Primitive Human Institutions

69:2.1Prim­i­tive in­dus­try slowly grew up as an in­sur­ance against the ter­rors of famine. Early in his ex­is­tence man be­gan to draw lessons from some of the an­i­mals that, dur­ing a har­vest of plenty, store up food against the days of scarcity.

69:2.2Be­fore the dawn of early fru­gal­ity and prim­i­tive in­dus­try the lot of the av­er­age tribe was one of des­ti­tu­tion and real suf­fer­ing. Early man had to com­pete with the whole an­i­mal world for his food. Com­pe­ti­tion-grav­ity ever pulls man down to­ward the beast level; pov­erty is his nat­u­ral and tyran­ni­cal es­tate. Wealth is not a nat­u­ral gift; it re­sults from la­bor, knowl­edge, and or­ga­ni­za­tion.

69:2.3Prim­i­tive man was not slow to rec­og­nize the ad­van­tages of as­so­ci­a­tion. As­so­ci­a­tion led to or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the first re­sult of or­ga­ni­za­tion was di­vi­sion of la­bor, with its im­me­di­ate sav­ing of time and ma­te­ri­als. These spe­cial­iza­tions of la­bor arose by adap­ta­tion to pres­sure—pur­su­ing the paths of less­ened re­sis­tance. Prim­i­tive sav­ages never did any real work cheer­fully or will­ingly. With them con­for­mity was due to the co­er­cion of ne­ces­sity.

69:2.4Prim­i­tive man dis­liked hard work, and he would not hurry un­less con­fronted by grave dan­ger. The time el­e­ment in la­bor, the idea of do­ing a given task within a cer­tain time limit, is en­tirely a mod­ern no­tion. The an­cients were never rushed. It was the dou­ble de­mands of the in­tense strug­gle for ex­is­tence and of the ever-ad­vanc­ing stan­dards of liv­ing that drove the nat­u­rally in­ac­tive races of early man into av­enues of in­dus­try.

69:2.5La­bor, the ef­forts of de­sign, dis­tin­guishes man from the beast, whose ex­er­tions are largely in­stinc­tive. The ne­ces­sity for la­bor is man’s paramount bless­ing. The Prince’s staff all worked; they did much to en­no­ble phys­i­cal la­bor on Uran­tia. Adam was a gar­dener; the God of the He­brews la­bored—he was the cre­ator and up­holder of all things. The He­brews were the first tribe to put a su­preme pre­mium on in­dus­try; they were the first peo­ple to de­cree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the re­li­gions of the world re­verted to the early ideal of idle­ness. Jupiter was a rev­eler, and Bud­dha be­came a re­flec­tive devo­tee of leisure.

69:2.6The San­gik tribes were fairly in­dus­tri­ous when re­sid­ing away from the trop­ics. But there was a long, long strug­gle be­tween the lazy devo­tees of magic and the apos­tles of work—those who ex­er­cised fore­sight.

69:2.7The first hu­man fore­sight was di­rected to­ward the preser­va­tion of fire, wa­ter, and food. But prim­i­tive man was a nat­u­ral-born gam­bler; he al­ways wanted to get some­thing for noth­ing, and all too of­ten dur­ing these early times the suc­cess which ac­crued from pa­tient prac­tice was at­tributed to charms. Magic was slow to give way be­fore fore­sight, self-de­nial, and in­dus­try.