476 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



13. Property. Considered as an Institution. — It is impossible to 

 overestimate the influence of property upon the civilization of man- 

 kind. It was the germ, and is still the evidence, of his progress from 

 barbarism. The master passion of the civilised mind is for its acqui- 

 sition and enjoyment. Governments, institutions, and laws, all resolve 

 themselves into so many agencies designed for the creation and pro- 

 tection of property. . But, above all, the desire of parents to transmit 

 it to their children was the great turning-point between barbarism and 

 civilization. When this desire, which arose with the development of 

 property, was consummated by the introduction of lineal succession 

 to estates, it revolutionized all the social ideas of barbarous society. 

 Marriage between single pairs became the first condition to certainty 

 of parentage ; and thus, in course of time, became the rule, rather than 

 the exception ; the interests of property required individual ownership 

 to stimulate personal exertion ; and the protection of the state became 

 necessary to render it stable. With the rise of property, considered 

 as an institution, with the settlement of its rights, and, above all, with 

 the established certainty of its transmission to lineal descendants, came 

 the first possibility among mankind of the true family in its modern 

 acceptation. All previous family states were but a feeble approxima- 

 tion. 



14. The Family. — As now constituted, the family is founded upon 

 marriage between one man and one woman. A certain parentage was 

 substituted for a doubtful one ; and the family became organized and 

 individualized by property rights and privileges. The establishment 

 of lineal succession to property as an incident of descent overthrew, 

 among civilized nations, every vestige of pre-existing customs and in- 

 stitutions inconsistent with this form of marriage. The persistency 

 with which the classificatory system has followed down the families of 

 mankind to the dawn of civilization furnishes evidence conclusive that 

 property alone was capable of furnishing an adequate motive for the 

 overthrow of this system and the substitution of the descriptive. 

 There are strong reasons for believing that the remote ancestors of 

 the Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian families possessed the classificatory 

 system, and broke it up when they reached the family state in its 

 present sense. 



Upon this family, as now constituted, modern civilized society is 

 organized and reposes. The whole previous experience and progress 

 of mankind culminated and crystallized in this one great institution. 



