240 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



generosity r , and charity, and despises from his ethereal 

 heights what he is pleased to term the loathsome or 

 disgusting animal instincts, may well be asked to ponder 

 on the evolution of such emotions as love and friendship. 

 The social virtues may in his imagination have arisen 

 in many diverse ways, but the stern fact remains that 

 among the Aryans they took their origin in the sexual 

 instinct ; and he must be a rash sociologist who would 

 affirm that this primary instinct is even now incapable 

 of producing any new social virtue. 



In the course of our investigations we have come 

 across fossils of several stages of sexual habit. These 

 stages pass one into the other without a rigidly marked 

 division, and the terms used in one stage remain in a 

 later stage, often with modified, or perhaps quite changed 

 senses. The first fundamental distinction is between 

 groups which lay chief stress on maternal, and those which 

 lay chief stress on paternal descent groups which con- 

 veniently, but not with strict accuracy, may be termed 

 matriarchal and patriarchal. The first group, without 

 giving an all-dominant position to woman, still placed 

 her in authority, directly and indirectly, in religious 

 matters the first deity was a goddess of fertility, and her 

 ministrant a matron -priestess. 1 The fact that woman 

 was then the conduit by which power and property 

 passed from one man to another, also gave her an 

 increased importance. Hence the term matriarchal 

 without being exact is to a certain extent significant. 

 Perhaps it is quite as significant as patriarchal, for 



1 The priestess is often identified with the goddess at the sex-festival, e.g. 

 the Sakaes. Compare also the high-priestess at the Argive Heraea (see p. 171) 

 with what Tacitus tells us of the worship of Nerthus, a Teutonic Earth-goddess. 



