To “wonder furiously”—Better Government, or Worse?—Comparison of Standards—A Conversation with Aborigine Friends—The Question of Money—Tabus.

Looking back over what I learned, during the two years that I was in Formosa, of the manners and customs—collectively speaking—of the aboriginal tribes, and of the outlook on life of these Naturv?lker, I am given to “think furiously” along lines other than anthropological; that is, along those that are sociological as well. Rather, perhaps, to “wonder furiously.”

If it be true, as Dr. Tylor—in Primitive Culture—points out, that “no human thought is so primitive as to have lost bearing on our own thought, or so ancient as to have broken connection with our own life,” it opens up an interesting field for speculation. For one thing, as to what would have been the line of social evolution of the so-called superior races had they, like the seban, continued to regard the cutting off of an enemy head as meritorious rather than otherwise. (Yet what is war between “civilized” races, except head-hunting on a grand scale;[201] only with accompanying mangling and gassing and other horrors of which the island seban[102] knows nothing?) And if, also like the seban, prostitution had remained unknown, and the breaking of a promise been regarded as so heinous a crime that only the death of the one guilty of so foul a thing could save his family and relatives and all who came into contact with him from being contaminated by his own uncleanness.

What then? One wonders. What sort of civilization would have been evolved, had culture progressed—as in Europe, for example, in the matter of learning, of arts, and of sciences—yet had the standards of right and wrong remained as they are with the primitive folk among whom I spent two years, and if the fundamental conception of government had remained the same—that of a matriarchal theocracy, which is yet, in a sense, communistic.

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[202] 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[203] 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?

Yet the realm which the women-chiefs and priestesses of Formosa govern is the reverse of anarchic. Laws there are as the laws of the Medes and Persians; or as those are supposed to have been. Every act of daily life, personal as well as communal, is regulated by law, and any infringement of this law is met with dire penalty. This—incidentally—holds true with all primitive peoples, patriarchal as well as matriarchal. Those who fancy that a “return to nature”—meaning to primitive conditions—would give licence either for lawlessness or for the indulgence without restraint in individual preference, social or political, reckon without knowledge of conditions actually existing in primitive society. One shudders to think what would have been Rousseau’s fate had he really “returned to nature”—i.e. lived among the Naturv?lker—and broken tabu of marriage or[204] parenthood. For those who hold in contempt established convention, or life regulated by law, primitive society is not the place.

But to return to the question of gynarchic rule: All the women of this particular island—or of that particular part of it still under aboriginal control and hence matriarchal—are not Sapphos or Katherines—are not even the primitive prototypes of these illustrious ladies—any more than they are simpering Doras,[106] neurotics, or nymphomaniacs. As George Eliot made one of her characters, in speaking of her own sex, remark, “The Lord made ‘em fools to match the men,” so one is inclined to ask, after having seen the practical working of a gynocracy, if women were made also good and bad—in the comprehensive inclusiveness of those words—wise and foolish, to match the so-called sterner sex; the sex which seems, however, in reality neither sterner nor more bloodthirsty than the so-called gentler one; any more than it seems a greater lover of abstract justice, which, according to one English writer, “no woman understands.”[107]

Which train of wondering brings us back to the original wonder with which this chapter started: If our European forefathers had ever, in the dim “once-upon-a-time” of long ago, the same standards of right and wrong as the present-day seban of Formosa; if they, too, were once[205] matri-potestal—what would have been the line of evolution that Europe would have followed had this state of affairs continued, only gradually evolving, through letters and arts, from savagery to so-called civilization? Should we have been better governed or worse?

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[206] 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.

As for the general standards of right and wrong—standards as they exist among the aborigines of Formosa, compared with standards which exist to-day in Europe: Would it be more agreeable to be in danger of losing one’s head, if[207] one went for a sunset stroll and ventured too near enemy territory—provided oneself were not the first to secure the enemy head—yet to know that a word once given, by friend or enemy, would never be broken; that no lock would be needed to guard one’s possessions; that life-insurance had not to be taken into consideration, because, in case of one’s untimely demise, one’s wife and children would, as a matter of course, be given equal provender with the other members of the community; that not only was no special plea for mercy needed for “fatherless children and widows,” but that, as a matter of fact, these usually fared somewhat better than other members of the community, because the widow generally became a priestess, and as such wielded greater power and influence in the community than a mere wife could do?

Also to know that fire-insurance might equally be left out of the reckoning, as in case one’s house were destroyed by fire, all one’s neighbours could be relied upon to build one a new house.

Would it be more agreeable to know that battle, murder, and sudden death were ever-present possibilities, if one happened to be a man and ............