power to
protect themselves or the means of adapting themselves to the purposes
of man. In this stage, however, man was a hardier creature than he
afterwards became. He lived like the beasts of the field and was
ignorant of tillage or fire or clothes or houses. He had no laws or
government or marriage, and though he did not fear the dark, he feared
the real danger of fiercer beasts. Men often died a miserable death, but
not in multitudes on a single day as they do now by battle or shipwreck.

The next stage sees huts and skins and fire which softened their
bodies, and marriage and the ties of family which softened their
tempers. And tribes began to make treaties of alliance with other
tribes.

Speech arose from the need which all creatures feel to exercise their
natural powers, just as the calf will butt before his horns protrude.
Men began to apply different sounds to denote different things, just as
brute beasts will do to express different passions, as any one must have
noticed in the cases of dogs and horses and birds. No one man set out to
invent speech.

Fire was first learnt from lightning and the friction of trees, and
cooking from the softening and ripening of things by the sun.

Then men of genius invented improved methods of life, the building of
cities and private property in lands and cattle. But gold gave power to
the wealthy and destroyed the sense of contentment in simple happiness.
It must always be so whenever men allow themselves to become the slaves
of things which should be their dependants and instruments.

They began to believe in and worship gods, because they saw in dreams
shapes of preterhuman strength and beauty and deemed them immortal; and
as they noted the changes of the seasons and all the wonders of the
heavens, they placed their gods there and feared them when they spoke in
the thunder.

Metals were discovered through the burning of the woods, which caused
the ores to run. Copper and brass came first and were rated above gold
and silver. And then the metals took the place of hands, nails, teeth,
and clubs, which had been men's earliest arms and tools. Weaving
followed the discovery of the use of iron.

Sowing, planting, and grafting were learnt from nature herself, and
gradually the cultivation of the soil was carried farther and farther up
the hills.

Men learnt to sing from the birds, and to blow on pipes from the
whistling of the zephyr through the reeds: and those simple t