it now became possible for large numbers of
people to form localized communities. A natural consequence was the
elaboration of political systems, which, however, proceeded along lines
already suggested by the experience of earlier epochs. All this tended
to establish and emphasize the idea of nationality, based primarily on
blood-relationship; and at the same time to develop within the community
itself the idea of property,--that is to say, of valuable or desirable
commodities which have come into the possession of an individual through
his enterprise or labour, and which should therefore be subject to his
voluntary disposal. At an earlier stage of development, all property had
been of communal, not of individual, ownership. It appears, then, that
our mid-period barbarian had attained--if the verbal contradiction be
permitted--a relatively high stage of civilization.

Iron.

There remained, however, one master craft of which he had no conception.
This was the art of smelting iron. When, ultimately, his descendants
learned the wonderful secrets of that art, they rose in consequence to
the Upper Status of Barbarism. This culminating practical invention, it
will be observed, is the first of the great discoveries with which we
have to do that was not primarily concerned with the question of man's
food supply. Iron, to be sure, has abundant uses in the same connexion,
but its most direct and obvious utilities have to do with weapons of war
and with implements calculated to promote such arts of peace as
house-building, road-making and the construction of vehicles. Wood and
stone could now be fashioned as never before. Houses could be built and
cities walled with unexampled facility; to say nothing of the making of
a multitude of minor implements and utensils hitherto quite unknown, or
at best rare and costly. Nor must we overlook the aesthetic influence of
edged implements, with which wood and stone could readily be sculptured
when placed in the hands of a race that had long been accustomed to
scratch the semblance of living forms on bone or ivory and to fashion
crude images of clay. In a word, man, the "tool-making animal," was now
for the first time provided with tools worthy of his wonderful hands and
yet more wonderful brain.

Thus through the application of one revolutionary invention after
another, the most advanced races of men had arrived, after long ages of
effort, at a relatively high stage of development. A