Excerpt from The Primitive Family, as an Educational Agency
It is a truism that an institution can be understood only through its history. The notion of change and development in ideas and institutions is fundamental to any sound science of society. Yet when we attempt to apply this principle to such concrete institutions as say, property, or the family, we are struck with the rigidity of the ideas and sentiments in which they are conceived. The popular mind accepts to a certain extent the general idea of progress and may not stop to bewail the death of the good old times which alone can usher in the new. But let the sociologist or the philosopher suggest that property and the family as we know them were not always so, but, since they are both largely social products, have varied enormously as social needs varied - and the popular mind becomes eminently reactionary. This cannot be, it says; monogamy and private property in lands and goods and women are innate characters of man, were always so, and always will be so. Unfortunately this attitude of mind is not confined to the obviously untrained but lingers with those who have had opportunities for knowing better.
Growing discontent with such static conceptions of social processes prompted the study which follows.
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