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.

XVI. ANIMALS TAMED AND IRON SMELTED

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 chie