The World Set Free | Page 3

eyes at the birds that soared beyond his reach. Or suddenly he became
aware of the scent of another male and rose up roaring, his roars the formless precursors
of moral admonitions. For he was a great individualist, that original, he suffered none
other than himself.
So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this ancestor of all of us, fought
and bred and perished, changing almost imperceptibly.
Yet he changed. That keen chisel of necessity which sharpened the tiger's claw age by
age and fined down the clumsy Orchippus to the swift grace of the horse, was at work
upon him--is at work upon him still. The clumsier and more stupidly fierce among him
were killed soonest and oftenest; the finer hand, the quicker eye, the bigger brain, the
better balanced body prevailed; age by age, the implements were a little better made, the
man a little more delicately adjusted to his possibilities. He became more social; his herd
grew larger; no longer did each man kill or drive out his growing sons; a system of taboos
made them tolerable to him, and they revered him alive and soon even after he was dead,
and were his allies against the beasts and the rest of mankind. (But they were forbidden to
touch the women of the tribe, they had to go out and capture women for themselves, and
each son fled from his stepmother and hid from her lest the anger of the Old Man should
be roused. All the world over, even to this day, these ancient inevitable taboos can be
traced.) And now instead of caves came huts and hovels, and the fire was better tended
and there were wrappings and garments; and so aided, the creature spread into colder
climates, carrying food with him, storing food--until sometimes the neglected grass-seed
sprouted again and gave a first hint of agriculture.
And already there were the beginnings of leisure and thought.
Man began to think. There were times when he was fed, when his lusts and his fears were
all appeased, when the sun shone upon the squatting-place and dim stirrings of
speculation lit his eyes. He scratched upon a bone and found resemblance and pursued it
and began pictorial art, moulded the soft, warm clay of the river brink between his fingers,
and found a pleasure in its patternings and repetitions, shaped it into the form of vessels,
and found that it would hold water. He watched the streaming river, and wondered from
what bountiful breast this incessant water came; he blinked at the sun and dreamt that
perhaps he might snare it and spear it as it went down to its resting-place amidst the
distant hills. Then he was roused to convey to his brother that once indeed he had done
so--at least that some one had done so--he mixed that perhaps with another dream almost
as daring, that one day a mammoth had been beset; and therewith began fiction--pointing
a way to achievement--and the august prophetic procession of tales.
For scores and hundreds of centuries, for myriads of generations that life of our fathers
went on. From the beginning to the ripening of that phase of human life, from the first
clumsy eolith of rudely chipped flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or
three thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by human
standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim intimations of the beast. And
that first glimmering of speculation, that first story of achievement, that story-teller

bright-eyed and flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous
listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most marvellous beginning this
world has ever seen. It doomed the mammoths, and it began the setting of that snare that
shall catch the sun.
Section 2
That dream was but a moment in a man's life, whose proper business it seemed was to get
food and kill his fellows and beget after the manner of all that belongs to the fellowship
of the beasts. About him, hidden from him by the thinnest of veils, were the untouched
sources of Power, whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day,
Power that could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of the race
were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing.
At last, in the generous levels of warm river valleys, where food is abundant and life very
easy, the emerging human overcoming his earlier jealousies, becoming, as necessity
persecuted him less urgently, more social and tolerant and amenable, achieved a larger
community. There began a division of labour, certain of the older men specialised in
knowledge and direction, a strong man took the fatherly leadership in war, and priest and