clay

66:5.10The blue man was par­tial to al­pha­bet writ­ing and made the great­est prog­ress along such lines. The red man pre­ferred pic­to­rial writ­ing, while the yel­low races drifted into the use of sym­bols for words and ideas, much like those they now em­ploy. But the al­pha­bet and much more was sub­se­quently lost to the world dur­ing the con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon re­bel­lion. The Cali­gas­tia de­fec­tion de­stroyed the hope of the world for a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, at least for un­told ages.

66:5.115. The com­mis­sion on in­dus­try and trade. This coun­cil was em­ployed in fos­ter­ing in­dus­try within the tribes and in pro­mot­ing trade be­tween the var­i­ous peace groups. Its leader was Nod. Ev­ery form of prim­i­tive man­u­fac­ture was en­cour­aged by this corps. They con­tributed di­rectly to the el­e­va­tion of stan­dards of liv­ing by pro­vid­ing many new com­modi­ties to at­tract the fancy of prim­i­tive men. They greatly ex­panded the trade in the im­proved salt pro­duced by the coun­cil on sci­ence and art.

66:5.12It was among these en­light­ened groups ed­u­cated in the Dala­ma­tia schools that the first com­mer­cial credit was prac­ticed. From a cen­tral ex­change of cred­its they se­cured to­kens which were ac­cepted in lieu of the ac­tual ob­jects of barter. The world did not im­prove upon these busi­ness meth­ods for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years.

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.

66:5.14None of the Prince’s staff would pre­sent rev­e­la­tion to com­pli­cate evo­lu­tion; they pre­sented rev­e­la­tion only as the cli­max of their ex­haus­tion of the forces of evo­lu­tion. But Hap did yield to the de­sire of the in­hab­i­tants of the city for the es­tab­lish­ment of a form of re­li­gious ser­vice. His group pro­vided the Dala­ma­tians with the seven chants of wor­ship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and even­tu­ally taught them “the Fa­ther’s prayer,” which was:

66:5.15“Fa­ther of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us with fa­vor. De­liver us from the fear of all save you. Make us a plea­sure to our di­vine teach­ers and for­ever put truth on our lips. De­liver us from vi­o­lence and anger; give us re­spect for our el­ders and that which be­longs to our neigh­bors. Give us this sea­son green pas­tures and fruit­ful flocks to glad­den our hearts. We pray for the has­ten­ing of the com­ing of the prom­ised up­lifter, and we would do your will on this world as oth­ers do on worlds be­yond.”

66:5.16Al­though the Prince’s staff were lim­ited to nat­u­ral means and or­di­nary meth­ods of race im­prove­ment, they held out the prom­ise of the Adamic gift of a new race as the goal of sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion­ary growth upon the at­tain­ment of the height of bi­o­logic de­vel­op­ment.

66:5.177. The guard­i­ans of health and life. This coun­cil was con­cerned with the in­tro­duc­tion of san­i­ta­tion and the pro­mo­tion of prim­i­tive hy­giene and was led by Lut.

66:5.18Its mem­bers taught much that was lost dur­ing the con­fu­sion of sub­se­quent ages, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. They taught man­kind that cook­ing, boil­ing and roast­ing, was a means of avoid­ing sick­ness; also that such cook­ing greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity and fa­cil­i­tated early wean­ing.

66:5.19Many of the early teach­ings of Lut’s guard­i­ans of health per­sisted among the tribes of earth on down to the days of Moses, even though they be­came much gar­bled and were greatly changed.

66:5.20The great ob­sta­cle in the way of pro­mot­ing hy­giene among these ig­no­rant peo­ples con­sisted in the fact that the real causes of many dis­eases were too small to be seen by the naked eye, and also be­cause they all held fire in su­per­sti­tious re­gard. It re­quired thou­sands of years to per­suade them to burn refuse. In the mean­time they were urged to bury their de­cay­ing rub­bish. The great san­i­tary ad­vance of this epoch came from the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge re­gard­ing the health-giv­ing and dis­ease-de­stroy­ing prop­er­ties of sun­light.

66:5.21Be­fore the Prince’s ar­rival, bathing had been an ex­clu­sively re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. It was in­deed dif­fi­cult to per­suade prim­i­tive men to wash their bod­ies as a health prac­tice. Lut fi­nally in­duced the re­li­gious teach­ers to in­clude cleans­ing with wa­ter as a part of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies to be prac­ticed in con­nec­tion with the noon­time de­vo­tions, once a week, in the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all.

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.

66:5.238. The plan­e­tary coun­cil on art and sci­ence. This corps did much to im­prove the in­dus­trial tech­nique of early man and to el­e­vate his con­cepts of beauty. Their leader was Mek.

66:5.24Art and sci­ence were at a low ebb through­out the world, but the rudi­ments of physics and chem­istry were taught the Dala­ma­tians. Pot­tery was ad­vanced, dec­o­ra­tive arts were all im­proved, and the ide­als of hu­man beauty were greatly en­hanced. But mu­sic made lit­tle prog­ress un­til af­ter the ar­rival of the vi­o­let race.

66:5.25These prim­i­tive men would not con­sent to ex­per­i­ment with steam power, not­with­stand­ing the re­peated urg­ings of their teach­ers; never could they over­come their great fear of the ex­plo­sive power of con­fined steam. They were, how­ever, fi­nally per­suaded to work with met­als and fire, al­though a piece of red-hot metal was a ter­ror­iz­ing ob­ject to early man.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

74:8.6The Baby­lo­ni­ans, be­cause of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the rem­nants of the civ­i­liza­tion of the Adamites, en­larged and em­bel­lished the story of man’s cre­ation; they taught that he had de­scended di­rectly from the gods. They held to an aris­to­cratic ori­gin for the race which was in­com­pat­i­ble with even the doc­trine of cre­ation out of clay.