Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/859

 Rh traders, common laborers, and slaves. The slave could never become a capitalist, though sometimes the wage earner could elect to join the capitalistic ranks.

7. Vocational—as vocations multiplied, they tended to establish castes and guilds. Workers divided into three groups: the professional classes, including the medicine men, then the skilled workers, followed by the unskilled laborers.

8. Religious—the early cult clubs produced their own classes within the clans and tribes, and the piety and mysticism of the priests have long perpetuated them as a separate social group.

9. Racial—the presence of two or more races within a given nation or territorial unit usually produces color castes. The original caste system of India was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

10. Age—youth and maturity. Among the tribes the boy remained under the watchcare of his father as long as the father lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother until married.

Flexible and shifting social classes are indispensable to an evolving civilization, but when class becomes caste, when social levels petrify, the enhancement of social stability is purchased by diminishment of personal initiative. Social caste solves the problem of finding one's place in industry, but it also sharply curtails individual development and virtually prevents social co-operation.

Classes in society, having naturally formed, will persist until man gradually achieves their evolutionary obliteration through intelligent manipulation of the biologic, intellectual, and spiritual resources of a progressing civilization, such as:

1. Biologic renovation of the racial stocks—the selective elimination of inferior human strains. This will tend to eradicate many mortal inequalities.

2. Educational training of the increased brain power which will arise out of such biologic improvement.

3. Religious quickening of the feelings of mortal kinship and brotherhood.

But these measures can bear their true fruits only in the distant millenniums of the future, although much social improvement will immediately result from the intelligent, wise, and patient manipulation of these acceleration factors of cultural progress. Religion is the mighty lever that lifts civilization from chaos, but it is powerless apart from the fulcrum of sound and normal mind resting securely on sound and normal heredity.

Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society's prime gift to man is security.

Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are:

1. Assurance of food supply.

2. Military defense—security through preparedness.

3. Internal peace preservation—prevention of personal violence and social disorder.