The talking, fire-using anthropoid in the course of time invented the
bow and arrow. So great and so enduring were the benefits of this new
device that it is almost impossible for us, who have profited by them,
to imagine the state of human society when men could kill animals or
destroy enemies only by throwing stones or clubs, or by striking with
the fist. But it is easy to see that the chief of a tribe of men
received an incalculable increase of power when, besides the
instruments of ignition, bows and arrows were in his possession to deal
out at his will. Whatever equality of initiative and diffused
sovereignty had existed before the use of fire was known, it now began
to vanish, and the men of any tribe saw power concentrated in the will
and word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his
command was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of
that individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the
lower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of
spontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so
long as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure from the
pursuit of enemies.
It was perhaps another ten thousand years before one more new link in
the chain of man's mastery over Nature and the chief's mastery over his
men was forged. This time it was probably a woman who--again by a happy
chance or by necessity of maternal solicitude--noticed the effect of
heat upon clay and introduced the art of pottery. Until then men had no
utensils that could withstand the action of fire; they could not boil
water except by dropping hot stones into some receptacle of wood or
skin. Now, by the new device of boiling, the food-supply was enormously
increased. The blessing of another mastery over matter was henceforth
shared by all the members of the tribe. But, at the same time, there
was a corresponding force added to the chief's grip upon his men. We
see the law illustrated, that every new invention, owned by the few,
becomes one more trap for the many. The differentiation between the
owner of the tribe's wealth and the propertyless became with the
introduction of pottery fixed and hopeless. The master dealt out not
only fire and arrows, but cooking-utensils; or he withheld all these if
he saw fit; and if you had been there, but not in command, you, too,
would have tamely submitted or have died.