both
in conduct and opinion, in practical morality and in theoretical morality.

At one time it was widely held that in early states of society, before the
establishment of the patriarchal stage which places women under the
protection of men, a matriarchal stage prevailed in which women possessed
supreme power.[273] Bachofen, half a century ago, was the great champion
of this view. He found a typical example of a matriarchal state among the
ancient Lycians of Asia Minor with whom, Herodotus stated, the child takes
the name of the mother, and follows her status, not that of the
father.[274] Such peoples, Bachofen believed, were gynaecocratic; power was
in the hands of women. It can no longer be said that this opinion, in the
form held by Bachofen, meets with any considerable support. As to the
widespread prevalence of descent through the mother, there is no doubt
whatever that it has prevailed very widely. But such descent through the
mother, it has become recognized, by no means necessarily involves the
power of the mother, and mother-descent may even be combined with a
patriarchal system.[275] There has even been a tendency to run to the
opposite extreme from Bachofen and to deny that mother-descent conferred
any special claim for consideration on women. That, however, seems
scarcely in accordance with the evidence and even in the absence of
evidence could scarcely be regarded as probable. It would seem that we may
fairly take as a type of the matriarchal family that based on the _ambil
anak_ marriage of Sumatra, in which the husband lives in the wife's
family, paying nothing and occupying a subordinate position. The example
of the Lycians is here in point, for although, as reported by Herodotus,
there is nothing to show that there was anything of the nature of a
gynaecocracy in Lycia, we know that women in all these regions of Asia
Minor enjoyed high consideration and influence, traces of which may be
detected in the early literature and history of Christianity. A decisive
and better known example of the favorable influence of mother-descent on
the status of woman is afforded by the _beena_ marriage of early Arabia.
Under such a system the wife is not only preserved from the subjection
involved by purchase, which always casts upon her some shadow of the
inferiority belonging to property, but she herself is the owner of the
tent and the household property, and enjoys the dignity always involved by
the possession of pro