If, however, during the earlier ages of human existence a system of kinship through women had been established which was able to produce the gentile institution, or, if this institution, which was “founded” on female kinship and dependent upon it, was able through untold ages to direct all the processes of evolution, even though no other evidence were at hand to prove it, then women’s influence must have been well-nigh supreme.
So deeply intrenched has become the idea of woman’s subjection that it is impossible for many male writers to contemplate a state of society in which women are not dominated and controlled by men.
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory to explain the universal system of kinship traced through woman involves the same idea of woman’s subserviency to man, especially in the sexual relation, and is an illustration of the reasoning usually employed in dealing with this subject.
Although “the very lowest races now existing, Fuegians, Australians, and Andamanese, show us that, however informally they have originated, sexual relations of a more or less enduring kind exist,” he is certain that among the earliest races a state of “lawlessness” must have prevailed and that “promiscuity” must have been the rule among them; and this too notwithstanding the fact that among the lower orders of life from which man has descended, and among the earliest races of mankind the female chooses her mate and refuses to pair with any individual except the one of her choice. To account for the universal system of reckoning descent through the female, Mr. Spencer says that as the connection between mother and child is more “obvious” than that existing between the father and his offspring the custom arose of reckoning descent through females.[88] The fact is observed that maternal affection without which organized society would have been impossible, and which alone can explain the system of kinship traced through women, is entirely ignored by Mr. Spencer.
Noting the reasoning employed by many writers to prove that in the earliest ages of human existence, the maternal bond was ignored, and that the child was accounted as being related only to the group, Mr. Darwin remarks:
But it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever be completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time, and as the lines of descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father.[89]