Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
STORIES of the CAVE PEOPLE
PREFACE
No man or woman can begin to intelligentlyinterpret the causes of social phenomena andhuman progress to-day without a practical knowledgeof sociology and a general understanding ofthe underlying causes of social evolution.
Man has risen from a stage of lowest savagery,little higher than the apes, buffetted by the handof Nature, dependent upon the wild game he mightkill or the food he found ready to hand, a fearingand a furtive creature of the forests and of theplains, preyed upon by a thousand stronger foes,to a being able to provide warmth and clothingand shelter against the rains and the cold andfood against the seasons. He has become a masterinstead of a plaything of the elements. In alarge measure he has become arbiter of his ownfood supply and, hence, his own destiny. He hassubjugated, in a marvelous degree, the forces ofNature and harnessed them to his needs.
The ordinary man all over the world to-daydoes not know these things. He attributes all thiswonderful progress to a supernatural agency orto supernatural agencies; he believes that the institutions8of to-day have existed since the beginningof time; that the Gods created man exactlyas we find him in the 20th century; that the presentideas of morality, religion, law and humanjustice have always prevailed. He is unable totell whence we sprung and which way we are going.Amid a changing world he sees only fixedthings.
He knows neither the ori