ui
women.

Enough has now been said. I have examined the institution of the
maternal family, both in the early communal stage and also under
later social conditions, where, in certain cases, mother-descent has
been maintained. In all the examples cited I have given the marriage
customs and domestic habits of the people as they are testified to by
authorities whose records cannot be questioned. Many similar examples,
it may be said, might be brought forward from other races, and the
proof of mother-right and mother-power greatly strengthened thereby.
There is, however, so much similarity in the maternal family, so much
correspondence in the marriage forms and social habits prevailing
among races widely separated, that the points of difference are little
in comparison with those they have in common. My object is not so much
to exhaust the subject as to bring into relief the radical differences
between the maternal communal clan, with its social life centred
around the mothers, and the opposite patriarchal form in which the
solitary family is founded on the individual father. I hold that,
other conditions being equal, the one system is favourable to the
authority of women, the other to the authority of men. The facts which
have been cited are, I submit, amply sufficient to support this view.

We have seen that the life of the maternal clan is dependent on the
women--and not upon the men; we have noted that the inheritance of the
family name and the family property passing through the women adds
considerably to their importance, and that daughters are preferred to
sons. We have found women the organisers of the households, the
guardians of the household stores, and the distributors of food, under
a social organisation that may be termed "a communal matriarchy." More
important than all else, we have noted the remarkable freedom of women
in the sexual relationships; in courtship they are permitted to take
the active part; in marriage their position is one of such power that,
sometimes, they are able to impose the form of the marriage; in
divorce they enjoy equal, and even superior, rights of separation;
moreover, they are always the owners and controllers of the children.
Nor is the influence of women restricted to the domestic sphere. We
have found them the advisers, and in some cases the dictators, in the
social organisation under the headmen of the clan. Then we examined
the cases in which the women's power has an indust