MOTHER-AGE CIVILISATION 109 



from such a source. It is reconstructed from the fossils 

 to be found in folklore, in fairy tales, in hero-legend, in 

 primitive law, and in other strata of human pre-history ; 

 and it appears to the writer as the one system which 

 makes them self-consistent and intelligible. It is a 

 system which puts a new and thrilling interest into the 

 stories which delighted our childhood, whether they were 

 drawn from Koman history, the Bible, or our beloved 

 Grimm. The problem is not to deduce the mother- 

 age from philology, but to decide whether the results 

 of the latter are really inconsistent with the existence of 

 such a civilisation as I have briefly sketched. What has 

 been indicated, however, as the system deducible from 

 Teutonic fossils receives much confirmation when we 

 study the fossils of oriental mythology and folk-custom. 

 In the East the mother-age civilisation developed into 

 what may be literally termed a matriarchate. There 

 the elaborate religious sexual feasts far excelled their 

 fainter Teutonic parallels. And yet we at once recog- 

 nise precisely the same institutions as we find por- 

 trayed in Teutonic witch-gatherings, and shadowed in 

 the peasant customs and festivals of modern Germany ; 

 the same predominance of the female element, the same 

 choral dancing, the same human sacrifice, the same 

 worship of fertility, the same identification of goddess 

 and priestess, and the same sexual cult. 1 



As type of such an Eastern cult, we may briefly refer 

 to the important festival of the Sakaes, held in Babylon 



1 Organised prostitution is frequently described as a result of the subjection 

 of women, but a study of the folklore of peasant festival and spinning-room, 

 and some acquaintance with the history of religious prostitution would, I think, 

 convince the unprejudiced that it is a strange survival of the mother-age. 



