fferentiation with his fellows in all parts of the world, and
in all zones, did he gradually climb up to his present height.
Indeed, while in one section of the earth's surface great peoples and
nations belong to the most advanced stages of civilization, other
peoples are found in different sections standing on the greatest variety
of gradations in development. They thus present to us a picture of our
own past history; and they point to the road which mankind traversed in
the course of its development. If but certain common and generally
accepted data are established, that may serve everywhere as sign-posts
to guide investigation, a mass of facts will follow, throwing a wholly
new light upon the relations of man in the past and the present. A
number of social phenomena--unintelligible to us to-day, and attacked by
superficial judges as nonsensical, not infrequently even as
"immoral"--will become clear and natural. A material lifting of the
veil, formerly spread over the history of the development of our race,
has been effected through the investigations made, since Bachofen, by a
considerable number of scientists, like Tylor, MacLennan, Lubbock and
others. Prominently among the men who joined these was Morgan, with his
fundamental work, that Frederick Engels further substantiated and
supplemented with a series of historical facts, economic and political
in their nature, and that, more recently, has been partly confirmed and
partly rectified by Cunow.[1]
By means of these expositions--especially as clearly and lucidly
presented by Frederick Engels, in his support of Morgan's excellent and
fundamental work,--a mass of light is shed upon hitherto unintelligible,
partly seemingly contradictory phenomena in the life of the races and
tribes of both high and low degree of culture. Only now do we gain an
insight into the structure that human society raised in the course of
time. According thereto, our former views of marriage, the family, the
community, the State, rested upon notions that were wholly false; so
false that they turn out to be no better than a fancy-picture, wholly
devoid of foundation in fact.
All that is said and proved about marriage, the family, the community
and the State holds good especially with regard to woman, who, in the
various periods of development did likewise fill a place, that differs
materially from the "eternal," imputed to her.
Morgan, whom Engels agrees with in this, divides the history
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