WOMAN AS WITCH 



may be formed from a study of prehistoric civilisation. 

 Our age, which is working for scarcely yet formulated 

 changes in the ownership of property and in the status 

 of woman, must gain special insight from the study of a 

 period, however far back in a semi-barbaric past, how- 

 ever incapable of future repetition, which yet to a great 

 extent realised, albeit on a narrow stage, what many to- 

 day would without qualification term socialism and the 

 emancipation of women. To have said so much is to 

 have amply justified a study of the mother-age. 



In a brief and necessarily insufficient paper, such as 

 the present must be, several courses were open to me. 

 In the first place, I might have given you in outline a 

 sketch of what I conceive the old mother-age to have 

 been like, and perhaps pointed out the general stages of 

 its development, for it embraces not a single but many 

 phases of civilisation. Had I done so, however, I should 

 have been asking you to take a very great deal on faith ; 

 I should have been appealing for that faith to your 

 emotional side as women, to your partisan spirit, or to 

 your belief that I should not speak without having my 

 evidence pigeon-holed somewhere. Now, such an appeal 

 to faith is contrary to my whole theory of the manner 

 in which knowledge ought to be gained and opinion 

 formed. The only true road to knowledge and the re- 

 sulting conviction lies through doubt and scepticism, 

 and any general sketch I might have given could at best 

 only legitimately serve to stimulate doubt, and to incite 

 others to undertake for themselves the collection and 

 interpretation of facts. The second course open to 

 me would have been to overwhelm you with the most 



