THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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man for him. Thus society is the perfect essential unity of men with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the implemented naturalism of man and the
implemented humanism of nature.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
I. Magic Past
Plunged into misery
Our bare skin absolutely forces us to invent. Man as such is strangely helpless, even against the weather. He only progresses in regularly warm regions, and could not
survive a single winter. The south permits us to walk about naked of course, but not to walk about unarmed. The teeth of the apes receded in primitive man, even the
manliest fist is hardly any use against a single wolf. For protection and attack it must grow further, into something which did not grow with it, into the club, into the stone
axe. As long as these had not yet been invented, it is strange that men remained alive at all. Since then at any rate they preserve themselves only by working a thing, by
planning something better.
Fire and new armament
Our nakedness is now covered, not of our own accord, but only from outside. The alien skin is put round our shoulders, and the cave from which the bear and lion
sometimes first had to be driven away was replaced by the house, made of wood or large stones. Birds also build a nest, but it is only used for rearing their brood, not
for extending the fortification of the body like human implements and houses. The ant, the bee, the badger, and especially the beaver all build structures and partly even
actually like an extension of their body, like an artificial shell as a fortress, but everything essential to technological invention is lacking: implements and their conscious
use. Man is the only animal who makes implements, who intensified the nail into a file, the fist into a hammer, the teeth into a knife. Only self­made man utilized fire,
which cooks the food, smelts the ore, and scares off every predator. And even more quickly than the plundered