substitution.

When there is true love and good-will on both sides, such experiences
may often help toward the gradual consolidation of conjugal relations.
Not only may a deviated passion be brought back to the conjugal bed,
but certain discords may be restored to harmony, and the couple may
find new desire and mutual affection which have been put to the test.

=Matriarchism.=--With regard to family relations there is an important
point to consider, which we have already touched upon in Chapter XIII.
The power of man and of patriarchism has had the result of giving the
father's name to the family. This system is not only unnatural, but
also has deplorable effects. If it is true that the germ of the
individual (_Chromosomes_, Chapter I) inherits on the average as much
from the father as from the mother, the latter is more closely
connected with it from all other points of view. Races in which the
maternal influence predominates in the family, not only in name but
also in other respects, have better understood the voice of nature.

The fact that the mother carries the child for nine months in her
womb, and for many years after birth is more intimately associated
with it than the father, gives her a natural right which the father
cannot claim. Children ought, therefore, to be named after the mother.
Moreover, in case of divorce, it should be the rule for children to be
restored to the mother, unless there are special reasons for another
decision.

It is evident that in the conditions of modern civilization we cannot
return to matriarchism in its primitive sense. An old patriarch cannot
become the sole sovereign of all his descendants without the
occurrence of grave abuses, no more can this power devolve on a
grandmother. Apart from denomination in the maternal line, I mean by
matriarchism, the legal privilege of the management of the family
conferred on the wife, who is in reality the center of the family.

I will sum up what appears to me to be required, in the following
propositions:

1. Denomination in the maternal line.

2. With the exception of cases in which the wife loses her maternal
rights owing to incapacity, bad conduct or insanity, etc., or when the
law is obliged to deprive her of them, she alone will possess the
guardianship and the management of her children during their minority.

3. The wife will be proprietor and housekeeper of the house and
household. Her work of housekeeping and her maternal d