CHAPTER 38
Lewis Henry Morgan upon arriving back home to Rochester, New York from England (where he drank from the same spring of evolutionary thought with such prominent theorists as Charles Darwin, Spencer and Huxley), Morgan found himself aroused by these new insights into the origin and evolution of man. While gaining a greater insight into the inner workings of the science communities in England, he learned how associations, organizations, and social clubs within the scientific community could be used as an effective tool in advancing a myriad of science and social agendas. He returned to America eager to implement what he had learned. Not long after arriving home, Morgan invited John Wesley Powell, Otis T. Mason and others to join him in organizing a sub-set of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a like organization that originated in England.
These men were captivated by this new science that explored the origin and evolution of man and were anxious to share their revolutionary ideas with others. They understood that this new science would raise questions about traditional religious doctrines and, as such, would not be readily embraced since it did not mesh with the religious tenets of their day. They also knew that it would take time, along with a sustained asserted effort, to break the religious underpinnings of the Biblical accounts of the creation of mankind. If they were to achieve societal acceptance of these views into the origin of the human species, it would come through new, not old, established governmental or scientific channels.
This new evolutionary thought of the 1800s would become the match and kindling needed to ignite a flame into a whole new way of thinking, which would bring about what has been referred to as an ‘evolution revolution,’ liberating society, as they would see it, from religious dogmas and a cannon of religious creeds.
The task of advancing such ideas that would change beliefs and societal norms, would take the support of science, government and education to bring such a monumental change about. Realizing that if they were to alter man’s thinking as to the origin of man, it would lead society into a whole new way of existing.
The command of both science and education would be needed to liberate society from such deeply held and rooted beliefs. They wanted to see religion, which they viewed as a lot of irrational beliefs, replaced by this new evolutionary science, a science that promotes liberation from religious teachings and enshrines the brilliance of man and human thinking as the real hero. This was called humanism, which made the human species the measure of all things, leaving it to man to determine what is moral or not moral, providing a foundation that could be built upon for the domination of nature, on both a material as well as spiritual plain.
Throughout history, often times one finds that those who govern, believe that the liberation of society comes through domination. However, too much power and control held by the ruling class, does not always turn out well. As expressed in this quote from the book, A River Running West, The Life of John Wesley Powell:
It was a nice trick to make liberation depend on domination. Examine it closely, and it had a darker face. The fate of nature, conquered and managed, might become the fate of humankind. Once nature was brought under control and all the world's peoples brought under the centralizing rule of civilization, no check would exist on those in power. Still, the ‘Enlightenment’ ideal survived through the nineteenth century—indeed survived well into the twentieth—survived so well that it has become identified with modernity.318
What had been a white intrusion into the lands of the Indians, exploring the mounds and the origin of the mound-building cultures, would place the feet of these early men of science on a path that would lead to a whole new way of viewing mankind and life on this planet. It also, provided the platform for a new science. It was a science that would excite the scholarly mind, as it would question traditional thought, while providing a way to galvanize the scientific community, as it would be used in striving to codify all human knowledge. “The leaven that worked in Herbert Spencer, Lester Ward, Lewis Morgan, worked just as powerfully in Powell.”319
“The will to discover all the possible means by which human aspiration and belief and custom had been institutionalized, and the conviction that every variant could be placed somewhere on the evolutionary stairway, gave direction and system to Major Powell’s work in ethnology.”320
“When he eased into directorship of the Bureau of Ethnology in the spring of 1879, Powell was in the best position in the world to direct a battery of scientific intelligences upon the origins and evolution of language, the forms and styles of Amerind art, the glacially slow growth of social, political and religious institutions within tribal cultures. Through study of these savage cultures he might throw light on the history of human culture at large.”321 They came to realize that these evolutionary sciences could be used to advance other causes as well.
These men believed that these secular views were the way to greater insight, providing emancipation from traditional family and religious dogmas, creating a whole new path to a new morality. To accomplish such tasks, they knew it would take galvanizing the forces of the academic and scientific communities. The way to accomplish such an undertaking, as learned by Morgan would take the creation and establishment of creditable societies, clubs, organizations and associations.
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318 See: Worster, 458-459
319 Stegner, 258.
320 Ibid., 255.
321 Ibid.