could be relied upon to build one a new house.
Would it be more agreeable to know that battle, murder, and sudden death were ever-present possibilities, if one happened to be a man and a warrior (and to be one meant being the other), yet to know that while life lasted it would ever be a merry one; that if by chance old age or illness overtook one, one would be cared for, not as a matter of charity, but again—as in the case of widows and orphans—as a matter of course; or to cower before what old age and illness and out-of-work days mean for the poverty-stricken in present-day civilization?
To live knowing that death sudden, yet swift and comparatively painless, might one day be one’s portion—or the portion of one’s husband—yet ever to be certain, while one lived, of a home as good as that of any member of the people to whom one belonged; of clothing and fuel and food in abundance; or to live as the poor in the great cities of Christian civilization live, and to die as they die; to cry not only for bread where there is no bread, but for work where there is no work; in decrepit old age and illness to be cared for by the community, if at all, as a matter of contemptuous pity,—which were preferable?
I tried once to explain something of economic conditions in the white man’s world, and in that of modern Japan, to one of my Formosan aborigine friends. The idea that one should receive more than another, unless that other had by misconduct forfeited his share, was as difficult for my friend to understand as it was that a man could not work who wanted to work, or that there should not be food enough for all. That it was held to be a matter of shame to be helped by the community when one was too old or too ill to work was incomprehensible; as incomprehensible as was the question of prostitution. “But women who live so, how can they have strong sons and daughters?” he asked. “And how can they make good priestesses to the people?” an old priestess who was standing by asked. “Such women destroy faith,” she added, “not build it up for the guidance of men.”
I thought of the Inari temples—those devoted to the worship of the Fox-god—and of the votaries of these temples, in Japan. I thought of the stories of the temples of Babylon, of Egypt, of certain of those in ancient Greece—all these had represented mighty civilizations; the votaries of the Fox-god temples belong to a nation that is to-day one of the great world-powers; while the old Formosan woman was only a savage. How could she know anything of the refinements of civilization, or of what civilization demands?
But those ancient civilizations, I reflected—they were “heathen”; even present-day Japan is “heathen.” As a member of a race that is supposed to uphold Christian civilization and to convert heathen peoples to its tenets, there was momentary unction in this thought. Then, as the old man and old woman stood looking up at me, with inquiring, wrinkled faces, awaiting an answer to questions that would solve the problem that was puzzling them, there flashed across my mind the memory of a Christian temple, in a great Christian capital, which it was the fashion of the more fashionable stratum of the painted ladies of the city to attend, and where——