How Religion Began and Division of Labour
In the last letter, I told you how the early men were afraid of everything and imagined that every misfortune was caused by angry and jealous gods. They saw these imaginary gods everywhere-in the jungle, in the mountains, in the river, in the clouds. Their idea of god was not of a kind and good person but of a very irritable person who was always losing his temper. And as they were afraid of his anger they were always trying to bribe him by giving him something, chiefly food. Sometimes if a disaster came, like an earthquake or a flood or disease which killed large numbers of people, they would become very frightened and think that the gods were angry. And to please them they would go so far as to sacrifice men and women, even kill their own children, and offer them to the gods. This seems horrible but a man who is afraid will do anything.
This must have been the beginning of religion. So religion first came as fear, and anything that is done because of fear is bad. Religion, as you know, tells us many beautiful things. When you grow up, you will read about the religions of the world and of the good things and the bad things that have been done in their name. It is interesting to notice here, however, how the idea of religion began. Later we shall see how it grew. But however much it may have grown, we see even today that people fight and break each other's heads in the name of religion. And for many people it is still something to be afraid of. They spend their time in trying to please some imaginary beings by making presents in temples and even sacrifices of animals.
So early man had a hard life. He had to get his food almost daily or else he starved. No idle man could live in those days. It was not possible for anyone even to get together a lot of food and then do nothing for a long time.
When the tribe was formed, it became a little easier for. man. All the members of the tribe working together could get more food than each one singly could have done. You know that working together or cooperation helps us to do many things which we cannot do singly. One man or two may not be able to carry a heavy load, but several men helping each other can easily do so. Another great advance came in those days about which I have already told you. This was agriculture. You will be interested to know that there are the beginnings of agriculture among some ants. Of course, I do not mean to say that ants sow seeds and plough and then reap the harvest. But what these ants do is something like this: if they find a shrub the seeds of which they eat, they take out the grass carefully from around the herb. This gives the herb a greater chance to live.
Perhaps men also did at one time what these ants do. They did not then understand what agriculture was. It must have taken them long ages to understand it and to begin to sow seeds. With the coming of agriculture, it was much easier to get food. Men did not have to hunt all the time for it. So they could live a less hard life than they used to. Another interesting change now took place. Before agriculture, every man was a hunter. That was the only work to be done by the men. The women probably looked after the children and gathered fruit. But when agriculture came there were different kinds of work. There was work in the fields and hunting and looking after the cattle. Probably the women looked after the cattle and milked the cows. Some men did one kind of work, others another kind of work .
You find today in the world each person doing one particular kind of work. A man is a doctor, or an engineer, building bridges and roads, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith, or a mason who builds houses, or a shoemaker or a tailor, and so on. Each man has got his special trade and does not know much or anything of other trades. This is called division of work or division of labour. If a man tries to do one thing well, he will do it much better than if he tried to do many things. There is a great deal of division of labour in the world today. We see this division of labour slowly beginning in the old tribes when agriculture came in.
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