1. Humanity and Religion in Relation to Nature.

...that with agriculture—that is, with the cultivation of nature—the culture of humanity begins. "Not the mythical paradise or the Golden Age, but labor is the beginning of the history of culture." 1 Therefore, within labor itself lies a progression: for while the primitive man works because necessity forces him—because he must—the educated man works from his own free determination—because he wills to. Through labor, man imprints his own spiritual essence upon the object he works on; he stamps it with his will and thereby declares it his property. Hunting and nomadic tribes do not "form" themselves The German verb "bilden" implies both forming a society and self-education/development because they do not reach the stage of transforming nature through labor. Although they do not live entirely in a pure state of nature like animals—since there is no human tribe where, for example, the use of fire 2 or the custom of self-adornment (however crude) is absent—they nevertheless fail to achieve consistent labor, permanent settlements, and thus do not reach the completeness of a nation and a state.

Since civilization and education begin with labor, labor is the condition of history. Language and labor, as expressions of the self-conscious spirit, are necessary prerequisites for history. There is no wild tribe that lacks a language or reveals its internal states merely through inarticulate sounds or simple muscle movements as gestures; but by the same token, no tribe has a history if its life lacks labor and the necessary permanence of settlement. The Bedouin Arab therefore stands at the same level he occupied in Abraham’s time; he has no history because his life lacks formative labor. One can say: labor is the means of human cultivation, and language—

"...elevates the performance of a natural stone or stone flake, shows an ability to abstract from the immediate needs and pleasures of life and to turn the attention entirely to the means for the sake of the purpose—an ability we will not easily find in animals."