MOTHER-AGE CIVILISATION 103 



the rights and duties of its members had become, 

 before it occurred to any one to give those members 

 names. 



(4) Let us now turn to the matriarchal system of 

 primitive life, and, after sketching its broad outlines, 

 inquire what evidence there is for supposing the words 

 of relationship and sex to have taken their origin in such 

 a stage of social growth, rather than in the patriarchal. 

 It is in a period of kindred group -marriage that I find 

 myself forced to seek for an explanation of these words. 

 It must be remembered that what we briefly speak of as 

 the mother-age covers several successive phases of civilisa- 

 tion, and of such phases those of group -marriage are 

 among the earliest. Without dogmatising, I may suggest 

 tentatively that the lair or den originally provided by the 

 mother for child-bearing and rearing, developed in comfort 

 to such an extent that the sons preferred staying by the 

 mother and taking part in the elementary agriculture of 

 the women to hunting on their own account. This led 

 to complete promiscuity, or at least seasonal pairing, 

 being succeeded by normal conditions, first of brother- 

 sister and afterwards of kindred group -marriage. Be the 

 source of these conditions, however, what they may, the 

 earliest mythologies and folk-customs distinctly point to 

 the first permanent relations of sex being those between 

 kindred ; and this view is confirmed also by the Teutonic 

 words of relationship. The most primitive theogony 

 is that of Mother Earth and her Son. 



The latter is usually depicted as an agriculturist, 

 and not infrequently as killing or emasculating his 

 father, who, if he can be identified, is of the wild, 



