Arts and sciences they had none. Their simple domestic arrangements were as primitive as they were. Their furniture consisted of little or nothing. Cooking utensils they needed none. There was no occasion to cook; nature’s food was ample. This they collected, selected, and fed upon.
Clothing they had no use for, in the warm climate they lived in. They were clad in nature’s garb, male and female alike. Innocence and virtue was well understood among them. They were moral in their way, committed no wrong—there was no occasion for it. There was plenty for everyone. The larders of nature were free, open, and plentiful. Therefore all were satisfied and happy.
Wealth or property they had. All they surveyed was theirs. What belonged to one belonged to the other. Mine and thine was unknown. The more civilized qualifications of property right developed many centuries later.
Commerce they knew nothing of. There was no need for that, since furniture, utensils, implements of agriculture, weapons, clothing of any kind, they had no use for.
They had no laws—nor law-makers, nor justices, nor judges, nor any officials known in later times.
And what is more, they had no God, or idol, or myth, or symbol, or worship, or prayer or religion, or soul, or spirit. Nor did they know anything about what we indicate by the epithets physical or metaphysical, neither theological nor psychological, neither gnostic nor agnostic.
They did not know of any of those things. These were evolved and invented later, as the necessities and exigencies arose, as their wants increased, and circumstances changed from internal to external conditions.
Consequently, their language was limited. They made use of a limited number of words, or produced articulate sound enough to express just what they wanted, and no more. They may have had two or three hundred different words or sounds in use. We have men to-day among us that have not many more words at command, and their ideas generally correspond in number and quality to their stock of words.
The stock of words and the stock of ideas always depend upon the amount of experience and the amount of exercise the five senses have had; together with the urgencies and difficulties they have had to contend with. The power of observation is developed in accordance as the opportunities arise.
Each particular special sense develops its own faculties, from the practice, use, and experience of that sense, the role it is called upon to play as necessities arise. And as each object is perceived or observed by the special sense, it is recorded, a picture of the same is retained in the great nervous storehouse for future reference. The retention and recognition of the same goes to the formation of memory. As the stock of objects increases, words or sounds designating the same also increase in number, and the material for the formation of ideas is also largely increased.