The British Study Edition of the Urantia Papers

self-torture and painful cutting entered into these ceremonies. Circumcision was first practised as a rite of initiation into one of these secret fraternities. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the puberty initiation; the tattoo originated as such a badge of membership. Such torture, together with much privation, was designed to harden these youths, to impress them with the reality of life and its inevitable hardships. This purpose is better accomplished by the later appearing athletic games and physical contests.

^70:7.11 But the secret societies did aim at the improvement of adolescent morals; one of the chief purposes of the puberty ceremonies was to impress upon the boy that he must leave other men’s wives alone.

^70:7.12 Following these years of rigorous discipline and training and just before marriage, the young men were usually released for a short period of leisure and freedom, after which they returned to marry and to submit to lifelong subjection to the tribal taboos. And this ancient custom has continued down to modern times as the foolish notion of “sowing wild oats.”

^70:7.13 ¶ Many later tribes sanctioned the formation of women’s secret clubs, the purpose of which was to prepare adolescent girls for wifehood and motherhood. After initiation girls were eligible for marriage and were permitted to attend the “bride show,” the coming-out party of those days. Women’s orders pledged against marriage early came into existence.

^70:7.14 Presently nonsecret clubs made their appearance when groups of unmarried men and groups of unattached women formed their separate organizations. These associations were really the first schools. And while men’s and women’s clubs were often given to persecuting each other, some advanced tribes, after contact with the Dalamatia teachers, experimented with coeducation, having boarding schools for both sexes.

^70:7.15 ¶ Secret societies contributed to the building up of social castes chiefly by the mysterious character of their initiations. The members of these societies first wore masks to frighten the curious away from their mourning rites — ancestor worship. Later this ritual developed into a pseudo seance at which ghosts were reputed to have appeared. The ancient societies of the “new birth” used signs and employed a special secret language; they also forswore certain foods and drinks. They acted as night police and otherwise functioned in a wide range of social activities.

^70:7.16 All secret associations imposed an oath, enjoined confidence, and taught the keeping of secrets. These orders awed and controlled the mobs; they also acted as vigilance societies, thus practising lynch law. They were the first spies when the tribes were at war and the first secret police during times of peace. Best of all they kept unscrupulous kings on the anxious seat. To offset them, the kings fostered their own secret police.

^70:7.17 These societies gave rise to the first political parties. The first party government was “the strong” vs. “the weak.” In ancient times a change of administration only followed civil war, abundant proof that the weak had become strong.

^70:7.18 These clubs were employed by merchants to collect debts and by rulers to collect taxes. Taxation has been a long struggle, one of the earliest forms being the tithe, 10% of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were originally levied to keep up the king’s house, but it was found that they were easier to collect when disguised as an offering for the support of the temple service.

^70:7.19 By and by these secret associations grew into the first charitable organizations and later evolved into the earlier religious societies — the forerunners of churches. Finally some of these societies became intertribal, the first international fraternities.

8. SOCIAL CLASSES

^70:8.1 The mental and physical inequality of human beings ensures that social classes will appear. The only worlds without social strata are the most primitive and the most advanced. A dawning civilization has not yet begun the differentiation of social levels, while a world settled in light and life has largely effaced these divisions of mankind, which are so characteristic of all intermediate evolutionary stages.

^70:8.2 As society emerged from savagery to barbarism, its human components tended to become grouped in classes for the following general reasons:

^70:8.3 1. Natural — contact, kinship, and marriage; the first social distinctions were based on sex, age, and blood — kinship to the chief.

^70:8.4 2. Personal — the recognition of ability, endurance, skill, and fortitude; soon followed by the recognition of language mastery, knowledge, and general intelligence.

^70:8.5 3. Chance — war and emigration resulted in the separating of human groups. Class evolution was powerfully influenced by conquest, the relation of the victor to the vanquished, while slavery brought about the first general division of society into free and bond.

^70:8.6 4. Economic — rich and poor. Wealth and the possession of slaves was a genetic basis for one class of society.

^70:8.7 5. Geographic — classes arose consequent upon urban or rural settlement. City and country have respectively contributed to the differentiation of the herder-agriculturist and the trader-industrialist, with their divergent viewpoints and reactions.

^70:8.8 6. Social — classes have gradually formed according to popular estimate of the social worth of different groups. Among the earliest divisions of this sort were the demarcations between priest-teachers, ruler-warriors, capitalist-traders, common labourers, and slaves. The slave could never become a capitalist, though sometimes the wage earner could elect to join the capitalistic ranks.

^70:8.9 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 labourers.

^70:8.10 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.

^70:8.11 9. Racial — the presence of two or more races within a given nation or territorial unit usually produces colour castes. The original caste system of India was based on colour, as was that of early Egypt.

^70:8.12 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.

^70:8.13 ¶ 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.

^70:8.14 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:

^70:8.15 1. Biologic renovation of the racial stocks — the selective elimination of inferior human strains. This will tend to eradicate many mortal inequalities.

^70:8.16 2. Educational training of the increased brain power which will arise out of such biologic improvement.

^70:8.17 3. Religious quickening of the feelings of mortal kinship and brotherhood.

^70:8.18 ¶ 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.