58 fHE COMING OF MAN 



Mutual helpfulness replaces injurious competition first in 

 the family, then gradually in neighborhood, village, clan and 

 tribe. To-day we find great nations, whose vast energies 

 and resources have led through fierce competition for trade 

 and commerce to a long and annihilating war, struggling to- 

 ward a world-order of peace and mutual respect and helpful- 

 ness permeating and uniting all the peoples of the globe. The 

 cry of the age is: "We must get together." It is only the 

 dawning vision of something long foreshadowed and sure to 

 come. 



The necessity of cooperation is rooted deep in human na- 

 ture and structure. All Palaeolithic men may have been able 

 to sharpen a stick in the fire equally well, only a few could 

 chip a symmetrical flint axe or shave a bone dagger, the joy 

 of the hunter's heart and eye. Still fewer could engrave and 

 ornament it. Division of labor was only just beginning to 

 enable every man to find his place and do with joy the work 

 which he was fitted to do best. It shows far more marked 

 results before the end of the Neolithic era. We find centers 

 of mining and manufacture of flint implements; work shops 

 of pottery, weaving and other handicrafts; manufacture of 

 jewelry from amber and other substances. This means mu- 

 tual interdependence between more and more distant areas, 

 trade-routes arise and bring new patterns, influences and 

 ideas. 



Cooperation was fostered or compelled by the introduction 

 of amculture and increase of population. The agriculturist 

 lives in a village and has neighbors. They work together 

 to rear compact lake-villages or great stone monuments and 

 circles. They must keep step with one another; they cannot 

 walk together unless they agree. 



In these villages folk-v/ays arise and become habits. 

 Habits crystallize in customs; and the " cake of cutsom " 

 hardens around the individual and the social unit.^ The 

 custom satisfies som.e need or meets some emergency. It 

 springs at first from a dim feeling rather than from clear in- 



s 62. 



