Were they, too, matriarchal--the “tattooed and woaded, winter-clad in skins” European forefathers of ours? It is a dangerous thing to assume a unilineal line of evolution. Because there are evidences of mother-right[103] having been dominant in certain parts of the world, or with certain peoples--and of this mother-right still existing in a few isolated instances--it would be rashly unwise to assume, as a few writers and speakers have done, that the female of the species was once the dominant half of the _genus homo_. However, assuming for the sake of argument--or of phantasy--that matriarchal government was once universal, until the male learned that in the matter of governing the power of brute force equalled, in efficacious results, that of summoning spirits from the vasty deep on the part of priestess and sibyl, or of ruling the tribe through aruspicy and the cries of birds; or until he learned, perhaps, that brute force could even make his own those priestly offices which had been the prerogative of that sex once solely associated with the Mystic Force (by virtue of that medium still regarded by primitive folk as sacred and mysterious).[104] Suppose, I say--and I underscore _suppose_--we assume this mother-right--matri-potestal as well as matrilineal and matri-local--once to have existed in Europe in as full force as it still does in a few islands of the South Pacific; and, again, suppose the male had never learned, or never chosen to apply, the force of muscular suasion, what sort of Midsummer’s Night Dream of a world should we have had? Would it have been an Eden--with Adam kept very much in his place--a sort of Golden Age, such as many equal-suffrage advocates assert would be the outcome of matriarchal rule; or would it have resulted in “confusion worse confounded” (in this year of grace, 1922, is such a state possible to conceive?), such as Weininger[105] and his school would assert could be the only result of woman-rule? Or would this school concede that there could be such a thing as a woman-ruled State? Would it not hold, rather, that such an attempt could end only in anarchy?