Lewis Henry Morgan citáty

Lewis Henry Morgan byl americký etnograf, antropolog a archeolog. Studiem života Indiánů nashromáždil rozsáhlý faktografický materiál o dějinách pravěké společnosti. Jako jeden z prvních upozornil na to, že rodina je historický jev, který se mění spolu s vývojem společnosti. Dále upozornil na to, že systémy příbuzenských vztahů amerických indiánů, se podobně jako systémy v Asii, Africe a Austrálii zakládaly na matriarchálním principu.

l. H. Morgan je autorem evolucionistické teorie vývoje společnosti: divošství – barbarství – civilizace. Wikipedia

✵ 21. listopad 1818 – 17. prosinec 1881

“Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”

Help us translate this quote

Lewis H. Morgan

As quoted in Friedrich Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm