The Dawn of Civilization

68:4.1All mod­ern so­cial in­sti­tu­tions arise from the evo­lu­tion of the prim­i­tive cus­toms of your sav­age an­ces­tors; the con­ven­tions of to­day are the mod­i­fied and ex­panded cus­toms of yes­ter­day. What habit is to the in­di­vid­ual, cus­tom is to the group; and group cus­toms de­velop into folk­ways or tribal tra­di­tions—mass con­ven­tions. From these early be­gin­nings all of the in­sti­tu­tions of pres­ent-day hu­man so­ci­ety take their hum­ble ori­gin.

68:4.2It must be borne in mind that the mores orig­i­nated in an ef­fort to ad­just group liv­ing to the con­di­tions of mass ex­is­tence; the mores were man’s first so­cial in­sti­tu­tion. And all of these tribal re­ac­tions grew out of the ef­fort to avoid pain and hu­mil­i­a­tion while at the same time seek­ing to en­joy plea­sure and power. The ori­gin of folk­ways, like the ori­gin of lan­guages, is al­ways un­con­scious and un­in­ten­tional and there­fore al­ways shrouded in mys­tery.

68:4.3Ghost fear drove prim­i­tive man to en­vi­sion the super­nat­u­ral and thus se­curely laid the foun­da­tions for those pow­er­ful so­cial in­flu­ences of ethics and re­li­gion which in turn pre­served in­vi­o­late the mores and cus­toms of so­ci­ety from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. The one thing which early es­tab­lished and crys­tal­lized the mores was the be­lief that the dead were jeal­ous of the ways by which they had lived and died; there­fore would they visit dire pun­ish­ment upon those liv­ing mor­tals who dared to treat with care­less dis­dain the rules of liv­ing which they had hon­ored when in the flesh. All this is best il­lus­trated by the pres­ent rev­er­ence of the yel­low race for their an­ces­tors. Later de­vel­op­ing prim­i­tive re­li­gion greatly re­in­forced ghost fear in sta­bi­liz­ing the mores, but ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion has in­creas­ingly lib­er­ated man­kind from the bond­age of fear and the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion.

68:4.4Prior to the lib­er­at­ing and lib­er­al­iz­ing in­struc­tion of the Dala­ma­tia teach­ers, an­cient man was held a help­less vic­tim of the rit­ual of the mores; the prim­i­tive sav­age was hedged about by an end­less cer­e­mo­nial. Ev­ery­thing he did from the time of awak­en­ing in the morn­ing to the mo­ment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so—in ac­cor­dance with the folk­ways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of us­age; his life con­tained noth­ing free, spon­ta­neous, or orig­i­nal. There was no nat­u­ral prog­ress to­ward a higher men­tal, moral, or so­cial ex­is­tence.

68:4.5Early man was might­ily gripped by cus­tom; the sav­age was a ver­i­ta­ble slave to us­age; but there have arisen ever and anon those vari­a­tions from type who have dared to in­au­gu­rate new ways of think­ing and im­proved meth­ods of liv­ing. Nev­er­the­less, the in­er­tia of prim­i­tive man con­sti­tutes the bi­o­logic safety brake against pre­cip­i­ta­tion too sud­denly into the ru­inous mal­ad­just­ment of a too rapidly ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

68:4.6But these cus­toms are not an un­mit­i­gated evil; their evo­lu­tion should con­tinue. It is nearly fa­tal to the con­tin­u­ance of civ­i­liza­tion to un­der­take their whole­sale mod­i­fi­ca­tion by rad­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. Cus­tom has been the thread of con­ti­nu­ity which has held civ­i­liza­tion to­gether. The path of hu­man his­tory is strewn with the rem­nants of dis­carded cus­toms and ob­so­lete so­cial prac­tices; but no civ­i­liza­tion has en­dured which aban­doned its mores ex­cept for the adop­tion of bet­ter and more fit cus­toms.

68:4.7The sur­vival of a so­ci­ety de­pends chiefly on the pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion of its mores. The pro­cess of cus­tom evo­lu­tion grows out of the de­sire for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion; new ideas are put for­ward—com­pe­ti­tion en­sues. A pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion em­braces the pro­gres­sive idea and en­dures; time and cir­cum­stance fi­nally se­lect the fit­ter group for sur­vival. But this does not mean that each sep­a­rate and iso­lated change in the com­po­si­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety has been for the bet­ter. No! in­deed no! for there have been many, many ret­ro­gres­sions in the long for­ward strug­gle of Uran­tia civ­i­liza­tion.