Primitive Human Institutions

69:6.1Prim­i­tive so­ci­ety with its four di­vi­sions—in­dus­trial, reg­u­la­tive, re­li­gious, and mili­tary—rose through the in­stru­men­tal­ity of fire, an­i­mals, slaves, and prop­erty.

69:6.2Fire build­ing, by a sin­gle bound, for­ever sep­a­rated man from an­i­mal; it is the ba­sic hu­man in­ven­tion, or dis­cov­ery. Fire en­abled man to stay on the ground at night as all an­i­mals are afraid of it. Fire en­cour­aged even­tide so­cial in­ter­course; it not only pro­tected against cold and wild beasts but was also em­ployed as se­cu­rity against ghosts. It was at first used more for light than heat; many back­ward tribes refuse to sleep un­less a flame burns all night.

69:6.3Fire was a great civ­i­lizer, pro­vid­ing man with his first means of be­ing al­tru­is­tic with­out loss by en­abling him to give live coals to a neigh­bor with­out de­priv­ing him­self. The house­hold fire, which was at­tended by the mother or el­dest daugh­ter, was the first ed­u­ca­tor, re­quir­ing watch­ful­ness and de­pend­abil­ity. The early home was not a build­ing but the fam­ily gath­ered about the fire, the fam­ily hearth. When a son founded a new home, he car­ried a fire­brand from the fam­ily hearth.

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

69:6.5It was a sin to ex­tin­guish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was al­lowed to burn. The fires of the tem­ples and shrines were sa­cred and were never per­mit­ted to go out ex­cept that it was the cus­tom to kin­dle new flames an­nu­ally or af­ter some calamity. Women were se­lected as priests be­cause they were cus­to­di­ans of the home fires.

69:6.6The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the ob­ser­va­tions of fire caused by light­ning. These ideas of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin led di­rectly to fire wor­ship, and fire wor­ship led to the cus­tom of “pass­ing through fire,” a prac­tice car­ried on up to the times of Moses. And there still per­sists the idea of pass­ing through fire af­ter death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still per­sists in the sym­bol­ism of the Parsees.

69:6.7Fire led to cook­ing, and “raw eaters” be­came a term of de­ri­sion. And cook­ing less­ened the ex­pen­di­ture of vi­tal en­ergy nec­es­sary for the di­ges­tion of food and so left early man some strength for so­cial cul­ture, while an­i­mal hus­bandry, by re­duc­ing the ef­fort nec­es­sary to se­cure food, pro­vided time for so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

69:6.8It should be re­mem­bered that fire opened the doors to met­al­work and led to the sub­se­quent dis­cov­ery of steam power and the pres­ent-day uses of elec­tric­ity.