civilization

• dependent upon › sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, cosmic insight
• unstable; not biologically innate

16:9.4Hu­man self-con­scious­ness im­plies the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of selves other than the con­scious self and fur­ther im­plies that such aware­ness is mu­tual; that the self is known as it knows. This is shown in a purely hu­man man­ner in man’s so­cial life. But you can­not be­come so ab­so­lutely cer­tain of a fel­low be­ing’s re­al­ity as you can of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God that lives within you. The so­cial con­scious­ness is not in­alien­able like the God-con­scious­ness; it is a cul­tural de­vel­op­ment and is de­pen­dent on knowl­edge, sym­bols, and the con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ments of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. And these cos­mic gifts, so­cial­ized, con­sti­tute civ­i­liza­tion.

16:9.5Civ­i­liza­tions are un­sta­ble be­cause they are not cos­mic; they are not in­nate in the in­di­vid­u­als of the races. They must be nur­tured by the com­bined con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive fac­tors of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. Civ­i­liza­tions come and go, but sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion al­ways sur­vive the crash.

• dependent upon › love, the wellspring of superior c.
• dependent upon › religion; God; nothing takes the place of God in c.
• dependent upon › sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, cosmic insight

16:9.7Un­selfish­ness, aside from pa­ren­tal in­stinct, is not al­to­gether nat­u­ral; other per­sons are not nat­u­rally loved or so­cially served. It re­quires the en­light­en­ment of rea­son, moral­ity, and the urge of re­li­gion, God-know­ing­ness, to gen­er­ate an un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic so­cial or­der. Man’s own per­son­al­ity aware­ness, self-con­scious­ness, is also di­rectly de­pen­dent on this very fact of in­nate other-aware­ness, this in­nate abil­ity to rec­og­nize and grasp the re­al­ity of other per­son­al­ity, rang­ing from the hu­man to the di­vine.

• dependent upon › moral assistance of well-ordered society

34:7.4The Uran­tia peo­ples are suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of a dou­ble de­pri­va­tion of help in this task of pro­gres­sive plan­e­tary spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. The Cali­gas­tia up­heaval pre­cip­i­tated world-wide con­fu­sion and robbed all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of the moral as­sis­tance which a well-or­dered so­ci­ety would have pro­vided. But even more dis­as­trous was the Adamic de­fault in that it de­prived the races of that su­pe­rior type of phys­i­cal na­ture which would have been more con­so­nant with spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tions.

• dependent upon › morality predicated on spiritual realities

39:3.74. Eth­i­cal Sen­si­tiz­ers. It is the mis­sion of these ser­a­phim to fos­ter and to pro­mote the growth of crea­ture ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the moral­ity of in­ter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships, for such is the seed and se­cret of the con­tin­ued and pur­pose­ful growth of so­ci­ety and gov­ern­ment, hu­man or super­hu­man. These en­hancers of eth­i­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion func­tion any­where and ev­ery­where they may be of ser­vice, as vol­un­teer coun­selors to the plan­e­tary rulers and as ex­change teach­ers on the sys­tem train­ing worlds. You will not, how­ever, come un­der their full guid­ance un­til you reach the broth­er­hood schools on Eden­tia, where they will quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of those very truths of fra­ter­nity which you will even then be so earnestly ex­plor­ing by the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing with the uni­v­i­ta­tia in the so­cial lab­o­ra­to­ries of Eden­tia, the sev­enty satel­lites of the Nor­la­ti­adek cap­i­tal.

39:5.1These ser­a­phim main­tain head­quar­ters on the sys­tem cap­i­tals and, though closely as­so­ci­ated with the res­i­dent Adamic cit­i­zens, are pri­mar­ily as­signed to the ser­vice of the Plan­e­tary Adams, the bi­o­logic or phys­i­cal up­lifters of the ma­te­rial races on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. The min­is­ter­ing work of an­gels be­comes of in­creas­ing in­ter­est as it nears the in­hab­ited worlds, as it nears the ac­tual prob­lems faced by the men and women of time who are prepar­ing them­selves for the at­tempt to at­tain the goal of eter­nity.

39:5.2On Uran­tia the ma­jor­ity of the plan­e­tary helpers were re­moved upon the col­lapse of the Adamic regime, and the se­raphic super­vi­sion of your world de­volved to a greater ex­tent upon the ad­min­is­tra­tors, the tran­si­tion min­is­ters, and the guard­i­ans of des­tiny. But these se­raphic aids of your de­fault­ing Ma­te­rial Sons still serve Uran­tia in the fol­low­ing groups:

39:5.31. The Voices of the Gar­den. When the plan­e­tary course of hu­man evo­lu­tion is at­tain­ing its high­est bi­o­logic level, there al­ways ap­pear the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters, the Adams and Eves, to aug­ment the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the races by an ac­tual con­tri­bu­tion of their su­pe­rior life plasm. The plan­e­tary head­quar­ters of such an Adam and Eve is usu­ally de­nom­i­nated the Gar­den of Eden, and their per­sonal ser­a­phim are of­ten known as the “voices of the Gar­den.” These ser­a­phim are of in­valu­able ser­vice to the Plan­e­tary Adams in all their projects for the phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual up­step­ping of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Af­ter the Adamic de­fault on Uran­tia, some of these ser­a­phim were left on the planet and were as­signed to Adam’s suc­ces­sors in au­thor­ity.

39:5.42. The Spir­its of Broth­er­hood. It should be ap­par­ent that, when an Adam and Eve ar­rive on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, the task of achiev­ing racial har­mony and so­cial co-op­er­a­tion among its di­verse races is one of con­sid­er­able pro­por­tions. Sel­dom do these races of dif­fer­ent col­ors and var­ied na­tures take kindly to the plan of hu­man broth­er­hood. These prim­i­tive men only come to re­al­ize the wis­dom of peace­ful in­teras­so­ci­a­tion as a re­sult of ripened hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and through the faith­ful min­istry of the se­raphic spir­its of broth­er­hood. With­out the work of these ser­a­phim the ef­forts of the Ma­te­rial Sons to har­mo­nize and ad­vance the races of an evolv­ing world would be greatly de­layed. And had your Adam ad­hered to the orig­i­nal plan for the ad­vance­ment of Uran­tia, by this time these spir­its of broth­er­hood would have worked un­be­liev­able trans­for­ma­tions in the hu­man race. In view of the Adamic de­fault, it is in­deed re­mark­able that these se­raphic or­ders have been able to fos­ter and bring to re­al­iza­tion even as much of broth­er­hood as you now have on Uran­tia.

39:5.53. The Souls of Peace. The early mil­len­ni­ums of the up­ward striv­ings of evo­lu­tion­ary men are marked by many a strug­gle. Peace is not the nat­u­ral state of the ma­te­rial realms. The worlds first re­al­ize “peace on earth and good will among men” through the min­istry of the se­raphic souls of peace. Al­though these an­gels were largely thwarted in their early ef­forts on Uran­tia, Vevona, chief of the souls of peace in Adam’s day, was left on Uran­tia and is now at­tached to the staff of the res­i­dent gov­er­nor gen­eral. And it was this same Vevona who, when Mi­chael was born, her­alded to the worlds, as the leader of the an­gelic host, “Glory to God in Ha­vona and on earth peace and good will among men.”

39:5.6In the more ad­vanced epochs of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion these ser­a­phim are in­stru­men­tal in sup­plant­ing the atone­ment idea by the con­cept of di­vine at­tune­ment as a phi­los­o­phy of mor­tal sur­vival.

39:5.74. The Spir­its of Trust. Sus­pi­cion is the in­her­ent re­ac­tion of prim­i­tive men; the sur­vival strug­gles of the early ages do not nat­u­rally breed trust. Trust is a new hu­man ac­qui­si­tion brought about by the min­istry of these plan­e­tary ser­a­phim of the Adamic regime. It is their mis­sion to in­cul­cate trust into the minds of evolv­ing men. The Gods are very trust­ful; the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is will­ing freely to trust him­self—the Ad­juster—to man’s as­so­ci­a­tion.

39:5.8This en­tire group of ser­a­phim was trans­ferred to the new regime af­ter the Adamic mis­car­riage, and they have ever since con­tin­ued their labors on Uran­tia. And they have not been wholly un­suc­cess­ful since a civ­i­liza­tion is now evolv­ing which em­bod­ies much of their ide­als of con­fi­dence and trust.

39:5.9In the more ad­vanced plan­e­tary ages these ser­a­phim en­hance man’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the truth that un­cer­tainty is the se­cret of con­tented con­ti­nu­ity. They help the mor­tal philoso­phers to re­al­ize that, when ig­no­rance is es­sen­tial to suc­cess, it would be a colos­sal blun­der for the crea­ture to know the fu­ture. They heighten man’s taste for the sweet­ness of un­cer­tainty, for the ro­mance and charm of the in­def­i­nite and un­known fu­ture.

39:5.105. The Trans­port­ers. The plan­e­tary trans­port­ers serve the in­di­vid­ual worlds. The ma­jor­ity of en­ser­a­phimed be­ings brought to this planet are in tran­sit; they merely stop over; they are in cus­tody of their own spe­cial se­raphic trans­port­ers; but there are a large num­ber of such ser­a­phim sta­tioned on Uran­tia. These are the trans­port per­son­al­i­ties op­er­at­ing from the lo­cal plan­ets, as from Uran­tia to Je­ru­sem.

39:5.11Your con­ven­tional idea of an­gels has been de­rived in the fol­low­ing way: Dur­ing mo­ments just prior to phys­i­cal death a re­flec­tive phe­nom­e­non some­times oc­curs in the hu­man mind, and this dim­ming con­scious­ness seems to vi­su­al­ize some­thing of the form of the at­tend­ing an­gel, and this is im­me­di­ately trans­lated into terms of the ha­bit­ual con­cept of an­gels held in that in­di­vid­ual’s mind.

39:5.12The er­ro­neous idea that an­gels pos­sess wings is not wholly due to olden no­tions that they must have wings to fly through the air. Hu­man be­ings have some­times been per­mit­ted to ob­serve ser­a­phim that were be­ing pre­pared for trans­port ser­vice, and the tra­di­tions of these ex­pe­ri­ences have largely de­ter­mined the Uran­tian con­cept of an­gels. In ob­serv­ing a trans­port ser­a­phim be­ing made ready to re­ceive a pas­sen­ger for in­ter­plan­e­tary tran­sit, there may be seen what are ap­par­ently dou­ble sets of wings ex­tend­ing from the head to the foot of the an­gel. In re­al­ity these wings are en­ergy in­su­la­tors—fric­tion shields.

39:5.13When ce­les­tial be­ings are to be en­ser­a­phimed for trans­fer from one world to an­other, they are brought to the head­quar­ters of the sphere and, af­ter due reg­istry, are in­ducted into the tran­sit sleep. Mean­time, the trans­port ser­a­phim moves into a hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion im­me­di­ately above the uni­verse en­ergy pole of the planet. While the en­ergy shields are wide open, the sleep­ing per­son­al­ity is skill­fully de­posited, by the of­fi­ci­at­ing se­raphic as­sis­tants, di­rectly on top of the trans­port an­gel. Then both the up­per and lower pairs of shields are care­fully closed and ad­justed.

39:5.14And now, un­der the in­flu­ence of the trans­form­ers and the trans­mit­ters, a strange meta­mor­pho­sis be­gins as the ser­a­phim is made ready to swing into the en­ergy cur­rents of the uni­verse cir­cuits. To out­ward ap­pear­ance the ser­a­phim grows pointed at both ex­trem­i­ties and be­comes so en­shrouded in a queer light of am­ber hue that very soon it is im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish the en­ser­a­phimed per­son­al­ity. When all is in readi­ness for de­par­ture, the chief of trans­port makes the proper in­spec­tion of the car­riage of life, car­ries out the rou­tine tests to as­cer­tain whether or not the an­gel is prop­erly en­cir­cuited, and then an­nounces that the trav­eler is prop­erly en­ser­a­phimed, that the en­er­gies are ad­justed, that the an­gel is in­su­lated, and that ev­ery­thing is in readi­ness for the de­part­ing flash. The me­chan­i­cal con­trol­lers, two of them, next take their po­si­tions. By this time the trans­port ser­a­phim has be­come an al­most trans­par­ent, vi­brat­ing, tor­pedo-shaped out­line of glis­ten­ing lu­mi­nos­ity. Now the trans­port dis­patcher of the realm sum­mons the aux­il­iary bat­ter­ies of the liv­ing en­ergy trans­mit­ters, usu­ally one thou­sand in num­ber; as he an­nounces the des­ti­na­tion of the trans­port, he reaches out and touches the near point of the se­raphic car­riage, which shoots for­ward with light­ning­like speed, leav­ing a trail of ce­les­tial lu­mi­nos­ity as far as the plan­e­tary at­mo­spheric in­vest­ment ex­tends. In less than ten min­utes the mar­velous spec­ta­cle will be lost even to re­in­forced se­raphic vi­sion.

39:5.15While plan­e­tary space re­ports are re­ceived at noon at the merid­ian of the des­ig­nated spir­i­tual head­quar­ters, the trans­port­ers are dis­patched from this same place at mid­night. That is the most fa­vor­able time for de­par­ture and is the stan­dard hour when not oth­er­wise spec­i­fied.

39:5.166. The Re­cord­ers. These are the cus­to­di­ans of the ma­jor af­fairs of the planet as it func­tions as a part of the sys­tem, and as it is re­lated to, and con­cerned in, the uni­verse gov­ern­ment. They func­tion in the record­ing of plan­e­tary af­fairs but are not con­cerned with mat­ters of in­di­vid­ual life and ex­is­tence.

39:5.177. The Re­serves. The Sa­ta­nia re­serve corps of the plan­e­tary ser­a­phim is main­tained on Je­ru­sem in close as­so­ci­a­tion with the re­serves of the Ma­te­rial Sons. These abun­dant re­serves re­pletely pro­vide for ev­ery phase of the man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties of this se­raphic or­der. These an­gels are also the per­sonal mes­sage bear­ers of the lo­cal sys­tems. They serve tran­si­tion mor­tals, an­gels, and the Ma­te­rial Sons as well as oth­ers domi­ciled on the sys­tem head­quar­ters. While Uran­tia is, at pres­ent, out­side the spir­i­tual cir­cuits of Sa­ta­nia and Nor­la­ti­adek, you are oth­er­wise in in­ti­mate touch with in­ter­plan­e­tary af­fairs, for these mes­sen­gers from Je­ru­sem fre­quently come to this world as to all the other spheres of the sys­tem.

• goals › refusal to use power selfishly is mark of high c.

48:7.86. To en­joy priv­i­lege with­out abuse, to have lib­erty with­out li­cense, to pos­sess power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for self-ag­gran­dize­ment—these are the marks of high civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › the planetary age, biological uplifters, missions of divine Sons

49:5.16All such com­par­a­tive es­ti­mates con­cern­ing the in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress or the spir­i­tual at­tain­ments of any world or group of worlds should in fair­ness rec­og­nize plan­e­tary age; much, very much, de­pends on age, the help of the bi­o­logic up­lifters, and the sub­se­quent mis­sions of the var­i­ous or­ders of the di­vine Sons.

50:5.1The loyal princes of the in­hab­ited worlds are per­ma­nently at­tached to the plan­ets of their orig­i­nal as­sign­ment. Par­a­dise Sons and their dis­pen­sa­tions may come and go, but a suc­cess­ful Plan­e­tary Prince con­tin­ues on as the ruler of his realm. His work is quite in­de­pen­dent of the mis­sions of the higher Sons, be­ing de­signed to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tion.

50:5.2The prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion is hardly alike on any two plan­ets. The de­tails of the un­fold­ment of mor­tal evo­lu­tion are very dif­fer­ent on nu­mer­ous dis­sim­i­lar worlds. Not­with­stand­ing these many di­ver­si­fi­ca­tions of plan­e­tary de­vel­op­ment along phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial lines, all evo­lu­tion­ary spheres pro­gress in cer­tain well-de­fined di­rec­tions.

50:5.3Un­der the be­nign rule of a Plan­e­tary Prince, aug­mented by the Ma­te­rial Sons and punc­tu­ated by the pe­ri­odic mis­sions of the Par­a­dise Sons, the mor­tal races on an av­er­age world of time and space will suc­ces­sively pass through the fol­low­ing seven de­vel­op­men­tal epochs:

50:5.41. The nu­tri­tion epoch. The pre­hu­man crea­tures and the dawn races of prim­i­tive man are chiefly con­cerned with food prob­lems. These evolv­ing be­ings spend their wak­ing hours ei­ther in seek­ing food or in fight­ing, of­fen­sively or de­fen­sively. The food quest is paramount in the minds of these early an­ces­tors of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion.

50:5.52. The se­cu­rity age. Just as soon as the prim­i­tive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns this leisure to aug­ment­ing his se­cu­rity. More and more at­ten­tion is de­voted to the tech­nique of war. Homes are for­ti­fied, and the clans are so­lid­i­fied by mu­tual fear and by the in­cul­ca­tion of hate for for­eign groups. Self-preser­va­tion is a pur­suit which al­ways fol­lows self-main­te­nance.

50:5.63. The ma­te­rial-com­fort era. Af­ter food prob­lems have been par­tially solved and some de­gree of se­cu­rity has been at­tained, the ad­di­tional leisure is uti­lized to pro­mote per­sonal com­fort. Lux­ury vies with ne­ces­sity in oc­cu­py­ing the cen­ter of the stage of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties. Such an age is all too of­ten char­ac­ter­ized by tyranny, in­tol­er­ance, glut­tony, and drunk­en­ness. The weaker el­e­ments of the races in­cline to­wards ex­cesses and bru­tal­ity. Grad­u­ally these plea­sure-seek­ing weak­lings are sub­ju­gated by the more strong and truth-lov­ing el­e­ments of the ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › food and security
• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan

50:5.74. The quest for knowl­edge and wis­dom. Food, se­cu­rity, plea­sure, and leisure pro­vide the foun­da­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture and the spread of knowl­edge. The ef­fort to ex­e­cute knowl­edge re­sults in wis­dom, and when a cul­ture has learned how to profit and im­prove by ex­pe­ri­ence, civ­i­liza­tion has re­ally ar­rived. Food, se­cu­rity, and ma­te­rial com­fort still dom­i­nate so­ci­ety, but many for­ward-look­ing in­di­vid­u­als are hun­ger­ing for knowl­edge and thirst­ing for wis­dom. Ev­ery child is pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to learn by do­ing; ed­u­ca­tion is the watch­word of these ages.

50:5.85. The epoch of phi­los­o­phy and broth­er­hood. When mor­tals learn to think and be­gin to profit by ex­pe­ri­ence, they be­come philo­sophical—they start out to rea­son within them­selves and to ex­er­cise dis­crim­i­na­tive judg­ment. The so­ci­ety of this age be­comes eth­i­cal, and the mor­tals of such an era are truly be­com­ing moral be­ings. Wise moral be­ings are ca­pa­ble of es­tab­lish­ing hu­man broth­er­hood on such a pro­gress­ing world. Eth­i­cal and moral be­ings can learn how to live in ac­cor­dance with the golden rule.

50:5.96. The age of spir­i­tual striv­ing. When evolv­ing mor­tals have passed through the phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial stages of de­vel­op­ment, sooner or later they at­tain those lev­els of per­sonal in­sight which im­pel them to seek for spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions and cos­mic un­der­stand­ings. Re­li­gion is com­plet­ing the as­cent from the emo­tional do­mains of fear and su­per­sti­tion to the high lev­els of cos­mic wis­dom and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Ed­u­ca­tion as­pires to the at­tain­ment of mean­ings, and cul­ture grasps at cos­mic re­la­tion­ships and true val­ues. Such evolv­ing mor­tals are gen­uinely cul­tured, truly ed­u­cated, and ex­qui­sitely God-know­ing.

50:5.107. The era of light and life. This is the flow­er­ing of the suc­ces­sive ages of phys­i­cal se­cu­rity, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, so­cial cul­ture, and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. These hu­man ac­com­plish­ments are now blended, as­so­ci­ated, and co-or­di­nated in cos­mic unity and un­selfish ser­vice. Within the lim­i­ta­tions of fi­nite na­ture and ma­te­rial en­dow­ments there are no bounds set upon the pos­si­bil­i­ties of evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment by the ad­vanc­ing gen­er­a­tions who suc­ces­sively live upon these su­per­nal and set­tled worlds of time and space.

50:5.11Af­ter serv­ing their spheres through suc­ces­sive dis­pen­sa­tions of world his­tory and the pro­gress­ing epochs of plan­e­tary prog­ress, the Plan­e­tary Princes are el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eigns upon the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the era of light and life.

50:6.1The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia ren­ders it im­pos­si­ble to un­der­take the pre­sen­ta­tion of many de­tails of the life and en­vi­ron­ment of your Sa­ta­nia neigh­bors. In these pre­sen­ta­tions we are lim­ited by the plan­e­tary quar­an­tine and by the sys­tem iso­la­tion. We must be guided by these re­stric­tions in all our ef­forts to en­lighten Uran­tia mor­tals, but in so far as is per­mis­si­ble, you have been in­structed in the prog­ress of an av­er­age evo­lu­tion­ary world, and you are able to com­pare such a world’s ca­reer with the pres­ent state of Uran­tia.

50:6.2The de­vel­op­ment of civ­i­liza­tion on Uran­tia has not dif­fered so greatly from that of other worlds which have sus­tained the mis­for­tune of spir­i­tual iso­la­tion. But when com­pared with the loyal worlds of the uni­verse, your planet seems most con­fused and greatly re­tarded in all phases of in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

50:6.3Be­cause of your plan­e­tary mis­for­tunes, Uran­tians are pre­vented from un­der­stand­ing very much about the cul­ture of nor­mal worlds. But you should not en­vis­age the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flow­ery bed of ease. The ini­tial life of the mor­tal races is al­ways at­tended by strug­gle. Ef­fort and de­ci­sion are an es­sen­tial part of the ac­quire­ment of sur­vival val­ues.

• dangers › inferior minds spurn highest c.

50:6.4Cul­ture pre­sup­poses qual­ity of mind; cul­ture can­not be en­hanced un­less mind is el­e­vated. Su­pe­rior in­tel­lect will seek a no­ble cul­ture and find some way to at­tain such a goal. In­fe­rior minds will spurn the high­est cul­ture even when pre­sented to them ready-made. Much de­pends, also, upon the suc­ces­sive mis­sions of the di­vine Sons and upon the ex­tent to which en­light­en­ment is re­ceived by the ages of their re­spec­tive dis­pen­sa­tions.

50:6.5You should not for­get that for two hun­dred thou­sand years all the worlds of Sa­ta­nia have rested un­der the spir­i­tual ban of Nor­la­ti­adek in con­se­quence of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. And it will re­quire age upon age to re­trieve the re­sul­tant hand­i­caps of sin and se­ces­sion. Your world still con­tin­ues to pur­sue an ir­reg­u­lar and check­ered ca­reer as a re­sult of the dou­ble tragedy of a re­bel­lious Plan­e­tary Prince and a de­fault­ing Ma­te­rial Son. Even the be­stowal of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia did not im­me­di­ately set aside the tem­po­ral con­se­quences of these se­ri­ous blun­ders in the ear­lier ad­min­is­tra­tion of the world.

• primitive society › Planetary Prince’s and Adam’s headquarters intended to advance

51:6.3Think what it would mean on your world if some­where in the Lev­ant there were a world cen­ter of civ­i­liza­tion, a great plan­e­tary uni­ver­sity of cul­ture, which had func­tioned un­in­ter­rupt­edly for 37,000 years. And again, pause to con­sider how the moral au­thor­ity of even such an an­cient cen­ter would be re­in­forced were there sit­u­ated not far-dis­tant still an­other and older head­quar­ters of ce­les­tial min­istry whose tra­di­tions would ex­ert a cu­mu­la­tive force of 500,000 years of in­te­grated evo­lu­tion­ary in­flu­ence. It is cus­tom which even­tu­ally spreads the ide­als of Eden to a whole world.

51:7.1From time to time the Avo­nal Sons of Par­a­dise come to the in­hab­ited worlds for ju­di­cial ac­tions, but the first Avo­nal to ar­rive on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion in­au­gu­rates the fourth dis­pen­sa­tion of an evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space. On some plan­ets where this Mag­is­te­rial Son is uni­ver­sally ac­cepted, he re­mains for one age; and thus the planet pros­pers un­der the joint ruler­ship of three Sons: the Plan­e­tary Prince, the Ma­te­rial Son, and the Mag­is­te­rial Son, the lat­ter two be­ing vis­i­ble to all the in­hab­i­tants of the realm.

51:7.2Be­fore the first Mag­is­te­rial Son con­cludes his mis­sion on a nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary world, there has been ef­fected the union of the ed­u­ca­tional and ad­min­is­tra­tive work of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the Ma­te­rial Son. This amal­ga­ma­tion of the dual super­vi­sion of a planet brings into ex­is­tence a new and ef­fec­tive or­der of world ad­min­is­tra­tion. Upon the re­tire­ment of the Mag­is­te­rial Son the Plan­e­tary Adam as­sumes the out­ward di­rec­tion of the sphere. The Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter thus act jointly as plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors un­til the set­tling of the world in the era of light and life; where­upon the Plan­e­tary Prince is el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign. Dur­ing this age of ad­vanced evo­lu­tion, Adam and Eve be­come what might be called joint prime min­is­ters of the glo­ri­fied realm.

51:7.3As soon as the new and con­sol­i­dated cap­i­tal of the evolv­ing world has be­come well es­tab­lished, and just as fast as com­pe­tent sub­or­di­nate ad­min­is­tra­tors can be prop­erly trained, sub­cap­i­tals are founded on re­mote land bod­ies and among the dif­fer­ent peo­ples. Be­fore the ar­rival of an­other dis­pen­sa­tional Son, from fifty to one hun­dred of these sub­cen­ters will have been or­ga­nized.

51:7.4The Plan­e­tary Prince and his staff still fos­ter the spir­i­tual and philo­sophic do­mains of ac­tiv­ity. Adam and Eve pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the phys­i­cal, sci­en­tific, and eco­nomic sta­tus of the realm. Both groups equally de­vote their en­er­gies to the pro­mo­tion of the arts, so­cial re­la­tions, and in­tel­lec­tual achieve­ments.

51:7.5By the time of the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the fifth dis­pen­sa­tion of world af­fairs, a mag­nif­i­cent ad­min­is­tra­tion of plan­e­tary ac­tiv­i­ties has been achieved. Mor­tal ex­is­tence on such a well-man­aged sphere is in­deed stim­u­lat­ing and prof­itable. And if Uran­tians could only ob­serve life on such a planet, they would im­me­di­ately ap­pre­ci­ate the value of those things which their world has lost through em­brac­ing evil and par­tic­i­pat­ing in re­bel­lion.

51:7.6[Pre­sented by a Sec­ondary La­non­an­dek Son of the Re­serve Corps.]

• spread by commerce and exploration

52:6.31. So­cial fra­ter­nity. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial so­cial con­tacts and fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tions through travel, com­merce, and com­pet­i­tive play. De­vel­op­ment of a com­mon lan­guage and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mul­ti­lin­guists. The racial and na­tional in­ter­change of stu­dents, teach­ers, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and re­li­gious philoso­phers.

• retrogression › after death of Andon

63:5.7And in many other ways these An­don tribes man­i­fested a de­gree of in­tel­li­gence which their ret­ro­gress­ing de­scen­dants did not at­tain in half a mil­lion years, though they did again and again re­dis­cover var­i­ous meth­ods of kin­dling fire.

• retrogression › after death of Andon

64:1.7The groups go­ing west be­came less con­tam­i­nated with the back­ward stocks of mu­tual an­ces­tral ori­gin than those go­ing east, who min­gled so freely with their re­tarded an­i­mal cousins. These un­pro­gres­sive in­di­vid­u­als drifted south­ward and pres­ently mated with the in­fe­rior tribes. Later on, in­creas­ing num­bers of their mon­grel de­scen­dants re­turned to the north to mate with the rapidly ex­pand­ing An­donic peo­ples, and such un­for­tu­nate unions un­fail­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated the su­pe­rior stock. Fewer and fewer of the prim­i­tive set­tle­ments main­tained the wor­ship of the Breath Giver. This early dawn civ­i­liza­tion was threat­ened with ex­tinc­tion.

• retrogression › after death of Andon

64:2.4Dur­ing this long pe­riod of cul­tural deca­dence the Fox­hall peo­ples of Eng­land and the Bado­nan tribes north­west of In­dia con­tin­ued to hold on to some of the tra­di­tions of An­don and cer­tain rem­nants of the cul­ture of On­a­gar.

• retrogression › after death of Andon

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• retrogression › after death of Onamonalonton

64:6.8As time passed, the teach­ings of Ona­mo­na­lon­ton be­came hazy tra­di­tions. In­ternecine wars were re­sumed, and never af­ter the days of this great teacher did an­other leader suc­ceed in bring­ing uni­ver­sal peace among them. In­creas­ingly the more in­tel­li­gent strains per­ished in these tribal strug­gles; oth­er­wise a great civ­i­liza­tion would have been built upon the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent by these able and in­tel­li­gent red men.

• spiritual progress not dependent upon

65:8.4As mind evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on, and de­layed by, the slow de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so is spir­i­tual prog­ress de­pen­dent on men­tal ex­pan­sion and un­fail­ingly de­layed by in­tel­lec­tual re­tar­da­tion. But this does not mean that spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, or wis­dom. The soul may evolve re­gard­less of men­tal cul­ture but not in the ab­sence of men­tal ca­pac­ity and de­sire—the choice of sur­vival and the de­ci­sion to achieve ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion—to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Al­though sur­vival may not de­pend on the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and wis­dom, pro­gres­sion most cer­tainly does.

66:3.1The head­quar­ters of the Plan­e­tary Prince was sit­u­ated in the Per­sian Gulf re­gion of those days, in the dis­trict cor­re­spond­ing to later Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

• primitive society › 4 great stages were collection, hunting, pastoral, and agricultural

66:3.2The cli­mate and land­scape in the Mes­o­po­ta­mia of those times were in ev­ery way fa­vor­able to the un­der­tak­ings of the Prince’s staff and their as­sis­tants, very dif­fer­ent from con­di­tions which have some­times since pre­vailed. It was nec­es­sary to have such a fa­vor­ing cli­mate as a part of the nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment de­signed to in­duce prim­i­tive Uran­tians to make cer­tain ini­tial ad­vances in cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion. The one great task of those ages was to trans­form man from a hunter to a herder, with the hope that later on he would evolve into a peace-lov­ing, home-abid­ing farmer.

66:3.3The head­quar­ters of the Plan­e­tary Prince on Uran­tia was typ­i­cal of such sta­tions on a young and de­vel­op­ing sphere. The nu­cleus of the Prince’s set­tle­ment was a very sim­ple but beau­ti­ful city, en­closed within a wall forty feet high. This world cen­ter of cul­ture was named Dala­ma­tia in honor of Dali­gas­tia.

66:3.4The city was laid out in ten sub­di­vi­sions with the head­quar­ters man­sions of the ten coun­cils of the cor­po­real staff sit­u­ated at the cen­ters of these sub­di­vi­sions. Cen­ter­most in the city was the tem­ple of the un­seen Fa­ther. The ad­min­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters of the Prince and his as­so­ciates was ar­ranged in twelve cham­bers im­me­di­ately grouped about the tem­ple it­self.

66:3.5The build­ings of Dala­ma­tia were all one story ex­cept the coun­cil head­quar­ters, which were two sto­ries, and the cen­tral tem­ple of the Fa­ther of all, which was small but three sto­ries in height.

66:3.6The city rep­re­sented the best prac­tices of those early days in build­ing ma­te­rial—brick. Very lit­tle stone or wood was used. Home build­ing and vil­lage ar­chi­tec­ture among the sur­round­ing peo­ples were greatly im­proved by the Dala­ma­tian ex­am­ple.

66:3.7Near the Prince’s head­quar­ters there dwelt all col­ors and strata of hu­man be­ings. And it was from these near-by tribes that the first stu­dents of the Prince’s schools were re­cruited. Al­though these early schools of Dala­ma­tia were crude, they pro­vided all that could be done for the men and women of that prim­i­tive age.

66:3.8The Prince’s cor­po­real staff con­tin­u­ously gath­ered about them the su­pe­rior in­di­vid­u­als of the sur­round­ing tribes and, af­ter train­ing and in­spir­ing these stu­dents, sent them back as teach­ers and lead­ers of their re­spec­tive peo­ples.

• primitive society › forged out between anvil of necessity and hammers of fear

66:5.136. The col­lege of re­vealed re­li­gion. This body was slow in func­tion­ing. Uran­tia civ­i­liza­tion was lit­er­ally forged out be­tween the anvil of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of fear. But this group had made con­sid­er­able prog­ress in their at­tempt to sub­sti­tute Cre­ator fear for crea­ture fear (ghost wor­ship) be­fore their labors were in­ter­rupted by the later con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon the se­ces­sion up­heaval. The head of this coun­cil was Hap.

• dangers › sudden transformations unhelpful

66:6.3The Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred—grad­u­ates of the Sa­ta­nia man­sion worlds—well knew the arts and cul­ture of Je­ru­sem, but such knowl­edge is nearly val­ue­less on a bar­baric planet pop­u­lated by prim­i­tive hu­mans. These wise be­ings knew bet­ter than to un­der­take the sud­den trans­for­ma­tion, or the en masse up­lift­ing, of the prim­i­tive races of that day. They well un­der­stood the slow evo­lu­tion of the hu­man species, and they wisely re­frained from any rad­i­cal at­tempts at mod­i­fy­ing man’s mode of life on earth.

66:6.4Each of the ten plan­e­tary com­mis­sions set about slowly and nat­u­rally to ad­vance the in­ter­ests in­trusted to them. Their plan con­sisted in at­tract­ing the best minds of the sur­round­ing tribes and, af­ter train­ing them, send­ing them back to their peo­ple as emis­saries of so­cial up­lift.

66:6.5For­eign emis­saries were never sent to a race ex­cept upon the spe­cific re­quest of that peo­ple. Those who la­bored for the up­lift and ad­vance­ment of a given tribe or race were al­ways na­tives of that tribe or race. The one hun­dred would not at­tempt to im­pose the habits and mores of even a su­pe­rior race upon an­other tribe. Al­ways they pa­tiently worked to up­lift and ad­vance the time-tried mores of each race. The sim­ple folk of Uran­tia brought their so­cial cus­toms to Dala­ma­tia, not to ex­change them for new and bet­ter prac­tices, but to have them up­lifted by con­tact with a higher cul­ture and by as­so­ci­a­tion with su­pe­rior minds. The pro­cess was slow but very ef­fec­tual.

66:6.6The Dala­ma­tia teach­ers sought to add con­scious so­cial se­lec­tion to the purely nat­u­ral se­lec­tion of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. They did not de­range hu­man so­ci­ety, but they did markedly ac­cel­er­ate its nor­mal and nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion. Their mo­tive was pro­gres­sion by evo­lu­tion and not rev­o­lu­tion by rev­e­la­tion. The hu­man race had spent ages in ac­quir­ing the lit­tle re­li­gion and morals it had, and these super­men knew bet­ter than to rob man­kind of these few ad­vances by the con­fu­sion and dis­may which al­ways re­sult when en­light­ened and su­pe­rior be­ings un­der­take to up­lift the back­ward races by overteach­ing and over­en­light­en­ment.

66:6.7When Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies go into the heart of Africa, where sons and daugh­ters are sup­posed to re­main un­der the con­trol and di­rec­tion of their par­ents through­out the life­time of the par­ents, they only bring about con­fu­sion and the break­down of all au­thor­ity when they seek, in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion, to sup­plant this prac­tice by teach­ing that these chil­dren should be free from all pa­ren­tal re­straint af­ter they have at­tained the age of twenty-one.

• retrogression › after Lucifer rebellion

67:5.3The Cali­gas­tia scheme for the im­me­di­ate re­con­struc­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety in ac­cor­dance with his ideas of in­di­vid­ual free­dom and group lib­er­ties, proved a swift and more or less com­plete fail­ure. So­ci­ety quickly sank back to its old bi­o­logic level, and the for­ward strug­gle be­gan all over, start­ing not very far in ad­vance of where it was at the be­gin­ning of the Cali­gas­tia regime, this up­heaval hav­ing left the world in con­fu­sion worse con­founded.

• dependent upon › rearing of children in environment of culture
• unstable; not biologically innate

68:0.2Civ­i­liza­tion is a racial ac­quire­ment; it is not bi­o­log­i­cally in­her­ent; hence must all chil­dren be reared in an en­vi­ron­ment of cul­ture, while each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion of youth must re­ceive anew its ed­u­ca­tion. The su­pe­rior qual­i­ties of civ­i­liza­tion—sci­en­tific, philo­sophic, and re­li­gious—are not trans­mit­ted from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other by di­rect in­her­i­tance. These cul­tural achieve­ments are pre­served only by the en­light­ened con­ser­va­tion of so­cial in­her­i­tance.

• primitive society › man’s insurance against risk, violent death

68:1.2As­so­ci­a­tion early be­came the price of sur­vival. The lone man was help­less un­less he bore a tribal mark which tes­ti­fied that he be­longed to a group which would cer­tainly avenge any as­sault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fa­tal to go abroad alone with­out some mark of group as­so­ci­a­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has be­come man’s in­sur­ance against vi­o­lent death, while the pre­mi­ums are paid by sub­mis­sion to so­ci­ety’s nu­mer­ous law de­mands.

• primitive society › founded on the reciprocity of necessity

68:1.3Prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was thus founded on the reci­procity of ne­ces­sity and on the en­hanced safety of as­so­ci­a­tion. And hu­man so­ci­ety has evolved in age­long cy­cles as a re­sult of this iso­la­tion fear and by means of re­luc­tant co-op­er­a­tion.

• organization of intelligent co-operators

68:1.4Prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their in­di­vid­ual units. One hun­dred men united and work­ing in uni­son can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guard­i­ans of the peace can re­strain an an­gry mob. And so so­ci­ety was born, not of mere as­so­ci­a­tion of num­bers, but rather as a re­sult of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tors. But co-op­er­a­tion is not a nat­u­ral trait of man; he learns to co-op­er­ate first through fear and then later be­cause he dis­cov­ers it is most ben­e­fi­cial in meet­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of time and guard­ing against the sup­posed per­ils of eter­nity.

• goals › prime gift of society is security, survival possibilities

68:1.5The peo­ples who thus early or­ga­nized them­selves into a prim­i­tive so­ci­ety be­came more suc­cess­ful in their at­tacks on na­ture as well as in de­fense against their fel­lows; they pos­sessed greater sur­vival pos­si­bil­i­ties; hence has civ­i­liza­tion steadily pro­gressed on Uran­tia, not­with­stand­ing its many set­backs. And it is only be­cause of the en­hance­ment of sur­vival value in as­so­ci­a­tion that man’s many blun­ders have thus far failed to stop or de­stroy hu­man civ­i­liza­tion.

68:2.1Civ­i­lized so­ci­ety is the re­sult of man’s early ef­forts to over­come his dis­like of iso­la­tion. But this does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify mu­tual af­fec­tion, and the pres­ent tur­bu­lent state of cer­tain prim­i­tive groups well il­lus­trates what the early tribes came up through. But though the in­di­vid­u­als of a civ­i­liza­tion may col­lide with each other and strug­gle against one an­other, and though civ­i­liza­tion it­self may ap­pear to be an in­con­sis­tent mass of striv­ing and strug­gling, it does ev­i­dence earnest striv­ing, not the deadly mo­not­ony of stag­na­tion.

• primitive society › man’s insurance against risk, violent death

68:2.2While the level of in­tel­li­gence has con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the rate of cul­tural prog­ress, so­ci­ety is es­sen­tially de­signed to lessen the risk el­e­ment in the in­di­vid­ual’s mode of liv­ing, and it has pro­gressed just as fast as it has suc­ceeded in less­en­ing pain and in­creas­ing the plea­sure el­e­ment in life. Thus does the whole so­cial body push on slowly to­ward the goal of des­tiny—ex­tinc­tion or sur­vival—de­pend­ing on whether that goal is self-main­te­nance or self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance orig­i­nates so­ci­ety, while ex­ces­sive self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

• concerned with self-perpetuation, self-maintenance, and self-gratification

68:2.3So­ci­ety is con­cerned with self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-main­te­nance, and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion is wor­thy of be­com­ing the im­me­di­ate goal of many cul­tural groups.

• primitive society › men driven together by food hunger, sex love, vanity, and ghost fear

68:2.4The herd in­stinct in nat­u­ral man is hardly suf­fi­cient to ac­count for the de­vel­op­ment of such a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion as now ex­ists on Uran­tia. Though this in­nate gre­gar­i­ous propen­sity lies at the bot­tom of hu­man so­ci­ety, much of man’s so­cia­bil­ity is an ac­quire­ment. Two great in­flu­ences which con­tributed to the early as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man be­ings were food hunger and sex love; these in­stinc­tive urges man shares with the an­i­mal world. Two other emo­tions which drove hu­man be­ings to­gether and held them to­gether were van­ity and fear, more par­tic­u­larly ghost fear.

• modern civilization › dangerous phase of complicated interdependence

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

• primitive society › men driven together by food hunger, sex love, vanity, and ghost fear

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

68:2.7Woman thus early be­came in­dis­pens­able to the evolv­ing so­cial scheme, not so much be­cause of the fleet­ing sex pas­sion as in con­se­quence of food re­quire­ment; she was an es­sen­tial part­ner in self-main­te­nance. She was a food provider, a beast of bur­den, and a com­pan­ion who would stand great abuse with­out vi­o­lent re­sent­ment, and in ad­di­tion to all of these de­sir­able traits, she was an ever-pres­ent means of sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

68:2.8Al­most ev­ery­thing of last­ing value in civ­i­liza­tion has its roots in the fam­ily. The fam­ily was the first suc­cess­ful peace group, the man and woman learn­ing how to ad­just their an­tag­o­nisms while at the same time teach­ing the pur­suits of peace to their chil­dren.

68:2.9The func­tion of mar­riage in evo­lu­tion is the in­sur­ance of race sur­vival, not merely the re­al­iza­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness; self-main­te­nance and self-per­pet­u­a­tion are the real ob­jects of the home. Self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion is in­ci­den­tal and not es­sen­tial ex­cept as an in­cen­tive in­sur­ing sex as­so­ci­a­tion. Na­ture de­mands sur­vival, but the arts of civ­i­liza­tion con­tinue to in­crease the plea­sures of mar­riage and the sat­is­fac­tions of fam­ily life.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.

• dangers › unbridled self-gratification unfailingly destroys

68:2.11Van­ity con­tributed might­ily to the birth of so­ci­ety; but at the time of these rev­e­la­tions the de­vi­ous striv­ings of a vain­glo­ri­ous gen­er­a­tion threaten to swamp and sub­merge the whole com­pli­cated struc­ture of a highly spe­cial­ized civ­i­liza­tion. Plea­sure-want has long since su­per­seded hunger-want; the le­git­i­mate so­cial aims of self-main­te­nance are rapidly trans­lat­ing them­selves into base and threat­en­ing forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance builds so­ci­ety; un­bri­dled self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion un­fail­ingly de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

68:3.1Prim­i­tive de­sires pro­duced the orig­i­nal so­ci­ety, but ghost fear held it to­gether and im­parted an ex­trahu­man as­pect to its ex­is­tence. Com­mon fear was phys­i­o­log­i­cal in ori­gin: fear of phys­i­cal pain, un­sat­is­fied hunger, or some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and sub­lime sort of ter­ror.

68:3.2Prob­a­bly the great­est sin­gle fac­tor in the evo­lu­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety was the ghost dream. Al­though most dreams greatly per­turbed the prim­i­tive mind, the ghost dream ac­tu­ally ter­ror­ized early men, driv­ing these su­per­sti­tious dream­ers into each other’s arms in will­ing and earnest as­so­ci­a­tion for mu­tual pro­tec­tion against the vague and un­seen imag­i­nary dan­gers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the ear­li­est ap­pear­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the an­i­mal and hu­man types of mind. An­i­mals do not vi­su­al­ize sur­vival af­ter death.

68:3.3Ex­cept for this ghost fac­tor, all so­ci­ety was founded on fun­da­men­tal needs and ba­sic bi­o­logic urges. But ghost fear in­tro­duced a new fac­tor in civ­i­liza­tion, a fear which reaches out and away from the el­e­men­tal needs of the in­di­vid­ual, and which rises far above even the strug­gles to main­tain the group. The dread of the de­parted spir­its of the dead brought to light a new and amaz­ing form of fear, an ap­palling and pow­er­ful ter­ror, which con­tributed to whip­ping the loose so­cial or­ders of early ages into the more thor­oughly dis­ci­plined and bet­ter con­trolled prim­i­tive groups of an­cient times. This sense­less su­per­sti­tion, some of which still per­sists, pre­pared the minds of men, through su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­real and the super­nat­u­ral, for the later dis­cov­ery of “the fear of the Lord which is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.” The base­less fears of evo­lu­tion are de­signed to be sup­planted by the awe for De­ity in­spired by rev­e­la­tion. The early cult of ghost fear be­came a pow­er­ful so­cial bond, and ever since that far-dis­tant day man­kind has been striv­ing more or less for the at­tain­ment of spir­i­tu­al­ity.

• dangers › breaks down without superhuman help

68:3.4Hunger and love drove men to­gether; van­ity and ghost fear held them to­gether. But these emo­tions alone, with­out the in­flu­ence of peace-pro­mot­ing rev­e­la­tions, are un­able to en­dure the strain of the sus­pi­cions and ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions. With­out help from super­hu­man sources the strain of so­ci­ety breaks down upon reach­ing cer­tain lim­its, and these very in­flu­ences of so­cial mo­bi­liza­tion—hunger, love, van­ity, and fear—con­spire to plunge man­kind into war and blood­shed.

68:3.5The peace ten­dency of the hu­man race is not a nat­u­ral en­dow­ment; it is de­rived from the teach­ings of re­vealed re­li­gion, from the ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive races, but more es­pe­cially from the teach­ings of Je­sus, the Prince of Peace.

• retrogression › many backward steps

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.

• sum of man’s adjustment to life

68:5.1Land is the stage of so­ci­ety; men are the ac­tors. And man must ever ad­just his per­for­mances to con­form to the land sit­u­a­tion. The evo­lu­tion of the mores is al­ways de­pen­dent on the land-man ra­tio. This is true not­with­stand­ing the dif­fi­culty of its dis­cern­ment. Man’s land tech­nique, or main­te­nance arts, plus his stan­dards of liv­ing, equal the sum to­tal of the folk­ways, the mores. And the sum of man’s ad­just­ment to the life de­mands equals his cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

• primitive society › 4 great stages were collection, hunting, pastoral, and agricultural

68:5.2The ear­li­est hu­man cul­tures arose along the rivers of the East­ern Hemi­sphere, and there were four great steps in the for­ward march of civ­i­liza­tion. They were:

68:5.31. The col­lec­tion stage. Food co­er­cion, hunger, led to the first form of in­dus­trial or­ga­ni­za­tion, the prim­i­tive food-gath­er­ing lines. Some­times such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land glean­ing food. This was the prim­i­tive no­madic stage of cul­ture and is the mode of life now fol­lowed by the African Bush­men.

68:5.42. The hunt­ing stage. The in­ven­tion of weapon tools en­abled man to be­come a hunter and thus to gain con­sid­er­able free­dom from food slav­ery. A thought­ful An­don­ite who had severely bruised his fist in a se­ri­ous com­bat re­dis­cov­ered the idea of us­ing a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made in­de­pen­dent dis­cov­er­ies of this sort, and these var­i­ous forms of ham­mers rep­re­sented one of the great for­ward steps in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. To­day some Aus­tralian na­tives have pro­gressed lit­tle be­yond this stage.

68:5.5The blue men be­came ex­pert hunters and trap­pers; by fenc­ing the rivers they caught fish in great num­bers, dry­ing the sur­plus for win­ter use. Many forms of in­ge­nious snares and traps were em­ployed in catch­ing game, but the more prim­i­tive races did not hunt the larger an­i­mals.

68:5.63. The pas­toral stage. This phase of civ­i­liza­tion was made pos­si­ble by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals. The Arabs and the na­tives of Africa are among the more re­cent pas­toral peo­ples.

68:5.7Pas­toral liv­ing af­forded fur­ther re­lief from food slav­ery; man learned to live on the in­ter­est of his cap­i­tal, the in­crease in his flocks; and this pro­vided more leisure for cul­ture and prog­ress.

68:5.8Prepas­toral so­ci­ety was one of sex co-op­er­a­tion, but the spread of an­i­mal hus­bandry re­duced women to the depths of so­cial slav­ery. In ear­lier times it was man’s duty to se­cure the an­i­mal food, woman’s busi­ness to pro­vide the veg­etable ed­i­bles. There­fore, when man en­tered the pas­toral era of his ex­is­tence, woman’s dig­nity fell greatly. She must still toil to pro­duce the veg­etable ne­ces­si­ties of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to pro­vide an abun­dance of an­i­mal food. Man thus be­came rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of woman; through­out the en­tire pas­toral age woman’s sta­tus steadily de­clined. By the close of this era she had be­come scarcely more than a hu­man an­i­mal, con­signed to work and to bear hu­man off­spring, much as the an­i­mals of the herd were ex­pected to la­bor and bring forth young. The men of the pas­toral ages had great love for their cat­tle; all the more pity they could not have de­vel­oped a deeper af­fec­tion for their wives.

68:5.94. The ag­ri­cul­tural stage. This era was brought about by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of plants, and it rep­re­sents the high­est type of ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion. Both Cali­gas­tia and Adam en­deav­ored to teach hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture. Adam and Eve were gar­den­ers, not shep­herds, and gar­den­ing was an ad­vanced cul­ture in those days. The grow­ing of plants ex­erts an en­nobling in­flu­ence on all races of man­kind.

68:5.10Agri­cul­ture more than quadru­pled the land-man ra­tio of the world. It may be com­bined with the pas­toral pur­suits of the for­mer cul­tural stage. When the three stages over­lap, men hunt and women till the soil.

68:5.11There has al­ways been fric­tion be­tween the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were mil­i­tant, war­like; the agri­cul­tur­ist is a more peace-lov­ing type. As­so­ci­a­tion with an­i­mals sug­gests strug­gle and force; as­so­ci­a­tion with plants in­stills pa­tience, quiet, and peace. Agri­cul­ture and in­dus­tri­al­ism are the ac­tiv­i­ties of peace. But the weak­ness of both, as world so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, is that they lack ex­cite­ment and ad­ven­ture.

• dangers › too complicated or too luxurious standards of living are suicidal

68:6.7All down through the ages the stan­dards of liv­ing have de­ter­mined the qual­ity of a sur­viv­ing pop­u­la­tion in con­trast with mere quan­tity. Lo­cal class stan­dards of liv­ing give ori­gin to new so­cial castes, new mores. When stan­dards of liv­ing be­come too com­pli­cated or too highly lux­u­ri­ous, they speed­ily be­come sui­ci­dal. Caste is the di­rect re­sult of the high so­cial pres­sure of keen com­pe­ti­tion pro­duced by dense pop­u­la­tions.

• primitive society › industrial, regulative, religious, military divisions

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.

69:7.1To start with, the en­tire an­i­mal world was man’s en­emy; hu­man be­ings had to learn to pro­tect them­selves from the beasts. First, man ate the an­i­mals but later learned to do­mes­ti­cate and make them serve him.

69:7.2The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals came about ac­ci­den­tally. The sav­age would hunt herds much as the Amer­i­can In­di­ans hunted the bi­son. By sur­round­ing the herd they could keep con­trol of the an­i­mals, thus be­ing able to kill them as they were re­quired for food. Later, cor­rals were con­structed, and en­tire herds would be cap­tured.

69:7.3It was easy to tame some an­i­mals, but like the ele­phant, many of them would not re­pro­duce in cap­tiv­ity. Still fur­ther on it was dis­cov­ered that cer­tain species of an­i­mals would sub­mit to man’s pres­ence, and that they would re­pro­duce in cap­tiv­ity. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals was thus pro­moted by se­lec­tive breed­ing, an art which has made great prog­ress since the days of Dala­ma­tia.

69:7.4The dog was the first an­i­mal to be do­mes­ti­cated, and the dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ence of tam­ing it be­gan when a cer­tain dog, af­ter fol­low­ing a hunter around all day, ac­tu­ally went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunt­ing, trans­porta­tion, and com­pan­ion­ship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog’s keen sense of smell led to the no­tion it could see spir­its, and thus arose the dog-fe­tish cults. The em­ploy­ment of watch­dogs made it first pos­si­ble for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then be­came the cus­tom to em­ploy watch­dogs to pro­tect the home against spir­its as well as ma­te­rial en­e­mies. When the dog barked, man or beast ap­proached, but when the dog howled, spir­its were near. Even now many still be­lieve that a dog’s howl­ing at night be­to­kens death.

69:7.5When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but af­ter the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals, cou­pled with the Cali­gas­tia con­fu­sion, many tribes shame­fully treated their women. They treated them al­to­gether too much as they treated their an­i­mals. Man’s bru­tal treat­ment of woman con­sti­tutes one of the dark­est chap­ters of hu­man his­tory.

69:8.1Prim­i­tive man never hes­i­tated to en­slave his fel­lows. Woman was the first slave, a fam­ily slave. Pas­toral man en­slaved woman as his in­fe­rior sex part­ner. This sort of sex slav­ery grew di­rectly out of man’s de­creased de­pen­dence upon woman.

69:8.2Not long ago en­slave­ment was the lot of those mil­i­tary cap­tives who re­fused to ac­cept the con­queror’s re­li­gion. In ear­lier times cap­tives were ei­ther eaten, tor­tured to death, set to fight­ing each other, sac­ri­ficed to spir­its, or en­slaved. Slav­ery was a great ad­vance­ment over mas­sacre and can­ni­bal­ism.

69:8.3En­slave­ment was a for­ward step in the mer­ci­ful treat­ment of war cap­tives. The am­bush of Ai, with the whole­sale slaugh­ter of men, women, and chil­dren, only the king be­ing saved to grat­ify the con­queror’s van­ity, is a faith­ful pic­ture of the bar­baric slaugh­ter prac­ticed by even sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized peo­ples. The raid upon Og, the king of Bashan, was equally bru­tal and ef­fec­tive. The He­brews “ut­terly de­stroyed” their en­e­mies, tak­ing all their prop­erty as spoils. They put all cities un­der trib­ute on pain of the “de­struc­tion of all males.” But many of the con­tem­po­rary tribes, those hav­ing less tribal ego­tism, had long since be­gun to prac­tice the adop­tion of su­pe­rior cap­tives.

69:8.4The hunter, like the Amer­i­can red man, did not en­slave. He ei­ther adopted or killed his cap­tives. Slav­ery was not preva­lent among the pas­toral peo­ples, for they needed few la­bor­ers. In war the herders made a prac­tice of killing all men cap­tives and tak­ing as slaves only the women and chil­dren. The Mo­saic code con­tained spe­cific di­rec­tions for mak­ing wives of these women cap­tives. If not sat­is­fac­tory, they could be sent away, but the He­brews were not al­lowed to sell such re­jected con­sorts as slaves—that was at least one ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion. Though the so­cial stan­dards of the He­brews were crude, they were far above those of the sur­round­ing tribes.

69:8.5The herders were the first cap­i­tal­ists; their herds rep­re­sented cap­i­tal, and they lived on the in­ter­est—the nat­u­ral in­crease. And they were dis­in­clined to trust this wealth to the keep­ing of ei­ther slaves or women. But later on they took male pris­on­ers and forced them to cul­ti­vate the soil. This is the early ori­gin of serf­dom—man at­tached to the land. The Africans could eas­ily be taught to till the soil; hence they be­came the great slave race.

69:8.6Slav­ery was an in­dis­pens­able link in the chain of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. It was the bridge over which so­ci­ety passed from chaos and in­do­lence to or­der and civ­i­lized ac­tiv­i­ties; it com­pelled back­ward and lazy peo­ples to work and thus pro­vide wealth and leisure for the so­cial ad­vance­ment of their su­pe­ri­ors.

69:8.7The in­sti­tu­tion of slav­ery com­pelled man to in­vent the reg­u­la­tive mech­a­nism of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety; it gave ori­gin to the be­gin­nings of gov­ern­ment. Slav­ery de­mands strong reg­u­la­tion and dur­ing the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages vir­tu­ally dis­ap­peared be­cause the feu­dal lords could not con­trol the slaves. The back­ward tribes of an­cient times, like the na­tive Aus­tralians of to­day, never had slaves.

69:8.8True, slav­ery was op­pres­sive, but it was in the schools of op­pres­sion that man learned in­dus­try. Even­tu­ally the slaves shared the bless­ings of a higher so­ci­ety which they had so un­will­ingly helped cre­ate. Slav­ery cre­ates an or­ga­ni­za­tion of cul­ture and so­cial achieve­ment but soon in­sid­i­ously at­tacks so­ci­ety in­ter­nally as the gravest of all de­struc­tive so­cial mal­adies.

69:8.9Mod­ern me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tion ren­dered the slave ob­so­lete. Slav­ery, like polygamy, is pass­ing be­cause it does not pay. But it has al­ways proved dis­as­trous sud­denly to lib­er­ate great num­bers of slaves; less trou­ble en­sues when they are grad­u­ally eman­ci­pated.

69:8.10To­day, men are not so­cial slaves, but thou­sands al­low am­bi­tion to en­slave them to debt. In­vol­un­tary slav­ery has given way to a new and im­proved form of mod­i­fied in­dus­trial servi­tude.

69:8.11While the ideal of so­ci­ety is uni­ver­sal free­dom, idle­ness should never be tol­er­ated. All able-bod­ied per­sons should be com­pelled to do at least a self-sus­tain­ing amount of work.

69:8.12Mod­ern so­ci­ety is in re­verse. Slav­ery has nearly dis­ap­peared; do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals are pass­ing. Civ­i­liza­tion is reach­ing back to fire—the in­or­ganic world—for power. Man came up from sav­agery by way of fire, an­i­mals, and slav­ery; to­day he reaches back, dis­card­ing the help of slaves and the as­sis­tance of an­i­mals, while he seeks to wrest new se­crets and sources of wealth and power from the el­e­men­tal store­house of na­ture.

69:9.1While prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was vir­tu­ally com­mu­nal, prim­i­tive man did not ad­here to the mod­ern doc­trines of com­mu­nism. The com­mu­nism of these early times was not a mere the­ory or so­cial doc­trine; it was a sim­ple and prac­ti­cal au­to­matic ad­just­ment. Com­mu­nism pre­vented pau­perism and want; beg­ging and pros­ti­tu­tion were al­most un­known among these an­cient tribes.

69:9.2Prim­i­tive com­mu­nism did not es­pe­cially level men down, nor did it ex­alt medi­ocrity, but it did put a pre­mium on in­ac­tiv­ity and idle­ness, and it did sti­fle in­dus­try and de­stroy am­bi­tion. Com­mu­nism was in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the growth of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety, but it gave way to the evo­lu­tion of a higher so­cial or­der be­cause it ran counter to four strong hu­man pro­cliv­i­ties:

69:9.31. The fam­ily. Man not only craves to ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty; he de­sires to be­queath his cap­i­tal goods to his progeny. But in early com­mu­nal so­ci­ety a man’s cap­i­tal was ei­ther im­me­di­ately con­sumed or dis­tributed among the group at his death. There was no in­her­i­tance of prop­erty—the in­her­i­tance tax was one hun­dred per cent. The later cap­i­tal-ac­cu­mu­la­tion and prop­erty-in­her­i­tance mores were a dis­tinct so­cial ad­vance. And this is true not­with­stand­ing the sub­se­quent gross abuses at­ten­dant upon the mis­use of cap­i­tal.

69:9.42. Re­li­gious ten­den­cies. Prim­i­tive man also wanted to save up prop­erty as a nu­cleus for start­ing life in the next ex­is­tence. This mo­tive ex­plains why it was so long the cus­tom to bury a man’s per­sonal be­long­ings with him. The an­cients be­lieved that only the rich sur­vived death with any im­me­di­ate plea­sure and dig­nity. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion, more es­pe­cially the Chris­tian teach­ers, were the first to pro­claim that the poor could have sal­va­tion on equal terms with the rich.

69:9.53. The de­sire for lib­erty and leisure. In the ear­lier days of so­cial evo­lu­tion the ap­por­tion­ment of in­di­vid­ual earn­ings among the group was vir­tu­ally a form of slav­ery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the sui­ci­dal weak­ness of com­mu­nism: The im­prov­i­dent ha­bit­u­ally lived off the thrifty. Even in mod­ern times the im­prov­i­dent de­pend on the state (thrifty tax­pay­ers) to take care of them. Those who have no cap­i­tal still ex­pect those who have to feed them.

69:9.64. The urge for se­cu­rity and power. Com­mu­nism was fi­nally de­stroyed by the de­cep­tive prac­tices of pro­gres­sive and suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als who re­sorted to di­verse sub­terfuges in an ef­fort to es­cape en­slave­ment to the shift­less idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoard­ing was se­cret; prim­i­tive in­se­cu­rity pre­vented the out­ward ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal. And even at a later time it was most dan­ger­ous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for con­fis­cat­ing a rich man’s prop­erty, and when a wealthy man died, the fu­neral was held up un­til the fam­ily do­nated a large sum to pub­lic wel­fare or to the king, an in­her­i­tance tax.

69:9.7In ear­li­est times women were the prop­erty of the com­mu­nity, and the mother dom­i­nated the fam­ily. The early chiefs owned all the land and were pro­pri­etors of all the women; mar­riage re­quired the con­sent of the tribal ruler. With the pass­ing of com­mu­nism, women were held in­di­vid­u­ally, and the fa­ther grad­u­ally as­sumed do­mes­tic con­trol. Thus the home had its be­gin­ning, and the pre­vail­ing polyg­a­mous cus­toms were grad­u­ally dis­placed by mo­nog­amy. (Polygamy is the sur­vival of the fe­male-slav­ery el­e­ment in mar­riage. Mo­nog­amy is the slave-free ideal of the match­less as­so­ci­a­tion of one man and one woman in the ex­qui­site en­ter­prise of home build­ing, off­spring rear­ing, mu­tual cul­ture, and self-im­prove­ment.)

69:9.8At first, all prop­erty, in­clud­ing tools and weapons, was the com­mon pos­ses­sion of the tribe. Pri­vate prop­erty first con­sisted of all things per­son­ally touched. If a stranger drank from a cup, the cup was hence­forth his. Next, any place where blood was shed be­came the prop­erty of the in­jured per­son or group.

69:9.9Pri­vate prop­erty was thus orig­i­nally re­spected be­cause it was sup­posed to be charged with some part of the owner’s per­son­al­ity. Prop­erty hon­esty rested safely on this type of su­per­sti­tion; no po­lice were needed to guard per­sonal be­long­ings. There was no steal­ing within the group, though men did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the goods of other tribes. Prop­erty re­la­tions did not end with death; early, per­sonal ef­fects were burned, then buried with the dead, and later, in­her­ited by the sur­viv­ing fam­ily or by the tribe.

69:9.10The or­na­men­tal type of per­sonal ef­fects orig­i­nated in the wear­ing of charms. Van­ity plus ghost fear led early man to re­sist all at­tempts to re­lieve him of his fa­vorite charms, such prop­erty be­ing val­ued above ne­ces­si­ties.

69:9.11Sleep­ing space was one of man’s ear­li­est prop­er­ties. Later, home­sites were as­signed by the tribal chiefs, who held all real es­tate in trust for the group. Pres­ently a fire site con­ferred own­er­ship; and still later, a well con­sti­tuted ti­tle to the ad­ja­cent land.

69:9.12Wa­ter holes and wells were among the first pri­vate pos­ses­sions. The whole fe­tish prac­tice was uti­lized to guard wa­ter holes, wells, trees, crops, and honey. Fol­low­ing the loss of faith in the fe­tish, laws were evolved to pro­tect pri­vate be­long­ings. But game laws, the right to hunt, long pre­ceded land laws. The Amer­i­can red man never un­der­stood pri­vate own­er­ship of land; he could not com­pre­hend the white man’s view.

69:9.13Pri­vate prop­erty was early marked by fam­ily in­signia, and this is the early ori­gin of fam­ily crests. Real es­tate could also be put un­der the watch­care of spir­its. The priests would “con­se­crate” a piece of land, and it would then rest un­der the pro­tec­tion of the magic taboos erected thereon. Own­ers thereof were said to have a “priest’s ti­tle.” The He­brews had great re­spect for these fam­ily land­marks: “Cursed be he who re­moves his neigh­bor’s land­mark.” These stone mark­ers bore the priest’s ini­tials. Even trees, when ini­tialed, be­came pri­vate prop­erty.

69:9.14In early days only the crops were pri­vate, but suc­ces­sive crops con­ferred ti­tle; agri­cul­ture was thus the gen­e­sis of the pri­vate own­er­ship of land. In­di­vid­u­als were first given only a life tenure­ship; at death land re­verted to the tribe. The very first land ti­tles granted by tribes to in­di­vid­u­als were graves—fam­ily bury­ing grounds. In later times land be­longed to those who fenced it. But the cities al­ways re­served cer­tain lands for pub­lic pas­turage and for use in case of siege; these “com­mons” rep­re­sent the sur­vival of the ear­lier form of col­lec­tive own­er­ship.

69:9.15Even­tu­ally the state as­signed prop­erty to the in­di­vid­ual, re­serv­ing the right of tax­a­tion. Hav­ing made se­cure their ti­tles, land­lords could col­lect rents, and land be­came a source of in­come—cap­i­tal. Fi­nally land be­came truly ne­go­tiable, with sales, trans­fers, mort­gages, and fore­clo­sures.

69:9.16Pri­vate own­er­ship brought in­creased lib­erty and en­hanced sta­bil­ity; but pri­vate own­er­ship of land was given so­cial sanc­tion only af­ter com­mu­nal con­trol and di­rec­tion had failed, and it was soon fol­lowed by a suc­ces­sion of slaves, serfs, and land­less classes. But im­proved ma­chin­ery is grad­u­ally set­ting men free from slav­ish toil.

69:9.17The right to prop­erty is not ab­so­lute; it is purely so­cial. But all gov­ern­ment, law, or­der, civil rights, so­cial lib­er­ties, con­ven­tions, peace, and hap­pi­ness, as they are en­joyed by mod­ern peo­ples, have grown up around the pri­vate own­er­ship of prop­erty.

69:9.18The pres­ent so­cial or­der is not nec­es­sar­ily right—not di­vine or sa­cred—but man­kind will do well to move slowly in mak­ing changes. That which you have is vastly bet­ter than any sys­tem known to your an­ces­tors. Make cer­tain that when you change the so­cial or­der you change for the bet­ter. Do not be per­suaded to ex­per­i­ment with the dis­carded for­mu­las of your fore­fa­thers. Go for­ward, not back­ward! Let evo­lu­tion pro­ceed! Do not take a back­ward step.

69:9.19[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]

• dangers › when society is overstressed

70:1.1War is the nat­u­ral state and her­itage of evolv­ing man; peace is the so­cial yard­stick mea­sur­ing civ­i­liza­tion’s ad­vance­ment. Be­fore the par­tial so­cial­iza­tion of the ad­vanc­ing races man was ex­ceed­ingly in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic, ex­tremely sus­pi­cious, and un­be­liev­ably quar­rel­some. Vi­o­lence is the law of na­ture, hos­til­ity the au­to­matic re­ac­tion of the chil­dren of na­ture, while war is but these same ac­tiv­i­ties car­ried on col­lec­tively. And wher­ever and when­ever the fab­ric of civ­i­liza­tion be­comes stressed by the com­pli­ca­tions of so­ci­ety’s ad­vance­ment, there is al­ways an im­me­di­ate and ru­inous re­ver­sion to these early meth­ods of vi­o­lent ad­just­ment of the ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions.

• early war dissolved illusion of equality

70:2.10At one time physi­cians be­lieved in blood­let­ting as a cure for many dis­eases, but they have since dis­cov­ered bet­ter reme­dies for most of these dis­or­ders. And so must the in­ter­na­tional blood­let­ting of war cer­tainly give place to the dis­cov­ery of bet­ter meth­ods for cur­ing the ills of na­tions.

• goals › foster originality

70:2.18Mil­i­tarism is au­to­cratic and cruel—sav­age. It pro­motes so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion among the con­querors but dis­in­te­grates the van­quished. In­dus­tri­al­ism is more civ­i­lized and should be so car­ried on as to pro­mote ini­tia­tive and to en­cour­age in­di­vid­u­al­ism. So­ci­ety should in ev­ery way pos­si­ble fos­ter orig­i­nal­ity.

• dependent upon › selective elimination of inferior strains; education, religion

70:8.14Classes in so­ci­ety, hav­ing nat­u­rally formed, will per­sist un­til man grad­u­ally achieves their evo­lu­tion­ary oblit­er­a­tion through in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of the bi­o­logic, in­tel­lec­tual, and spir­i­tual re­sources of a pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion, such as:

70:8.151. Bi­o­logic ren­o­va­tion of the racial stocks—the se­lec­tive elim­i­na­tion of in­fe­rior hu­man strains. This will tend to erad­i­cate many mor­tal in­equal­i­ties.

70:8.162. Ed­u­ca­tional train­ing of the in­creased brain power which will arise out of such bi­o­logic im­prove­ment.

70:8.173. Re­li­gious quick­en­ing of the feel­ings of mor­tal kin­ship and broth­er­hood.

70:8.18But these mea­sures can bear their true fruits only in the dis­tant mil­len­ni­ums of the fu­ture, al­though much so­cial im­prove­ment will im­me­di­ately re­sult from the in­tel­li­gent, wise, and pa­tient ma­nip­u­la­tion of these ac­cel­er­a­tion fac­tors of cul­tural prog­ress. Re­li­gion is the mighty lever that lifts civ­i­liza­tion from chaos, but it is pow­er­less apart from the ful­crum of sound and nor­mal mind rest­ing se­curely on sound and nor­mal hered­ity.

• goals › prime gift of society is security, survival possibilities

70:9.1Na­ture con­fers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Na­ture does not even con­fer the right to live, as might be de­duced by con­sid­er­ing what would likely hap­pen if an un­armed man met a hun­gry tiger face to face in the prim­i­tive for­est. So­ci­ety’s prime gift to man is se­cu­rity.

• rights asserted by society

70:9.2Grad­u­ally so­ci­ety as­serted its rights and, at the pres­ent time, they are:

• dependent upon › military defense

70:9.42. Mil­i­tary de­fense—se­cu­rity through pre­pared­ness.

• dependent upon › compulsory education, which is the only safe method of accelerating c.

70:9.97. Pro­vi­sion for ed­u­cat­ing and train­ing youth.

• dependent upon › freedom of religion

70:9.1210. The guar­an­tee of the free­dom of re­li­gious prac­tices to the end that all of these other so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties may be ex­alted by be­com­ing spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated.

• goals › should provide fair and peaceful opportunity to all

70:9.17But this equal­ity ideal is the child of civ­i­liza­tion; it is not found in na­ture. Even cul­ture it­self demon­strates con­clu­sively the in­her­ent in­equal­ity of men by their very un­equal ca­pac­ity there­for. The sud­den and nonevo­lu­tion­ary re­al­iza­tion of sup­posed nat­u­ral equal­ity would quickly throw civ­i­lized man back to the crude us­ages of prim­i­tive ages. So­ci­ety can­not of­fer equal rights to all, but it can prom­ise to ad­min­is­ter the vary­ing rights of each with fair­ness and eq­uity. It is the busi­ness and duty of so­ci­ety to pro­vide the child of na­ture with a fair and peace­ful op­por­tu­nity to pur­sue self-main­te­nance, par­tic­i­pate in self-per­pet­u­a­tion, while at the same time en­joy­ing some mea­sure of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the sum of all three con­sti­tut­ing hu­man hap­pi­ness.

• primitive society › belief group had right to control individuals

70:10.4In the ear­li­est prim­i­tive so­ci­ety pub­lic opin­ion op­er­ated di­rectly; of­fi­cers of law were not needed. There was no pri­vacy in prim­i­tive life. A man’s neigh­bors were re­spon­si­ble for his con­duct; there­fore their right to pry into his per­sonal af­fairs. So­ci­ety was reg­u­lated on the the­ory that the group mem­ber­ship should have an in­ter­est in, and some de­gree of con­trol over, the be­hav­ior of each in­di­vid­ual.

• primitive society › wholly negative in its organization

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

• status determined by equity of courts

70:11.14The whole idea of prim­i­tive jus­tice was not so much to be fair as to dis­pose of the con­test and thus pre­vent pub­lic dis­or­der and pri­vate vi­o­lence. But prim­i­tive man did not so much re­sent what would now be re­garded as an in­jus­tice; it was taken for granted that those who had power would use it self­ishly. Nev­er­the­less, the sta­tus of any civ­i­liza­tion may be very ac­cu­rately de­ter­mined by the thor­ough­ness and eq­uity of its courts and by the in­tegrity of its judges.

• dangers › common opinion has always delayed
• dangers › force only temporarily advances c.
• dependent upon › compulsory education, which is the only safe method of accelerating c.

71:2.7Pub­lic opin­ion, com­mon opin­ion, has al­ways de­layed so­ci­ety; nev­er­the­less, it is valu­able, for, while re­tard­ing so­cial evo­lu­tion, it does pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion. Ed­u­ca­tion of pub­lic opin­ion is the only safe and true method of ac­cel­er­at­ing civ­i­liza­tion; force is only a tem­po­rary ex­pe­di­ent, and cul­tural growth will in­creas­ingly ac­cel­er­ate as bul­lets give way to bal­lots. Pub­lic opin­ion, the mores, is the ba­sic and el­e­men­tal en­ergy in so­cial evo­lu­tion and state de­vel­op­ment, but to be of state value it must be non­vi­o­lent in ex­pres­sion.

• goals › should not tolerate idleness or poverty

71:3.8No so­ci­ety has pro­gressed very far when it per­mits idle­ness or tol­er­ates pov­erty. But pov­erty and de­pen­dence can never be elim­i­nated if the de­fec­tive and de­gen­er­ate stocks are freely sup­ported and per­mit­ted to re­pro­duce with­out re­straint.

• dependent upon

71:4.2The pro­gres­sive pro­gram of an ex­pand­ing civ­i­liza­tion em­braces:

• dependent upon › liberty of the individual

71:4.31. Preser­va­tion of in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ties.

• dependent upon › effective families

71:4.42. Pro­tec­tion of the home.

• dependent upon › food and security

71:4.53. Pro­mo­tion of eco­nomic se­cu­rity.

• dependent upon › prevention of disease

71:4.64. Pre­ven­tion of dis­ease.

• dependent upon › compulsory education, which is the only safe method of accelerating c.

71:4.75. Com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion.

• dependent upon › compulsory employment

71:4.86. Com­pul­sory em­ploy­ment.

• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan

71:4.97. Prof­itable uti­liza­tion of leisure.

• dependent upon › care of the unfortunate

71:4.108. Care of the un­for­tu­nate.

• dependent upon › selective elimination of inferior strains; education, religion

71:4.119. Race im­prove­ment.

• dependent upon › promotion of art
• dependent upon › scientific knowledge

71:4.1210. Pro­mo­tion of sci­ence and art.

71:4.1311. Pro­mo­tion of phi­los­o­phy—wis­dom.

• dependent upon › sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, cosmic insight
• dependent upon › true religion; spiritual idealism is energy which advances

71:4.1412. Aug­men­ta­tion of cos­mic in­sight—spir­i­tu­al­ity.

• second Eden was cradle of c. for 30,000 years

76:3.8The Adamites greatly ex­celled the sur­round­ing peo­ples in cul­tural achieve­ment and in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. They pro­duced the third al­pha­bet and oth­er­wise laid the foun­da­tions for much that was the fore­run­ner of mod­ern art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Here in the lands be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates they main­tained the arts of writ­ing, met­al­work­ing, pot­tery mak­ing, and weav­ing and pro­duced a type of ar­chi­tec­ture that was not ex­celled in thou­sands of years.

• does not make the people

76:6.4And thus ends the story of the Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve of Uran­tia, a story of trial, tragedy, and tri­umph, at least per­sonal tri­umph for your well-mean­ing but de­luded Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter and un­doubt­edly, in the end, a story of ul­ti­mate tri­umph for their world and its re­bel­lion-tossed and evil-ha­rassed in­hab­i­tants. When all is summed up, Adam and Eve made a mighty con­tri­bu­tion to the speedy civ­i­liza­tion and ac­cel­er­ated bi­o­logic prog­ress of the hu­man race. They left a great cul­ture on earth, but it was not pos­si­ble for such an ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion to sur­vive in the face of the early di­lu­tion and the even­tual sub­mer­gence of the Adamic in­her­i­tance. It is the peo­ple who make a civ­i­liza­tion; civ­i­liza­tion does not make the peo­ple.

• joint product of mortals and midwayers

77:9.8In the larger as­pect the civ­i­liza­tion of Uran­tia is the joint prod­uct of the Uran­tia mor­tals and the Uran­tia mid­way­ers, and this is true de­spite the pres­ent dif­fer­en­tial be­tween the two lev­els of cul­ture, a dif­fer­en­tial which will not be com­pen­sated prior to the ages of light and life.

• second Eden was cradle of c. for 30,000 years

78:0.1The sec­ond Eden was the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion for al­most thirty thou­sand years. Here in Mes­o­po­ta­mia the Adamic peo­ples held forth, send­ing out their progeny to the ends of the earth, and lat­terly, as amal­ga­mated with the Nod­ite and San­gik tribes, were known as the And­ites. From this re­gion went those men and women who ini­ti­ated the do­ings of his­toric times, and who have so enor­mously ac­cel­er­ated cul­tural prog­ress on Uran­tia.

• dangers › recedes from premature attainment

78:2.3The civ­i­liza­tion, so­ci­ety, and cul­tural sta­tus of the Adamites were far above the gen­eral level of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of Uran­tia. Only among the old set­tle­ments of Van and Amadon and the Ad­am­son­ites was there a civ­i­liza­tion in any way com­pa­ra­ble. But the civ­i­liza­tion of the sec­ond Eden was an ar­ti­fi­cial struc­ture—it had not been evolved—and was there­fore doomed to de­te­ri­o­rate un­til it reached a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary level.

• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan
• dependent upon › natural resources

78:2.4Adam left a great in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual cul­ture be­hind him, but it was not ad­vanced in me­chan­i­cal ap­pli­ances since ev­ery civ­i­liza­tion is lim­ited by avail­able nat­u­ral re­sources, in­her­ent ge­nius, and suf­fi­cient leisure to in­sure in­ven­tive fruition. The civ­i­liza­tion of the vi­o­let race was pred­i­cated on the pres­ence of Adam and on the tra­di­tions of the first Eden. Af­ter Adam’s death and as these tra­di­tions grew dim through the pass­ing mil­len­ni­ums, the cul­tural level of the Adamites steadily de­te­ri­o­rated un­til it reached a state of re­cip­ro­cal bal­ance with the sta­tus of the sur­round­ing peo­ples and the nat­u­rally evolv­ing cul­tural ca­pac­i­ties of the vi­o­let race.

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor

78:8.11From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the no­mads were on a ram­page from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The Ner­ites con­sti­tuted the fi­nal erup­tion of the Caspian group of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian de­scen­dants of the blended An­don­ite and And­ite races. What the bar­bar­ians failed to do to ef­fect the ru­ina­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, sub­se­quent cli­matic changes suc­ceeded in ac­com­plish­ing.

• retrogression › in Mesopotamia with emigration of superior peoples; immigration of inferiors

78:8.12And this is the story of the vi­o­let race af­ter the days of Adam and of the fate of their home­land be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates. Their an­cient civ­i­liza­tion fi­nally fell due to the em­i­gra­tion of su­pe­rior peo­ples and the im­mi­gra­tion of their in­fe­rior neigh­bors. But long be­fore the bar­bar­ian cav­al­ry­men con­quered the val­ley, much of the Gar­den cul­ture had spread to Asia, Africa, and Eu­rope, there to pro­duce the fer­ments which have re­sulted in the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury civ­i­liza­tion of Uran­tia.

• dependent upon › selective elimination of inferior strains; education, religion

79:2.6As it was, these ear­lier And­ite con­querors made a des­per­ate at­tempt to pre­serve their iden­tity and stem the tide of racial en­gulf­ment by the es­tab­lish­ment of rigid re­stric­tions re­gard­ing in­ter­mar­riage. Nonethe­less, the And­ites had be­come sub­merged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the peo­ple had been markedly im­proved by this ab­sorp­tion.

• race mixture favors versatility

79:2.7Race mix­ture is al­ways ad­van­ta­geous in that it fa­vors ver­sa­til­ity of cul­ture and makes for a pro­gres­sive civ­i­liza­tion, but if the in­fe­rior el­e­ments of racial stocks pre­dom­i­nate, such achieve­ments will be short-lived. A poly­glot cul­ture can be pre­served only if the su­pe­rior stocks re­pro­duce them­selves in a safe mar­gin over the in­fe­rior. Un­re­strained mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of in­fe­ri­ors, with de­creas­ing re­pro­duc­tion of su­pe­ri­ors, is un­fail­ingly sui­ci­dal of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

79:2.8Had the And­ite con­querors been in num­bers three times what they were, or had they driven out or de­stroyed the least de­sir­able third of the mixed or­ange-green-in­digo in­hab­i­tants, then would In­dia have be­come one of the world’s lead­ing cen­ters of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion and un­doubt­edly would have at­tracted more of the later waves of Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans that flowed into Tur­kes­tan and thence north­ward to Eu­rope.

• dependent upon › true religion; spiritual idealism is energy which advances

79:4.9Cul­ture does rest on a bi­o­logic foun­da­tion, but caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan cul­ture, for re­li­gion, true re­li­gion, is the in­dis­pens­able source of that higher en­ergy which drives men to es­tab­lish a su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion based on hu­man broth­er­hood.

• primitive society › Chinese were first to attain large-scale

79:6.82. So­cial. The yel­low race early learned the value of peace among them­selves. Their in­ter­nal peace­able­ness so con­tributed to pop­u­la­tion in­crease as to in­sure the spread of their civ­i­liza­tion among many mil­lions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the high­est mass civ­i­liza­tion on Uran­tia was in cen­tral and north­ern China. The yel­low man was first to achieve a racial sol­i­dar­ity—the first to at­tain a large-scale cul­tural, so­cial, and po­lit­i­cal civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › true religion; spiritual idealism is energy which advances

79:6.103. Spir­i­tual. Dur­ing the age of And­ite mi­gra­tions the Chi­nese were among the more spir­i­tual peo­ples of earth. Long ad­her­ence to the wor­ship of the One Truth pro­claimed by Singlang­ton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stim­u­lus of a pro­gres­sive and ad­vanced re­li­gion is of­ten a de­ci­sive fac­tor in cul­tural de­vel­op­ment; as In­dia lan­guished, so China forged ahead un­der the in­vig­o­rat­ing stim­u­lus of a re­li­gion in which truth was en­shrined as the su­preme De­ity.

• dependent upon › effective families

79:8.9The great strength in a ven­er­a­tion of an­ces­try is the value that such an at­ti­tude places upon the fam­ily. The amaz­ing sta­bil­ity and per­sis­tence of Chi­nese cul­ture is a con­se­quence of the paramount po­si­tion ac­corded the fam­ily, for civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the fam­ily; and in China the fam­ily at­tained a so­cial im­por­tance, even a re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance, ap­proached by few other peo­ples.

• goals › conserves property

79:8.111. Con­ser­va­tion of prop­erty and wealth.

• enables man to stand on shoulders of all who have preceded him

79:8.122. Pool­ing of the ex­pe­ri­ence of more than one gen­er­a­tion.

• goals › education of children

79:8.133. Ef­fi­cient ed­u­ca­tion of chil­dren in the arts and sci­ences of the past.

• goals › develops sense of duty, morality

79:8.144. De­vel­op­ment of a strong sense of duty, the en­hance­ment of moral­ity, and the aug­men­ta­tion of eth­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity.

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor

80:1.4But dur­ing ear­lier times there was lit­tle to hin­der the west­ward mi­gra­tion of the Adamites. The Sa­hara was an open graz­ing land over­spread by herders and agri­cul­tur­ists. These Sa­ha­rans never en­gaged in man­u­fac­ture, nor were they city builders. They were an in­digo-black group which car­ried ex­ten­sive strains of the ex­tinct green and or­ange races. But they re­ceived a very lim­ited amount of the vi­o­let in­her­i­tance be­fore the up­thrust of land and the shift­ing wa­ter-laden winds dis­persed the rem­nants of this pros­per­ous and peace­ful civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor

80:2.1The early ex­pan­sion of the vi­o­let race into Eu­rope was cut short by cer­tain rather sud­den cli­matic and ge­o­logic changes. With the re­treat of the north­ern ice fields the wa­ter-laden winds from the west shifted to the north, grad­u­ally turn­ing the great open pas­ture re­gions of Sa­hara into a bar­ren desert. This drought dis­persed the smaller-statured brunets, dark-eyed but long-headed dwellers of the great Sa­hara pla­teau.

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor

80:3.8About fif­teen thou­sand years ago the Alpine forests were spread­ing ex­ten­sively. The Eu­ro­pean hunters were be­ing driven to the river val­leys and to the seashores by the same cli­matic co­er­cion that had turned the world’s happy hunt­ing grounds into dry and bar­ren deserts. As the rain winds shifted to the north, the great open graz­ing lands of Eu­rope be­came cov­ered by forests. These great and rel­a­tively sud­den cli­matic mod­i­fi­ca­tions drove the races of Eu­rope to change from open-space hunters to herders, and in some mea­sure to fish­ers and tillers of the soil.

• primitive society › slavery caused culture to perish

80:7.6The Aegean re­gion passed through five dis­tinct cul­tural stages, each less spir­i­tual than the pre­ced­ing, and ere­long the last glo­ri­ous era of art per­ished be­neath the weight of the rapidly mul­ti­ply­ing mediocre de­scen­dants of the Danu­bian slaves who had been im­ported by the later gen­er­a­tions of Greeks.

• dependent upon › religion; God; nothing takes the place of God in c.

80:7.8By about 6500 B.C. there had oc­curred a great de­cline in the spir­i­tual her­itage of the And­ites. The de­scen­dants of Adam were widespreadly dis­persed and had been vir­tu­ally swal­lowed up in the older and more nu­mer­ous hu­man races. And this deca­dence of And­ite civ­i­liza­tion, to­gether with the dis­ap­pear­ance of their re­li­gious stan­dards, left the spir­i­tu­ally im­pov­er­ished races of the world in a de­plorable con­di­tion.

• primitive society › slavery caused culture to perish

80:7.13The Greeks were not only great teach­ers and artists, they were also the world’s great­est traders and col­o­niz­ers. Be­fore suc­cumb­ing to the flood of in­fe­ri­or­ity which even­tu­ally en­gulfed their art and com­merce, they suc­ceeded in plant­ing so many out­posts of cul­ture to the west that a great many of the ad­vances in early Greek civ­i­liza­tion per­sisted in the later peo­ples of south­ern Eu­rope, and many of the mixed de­scen­dants of these Ad­am­son­ites be­came in­cor­po­rated in the tribes of the ad­ja­cent main­lands.

• Adamic infusion accelerated

81:0.2The in­flu­ence of the vi­o­let race, though in num­bers smaller than had been planned, pro­duced an ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion which, since the days of Adam, has far ex­ceeded the prog­ress of man­kind through­out its en­tire pre­vi­ous ex­is­tence of al­most a mil­lion years.

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor

81:1.1For about thirty-five thou­sand years af­ter the days of Adam, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion was in south­west­ern Asia, ex­tend­ing from the Nile val­ley east­ward and slightly to the north across north­ern Ara­bia, through Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and on into Tur­kes­tan. And cli­mate was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in the es­tab­lish­ment of civ­i­liza­tion in that area.

81:1.2It was the great cli­matic and ge­o­logic changes in north­ern Africa and west­ern Asia that ter­mi­nated the early mi­gra­tions of the Adamites, bar­ring them from Eu­rope by the ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean and di­vert­ing the stream of mi­gra­tion north and east into Tur­kes­tan. By the time of the com­ple­tion of these land el­e­va­tions and as­so­ci­ated cli­matic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civ­i­liza­tion had set­tled down to a world-wide stale­mate ex­cept for the cul­tural fer­ments and bi­o­logic re­serves of the And­ites still con­fined by moun­tains to the east in Asia and by the ex­pand­ing forests in Eu­rope to the west.

81:1.3Cli­matic evo­lu­tion is now about to ac­com­plish what all other ef­forts had failed to do, that is, to com­pel Eurasian man to aban­don hunt­ing for the more ad­vanced call­ings of herd­ing and farm­ing. Evo­lu­tion may be slow, but it is ter­ri­bly ef­fec­tive.

81:1.4Since slaves were so gen­er­ally em­ployed by the ear­lier agri­cul­tur­ists, the farmer was for­merly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was con­sid­ered me­nial to till the soil; where­fore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the great­est of all bless­ings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sac­ri­fices of the pas­toral life were held in greater es­teem than the of­fer­ings of agri­cul­ture.

81:1.5Man or­di­nar­ily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by tran­si­tion through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the And­ites, but more of­ten the evo­lu­tion­ary co­er­cion of cli­matic ne­ces­sity would cause whole tribes to pass di­rectly from hunters to suc­cess­ful farm­ers. But this phe­nom­e­non of pass­ing im­me­di­ately from hunt­ing to agri­cul­ture only oc­curred in those re­gions where there was a high de­gree of race mix­ture with the vi­o­let stock.

81:1.6The evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples (no­tably the Chi­nese) early learned to plant seeds and to cul­ti­vate crops through ob­ser­va­tion of the sprout­ing of seeds ac­ci­den­tally moist­ened or which had been put in graves as food for the de­parted. But through­out south­west Asia, along the fer­tile river bot­toms and ad­ja­cent plains, the And­ites were car­ry­ing out the im­proved ag­ri­cul­tural tech­niques in­her­ited from their an­ces­tors, who had made farm­ing and gar­den­ing the chief pur­suits within the bound­aries of the sec­ond gar­den.

81:1.7For thou­sands of years the de­scen­dants of Adam had grown wheat and bar­ley, as im­proved in the Gar­den, through­out the high­lands of the up­per bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia. The de­scen­dants of Adam and Adam­son here met, traded, and so­cially min­gled.

81:1.8It was these en­forced changes in liv­ing con­di­tions which caused such a large pro­por­tion of the hu­man race to be­come om­niv­o­rous in di­etetic prac­tice. And the com­bi­na­tion of the wheat, rice, and veg­etable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great for­ward step in the health and vigor of these an­cient peo­ples.

81:2.1The growth of cul­ture is pred­i­cated upon the de­vel­op­ment of the tools of civ­i­liza­tion. And the tools which man uti­lized in his as­cent from sav­agery were ef­fec­tive just to the ex­tent that they re­leased man power for the ac­com­plish­ment of higher tasks.

• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan

81:2.2You who now live amid lat­ter-day scenes of bud­ding cul­ture and be­gin­ning prog­ress in so­cial af­fairs, who ac­tu­ally have some lit­tle spare time in which to think about so­ci­ety and civ­i­liza­tion, must not over­look the fact that your early an­ces­tors had lit­tle or no leisure which could be de­voted to thought­ful re­flec­tion and so­cial think­ing.

81:2.3The first four great ad­vances in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion were:

• dependent upon › taming of fire

81:2.41. The tam­ing of fire.

• dependent upon › domestication of animals

81:2.52. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals.

• dependent upon › enslavement of captives

81:2.63. The en­slave­ment of cap­tives.

• dependent upon › private property
• primitive society › first great advances were fire, animal domestication, slavery, and private property

81:2.74. Pri­vate prop­erty.

81:2.8While fire, the first great dis­cov­ery, even­tu­ally un­locked the doors of the sci­en­tific world, it was of lit­tle value in this re­gard to prim­i­tive man. He re­fused to rec­og­nize nat­u­ral causes as ex­pla­na­tions for com­mon­place phe­nom­ena.

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

81:2.10In the prema­chine age the only way in which man could ac­com­plish work with­out do­ing it him­self was to use an an­i­mal. Do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals placed in his hands liv­ing tools, the in­tel­li­gent use of which pre­pared the way for both agri­cul­ture and trans­porta­tion. And with­out these an­i­mals man could not have risen from his prim­i­tive es­tate to the lev­els of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion.

81:2.11Most of the an­i­mals best suited to do­mes­ti­ca­tion were found in Asia, es­pe­cially in the cen­tral to south­west re­gions. This was one rea­son why civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed faster in that lo­cal­ity than in other parts of the world. Many of these an­i­mals had been twice be­fore do­mes­ti­cated, and in the And­ite age they were re­tamed once again. But the dog had re­mained with the hunters ever since be­ing adopted by the blue man long, long be­fore.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

81:2.13The in­sti­tu­tions of slav­ery and pri­vate own­er­ship of land came with agri­cul­ture. Slav­ery raised the mas­ter’s stan­dard of liv­ing and pro­vided more leisure for so­cial cul­ture.

• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan

81:2.14The sav­age is a slave to na­ture, but sci­en­tific civ­i­liza­tion is slowly con­fer­ring in­creas­ing lib­erty on man­kind. Through an­i­mals, fire, wind, wa­ter, elec­tric­ity, and other undis­cov­ered sources of en­ergy, man has lib­er­ated, and will con­tinue to lib­er­ate, him­self from the ne­ces­sity for un­remit­ting toil. Re­gard­less of the tran­sient trou­ble pro­duced by the pro­lific in­ven­tion of ma­chin­ery, the ul­ti­mate ben­e­fits to be de­rived from such me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tions are in­es­timable. Civ­i­liza­tion can never flour­ish, much less be es­tab­lished, un­til man has leisure to think, to plan, to imag­ine new and bet­ter ways of do­ing things.

81:2.15Man first sim­ply ap­pro­pri­ated his shel­ter, lived un­der ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such nat­u­ral ma­te­ri­als as wood and stone to the cre­ation of fam­ily huts. Lastly he en­tered the cre­ative stage of home build­ing, learned to man­u­fac­ture brick and other build­ing ma­te­ri­als.

81:2.16The peo­ples of the Tur­kes­tan high­lands were the first of the more mod­ern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at all un­like the early log cab­ins of the Amer­i­can pi­o­neer set­tlers. Through­out the plains hu­man dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned bricks.

81:2.17The older river races made their huts by set­ting tall poles in the ground in a cir­cle; the tops were then brought to­gether, mak­ing the skele­ton frame for the hut, which was in­ter­laced with trans­verse reeds, the whole cre­ation re­sem­bling a huge in­verted bas­ket. This struc­ture could then be daubed over with clay and, af­ter dry­ing in the sun, would make a very ser­vice­able weath­er­proof habi­ta­tion.

81:2.18It was from these early huts that the sub­se­quent idea of all sorts of bas­ket weav­ing in­de­pen­dently orig­i­nated. Among one group the idea of mak­ing pot­tery arose from ob­serv­ing the ef­fects of smear­ing these pole frame­works with moist clay. The prac­tice of hard­en­ing pot­tery by bak­ing was dis­cov­ered when one of these clay-cov­ered prim­i­tive huts ac­ci­den­tally burned. The arts of olden days were many times de­rived from the ac­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rences at­ten­dant upon the daily life of early peo­ples. At least, this was al­most wholly true of the evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress of man­kind up to the com­ing of Adam.

81:2.19While pot­tery had been first in­tro­duced by the staff of the Prince about one-half mil­lion years ago, the mak­ing of clay ves­sels had prac­ti­cally ceased for over one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years. Only the gulf coast pre-Sume­rian Nod­ites con­tin­ued to make clay ves­sels. The art of pot­tery mak­ing was re­vived dur­ing Adam’s time. The dis­sem­i­na­tion of this art was si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the ex­ten­sion of the desert ar­eas of Africa, Ara­bia, and cen­tral Asia, and it spread in suc­ces­sive waves of im­prov­ing tech­nique from Mes­o­po­ta­mia out over the East­ern Hemi­sphere.

81:2.20These civ­i­liza­tions of the And­ite age can­not al­ways be traced by the stages of their pot­tery or other arts. The smooth course of hu­man evo­lu­tion was tremen­dously com­pli­cated by the regimes of both Dala­ma­tia and Eden. It of­ten oc­curs that the later vases and im­ple­ments are in­fe­rior to the ear­lier prod­ucts of the purer And­ite peo­ples.

• spread by commerce and exploration

81:3.2The in­crease in trade and in the man­u­fac­ture of raw ma­te­ri­als into var­i­ous ar­ti­cles of com­merce was di­rectly in­stru­men­tal in pro­duc­ing those early and semi­peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties which were so in­flu­en­tial in spread­ing the cul­ture and the arts of civ­i­liza­tion. Be­fore the era of ex­ten­sive world trade, so­cial com­mu­ni­ties were tribal—ex­panded fam­ily groups. Trade brought into fel­low­ship dif­fer­ent sorts of hu­man be­ings, thus con­tribut­ing to a more speedy cross-fer­til­iza­tion of cul­ture.

• spread by commerce and exploration

81:3.6With the ap­pear­ance of crude man­u­fac­ture and be­gin­ning in­dus­try, com­merce quickly be­came the most po­tent in­flu­ence in the spread of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion. The open­ing up of the trade chan­nels by land and by sea greatly fa­cil­i­tated travel and the mix­ing of cul­tures as well as the blend­ing of civ­i­liza­tions. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in gen­eral use through­out civ­i­lized and semi­civ­i­lized lands. These later races not only had the do­mes­ti­cated horse but also var­i­ous sorts of wag­ons and char­i­ots. Ages be­fore, the wheel had been used, but now ve­hi­cles so equipped be­came uni­ver­sally em­ployed both in com­merce and war.

• spread by commerce and exploration

81:3.7The trav­el­ing trader and the rov­ing ex­plorer did more to ad­vance his­toric civ­i­liza­tion than all other in­flu­ences com­bined. Mil­i­tary con­quests, col­o­niza­tion, and mis­sion­ary en­ter­prises fos­tered by the later re­li­gions were also fac­tors in the spread of cul­ture; but these were all sec­ondary to the trad­ing re­la­tions, which were ever ac­cel­er­ated by the rapidly de­vel­op­ing arts and sci­ences of in­dus­try.

• dependent upon › antecedent racial progression
• is to evolution as effect to cause

81:5.1Bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion and cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion are not nec­es­sar­ily cor­re­lated; or­ganic evo­lu­tion in any age may pro­ceed un­hin­dered in the very midst of cul­tural deca­dence. But when lengthy pe­ri­ods of hu­man his­tory are sur­veyed, it will be ob­served that even­tu­ally evo­lu­tion and cul­ture be­come re­lated as cause and ef­fect. Evo­lu­tion may ad­vance in the ab­sence of cul­ture, but cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion does not flour­ish with­out an ad­e­quate back­ground of an­te­ced­ent racial pro­gres­sion. Adam and Eve in­tro­duced no art of civ­i­liza­tion for­eign to the prog­ress of hu­man so­ci­ety, but the Adamic blood did aug­ment the in­her­ent abil­ity of the races and did ac­cel­er­ate the pace of eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment and in­dus­trial pro­gres­sion. Adam’s be­stowal im­proved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly has­ten­ing the pro­cesses of nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion.

• no great club of inherited privilege; exacts fees

81:5.3But cul­tural so­ci­ety is no great and benef­i­cent club of in­her­ited priv­i­lege into which all men are born with free mem­ber­ship and en­tire equal­ity. Rather is it an ex­alted and ever-ad­vanc­ing guild of earth work­ers, ad­mit­ting to its ranks only the no­bil­ity of those toil­ers who strive to make the world a bet­ter place in which their chil­dren and their chil­dren’s chil­dren may live and ad­vance in sub­se­quent ages. And this guild of civ­i­liza­tion ex­acts costly ad­mis­sion fees, im­poses strict and rig­or­ous dis­ci­plines, vis­its heavy penal­ties on all dis­senters and non­con­formists, while it con­fers few per­sonal li­censes or priv­i­leges ex­cept those of en­hanced se­cu­rity against com­mon dan­gers and racial per­ils.

• goals › prime gift of society is security, survival possibilities

81:5.4So­cial as­so­ci­a­tion is a form of sur­vival in­sur­ance which hu­man be­ings have learned is prof­itable; there­fore are most in­di­vid­u­als will­ing to pay those pre­mi­ums of self-sac­ri­fice and per­sonal-lib­erty cur­tail­ment which so­ci­ety ex­acts from its mem­bers in re­turn for this en­hanced group pro­tec­tion. In short, the pres­ent-day so­cial mech­a­nism is a trial-and-er­ror in­sur­ance plan de­signed to af­ford some de­gree of as­sur­ance and pro­tec­tion against a re­turn to the ter­ri­ble and an­ti­so­cial con­di­tions which char­ac­ter­ized the early ex­pe­ri­ences of the hu­man race.

• goals › society secures civil freedom through institutions

81:5.5So­ci­ety thus be­comes a co-op­er­a­tive scheme for se­cur­ing civil free­dom through in­sti­tu­tions, eco­nomic free­dom through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion, so­cial lib­erty through cul­ture, and free­dom from vi­o­lence through po­lice reg­u­la­tion.

81:6.1While bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion has pro­ceeded ever up­ward, much of cul­tural evo­lu­tion went out from the Eu­phrates val­ley in waves, which suc­ces­sively weak­ened as time passed un­til fi­nally the whole of the pure-line Adamic pos­ter­ity had gone forth to en­rich the civ­i­liza­tions of Asia and Eu­rope. The races did not fully blend, but their civ­i­liza­tions did to a con­sid­er­able ex­tent mix. Cul­ture did slowly spread through­out the world. And this civ­i­liza­tion must be main­tained and fos­tered, for there ex­ist to­day no new sources of cul­ture, no And­ites to in­vig­o­rate and stim­u­late the slow prog­ress of the evo­lu­tion of civ­i­liza­tion.

81:6.2The civ­i­liza­tion which is now evolv­ing on Uran­tia grew out of, and is pred­i­cated on, the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• dependent upon › climate is decisive factor
• dependent upon › natural resources

81:6.31. Nat­u­ral cir­cum­stances. The na­ture and ex­tent of a ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion is in large mea­sure de­ter­mined by the nat­u­ral re­sources avail­able. Cli­mate, weather, and nu­mer­ous phys­i­cal con­di­tions are fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of cul­ture.

81:6.4At the open­ing of the And­ite era there were only two ex­ten­sive and fer­tile open hunt­ing ar­eas in all the world. One was in North Amer­ica and was over­spread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north of Tur­kes­tan and was partly oc­cu­pied by an An­donic-yel­low race. The de­ci­sive fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of a su­pe­rior cul­ture in south­west­ern Asia were race and cli­mate. The And­ites were a great peo­ple, but the cru­cial fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the course of their civ­i­liza­tion was the in­creas­ing arid­ity of Iran, Tur­kes­tan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to in­vent and adopt new and ad­vanced meth­ods of wrest­ing a liveli­hood from their de­creas­ingly fer­tile lands.

81:6.5The con­fig­u­ra­tion of con­ti­nents and other land-ar­range­ment sit­u­a­tions are very in­flu­en­tial in de­ter­min­ing peace or war. Very few Uran­tians have ever had such a fa­vor­able op­por­tu­nity for con­tin­u­ous and un­mo­lested de­vel­op­ment as has been en­joyed by the peo­ples of North Amer­ica—pro­tected on prac­ti­cally all sides by vast oceans.

• dependent upon › capital goods
• dependent upon › leisure to think and plan
• never developed in poverty

81:6.62. Cap­i­tal goods. Cul­ture is never de­vel­oped un­der con­di­tions of pov­erty; leisure is es­sen­tial to the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. In­di­vid­ual char­ac­ter of moral and spir­i­tual value may be ac­quired in the ab­sence of ma­te­rial wealth, but a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is only de­rived from those con­di­tions of ma­te­rial pros­per­ity which fos­ter leisure com­bined with am­bi­tion.

81:6.7Dur­ing prim­i­tive times life on Uran­tia was a se­ri­ous and sober busi­ness. And it was to es­cape this in­ces­sant strug­gle and in­ter­minable toil that man­kind con­stantly tended to drift to­ward the salu­bri­ous cli­mate of the trop­ics. While these warmer zones of habi­ta­tion af­forded some re­mis­sion from the in­tense strug­gle for ex­is­tence, the races and tribes who thus sought ease sel­dom uti­lized their un­earned leisure for the ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion. So­cial prog­ress has in­vari­ably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their in­tel­li­gent toil, learned how to wrest a liv­ing from the land with less­ened ef­fort and short­ened days of la­bor and thus have been able to en­joy a well-earned and prof­itable mar­gin of leisure.

• dependent upon › scientific knowledge

81:6.83. Sci­en­tific knowl­edge. The ma­te­rial as­pects of civ­i­liza­tion must al­ways await the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sci­en­tific data. It was a long time af­ter the dis­cov­ery of the bow and ar­row and the uti­liza­tion of an­i­mals for power pur­poses be­fore man learned how to har­ness wind and wa­ter, to be fol­lowed by the em­ploy­ment of steam and elec­tric­ity. But slowly the tools of civ­i­liza­tion im­proved. Weav­ing, pot­tery, the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals, and met­al­work­ing were fol­lowed by an age of writ­ing and print­ing.

81:6.9Knowl­edge is power. In­ven­tion al­ways pre­cedes the ac­cel­er­a­tion of cul­tural de­vel­op­ment on a world-wide scale. Sci­ence and in­ven­tion ben­e­fited most of all from the print­ing press, and the in­ter­ac­tion of all these cul­tural and in­ven­tive ac­tiv­i­ties has enor­mously ac­cel­er­ated the rate of cul­tural ad­vance­ment.

81:6.10Sci­ence teaches man to speak the new lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics and trains his thoughts along lines of ex­act­ing pre­ci­sion. And sci­ence also sta­bi­lizes phi­los­o­phy through the elim­i­na­tion of er­ror, while it pu­ri­fies re­li­gion by the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion.

• dependent upon › human resources

81:6.114. Hu­man re­sources. Man power is in­dis­pens­able to the spread of civ­i­liza­tion. All things equal, a nu­mer­ous peo­ple will dom­i­nate the civ­i­liza­tion of a smaller race. Hence fail­ure to in­crease in num­bers up to a cer­tain point pre­vents the full re­al­iza­tion of na­tional des­tiny, but there comes a point in pop­u­la­tion in­crease where fur­ther growth is sui­ci­dal. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of num­bers be­yond the op­ti­mum of the nor­mal man-land ra­tio means ei­ther a low­er­ing of the stan­dards of liv­ing or an im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion of ter­ri­to­rial bound­aries by peace­ful pen­e­tra­tion or by mil­i­tary con­quest, forcible oc­cu­pa­tion.

81:6.12You are some­times shocked at the rav­ages of war, but you should rec­og­nize the ne­ces­sity for pro­duc­ing large num­bers of mor­tals so as to af­ford am­ple op­por­tu­nity for so­cial and moral de­vel­op­ment; with such plan­e­tary fer­til­ity there soon oc­curs the se­ri­ous prob­lem of over­pop­u­la­tion. Most of the in­hab­ited worlds are small. Uran­tia is av­er­age, per­haps a tri­fle un­der­sized. The op­ti­mum sta­bi­liza­tion of na­tional pop­u­la­tion en­hances cul­ture and pre­vents war. And it is a wise na­tion which knows when to cease grow­ing.

81:6.13But the con­ti­nent rich­est in nat­u­ral de­posits and the most ad­vanced me­chan­i­cal equip­ment will make lit­tle prog­ress if the in­tel­li­gence of its peo­ple is on the de­cline. Knowl­edge can be had by ed­u­ca­tion, but wis­dom, which is in­dis­pens­able to true cul­ture, can be se­cured only through ex­pe­ri­ence and by men and women who are in­nately in­tel­li­gent. Such a peo­ple are able to learn from ex­pe­ri­ence; they may be­come truly wise.

• dependent upon › leadership
• primitive society › chief factor was force exerted by wise social masters

81:6.145. Ef­fec­tive­ness of ma­te­rial re­sources. Much de­pends on the wis­dom dis­played in the uti­liza­tion of nat­u­ral re­sources, sci­en­tific knowl­edge, cap­i­tal goods, and hu­man po­ten­tials. The chief fac­tor in early civ­i­liza­tion was the force ex­erted by wise so­cial mas­ters; prim­i­tive man had civ­i­liza­tion lit­er­ally thrust upon him by his su­pe­rior con­tem­po­raries. Well-or­ga­nized and su­pe­rior mi­nori­ties have largely ruled this world.

81:6.15Might does not make right, but might does make what is and what has been in his­tory. Only re­cently has Uran­tia reached that point where so­ci­ety is will­ing to de­bate the ethics of might and right.

• dependent upon › language

81:6.166. Ef­fec­tive­ness of lan­guage. The spread of civ­i­liza­tion must wait upon lan­guage. Live and grow­ing lan­guages in­sure the ex­pan­sion of civ­i­lized think­ing and plan­ning. Dur­ing the early ages im­por­tant ad­vances were made in lan­guage. To­day, there is great need for fur­ther lin­guis­tic de­vel­op­ment to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­pres­sion of evolv­ing thought.

81:6.17Lan­guage evolved out of group as­so­ci­a­tions, each lo­cal group de­vel­op­ing its own sys­tem of word ex­change. Lan­guage grew up through ges­tures, signs, cries, im­i­ta­tive sounds, in­to­na­tion, and ac­cent to the vo­cal­iza­tion of sub­se­quent al­pha­bets. Lan­guage is man’s great­est and most ser­vice­able think­ing tool, but it never flour­ished un­til so­cial groups ac­quired some leisure. The ten­dency to play with lan­guage de­vel­ops new words—slang. If the ma­jor­ity adopt the slang, then us­age con­sti­tutes it lan­guage. The ori­gin of di­alects is il­lus­trated by the in­dul­gence in “baby talk” in a fam­ily group.

81:6.18Lan­guage dif­fer­ences have ever been the great bar­rier to the ex­ten­sion of peace. The con­quest of di­alects must pre­cede the spread of a cul­ture through­out a race, over a con­ti­nent, or to a whole world. A uni­ver­sal lan­guage pro­motes peace, in­sures cul­ture, and aug­ments hap­pi­ness. Even when the tongues of a world are re­duced to a few, the mas­tery of these by the lead­ing cul­tural peo­ples might­ily in­flu­ences the achieve­ment of world-wide peace and pros­per­ity.

81:6.19While very lit­tle prog­ress has been made on Uran­tia to­ward de­vel­op­ing an in­ter­na­tional lan­guage, much has been ac­com­plished by the es­tab­lish­ment of in­ter­na­tional com­mer­cial ex­change. And all these in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions should be fos­tered, whether they in­volve lan­guage, trade, art, sci­ence, com­pet­i­tive play, or re­li­gion.

81:6.207. Ef­fec­tive­ness of me­chan­i­cal de­vices. The prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly re­lated to the de­vel­op­ment and pos­ses­sion of tools, ma­chines, and chan­nels of dis­tri­bu­tion. Im­proved tools, in­ge­nious and ef­fi­cient ma­chines, de­ter­mine the sur­vival of con­tend­ing groups in the arena of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

81:6.21In the early days the only en­ergy ap­plied to land cul­ti­va­tion was man power. It was a long strug­gle to sub­sti­tute oxen for men since this threw men out of em­ploy­ment. Lat­terly, ma­chines have be­gun to dis­place men, and ev­ery such ad­vance is di­rectly con­trib­u­tory to the prog­ress of so­ci­ety be­cause it lib­er­ates man power for the ac­com­plish­ment of more valu­able tasks.

81:6.22Sci­ence, guided by wis­dom, may be­come man’s great so­cial lib­er­a­tor. A me­chan­i­cal age can prove dis­as­trous only to a na­tion whose in­tel­lec­tual level is too low to dis­cover those wise meth­ods and sound tech­niques for suc­cess­fully ad­just­ing to the tran­si­tion dif­fi­cul­ties aris­ing from the sud­den loss of em­ploy­ment by large num­bers con­se­quent upon the too rapid in­ven­tion of new types of labor­sav­ing ma­chin­ery.

• enables man to stand on shoulders of all who have preceded him

81:6.238. Char­ac­ter of torch­bear­ers. So­cial in­her­i­tance en­ables man to stand on the shoul­ders of all who have pre­ceded him, and who have con­tributed aught to the sum of cul­ture and knowl­edge. In this work of pass­ing on the cul­tural torch to the next gen­er­a­tion, the home will ever be the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion. The play and so­cial life comes next, with the school last but equally in­dis­pens­able in a com­plex and highly or­ga­nized so­ci­ety.

• dependent upon › education of younger generation

81:6.24In­sects are born fully ed­u­cated and equipped for life—in­deed, a very nar­row and purely in­stinc­tive ex­is­tence. The hu­man baby is born with­out an ed­u­ca­tion; there­fore man pos­sesses the power, by con­trol­ling the ed­u­ca­tional train­ing of the younger gen­er­a­tion, greatly to mod­ify the evo­lu­tion­ary course of civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › communication
• dependent upon › world travel
• enables man to stand on shoulders of all who have preceded him

81:6.25The great­est twen­ti­eth-cen­tury in­flu­ences con­tribut­ing to the fur­ther­ance of civ­i­liza­tion and the ad­vance­ment of cul­ture are the marked in­crease in world travel and the un­par­al­leled im­prove­ments in meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the im­prove­ment in ed­u­ca­tion has not kept pace with the ex­pand­ing so­cial struc­ture; nei­ther has the mod­ern ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ethics de­vel­oped in cor­re­spon­dence with growth along more purely in­tel­lec­tual and sci­en­tific lines. And mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion is at a stand­still in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment and the safe­guard­ing of the home in­sti­tu­tion.

• dependent upon › leadership
• dependent upon › spiritual idealism

81:6.269. The racial ide­als. The ide­als of one gen­er­a­tion carve out the chan­nels of des­tiny for im­me­di­ate pos­ter­ity. The qual­ity of the so­cial torch­bear­ers will de­ter­mine whether civ­i­liza­tion goes for­ward or back­ward. The homes, churches, and schools of one gen­er­a­tion pre­de­ter­mine the char­ac­ter trend of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The moral and spir­i­tual mo­men­tum of a race or a na­tion largely de­ter­mines the cul­tural ve­loc­ity of that civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › true religion; spiritual idealism is energy which advances

81:6.27Ide­als el­e­vate the source of the so­cial stream. And no stream will rise any higher than its source no mat­ter what tech­nique of pres­sure or di­rec­tional con­trol may be em­ployed. The driv­ing power of even the most ma­te­rial as­pects of a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is res­i­dent in the least ma­te­rial of so­ci­ety’s achieve­ments. In­tel­li­gence may con­trol the mech­a­nism of civ­i­liza­tion, wis­dom may di­rect it, but spir­i­tual ide­al­ism is the en­ergy which re­ally up­lifts and ad­vances hu­man cul­ture from one level of at­tain­ment to an­other.

81:6.28At first life was a strug­gle for ex­is­tence; now, for a stan­dard of liv­ing; next it will be for qual­ity of think­ing, the com­ing earthly goal of hu­man ex­is­tence.

• dependent upon › co-ordination of specialists

81:6.2910. Co-or­di­na­tion of spe­cial­ists. Civ­i­liza­tion has been enor­mously ad­vanced by the early di­vi­sion of la­bor and by its later corol­lary of spe­cial­iza­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion is now de­pen­dent on the ef­fec­tive co-or­di­na­tion of spe­cial­ists. As so­ci­ety ex­pands, some method of draw­ing to­gether the var­i­ous spe­cial­ists must be found.

81:6.30So­cial, artis­tic, tech­ni­cal, and in­dus­trial spe­cial­ists will con­tinue to mul­ti­ply and in­crease in skill and dex­ter­ity. And this di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of abil­ity and dis­sim­i­lar­ity of em­ploy­ment will even­tu­ally weaken and dis­in­te­grate hu­man so­ci­ety if ef­fec­tive means of co-or­di­na­tion and co-op­er­a­tion are not de­vel­oped. But the in­tel­li­gence which is ca­pa­ble of such in­ven­tive­ness and such spe­cial­iza­tion should be wholly com­pe­tent to de­vise ad­e­quate meth­ods of con­trol and ad­just­ment for all prob­lems re­sult­ing from the rapid growth of in­ven­tion and the ac­cel­er­ated pace of cul­tural ex­pan­sion.

81:6.3111. Place-find­ing de­vices. The next age of so­cial de­vel­op­ment will be em­bod­ied in a bet­ter and more ef­fec­tive co-op­er­a­tion and co-or­di­na­tion of ever-in­creas­ing and ex­pand­ing spe­cial­iza­tion. And as la­bor more and more di­ver­si­fies, some tech­nique for di­rect­ing in­di­vid­u­als to suit­able em­ploy­ment must be de­vised. Ma­chin­ery is not the only cause for un­em­ploy­ment among the civ­i­lized peo­ples of Uran­tia. Eco­nomic com­plex­ity and the steady in­crease of in­dus­trial and pro­fes­sional spe­cial­ism add to the prob­lems of la­bor place­ment.

81:6.32It is not enough to train men for work; in a com­plex so­ci­ety there must also be pro­vided ef­fi­cient meth­ods of place find­ing. Be­fore train­ing cit­i­zens in the highly spe­cial­ized tech­niques of earn­ing a liv­ing, they should be trained in one or more meth­ods of com­mon­place la­bor, trades or call­ings which could be uti­lized when they were tran­siently un­em­ployed in their spe­cial­ized work. No civ­i­liza­tion can sur­vive the long-time har­bor­ing of large classes of un­em­ployed. In time, even the best of cit­i­zens will be­come dis­torted and de­mor­al­ized by ac­cept­ing sup­port from the pub­lic trea­sury. Even pri­vate char­ity be­comes per­ni­cious when long ex­tended to able-bod­ied cit­i­zens.

81:6.33Such a highly spe­cial­ized so­ci­ety will not take kindly to the an­cient com­mu­nal and feu­dal prac­tices of olden peo­ples. True, many com­mon ser­vices can be ac­cept­ably and prof­itably so­cial­ized, but highly trained and ul­tra­spe­cial­ized hu­man be­ings can best be man­aged by some tech­nique of in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion. Mod­ern­ized co-or­di­na­tion and fra­ter­nal reg­u­la­tion will be pro­duc­tive of longer-lived co-op­er­a­tion than will the older and more prim­i­tive meth­ods of com­mu­nism or dic­ta­to­rial reg­u­la­tive in­sti­tu­tions based on force.

81:6.3412. The will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate. One of the great hin­drances to the prog­ress of hu­man so­ci­ety is the con­flict be­tween the in­ter­ests and wel­fare of the larger, more so­cial­ized hu­man groups and of the smaller, con­trary-minded aso­cial as­so­ci­a­tions of man­kind, not to men­tion an­ti­so­cially-minded sin­gle in­di­vid­u­als.

• dependent upon › enthusiastic and effective load-pulling spirit

81:6.35No na­tional civ­i­liza­tion long en­dures un­less its ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods and re­li­gious ide­als in­spire a high type of in­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism and na­tional de­vo­tion. With­out this sort of in­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism and cul­tural sol­i­dar­ity, all na­tions tend to dis­in­te­grate as a re­sult of provin­cial jeal­ousies and lo­cal self-in­ter­ests.

81:6.36The main­te­nance of world-wide civ­i­liza­tion is de­pen­dent on hu­man be­ings learn­ing how to live to­gether in peace and fra­ter­nity. With­out ef­fec­tive co-or­di­na­tion, in­dus­trial civ­i­liza­tion is jeop­ar­dized by the dan­gers of ul­tra­spe­cial­iza­tion: mo­not­ony, nar­row­ness, and the ten­dency to breed dis­trust and jeal­ousy.

81:6.3713. Ef­fec­tive and wise lead­er­ship. In civ­i­liza­tion much, very much, de­pends on an en­thu­si­as­tic and ef­fec­tive load-pulling spirit. Ten men are of lit­tle more value than one in lift­ing a great load un­less they lift to­gether—all at the same mo­ment. And such team­work—so­cial co-op­er­a­tion—is de­pen­dent on lead­er­ship. The cul­tural civ­i­liza­tions of the past and the pres­ent have been based upon the in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion of the cit­i­zenry with wise and pro­gres­sive lead­ers; and un­til man evolves to higher lev­els, civ­i­liza­tion will con­tinue to be de­pen­dent on wise and vig­or­ous lead­er­ship.

• dependent upon › sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, cosmic insight

81:6.38High civ­i­liza­tions are born of the saga­cious cor­re­la­tion of ma­te­rial wealth, in­tel­lec­tual great­ness, moral worth, so­cial clev­er­ness, and cos­mic in­sight.

• dangers › must keep pace with scientific developments
• dependent upon › leadership
• not divine; a phenomenon of progressive evolution

81:6.3914. So­cial changes. So­ci­ety is not a di­vine in­sti­tu­tion; it is a phe­nom­e­non of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion; and ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion is al­ways de­layed when its lead­ers are slow in mak­ing those changes in the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion which are es­sen­tial to keep­ing pace with the sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments of the age. For all that, things must not be de­spised just be­cause they are old, nei­ther should an idea be un­con­di­tion­ally em­braced just be­cause it is novel and new.

• dangers › breakdown during transition

81:6.40Man should be un­afraid to ex­per­i­ment with the mech­a­nisms of so­ci­ety. But al­ways should these ad­ven­tures in cul­tural ad­just­ment be con­trolled by those who are fully con­ver­sant with the his­tory of so­cial evo­lu­tion; and al­ways should these in­no­va­tors be coun­seled by the wis­dom of those who have had prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the do­mains of con­tem­plated so­cial or eco­nomic ex­per­i­ment. No great so­cial or eco­nomic change should be at­tempted sud­denly. Time is es­sen­tial to all types of hu­man ad­just­ment—phys­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic. Only moral and spir­i­tual ad­just­ments can be made on the spur of the mo­ment, and even these re­quire the pass­ing of time for the full out­work­ing of their ma­te­rial and so­cial reper­cus­sions. The ide­als of the race are the chief sup­port and as­sur­ance dur­ing the crit­i­cal times when civ­i­liza­tion is in tran­sit from one level to an­other.

• modern civilization › offspring of ages of trial and error

81:6.4115. The pre­ven­tion of tran­si­tional break­down. So­ci­ety is the off­spring of age upon age of trial and er­ror; it is what sur­vived the se­lec­tive ad­just­ments and read­just­ments in the suc­ces­sive stages of man­kind’s age­long rise from an­i­mal to hu­man lev­els of plan­e­tary sta­tus. The great dan­ger to any civ­i­liza­tion—at any one mo­ment—is the threat of break­down dur­ing the time of tran­si­tion from the es­tab­lished meth­ods of the past to those new and bet­ter, but un­tried, pro­ce­dures of the fu­ture.

81:6.42Lead­er­ship is vi­tal to prog­ress. Wis­dom, in­sight, and fore­sight are in­dis­pens­able to the en­durance of na­tions. Civ­i­liza­tion is never re­ally jeop­ar­dized un­til able lead­er­ship be­gins to van­ish. And the quan­tity of such wise lead­er­ship has never ex­ceeded one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

81:6.43And it was by these rungs on the evo­lu­tion­ary lad­der that civ­i­liza­tion climbed to that place where those mighty in­flu­ences could be ini­ti­ated which have cul­mi­nated in the rapidly ex­pand­ing cul­ture of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. And only by ad­her­ence to these es­sen­tials can man hope to main­tain his pres­ent-day civ­i­liza­tions while pro­vid­ing for their con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment and cer­tain sur­vival.

• enables man to stand on shoulders of all who have preceded him

81:6.44This is the gist of the long, long strug­gle of the peo­ples of earth to es­tab­lish civ­i­liza­tion since the age of Adam. Pres­ent-day cul­ture is the net re­sult of this stren­u­ous evo­lu­tion. Be­fore the dis­cov­ery of print­ing, prog­ress was rel­a­tively slow since one gen­er­a­tion could not so rapidly ben­e­fit from the achieve­ments of its pre­de­ces­sors. But now hu­man so­ci­ety is plung­ing for­ward un­der the force of the ac­cu­mu­lated mo­men­tum of all the ages through which civ­i­liza­tion has strug­gled.

81:6.45[Spon­sored by an Arch­an­gel of Neb­a­don.]

• numerous unmarrieds indicates breakdown of mores

83:7.5The new and sud­den sub­sti­tu­tion of the more ideal but ex­tremely in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic love mo­tive in mar­riage for the older and long-es­tab­lished prop­erty mo­tive, has un­avoid­ably caused the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion to be­come tem­porar­ily un­sta­ble. Man’s mar­riage mo­tives have al­ways far tran­scended ac­tual mar­riage morals, and in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies the Oc­ci­den­tal ideal of mar­riage has sud­denly far out­run the self-cen­tered and but par­tially con­trolled sex im­pulses of the races. The pres­ence of large num­bers of un­mar­ried per­sons in any so­ci­ety in­di­cates the tem­po­rary break­down or the tran­si­tion of the mores.

• dependent upon › effective families

84:0.2Mat­ing is purely an act of self-per­pet­u­a­tion as­so­ci­ated with vary­ing de­grees of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion; mar­riage, home build­ing, is largely a mat­ter of self-main­te­nance, and it im­plies the evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety. So­ci­ety it­self is the ag­gre­gated struc­ture of fam­ily units. In­di­vid­u­als are very tem­po­rary as plan­e­tary fac­tors—only fam­i­lies are con­tin­u­ing agen­cies in so­cial evo­lu­tion. The fam­ily is the chan­nel through which the river of cul­ture and knowl­edge flows from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other.

• dependent upon › effective families

84:7.1Sex mat­ing is in­stinc­tive, chil­dren are the nat­u­ral re­sult, and the fam­ily thus au­to­mat­i­cally comes into ex­is­tence. As are the fam­i­lies of the race or na­tion, so is its so­ci­ety. If the fam­i­lies are good, the so­ci­ety is like­wise good. The great cul­tural sta­bil­ity of the Jew­ish and of the Chi­nese peo­ples lies in the strength of their fam­ily groups.

• dependent upon › willingness to invest in future generations

84:7.27In the pres­ent in­dus­trial and ur­ban era the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion is evolv­ing along new eco­nomic lines. Fam­ily life has be­come more and more costly, while chil­dren, who used to be an as­set, have be­come eco­nomic li­a­bil­i­ties. But the se­cu­rity of civ­i­liza­tion it­self still rests on the grow­ing will­ing­ness of one gen­er­a­tion to in­vest in the wel­fare of the next and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. And any at­tempt to shift pa­ren­tal re­spon­si­bil­ity to state or church will prove sui­ci­dal to the wel­fare and ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion.

• evolutionary religion is man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

92:3.7But while call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that re­li­gion was es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, it should be re­corded that nat­u­ral re­li­gion has also done much to crip­ple and hand­i­cap the very civ­i­liza­tion which it oth­er­wise fos­tered and main­tained. Re­li­gion has ham­pered in­dus­trial ac­tiv­i­ties and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment; it has been waste­ful of la­bor and has squan­dered cap­i­tal; it has not al­ways been help­ful to the fam­ily; it has not ad­e­quately fos­tered peace and good will; it has some­times ne­glected ed­u­ca­tion and re­tarded sci­ence; it has un­duly im­pov­er­ished life for the pre­tended en­rich­ment of death. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, hu­man re­li­gion, has in­deed been guilty of all these and many more mis­takes, er­rors, and blun­ders; nev­er­the­less, it did main­tain cul­tural ethics, civ­i­lized moral­ity, and so­cial co­her­ence, and made it pos­si­ble for later re­vealed re­li­gion to com­pen­sate for these many evo­lu­tion­ary short­com­ings.

92:3.8Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion has been man’s most ex­pen­sive but in­com­pa­ra­bly ef­fec­tive in­sti­tu­tion. Hu­man re­li­gion can be jus­ti­fied only in the light of evo­lu­tion­ary civ­i­liza­tion. If man were not the as­cen­dant prod­uct of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion, then would such a course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment stand with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

• dependent upon › religion; God; nothing takes the place of God in c.

94:6.12Like many other spir­i­tual and moral teach­ers, both Con­fu­cius and Lao-tse were even­tu­ally de­i­fied by their fol­low­ers in those spir­i­tu­ally dark ages of China which in­ter­vened be­tween the de­cline and per­ver­sion of the Taoist faith and the com­ing of the Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies from In­dia. Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally deca­dent cen­turies the re­li­gion of the yel­low race de­gen­er­ated into a piti­ful the­ol­ogy wherein swarmed dev­ils, drag­ons, and evil spir­its, all be­to­ken­ing the re­turn­ing fears of the un­en­light­ened mor­tal mind. And China, once at the head of hu­man so­ci­ety be­cause of an ad­vanced re­li­gion, then fell be­hind be­cause of tem­po­rary fail­ure to pro­gress in the true path of the de­vel­op­ment of that God-con­scious­ness which is in­dis­pens­able to the true prog­ress, not only of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal, but also of the in­tri­cate and com­plex civ­i­liza­tions which char­ac­ter­ize the ad­vance of cul­ture and so­ci­ety on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet of time and space.

• dangers › will not settle down for a millennium

99:1.1Me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tions and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge are mod­i­fy­ing civ­i­liza­tion; cer­tain eco­nomic ad­just­ments and so­cial changes are im­per­a­tive if cul­tural dis­as­ter is to be avoided. This new and on­com­ing so­cial or­der will not set­tle down com­pla­cently for a mil­len­nium. The hu­man race must be­come rec­on­ciled to a pro­ces­sion of changes, ad­just­ments, and read­just­ments. Man­kind is on the march to­ward a new and un­re­vealed plan­e­tary des­tiny.

• dangers › will not settle down for a millennium

99:1.3Uran­tia so­ci­ety can never hope to set­tle down as in past ages. The so­cial ship has steamed out of the shel­tered bays of es­tab­lished tra­di­tion and has be­gun its cruise upon the high seas of evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny; and the soul of man, as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory, needs care­fully to scru­ti­nize its charts of moral­ity and painstak­ingly to ob­serve the com­pass of re­li­gious guid­ance. The paramount mis­sion of re­li­gion as a so­cial in­flu­ence is to sta­bi­lize the ide­als of man­kind dur­ing these dan­ger­ous times of tran­si­tion from one phase of civ­i­liza­tion to an­other, from one level of cul­ture to an­other.

• modern civilization › critically interdependent

99:1.4Re­li­gion has no new du­ties to per­form, but it is ur­gently called upon to func­tion as a wise guide and ex­pe­ri­enced coun­selor in all of these new and rapidly chang­ing hu­man sit­u­a­tions. So­ci­ety is be­com­ing more me­chan­i­cal, more com­pact, more com­plex, and more crit­i­cally in­ter­de­pen­dent. Re­li­gion must func­tion to pre­vent these new and in­ti­mate in­teras­so­ci­a­tions from be­com­ing mu­tu­ally ret­ro­gres­sive or even de­struc­tive. Re­li­gion must act as the cos­mic salt which pre­vents the fer­ments of pro­gres­sion from de­stroy­ing the cul­tural sa­vor of civ­i­liza­tion. These new so­cial re­la­tions and eco­nomic up­heavals can re­sult in last­ing broth­er­hood only by the min­istry of re­li­gion.

• lower strata no longer so ignorant, politically helpless

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

• goals › for every man to love his neighbor as himself

99:2.4Re­li­gion­ists are of no more value in the tasks of so­cial re­con­struc­tion than non­re­li­gion­ists ex­cept in so far as their re­li­gion has con­ferred upon them en­hanced cos­mic fore­sight and en­dowed them with that su­pe­rior so­cial wis­dom which is born of the sin­cere de­sire to love God su­premely and to love ev­ery man as a brother in the heav­enly king­dom. An ideal so­cial or­der is that in which ev­ery man loves his neigh­bor as he loves him­self.

• demands ideal type of citizen

99:3.4The at­tain­ment of a high cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion de­mands, first, the ideal type of cit­i­zen and, then, ideal and ad­e­quate so­cial mech­a­nisms where­with such a cit­i­zenry may con­trol the eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions of such an ad­vanced hu­man so­ci­ety.

• dangers › racially degenerate stocks have retarded

99:3.5The church, be­cause of over­much false sen­ti­ment, has long min­is­tered to the un­der­priv­i­leged and the un­for­tu­nate, and this has all been well, but this same sen­ti­ment has led to the un­wise per­pet­u­a­tion of racially de­gen­er­ate stocks which have tremen­dously re­tarded the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › love, the wellspring of superior c.

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

• dependent upon › moral assistance of well-ordered society
• judge by purity and nobility of its religion

102:8.2Re­gard­ing the sta­tus of any re­li­gion in the evo­lu­tion­ary scale, it may best be judged by its moral judg­ments and its eth­i­cal stan­dards. The higher the type of any re­li­gion, the more it en­cour­ages and is en­cour­aged by a con­stantly im­prov­ing so­cial moral­ity and eth­i­cal cul­ture. We can­not judge re­li­gion by the sta­tus of its ac­com­pa­ny­ing civ­i­liza­tion; we had bet­ter es­ti­mate the real na­ture of a civ­i­liza­tion by the pu­rity and no­bil­ity of its re­li­gion. Many of the world’s most no­table re­li­gious teach­ers have been vir­tu­ally un­let­tered. The wis­dom of the world is not nec­es­sary to an ex­er­cise of sav­ing faith in eter­nal re­al­i­ties.

• dangers › jeopardy when 3/4 of youth enter materialistic professions
• dependent upon › advances born in inner world

111:4.3The ad­vances of true civ­i­liza­tion are all born in this in­ner world of man­kind. It is only the in­ner life that is truly cre­ative. Civ­i­liza­tion can hardly pro­gress when the ma­jor­ity of the youth of any gen­er­a­tion de­vote their in­ter­ests and en­er­gies to the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pur­suits of the sen­sory or outer world.

111:4.4The in­ner and the outer worlds have a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. Any civ­i­liza­tion is in jeop­ardy when three quar­ters of its youth en­ter ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pro­fes­sions and de­vote them­selves to the pur­suit of the sen­sory ac­tiv­i­ties of the outer world. Civ­i­liza­tion is in dan­ger when youth ne­glect to in­ter­est them­selves in ethics, so­ci­ol­ogy, eu­gen­ics, phi­los­o­phy, the fine arts, re­li­gion, and cos­mol­ogy.

• goals › superconscious mind contains master patterns for

111:4.5Only in the higher lev­els of the super­con­scious mind as it im­pinges upon the spirit realm of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence can you find those higher con­cepts in as­so­ci­a­tion with ef­fec­tive mas­ter pat­terns which will con­tribute to the build­ing of a bet­ter and more en­dur­ing civ­i­liza­tion. Per­son­al­ity is in­her­ently cre­ative, but it thus func­tions only in the in­ner life of the in­di­vid­ual.

• dangers › recedes from premature attainment

118:8.6The slow­ness of evo­lu­tion, of hu­man cul­tural prog­ress, tes­ti­fies to the ef­fec­tive­ness of that brake—ma­te­rial in­er­tia—which so ef­fi­ciently op­er­ates to re­tard dan­ger­ous ve­loc­i­ties of prog­ress. Thus does time it­self cush­ion and dis­tribute the oth­er­wise lethal re­sults of pre­ma­ture es­cape from the next-en­com­pass­ing bar­ri­ers to hu­man ac­tion. For when cul­ture ad­vances over­fast, when ma­te­rial achieve­ment out­runs the evo­lu­tion of wor­ship-wis­dom, then does civ­i­liza­tion con­tain within it­self the seeds of ret­ro­gres­sion; and un­less but­tressed by the swift aug­men­ta­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom, such hu­man so­ci­eties will re­cede from high but pre­ma­ture lev­els of at­tain­ment, and the “dark ages” of the in­ter­reg­num of wis­dom will bear wit­ness to the in­ex­orable restora­tion of the im­bal­ance be­tween self-lib­erty and self-con­trol.

• Jesus avoided entanglements with economic structure

120:3.4“3. In your re­la­tions to the so­cial or­der we ad­vise that you con­fine your ef­forts largely to spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion and in­tel­lec­tual eman­ci­pa­tion. Avoid all en­tan­gle­ments with the eco­nomic struc­ture and the po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments of your day. More es­pe­cially de­vote your­self to liv­ing the ideal re­li­gious life on Uran­tia.

• small middle class appeared in Jesus’ time

121:1.8Not­with­stand­ing the in­ter­nal peace and su­per­fi­cial pros­per­ity of the Greco-Ro­man world, a ma­jor­ity of the in­hab­i­tants of the em­pire lan­guished in squalor and pov­erty. The small up­per class was rich; a mis­er­able and im­pov­er­ished lower class em­braced the rank and file of hu­man­ity. There was no happy and pros­per­ous mid­dle class in those days; it had just be­gun to make its ap­pear­ance in Ro­man so­ci­ety.

• small middle class appeared in Jesus’ time

121:3.43. The small mid­dle class. Al­though this group was in­deed small, it was very in­flu­en­tial and pro­vided the moral back­bone of the early Chris­tian church, which en­cour­aged these groups to con­tinue in their var­i­ous crafts and trades. Among the Jews many of the Phar­isees be­longed to this class of trades­men.

• society has right to employ force

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

• society has right to employ force

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

• society has right to employ force

140:8.4Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in get­ting them to un­der­stand his per­sonal prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance. He ab­so­lutely re­fused to de­fend him­self, and it ap­peared to the apos­tles that he would be pleased if they would pur­sue the same pol­icy. He taught them not to re­sist evil, not to com­bat in­jus­tice or in­jury, but he did not teach pas­sive tol­er­ance of wrong­do­ing. And he made it plain on this af­ter­noon that he ap­proved of the so­cial pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers and crim­i­nals, and that the civil gov­ern­ment must some­times em­ploy force for the main­te­nance of so­cial or­der and in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice.

• dependent upon › Master’s teachings conceal secret of

154:4.6There was much talk about Je­sus’ preach­ing doc­trines which were up­set­ting for the com­mon peo­ple; his en­e­mies main­tained that his teach­ings were im­prac­ti­cal, that ev­ery­thing would go to pieces if ev­ery­body made an hon­est ef­fort to live in ac­cor­dance with his ideas. And the men of many sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions have said the same things. Many in­tel­li­gent and well-mean­ing men, even in the more en­light­ened age of these rev­e­la­tions, main­tain that mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion could not have been built upon the teach­ings of Je­sus—and they are par­tially right. But all such doubters for­get that a much bet­ter civ­i­liza­tion could have been built upon his teach­ings, and some­time will be. This world has never se­ri­ously tried to carry out the teach­ings of Je­sus on a large scale, not­with­stand­ing that half­hearted at­tempts have of­ten been made to fol­low the doc­trines of so-called Chris­tian­ity.

• dependent upon › communication
• enables man to stand on shoulders of all who have preceded him

160:2.3It is this abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate and share mean­ings that con­sti­tutes hu­man cul­ture and en­ables man, through so­cial as­so­ci­a­tions, to build civ­i­liza­tions. Knowl­edge and wis­dom be­come cu­mu­la­tive be­cause of man’s abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate these pos­ses­sions to suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions. And thereby arise the cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties of the race: art, sci­ence, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy.

• dependent upon › Master’s teachings conceal secret of

194:3.12Pen­te­cost en­dowed mor­tal man with the power to for­give per­sonal in­juries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest in­jus­tice, to re­main un­moved in the face of ap­palling dan­ger, and to chal­lenge the evils of hate and anger by the fear­less acts of love and for­bear­ance. Uran­tia has passed through the rav­ages of great and de­struc­tive wars in its his­tory. All par­tic­i­pants in these ter­ri­ble strug­gles met with de­feat. There was but one vic­tor; there was only one who came out of these em­bit­tered strug­gles with an en­hanced rep­u­ta­tion—that was Je­sus of Naz­a­reth and his gospel of over­com­ing evil with good. The se­cret of a bet­ter civ­i­liza­tion is bound up in the Mas­ter’s teach­ings of the broth­er­hood of man, the good will of love and mu­tual trust.

• dangers › civilization retrogresses when genius declines

195:1.9In the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, Hel­lenis­tic cul­ture had al­ready at­tained its high­est lev­els; its ret­ro­gres­sion had be­gun; learn­ing was ad­vanc­ing but ge­nius was de­clin­ing. It was at this very time that the ideas and ide­als of Je­sus, which were par­tially em­bod­ied in Chris­tian­ity, be­came a part of the sal­vage of Greek cul­ture and learn­ing.

• dangers › reasons for decline of Roman Empire

195:3.8The spir­i­tual im­pe­tus of nom­i­nally ac­cept­ing Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity came to Rome too late to pre­vent the well-started moral de­cline or to com­pen­sate for the al­ready well-es­tab­lished and in­creas­ing racial de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. This new re­li­gion was a cul­tural ne­ces­sity for im­pe­rial Rome, and it is ex­ceed­ingly un­for­tu­nate that it did not be­come a means of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion in a larger sense.

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.

• dependent upon › morality predicated on spiritual realities

195:5.9A last­ing so­cial sys­tem with­out a moral­ity pred­i­cated on spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties can no more be main­tained than could the so­lar sys­tem with­out grav­ity.

• dependent upon › religion; God; nothing takes the place of God in c.

195:8.6Sec­u­lar­ism can never bring peace to man­kind. Noth­ing can take the place of God in hu­man so­ci­ety. But mark you well! do not be quick to sur­ren­der the benef­i­cent gains of the sec­u­lar re­volt from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion to­day en­joys many lib­er­ties and sat­is­fac­tions as a re­sult of the sec­u­lar re­volt. The great mis­take of sec­u­lar­ism was this: In re­volt­ing against the al­most to­tal con­trol of life by re­li­gious au­thor­ity, and af­ter at­tain­ing the lib­er­a­tion from such ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal tyranny, the sec­u­lar­ists went on to in­sti­tute a re­volt against God him­self, some­times tac­itly and some­times openly.

• modern civilization › notwithstanding material achievement, is slowly disintegrating
• nationalism prevents c. from disintegrating

195:8.10With­out God, with­out re­li­gion, sci­en­tific sec­u­lar­ism can never co-or­di­nate its forces, har­mo­nize its di­ver­gent and ri­val­rous in­ter­ests, races, and na­tion­alisms. This sec­u­lar­is­tic hu­man so­ci­ety, not­with­stand­ing its un­par­al­leled ma­te­ri­al­is­tic achieve­ment, is slowly dis­in­te­grat­ing. The chief co­he­sive force re­sist­ing this dis­in­te­gra­tion of an­tag­o­nism is na­tion­al­ism. And na­tion­al­ism is the chief bar­rier to world peace.

• goals › ideal realized only in divine kingdom

196:2.11Je­sus of­fered no rules for so­cial ad­vance­ment; his was a re­li­gious mis­sion, and re­li­gion is an ex­clu­sively in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence. The ul­ti­mate goal of so­ci­ety’s most ad­vanced achieve­ment can never hope to tran­scend Je­sus’ broth­er­hood of men based on the rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God. The ideal of all so­cial at­tain­ment can be re­al­ized only in the com­ing of this di­vine king­dom.