The word "tamely" which I have just used, brings me to the next great
event which moved mankind perceptibly nearer to civilization proper.
It is an event which was not only a literal fact of prime importance,
but which is eternally a symbol of man's own fate. It was probably
first the dog that lent himself to the imagination of the speaking,
fire-making, arrow-shooting, clay-baking, anthropoid ape, as a
stimulus to the idea that captive animals might be of service to human
beings. Man began to tame not only the dog, but the sheep, the ox, the
camel, the goat, the horse, and the elephant. The gain to all the
tribe was enormous. The men all shared in the profit, but once more
their master appropriated the new increment in power. He became the
owner of the domesticated animals as well as of the inanimate pot and
arrow and flame. But at this stage it must have seemed to all the
other members of the tribe that they also were owned, soul and body,
by their chief. They could not help seeing, nor could he, that they
were _his_ men. And how natural it was for them to rejoice in the fact
that they belonged to some one who was mightier than themselves, and
who identified his own prosperity with that of the tribe, and of every
individual in it who served it according to his will. Loyalty to the
beloved community became loyalty to the chief. But it is evident that
what mankind had caused to happen to the dog and the horse, the chief
had accomplished in regard to the human beings who had come under his
power. He had tamed them; they were no longer wild animals. They had
rendered up individual liberty and self-reliant independence such as
we see among many species of wild beasts. But instead, as the price of
obedience to a will outside their own, they had received a thousand
creature-comforts.
Only one more invention was needed to lift them to the highest and
latest stage of barbarism. Some one now hit upon the art of smelting
iron--the first invention that had not directly to do with the
supplying of food. By leaps and bounds the art of smelting iron
advanced man in the equipment of war, in the building of houses, roads,
and vehicles of transportation. Now what magnificent returns
individuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to
do as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have
been worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or
wheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare
birthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation
in the ever richer conquest over the physical resources of Nature?