Chapter XV: Arrows and Earthenware

The talking, fire-using anthropoid in the course of time invented the bow and arrow. So great and so enduring were the benefits of this new device that it is almost impossible for us, who have profited by them, to imagine the state of human society when men could kill animals or destroy enemies only by throwing stones or clubs, or by striking with the fist. But it is easy to see that the chief of a tribe of men received an incalculable increase of power when, besides the instruments of ignition, bows and arrows were in his possession to deal out at his will. Whatever equality of initiative and diffused sovereignty had existed before the use of fire was known, it now began to vanish, and the men of any tribe saw power concentrated in the will and word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his command was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of that individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the lower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of spontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so long as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure from the pursuit of enemies.

It was perhaps another ten thousand years before one more new link in the chain of man's mastery over Nature and the chief's mastery over his men was forged. This time it was probably a woman who--again by a happy chance or by necessity of maternal solicitude--noticed the effect of heat upon clay and introduced the art of pottery. Until then men had no utensils that could withstand the action of fire; they could not boil water except by dropping hot stones into some receptacle of wood or skin. Now, by the new device of boiling, the food-supply was enormously increased. The blessing of another mastery over matter was henceforth shared by all the members of the tribe. But, at the same time, there was a corresponding force added to the chief's grip upon his men. We see the law illustrated, that every new invention, owned by the few, becomes one more trap for the many. The differentiation between the owner of the tribe's wealth and the propertyless became with the introduction of pottery fixed and hopeless. The master dealt out not only fire and arrows, but cooking-utensils; or he withheld all these if he saw fit; and if you had been there, but not in command, you, too, would have tamely submitted or have died.