tion that, under a
system of maternal descent women possessed supreme rule in the family
and in the clan: this is a dream only of visionaries. I declare here
that I consider the theory of the so-called matriarchate at once false
and injurious: false, because it can lead to nothing; and injurious,
because, while it cannot be supported by facts, it overthrows what can
be proved by the evidence that is open to all investigators. Nothing
will be gained by exaggeration and by claiming over much for women.
The term "matriarchal" takes too much for granted that women at one
period ruled. Such a view is far from the truth. All I claim, then, is
this: the system by which the descent of the name and the inheritance
of property passes through the female side of the family placed women
in a favourable position, with definite rights in the family and clan,
rights which, in some cases, resulted in their having great and even
extraordinary power. This, I think, may be granted. _If descent
through the father stands, as it is held to do, for the predominance
of man over woman--the husband over the wife, then it is at least
surely possible that descent through the mother may in some cases have
stood for the predominance of the wife over the husband._ The reader
will judge how far the examples of the maternal family I am able to
bring forward support this claim.

The evidence for mother-right has never yet been fully brought into
notice; but much of the evidence is now available. Our knowledge of
the customs of primitive peoples has increased greatly of late years,
and these afford a wide field for inquiry. And although the examples
of the complete maternal family existing to-day are few in
number--probably not more than twenty tribes,[41] yet the important
fact is that they occur among widely separated peoples in all the
great regions of the uncivilised world. Moreover, side by side with
these, are found a much larger number of imperfect systems, which give
unmistakable evidence of an earlier maternal stage. Such examples are
specially instructive; they belong to a transitional period, and show
the maternal family in its decline as it passes into a new patriarchal
stage; often, indeed, we see the one system competing in conflict with
the other.

[41] This is the number given by Prof. Tylor. "The
Matriarchal Family System," _Nineteenth Century_, July 1896.

In this connection I may note that Westermarck does not accept an
earl