It is clearly of vital importance to an inquiry that claims to set up a new belief in a discredited theory to protect it from those objections which hitherto have prevented its acceptance. This I have attempted to do. I have shown that the customs connected with mother-right had no connection at all with a state of promiscuity; that they were the result of order in the sexual relationships, and not of disorder. I have traced the causes which appear to have given rise to such a system, showing that the maternal order was not the first phase of the family, but was a natural forward movement--one which developed slowly and quite simply from the conditions of the patriarchal group. Moreover, I have maintained, and tried to prove, that the initiative in progress was taken by the women, they being inspired by their collective interest to overcome the individual interests of the male members of the group. If this is not assented to, then indeed, my view of mother-power can find no acceptance. It is necessary, however, once more to guard against any mistake. I do not wish to prove a theory of gynæcocracy, or rule of woman. The title chosen for this chapter at once opens the way to misinterpretation. It might appear as if I supported Bachofen’s supposition 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.