“The woman’s religious attitude, in particular, the tendency of her mind towards the supernatural and the divine, influenced the man and robbed him of the position which nature disposed him to take in virtue of his physical superiority. In this way women’s position was transformed by religious considerations, until they became in civil life what religion had caused them to be.”[13] And again: “We cannot fail to see that of the two forms of gynæcocracy in question--religious and civil--the former was the basis of the latter. Ideas connected with worship came first, and the civil forms of life were then the result and expression.”[14] [13] _Ibid._, Intro., p. xiv. [14] _Ibid._, Intro., p. xv. We may note in passing, the greater affectability of woman’s nature, which would seem always to have had a tendency to expression in religio-erotic manifestations. But to build up a theory of matriarchy on this foundation is strangely wide of the facts. Bachofen adduces the spirituality of women as the cause of their power. But on what grounds can such a claim be supported? It is on the evidence of licentious customs of all kinds and on polyandry, that he bases his belief in a period of promiscuity. He regards this early condition of _hetaïrism_ as a law of nature, and believes that after its infraction by the introduction of individual marriage, expiation was required to be made to the Earth Goddess, Demeter, in temporary prostitution. Hence he explains the widespread custom of religious prostitution. This fanciful idea may be taken to represent Bachofen’s method of interpretation. There is an intermediate stage between _hetaïrism_ and marriage, such as the group-marriage, held by him to have been practised among barbarous peoples. “Each man has a wife, but they are all permitted to have intercourse with the wives of others.”[15] [15] _Das Mutterrecht_, p. 18. Great stress is laid on the acquisition by women of the benefits of a marriage law. In the families founded upon individual marriage, which grew up after the Amazonian revolt, the women, and not the men, held the first place. Bachofen does not tell us whether they assigned this place to themselves, or had it conceded to them. Women were the heads of the families, the children were named after the mother, and not the father, and all the relations to which rights of succession attached were traced through women only. All property was held by women. Moreover, from this headship, women assigned to themselves, or had conceded to them, the social and political power as well as the domestic supremacy.[16] [16] I have taken much of this passage from Mr. McLennan’s criticism of Bachofen’s theory, _Studies in Ancient History_, pp. 319-325.