Or--another wonder intervenes. Would letters and arts have ever developed under a matriarchy? Probably yes. Perhaps even to a greater extent than has been the case during the long centuries of patriarchal rule that have followed the possible once-upon-a-time primitive matriarchates of antiquity. For even recognizing that the creative faculty--artistic and inventive--is the heritage of man rather than of woman, has it not, within historic times, in civilized countries, been ever under queen rulership that letters and art have flourished? Perhaps an unrecognized, sublimated form of sex-instinct--or so a certain school of psycho-analysts would argue--that has spurred masculine creative genius to its highest point; as it spurred, apparently, the venturous spirit of the great explorers, certainly of the Elizabethan age; and as, in a later age in England, it spurred those who dreamed of world conquest in the name of the “Great Good Queen.” Has personal idolatry rendered to a king ever equalled that rendered to a queen, whether by soldier or poet, artist or farm-labourer? The sex instinct here, as in other fields, has played its part, and in this particular field usually for good rather than for evil. Perhaps no more Sapphos would have arisen under the rule of women than of men; but it seems not improbable that more men poets might have arisen, worthily and lustily to sing the praises of queens. And the governing--worse governed or better under theocratic queens than under kings or under mobs? Not worse, I think. Executive ability seems woman’s in surprising degree where she has had the opportunity to exercise it; often where the exercise of it has been unrecognized, because attributed to the male--her man--who stood before the world, or who sat upon the throne. As executive and ruler in miniature--executive in the household and ruler over the children, since house, in any form, has existed or maternal responsibility, however elementary, been recognized--executive ability seems to have been developed in women; just as through child-bearing and rearing--or psycho-physical potentiality for this--intellectual creative faculty has, with the normal woman, remained dormant. So much for wondering over possible might-have-beens in connection with matriarchal government, if this system in some supposititious long-ago ever existed in Europe.