The Ethics of Cooperation

ACCORDING to Plato's famous myth, two gifts of the gods equipped man for living: the one, arts and inventions to supply him with the means of livelihood; the other, reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of societies and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Agencies for mastery over nature and agencies for coöperation among men remain the two great sources of human power. But after two thousand years, it is possible to note an interesting fact as to their relative...
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ACCORDING to Plato's famous myth, two gifts of the gods equipped man for living: the one, arts and inventions to supply him with the means of livelihood; the other, reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of societies and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Agencies for mastery over nature and agencies for coöperation among men remain the two great sources of human power. But after two thousand years, it is possible to note an interesting fact as to their relative order of development in civilization. Nearly all the great skills and inventions that had been acquired up to the eighteenth century were brought into man's service at a very early date. The use of fire, the arts of weaver, potter, and metal worker, of sailor, hunter, fisher, and sower, early fed man and clothed him. These were carried to higher perfection by Egyptian and Greek, by Tyrian and Florentine, but it would be difficult to point to any great new unlocking of material resources until the days of the chemist and electrician. Domestic animals and crude water mills were for centuries in man's service, and until steam was harnessed, no additions were made of new powers.