Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/95

 between seed time and harvest in the neighbourhood of the cultivated ground.

Again, man so soon as he left the primitive forest was far more at the mercy of climatic changes than in his primitive home. In the thick forest the changes of temperature between day and night were much less than on the open plain, on which during the day a burning sun rules, and by night a powerful radiation and loss of heat. Storms are also less noticeable in the forest than in a woodless territory, and against rain and hail this latter offers much less protection than the almost impenetrable foliage of the first. Thus man forced on to the plains was bound to feel a need for shelter and clothing which the primitive man in the tropical forest never felt. If the male apes had already built themselves formal nests for the night’s repose he was bound to go farther and build walls and roofs for protection, or to seek shelter in caves or holes. On the other hand, it was no great step to clothe himself in the skins of animals which remained over after the flesh had been taken out of them. It was certainly the need for protection against cold which caused mankind to aspire for the possession of fire. Its technical utility he could only gradually learn after he had used it a long time. The warmth which it gave out was, naturally, at once evident. How man came to the use of fire will, perhaps, never be certainly known; but it is certain that man in the primitive forest had no need for it as a source of heat, and would not have been able amid the continual damp to maintain it. Only in a drier region, where greater quantities of dry fire materials were to be found at intervals—moss, leaves, brushwood—could fires arise, which made man acquainted with fire; perhaps through lightning, or more likely from the sparks of a flint, the first tool of primitive man, or from the heat which arose from boring holes in hard wood.

We see how the entire life of man, his needs, his dwelling, his means of sustenance were changed; how one discovery brought numerous others in its train so soon as it was once made, so soon as the making