The Planetary Prince of Urantia

66:7.1The Prince’s head­quar­ters, though ex­qui­sitely beau­ti­ful and de­signed to awe the prim­i­tive men of that age, was al­to­gether mod­est. The build­ings were not es­pe­cially large as it was the mo­tive of these im­ported teach­ers to en­cour­age the even­tual de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­ture through the in­tro­duc­tion of an­i­mal hus­bandry. The land pro­vi­sion within the city walls was suf­fi­cient to pro­vide for pas­turage and gar­den­ing for the sup­port of a pop­u­la­tion of about twenty thou­sand.

66:7.2The in­te­ri­ors of the cen­tral tem­ple of wor­ship and the ten coun­cil man­sions of the super­vis­ing groups of super­men were in­deed beau­ti­ful works of art. And while the res­i­den­tial build­ings were mod­els of neat­ness and clean­li­ness, ev­ery­thing was very sim­ple and al­to­gether prim­i­tive in com­par­i­son with later-day de­vel­op­ments. At this head­quar­ters of cul­ture no meth­ods were em­ployed which did not nat­u­rally be­long on Uran­tia.

66:7.3The Prince’s cor­po­real staff pre­sided over sim­ple and ex­em­plary abodes which they main­tained as homes de­signed to in­spire and fa­vor­ably im­press the stu­dent ob­servers so­journ­ing at the world’s so­cial cen­ter and ed­u­ca­tional head­quar­ters.

66:7.4The def­i­nite or­der of fam­ily life and the liv­ing of one fam­ily to­gether in one res­i­dence of com­par­a­tively set­tled lo­ca­tion date from these times of Dala­ma­tia and were chiefly due to the ex­am­ple and teach­ings of the one hun­dred and their pupils. The home as a so­cial unit never be­came a suc­cess un­til the super­men and super­women of Dala­ma­tia led man­kind to love and plan for their grand­chil­dren and their grand­chil­dren’s chil­dren. Sav­age man loves his child, but civ­i­lized man loves also his grand­child.

66:7.5The Prince’s staff lived to­gether as fa­thers and moth­ers. True, they had no chil­dren of their own, but the fifty pat­tern homes of Dala­ma­tia never shel­tered less than five hun­dred adopted lit­tle ones as­sem­bled from the su­pe­rior fam­i­lies of the An­donic and San­gik races; many of these chil­dren were or­phans. They were fa­vored with the dis­ci­pline and train­ing of these super­par­ents; and then, af­ter three years in the schools of the Prince (they en­tered from thir­teen to fif­teen), they were el­i­gi­ble for mar­riage and ready to re­ceive their com­mis­sions as emis­saries of the Prince to the needy tribes of their re­spec­tive races.

66:7.6Fad spon­sored the Dala­ma­tia plan of teach­ing that was car­ried out as an in­dus­trial school in which the pupils learned by do­ing, and through which they worked their way by the daily per­for­mance of use­ful tasks. This plan of ed­u­ca­tion did not ig­nore think­ing and feel­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter; but it gave first place to man­ual train­ing. The in­struc­tion was in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive. The pupils were taught by both men and women and by the two act­ing con­jointly. One half of this group in­struc­tion was by sexes; the other half was co­ed­u­ca­tional. Stu­dents were taught man­ual dex­ter­ity as in­di­vid­u­als and were so­cial­ized in groups or classes. They were trained to frat­er­nize with younger groups, older groups, and adults, as well as to do team­work with those of their own ages. They were also fa­mil­iar­ized with such as­so­ci­a­tions as fam­ily groups, play squads, and school classes.

66:7.7Among the later stu­dents trained in Mes­o­po­ta­mia for work with their re­spec­tive races were An­don­ites from the high­lands of west­ern In­dia to­gether with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the red men and the blue men; still later a small num­ber of the yel­low race were also re­ceived.

66:7.8Hap pre­sented the early races with a moral law. This code was known as “The Fa­ther’s Way” and con­sisted of the fol­low­ing seven com­mands:

66:7.91. You shall not fear nor serve any God but the Fa­ther of all.

66:7.102. You shall not dis­obey the Fa­ther’s Son, the world’s ruler, nor show dis­re­spect to his super­hu­man as­so­ciates.

66:7.113. You shall not speak a lie when called be­fore the judges of the peo­ple.

66:7.124. You shall not kill men, women, or chil­dren.

66:7.135. You shall not steal your neigh­bor’s goods or cat­tle.

66:7.146. You shall not touch your friend’s wife.

66:7.157. You shall not show dis­re­spect to your par­ents or to the el­ders of the tribe.

66:7.16This was the law of Dala­ma­tia for al­most three hun­dred thou­sand years. And many of the stones on which this law was in­scribed now lie be­neath the wa­ters off the shores of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Per­sia. It be­came the cus­tom to hold one of these com­mands in mind for each day of the week, us­ing it for salu­ta­tions and meal­time thanks­giv­ing.

66:7.17The time mea­sure­ment of these days was the lu­nar month, this pe­riod be­ing reck­oned as twenty-eight days. That, with the ex­cep­tion of day and night, was the only time reck­on­ing known to the early peo­ples. The seven-day week was in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tia teach­ers and grew out of the fact that seven was one fourth of twenty-eight. The sig­nif­i­cance of the num­ber seven in the super­uni­verse un­doubt­edly af­forded them op­por­tu­nity to in­tro­duce a spir­i­tual re­minder into the com­mon reck­on­ing of time. But there is no nat­u­ral ori­gin for the weekly pe­riod.

66:7.18The coun­try around the city was quite well set­tled within a ra­dius of one hun­dred miles. Im­me­di­ately sur­round­ing the city, hun­dreds of grad­u­ates of the Prince’s schools en­gaged in an­i­mal hus­bandry and oth­er­wise car­ried out the in­struc­tion they had re­ceived from his staff and their nu­mer­ous hu­man helpers. A few en­gaged in agri­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture.

66:7.19Man­kind was not con­signed to ag­ri­cul­tural toil as the penalty of sup­posed sin. “In the sweat of your face shall you eat the fruit of the fields” was not a sen­tence of pun­ish­ment pro­nounced be­cause of man’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fol­lies of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion un­der the lead­er­ship of the traitorous Cali­gas­tia. The cul­ti­va­tion of the soil is in­her­ent in the es­tab­lish­ment of an ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, and this in­junc­tion was the cen­ter of all teach­ing of the Plan­e­tary Prince and his staff through­out the three hun­dred thou­sand years which in­ter­vened be­tween their ar­rival on Uran­tia and those tragic days when Cali­gas­tia threw in his lot with the rebel Lu­cifer. Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the high­est bless­ing to all who are thus per­mit­ted to en­joy the most hu­man of all hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties.

66:7.20At the out­break of the re­bel­lion, Dala­ma­tia had a res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion of al­most six thou­sand. This num­ber in­cludes the reg­u­lar stu­dents but does not em­brace the vis­i­tors and ob­servers, who al­ways num­bered more than one thou­sand. But you can have lit­tle or no con­cept of the mar­velous prog­ress of those far­away times; prac­ti­cally all of the won­der­ful hu­man gains of those days were wiped out by the hor­ri­ble con­fu­sion and ab­ject spir­i­tual dark­ness which fol­lowed the Cali­gas­tia catas­tro­phe of de­cep­tion and sedi­tion.