Chapter I: Preface

No man or woman can begin to intelligently interpret the causes of social phenomena and human progress to-day without a practical knowledge of sociology and a general understanding of the underlying causes of social evolution.

Man has risen from a stage of lowest savagery, little higher than the apes, buffetted by the hand of Nature, dependent upon the wild game he might kill or the food he found ready to hand, a fearing and a furtive creature of the forests and of the plains, preyed upon by a thousand stronger foes, to a being able to provide warmth and clothing and shelter against the rains and the cold and food against the seasons. He has become a master instead of a plaything of the elements. In a large measure he has become arbiter of his own food supply and, hence, his own destiny. He has subjugated, in a marvelous degree, the forces of Nature and harnessed them to his needs.

The ordinary man all over the world to-day does not know these things. He attributes all this wonderful progress to a supernatural agency or to supernatural agencies; he believes that the institutions of to-day have existed since the beginning of time; that the Gods created man exactly as we find him in the 20th century; that the present ideas of morality, religion, law and human justice have always prevailed. He is unable to tell whence we sprung and which way we are going. Amid a changing world he sees only fixed things.

He knows neither the origin nor the trend of anything; to him the world, the human race and all social institutions began as they are now and will be—world without end.

But Science has shown us that the only stable fact in the world to-day is the process of _change_, how man has evolved through the ageless past and the direction of the social current.

In this little book I have sought, in a series of stories or sketches, to present only the _first steps in human progress_ as elaborated by Lewis J. Morgan in his brilliant work on Ancient Society. If they stimulate the young folks to a more comprehensive study of the struggles of primitive man and the causes of his slow but steady advance, they shall have fulfilled their purpose.

THE AUTHOR.

A SONG OF THE “CAVE PEOPLE”

_By Gerald J. Lively_

Hear now a tale—a tale of human genesis,
A tale of first endeavor,
The dawn-flush in the night.
It’s a long, long way to go, to those days of long ago,
But your baby feet have trod it, oh ye children of the light.

Dark were our early days—night and cold encumbered us,
Driving us to trees and caves
Who had no eyes to fight.
Yet it still seems very near, does that dreary age of fear,
When we trembled in our shelters at the noises of the night.

Prey to all the stronger beasts—mock of half the lesser ones;
Little, less, and lower ones
Marvelled at our shame.
Till from out our utter need came the thought, and came the deed,
And we won our way to freedom with the all-compelling flame.

Noises we misunderstood—dreams that came to trouble us;
Shades that shrank and lengthened
And danced about our way.
Our world was full of hosts of goblins, gnomes, and ghosts—
Are ye still afraid of goblins, oh ye children of the day?

Stark—but for flint and bone—pitted we our wit against
The sabre-tooth and cave-bear
And beasts we slew for food;
But the fiercest fight began when we slew our brotherman:
Oh children of the daylight, have ye lost the taste for blood?

Dim is the tale we tell: dust of Time has muffled it;
Far apart the happenings
That made ye lords of earth.
By the ages in between times ye know and pleistocene
Have pity on our childish ways and pride in all our worth.

CONTENTS

Pages

The Fire Beast 15

The Ornament of Big Nose 27

When Run Fast Went Hunting for a Wife 41

Little Laughing Boy 53

Hunting an Echo 69

The Flood 81

Big Foot’s New Weapon 95

The First Planting 109

The First Pot 123

The Arrow Throwers 137

The First Priest 151

Questions for Teachers 162