The present age regarding the family as the base upon which all else rests, its primitive condition has evoked much interest. persons unacquainted with the present phase of historical knowledge assume that woman's place in the family has always been that of an inferior and dependent; man's that of a superior and ruler. But this is not true either of the family, or the State, or in religion. The earliest phase of family life was entirely dependent upon woman; she was the principal factor in it, man having no place whatsoever except as son or dependent. The mother was one through whom blood relationship ran, not alone in the family, but the tribe was united through her. Social, political, and religious life were all in harmony with the idea of woman as the primal power. The matriarchate existed long before the patriarchate; the mother was ruler in family and tribe, in State and Church, through long centuries where the father was unknown. Mother and children constituted the family, woman gave laws to the State, and in all early religions when a goddess and god are mentioned it was mother and son, the mother ever holding superior position. We find traces of this old cult in the adoration given the Virgin Mary, her supposed influence over her son, and in the dogma of the immaculate conception so recently promulgated as a vital tenet of the Roman Catholic Church. Except as a son and an inferior, man was not anciently recognized in either of those great institutions, family, Church, State; a father or a husband, as such, had no place in either the social or religious scheme.

Every part of the world gives us evidence to-day of these ancient customs; reminiscences of the matriarchate everywhere abound. In Africa, Livingstone found tribes swearing by the mother, tracing descent through her. Marco Polo found similar customs in his voyages of exploration; it is the same with the Indians of our continent, not alone of the Pacific coast, as Herbert Bancroft shows, but Eastern writers upon Indian customs note the same thing. The Iroquois, the most formidable confederacy existing east of the Mississippi at the discovery of America, traced their descent in the female line. Upon the Iroquois system of government, that of the United States is based, and thus our country has given unwitting recognition of the wisdom of the matriarchate.

Nor is mother-rule discernible among the less civilized people. The ancient Lycians thus traced their descent, as also did the ancient Egyptians, whom we recognize as the wisest nation of antiquity. In Egypt the throne descended in the female line. The curious story of Moses as related in the bible and by Josephus was due to this Egyptian custom. Thermuthis, the King's daughter, who saved him, presented the child to her father as her adopted son and heir to the throne, and until grown to manhood had power to protect him from the machinations of the wily high priest who sought his life. The Portuguese found the matriarchate fully extant in Malabena 300 years since, and were not more surprised at this social system than at the high state of the arts, the wealth of the people. and the general peace and harmony prevalent. In fact, there are the notable results of mother-rule everywhere. Bachofen, the celebrated Swiss jurist, who has made the matriarchate a subject of much study, and whose work, "Mutterrecht," is a recognized authority, declares that gynecocracy, or the rule of mothers and daughters, the matriarchate, was everywhere notable for the justice and peace which prevailed. Infants were not destroyed, no daughter was forced into an uncongenial relation, the arts and sciences flourished, and peace was maintained.

Tylor, "Primitive Culture;" Lubbock, "Pre-Historic Times and Origin of Civilization," and numerous other investigators agree with Bachofen in the statement that in primitive society the family, the state, and the Church, were all under woman's control; that society started, in fact, under the absolute power and authority of woman. In an able article on ethnology, Dr. Th. Achelis says: "The complete agreement of accounts of tribes bearing no relationship to one another no longer leaves it a matter of doubt that blood relationship through a common mother must take the place of the patriarchal family as the fundamental form of development." In process of time society degenerated, the golden age died, bronze and iron took its place, and the patriarchate arose. As soon as man was received into the family as a permanent factor, the rule of peace and justice was overthrown. New forms of government were promulgated; woman's inferiority and incapacity were sedulously taught; the theory of a male personal God and new systems of religion in the interests of force and authority were invented; wars, family discord, infanticide, polygamy, sale of daughters and kindred wrongs, not only became common, but were assumed to be the normal condition of humanity. Woman is taught that to Christianity alone is amelioration of her slavish condition under patriarchal rule due. But this assertion can easily be controverted. Under Christian teaching the wife has no rights in the family that the husband is bound to respect. Neither her person, her property, nor her children are under her control, and divorce for any cause is forbidden. Where change in these respects have been effected, it has been of modern date and accomplished under opposition of the Church.

Before the introduction of Christianity many improvements in her condition had been effected. The Amazons, of whom all nations give trace and to whose existence Humbold gave credence, had broken from domineering patriarchal rule, founding the first republic known under that system. The famous temple of Delphi, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, its first priestess an Egyptian woman, had been founded by them. (It may interest some readers to know that the United States has just secured permission to explore the ancient site of this temple.) Before the Athens of modern history a prior city of that name stood upon the same ground. It was founded by women, and its laws far exceeded in wisdom those of its boasted successor. The law of the Twelve Tables long prior to Rome recognized the right of woman to repudiation in marriage, and before the Christian era Roman civilization had secured the almost entire personal and proprietary freedom of woman in that relation - a freedom never since equaled in Christian lands. "Our laws," says Herbert Spencer, speaking of England, "were made for man, not for woman," in that country for many hundred years, was under control of a magistrate, and between the ages of eleven and forty could be bound out to work. But this mastership of man is not the normal condition of the human race; it is not even a settled principle of evolution, but is one of those offshoots due to the gross material state of the world at the present time and for centuries back.