Here it should be explained that this little book is an expansion of the historical section which treats of “the Mother-age civilisation” in my former book, _The Truth About Woman_. I wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for the generous interest and sympathy with which my work has been received. Such kindness is very imperfectly repaid by an author’s thanks; it is certainly the best incentive to further work. This little volume was suggested to me by a review in one of the Suffrage papers. The writer, after speaking of the interest to women of the mother-age and the difficulty there was in gaining information on the subject, said that “a small and cheaper book on the matriarchate would be useful to women in all countries.” I was grateful for this suggestion. I at once felt that I wanted to write such a book. For one thing, this particular section on the mother-age in _The Truth About Woman_, and my belief in the favourable influence of mother-descent on the status of women, has been much questioned. I have been told that I “had quite deliberately gone back to our uncivilised ancestors to ‘fish up’ the precedent of the matriarchate;” that I “had allowed my prejudices to dictate my choice of material, and had thus brought forward examples explanatory of my own opinions;” that I “had fastened eagerly on these, without inquiring too carefully about other facts having a contrary tendency.” I was reminded of what I well knew, that the matriarchate and promiscuity with which it is usually connected were not universally accepted by anthropologists; the tendency to-day being to discredit both as being among the early phases of society. It was suggested that I “had unprofitably spent my time on the historical section of my book, and had built up my theory on a curiously uncertain foundation;” that I “had relied too much on the certain working of mother-right, and had been by no means clear in showing how, from such a position of power, women had sunk into subservience to patriarchal rule.” In fact, it has seemed to be the opinion of my critics that I had allowed what I “would have liked to have happened to affect my account of what did happen in the infancy of man’s social life.”