LEWIS HENRY MORGAN, LL.D. 433 



for the purpose of confirming his conceptions in relation to the devel- 

 opment of house life among the Indian tribes. In " House Life and 

 Architecture of the North American Indians," expressing his views 

 of communal living among the village Indians, we particularly notice 

 the persistency with which he clung to his early theories on this sub- 

 ject. This was his latest work, published only a few weeks before his 

 death. 



While his *' Systems of Affinity and Consanguinity," " League of 

 the Iroquois," and paper on the Mexican civilization will ever stand 

 as monuments of his industry and research, and give to him enduring 

 fame, he will be most widely known by his more popular volume of 

 1877, " Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Prog- 

 ress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization," which is, in 

 fact, the embodiment of the most important of his researches, the 

 grand summing up of many years of industrious labor and deep 

 thought. A thorough evolutionist in his treatment of the subjects of 

 his volume, he commences the Preface with the statement that " The 

 great antiquity of mankind upon earth has been conclusively estab- 

 lished," and goes on to state that " this knowledge changes materially 

 the views which have prevailed respecting the relations of savages to 

 barbarians, and of barbarians to civilized men. It can now be asserted 

 upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the 

 tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization. 

 The history of the human race is one in source, one in experience, and 

 one in progress." He then on the second and third pages writes, 

 that '' Inventions and discoveries stand in serial relations along the 

 lines of human progress and register its successive stages, while 

 social and civil institutions, in virtue of perpetual human wants, have 

 been developed from a few primary germs of thought. They exhibit 

 a similar register of progress. . . . Throughout the latter part of the 

 period of savagery, and the entire period of barbarism, mankind in 

 general were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. . . . The 

 principal institutions of mankind originated in savagery, wer£ devel- 

 oped in barbarism, and are maturing in civilization. In like manner 

 the family has passed through successive forms, and created great 

 systems of consanguinity and affinity, which have remained to the 

 present time. . . . The idea of property has undergone a similar 

 growth and development. Commencing at zero in savagery, the pas- 

 sion for the possession of property, as the representative of accumu- 

 lated subsistence, has now become dominant over the human mind in 

 civilized races." He then writes that " The four classes of facts above 



VOL. XVH. (N. S. IX.) 28 



