CHAPTER I

IMPRESSIONS FROM A DISTANCE

Scepticism regarding the Existence of a Matriarchate—Glimpse of Formosa from a Steamer’s Deck in passing—Hearsay in Japan concerning the Island Colony—Opportunity of going to Formosa as a Government Official.

As to the actual existence of matriarchates I had always been sceptical. Matrilineal tribes, and those matrilocal—that was a different matter. The existence of these among certain primitive¹ peoples had long been substantiated². But that the name should descend³ in the line of the mother, or that the newly married couple should take up its residence in the tribe or phratry of the bride, has not of necessity meant that the woman held the reins⁴ of power. Quite the reverse in many cases, as actual contact with peoples among whom matrilineal and matrilocal customs existed has proved to every practical observer.[1]

Those lecturers in the “Woman’s Cause” who[28] boasted of the “great matriarchates of old” I thought weakened, rather than strengthened, the cause they would advocate by attempting to bring to its aid evidence builded on the sands. The great “matriarchates of antiquity” I was inclined to class with the “Golden Age” of the Theosophists, as representing a state of affairs not only “too good to be true,” but one in which the wish was—to paraphrase—father to the belief. And as to prehistoric⁵ matriarchates, representing a highly evolved state of civilization—in anything like the present-day significance of that word—I am still sceptical; as sceptical as I am of a Golden Age preceding the day of Pithecanthropus and his kind.

But a land which is, as regards its aboriginal⁶ inhabitants—now confined to a few tribes, and those fast diminishing, in its more mountainous and inaccessible⁷ portions—sufficiently matripotestal to

分享到：