It is evident that, at some time, there was a beginning of social life.
To those who have full faith in the Mosaic record it was in the Garden
of Eden; but that may be considered as before society, as such, was
fairly begun. It was the very dawn of the childhood of our race. To
those who recognize the fact that the primitive man was a weak,
unskilled, uncultivated savage, the conclusion must come that the first
social life of the race was very crude; that men lived in trees or in
caves and rude huts, and that they formed societies or hordes for
protection from the huge and formidable wild animals that roamed the
uncultivated earth.
Upon the slain beasts, wild fruits and grains they existed. They hunted
and fished, and although the passions of friendship, love and ambition
implanted in their souls by their Creator shone out at times, at other
times they quarrelled like the brutes they slaughtered. This state of
crude society is named _savagism_.
But as the beasts became less formidable foes, and were much diminished
in numbers by being slain and possibly from other causes, it is
probable that at times the race suffered hunger, and finding that the
ground readily produced from seed, the primitive race or races began to
plant, and finding also that they had slain so many of the wild animals
that they could keep herds of cattle without great danger of their
destruction by them, the life of the herdsman began.
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