Chapter XVI: Animals Tamed and Iron Smelted

The word "tamely" which I have just used, brings me to the next great event which moved mankind perceptibly nearer to civilization proper. It is an event which was not only a literal fact of prime importance, but which is eternally a symbol of man's own fate. It was probably first the dog that lent himself to the imagination of the speaking, fire-making, arrow-shooting, clay-baking, anthropoid ape, as a stimulus to the idea that captive animals might be of service to human beings. Man began to tame not only the dog, but the sheep, the ox, the camel, the goat, the horse, and the elephant. The gain to all the tribe was enormous. The men all shared in the profit, but once more their master appropriated the new increment in power. He became the owner of the domesticated animals as well as of the inanimate pot and arrow and flame. But at this stage it must have seemed to all the other members of the tribe that they also were owned, soul and body, by their chief. They could not help seeing, nor could he, that they were _his_ men. And how natural it was for them to rejoice in the fact that they belonged to some one who was mightier than themselves, and who identified his own prosperity with that of the tribe, and of every individual in it who served it according to his will. Loyalty to the beloved community became loyalty to the chief. But it is evident that what mankind had caused to happen to the dog and the horse, the chief had accomplished in regard to the human beings who had come under his power. He had tamed them; they were no longer wild animals. They had rendered up individual liberty and self-reliant independence such as we see among many species of wild beasts. But instead, as the price of obedience to a will outside their own, they had received a thousand creature-comforts.

Only one more invention was needed to lift them to the highest and latest stage of barbarism. Some one now hit upon the art of smelting iron--the first invention that had not directly to do with the supplying of food. By leaps and bounds the art of smelting iron advanced man in the equipment of war, in the building of houses, roads, and vehicles of transportation. Now what magnificent returns individuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to do as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have been worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or wheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare birthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation in the ever richer conquest over the physical resources of Nature?