WOMAN AS WITCH 



age was frequently cruel in its rites and licentious in its 

 customs, and these charges are still true if we judge it 

 not by the standards of to-day, but by that of the patri- 

 archate which succeeded it. It was a less efficient and 

 a less stable social system than the latter, or it would 

 not have perished in the struggle with it. 1 I for one 

 rejoice that it perished, as I rejoice that the patriarchal 

 system perished, or that the individualism of to-day is 

 perishing. One and all have been fruitful as successive 

 stages of growth, yet they can never recur, and only 

 the fanatic or visionary could wish that they should 

 recur, for each is narrow and insufficient from the stand- 

 point of a later stage. Yet insight into what has been 

 is of special value to us to-day ; it shows us that 

 morality and social institutions are peculiar to each age 

 and to each civilisation ; it shows us that growth, if never 

 very rapid, is ever continuous. It teaches us that those 

 who prate of absolute good and bad, and of an unchanging 

 moral code, may help to police an existing society, but 

 that they cannot reform it. To successfully initiate 

 reform needs the historical spirit the conception that 

 social institutions, however time-honoured and sacred, 

 have but relative value, and are ever adjusting them- 

 selves, as well as freely adjustable, to the needs of 

 social growth. But it is not only a true estimate of the 

 plastic character of customs and social systems which 



1 If the reader will put aside for a time the classical and biblical impres- 

 sions of childhood, and recognise in Romans and Jews two early races who came 

 victorious out of the struggle for existence because they were patriarchal varia- 

 tions amid a widespread mother-right civilisation, he will find immense pleasure 

 in reinterpreting the legends of early Roman history with its struggles of patri- 

 cians and plebeians, as well as in fully grasping for the first time the exact 

 historical bearing of the Jewish backslidings, which led to the worship of the 

 golden calf and the adoration of the woman in scarlet. 



