Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

Once granted that amonar tliis or that
Aryan people — let ua say Germans, Greeks,
or Italians — there are to be found stray cases
of juridical right which at bottom are only
intelligible in the light of descent in the
female line, should not in such cases att«ntion
to the three points auduced, combined with
consideration of the facts which we have
learned to know within the British area, pre-
vent us from blindly supposing that we had
here before us rudimentaiy organs of a social
organisation which in principle among the
Aryans must have already more than 5000
years before have been overcome, if it had at
all formerly existed among them? Should
not then the supposition lie more near at hand
— always presupposed that without descent in
the female line one cannot get on — to suppose
that here we have traces of a non-Aryan
l^rimitive population, assimilated in somewhat
strong proportions — a population in which,
as among the primitive peoples of Britain and
Ireland, descent in the female line held the
field?
One point I would still emphasize'. As a
matter of fact, here and there actually existent
cases of mother-right have been pointed out;
further, a social order with descent in the male
line, along with traces of mother-right, has
been pointed out; but a proof that the social
order based upon mother-right has anywhere,
"without extraneous influence," developed
itself to patriarchy — such a proof one has not
earnestly attempted, still less anywhere given.
One simply takes mother-right (matriarchy)
as self-evidently the antecedent step to a social
order based upon patriarchy. With the same,
and perhaps with greater right, one may re-
gard matriarchy and patriarchv as the oppo-
site poles of developmen't starting from a
like basis. With like right one can regard a
perfected matriarchy as an order of society
which of itself does not develop itself into