FIRE, PRIMITIVE. The conception of early man as a fireless animal has been entertained from remote times, and the prevalence of this idea in origin-mythy seems to present a real sur vival in lore from the primitive period. This great body of lore with attendant customs points out the stages in inan's progress by which fire from an unused and almost unknown force beeamp interwoven with his life as a prime neces sity. These stages represent : (I) man in the ease with his feral neighbors as to tire. but hav ing a clearer knowledge of its manifestations in the lightning, volcanoes, and other exhibitions in nature (stages of the knowledge of fire) ; (2) from some of these sources fire is acquired and preserved for the most primitive use conceivable, perhaps for protection from the beasts (stage of acquisition and preservation of lire) ; and t 3) the stage marked by the invention of a process of creating fire at will, either by friction of wood in the fire-drill, fire-plow, and tire-saw, or by the percussion of minerals in the flint and pyrites (stage of fire-producing). Growing out of these great strides in man's progress, conies the fourth stage, marked by an increasing utilization of this element down to the present (stage of the conquest of fire).
It will be seen that in respect to the distribu tion of mankind over the earth, fire has played the leading part. in the first stage, before the
use of fire, the distribution of man fell under the laws regulating the movements of animals. In the second stage, with the preservation of fire, man became sedentary and aggregated into groups having the germs of the State. In the third stage. with the means of providing fire at will, fire preservation sank into a lower place, and man became free to immigrate into different zones. With the cumulative employment of fire in the mechanical era, there enters a time ele ment. and great masses of humanity move quickly to settle the waste places of the earth where be fore the movement was slow. From this most fer tile of beginnings in the camp-fire have grown a great majority of the arts that have supplied man's artificial wants—those primary arts repre sented by lighting. cooking. offense and defense; and those secondary arts connected with the me chanics of fire or its use in agriculture, timber ing, boat-building, metallurgy, ceramics, etc., all with vast ramifications. There is also a social history of fire, a mythology embracing the vari ous phases of fire-worship with its ceremonies and observances, and a folk-lore of magnitude and surpassing interest.