places its whole mode of life upon
the highest stage of culture, which enables all to enjoy what under more
primitive circumstances was the privilege of individuals or of
individual classes only.

Now woman again fills the active _role_ that once was hers in primitive
society. She does not become the mistress, she is the equal of man.

"The end of social development resembles the beginning of human
existence. The original equality returns. The mother-web of existence
starts and rounds up the cycle of human affairs"--thus writes Bachofen,
in his frequently quoted work "Das Mutterrecht," forecasting coming
events. Like Bachofen, Morgan also passes judgment upon bourgeois
society, a judgment that, without his having any particular information
on Socialism, coincides essentially with our own. He says:

"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._"[227]

Thus we see how men, proceeding from different starting-points, are
guided by their scientific investigations to the identical conclusions.
T