Note 2 — Chapter II · WOMAN BEFORE CIVILISATION

It is, therefore, not to be deplored that modern ethnographers emphatically reject the theory of the matriarchate. “No sociologist nowadays believes Bachofen’s theory,” says Professor Westermarck. An occasional feminist writer still builds on the theory, but I find Westermarck’s statement in regard to the authorities justified.[2] It is quite true that in “a very considerable number of tribes” we find the habit of giving the mother’s name to the child, and tracing through her whatever inheritance there be of rank or property. But there are serious objections to seeing in these practices a lingering trace of a former matriarchal rule. In at least an equal number of cases more complete research has found the opposite practice of tracing kinship through the father. In many of the tribes, where the female line is observed, the man rules even the home. In all cases where the female line is followed it is just as natural, at least, to trace the practice to a primitive promiscuity and uncertainty of paternity as to feminine domination. That, indeed, is the inference of the great majority of modern ethnographers. Westermarck dissents from them on this point of promiscuity (and, within limits that I will indicate, I agree with him); but he just as firmly rejects the matriarchate. It is surely possible that in the childhood of the race the man’s share in the creation of children was unknown, and the child was the child of its mother.