Billions of years ago a part of matter coalesced in such a manner as to form the planet upon which we live.  (Exactly how the earth was created is not important here.)  Evidence substantiates the belief that its surface was very hot and tumultuous for millions of years.  As this activity subsided, topographical, geological, climatological and other physical features gradually materialized--mountains and plains, the polar icecaps and tropics, seas and deserts, etc.  After millions of years of development and a vast number of chemical combinations of matter, the earth eventually gave rise to a unique amalgamation--a living substance ¹⁴ --which, among other distinguishing characteristics (metabolism, reproduction, self-repair, etc.) demonstrated the capacities to learn and adapt.  Like all matter it moved continuously and through millions of internal and external contacts involving a multitude of material unifications, alterations were repeatedly produced in its physical structure.  Those which were effective replies to environmental modifications were passed on to successive generations while those organisms in which chance caused inadequate responses to develop perished.¹⁵   As far as what organisms underwent transformation or the nature of the alteration, this was purely a question of natural causes (environmental) and understandable natural effects produced by the continuous motion of all matter.  Neither the environment nor the organism exercised conscious activity.  Mere chance based upon billions of permutations and combinations determined which organisms adopted physical changes necessary for continued existence (survival) and which became extinct.  The organisms were no more aware of what was happening to themselves than the environment was aware of its activities.  Neither performed any kind of conscious intent to produce a desired result.

Domination of the organism is readily apparent throughout the entire process.  Regardless of how many years or generations of life were involved, internal and external material conditions were primary, the organism secondary.  The organism was created by material conditions, not vice versa; the organism was dependent upon material conditions, not vice versa; the organism was required to adapt to the material conditions if it was to survive, not vice versa.  So always it was the material conditions that were primary, not the organism.  Material conditions were, and continue to be, the basic policy determinant.

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¹⁴ "With regard to the origin of life, therefore, up to the present, natural science is only able to say with certainty that it must have been the result of chemical action."
Source 4 , page 104
¹⁵ "...in this struggle those individuals (organisms--Ed.) who have some individual peculiarity, however insignificant, that gives them an advantage in the struggle for existence will have the best prospect of reaching maturity and propagating themselves.  These individual peculiarities have thus the tendency to descend by heredity....  In this way a species is altered through natural selection, through the survival of the fittest."
Source 4 , page 98

As the vast array of organisms throughout the earth learned and passed on to successive generations an ever-growing compilation of knowledge and other biological adaptations, organisms became increasingly complex, ultimately giving rise to man--the highest stage of life on this planet. ¹⁶   Physical requirements, indeed reality, dictated that the dominant concern of every organism in history be the maintenance of its existence.  So, food, environmental temperature, natural resources, and other physical needs were of primary importance.  Man has been no different in this regard.  He has been a prisoner of the physical needs of his body which had to be satisfied through eating, ¹⁷ drinking, breathing non-toxic air, wearing adequate clothing, dwelling in an acceptable temperature. etc.¹⁸   Because these requirements had to be met, because he operated in an environment of multiple restrictions (only certain types and amounts of rocks, ores, soils, water, plants, animals, etc.) and because the state of his technology was poor, life for early man was one of almost continual labor.  Out of necessity, not choice, he like all organisms, spent an inordinate amount of time providing for his very existence. ¹⁹

Like other forms of life man has not only been a victim of his physical requirements but a captive of his environment as well.  He has been forced to produce his food, housing, clothing, transportation, tools, weapons, etc. from what was available in his surroundings. ²⁰   The latter formulated policy, man obeyed.  Consequently, the entire ideology which developed within man was, and is, almost exclusively a product of the conditions in which he found himself, a response to, a result of those conditions.

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¹⁶ "We know, for example, that the earth was once an incandescent, fiery mass, then it gradually cooled, then the animal kingdom appeared and developed, then appeared a species of ape from which man subsequently originated."
Source 74 , page 382
¹⁷ (Add) "...all labor is primarily and initially directed toward the production and appropriation of food."
Source 51 , Vol. 3, page 617
¹⁸ "But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things."
Source 58 , page 39
¹⁹ (a) "It (labour--Ed.) is the prime basic condition for all human existence...."
Source 6 , page 172
(b) "...the production of the means of subsistence is the very first condition of their (the laborers or direct producers--Ed.) existence and of all production in general...."
Source 51 , Vol. 3, page 620
(c) (Add) "That primitive man obtained all he required as a free gift of Nature is a silly fable....  Our age was not preceded by a Golden Age; and primitive man was absolutely crushed by the burden of existence, by the difficulties of the struggle against Nature."
Source 20 , Vol. 5, page 111
²⁰ "The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce."
Source 58 , page 31

Driven by physical needs which had to be satisfied if he was to survive, man understandably used that matter which was most readily available.  If it happened to be a body of water, he consumed various aquatic animals to see if they were edible.  The outcome of his investigations was recorded in his memory and employed in formulating his ideology.  Having discovered that certain aquatic life were consumable and forever driven by his biological requirements, man was compelled to find methods by which aquatic animals and plants could be extracted in greater numbers and more systematically.  Again the environment asserted its dominance, for in trying various methods only objects provided by material conditions could be employed.  As man used a multitude of methods and the success or failure of each was noted, his ideology necessarily developed accordingly.  Invariably the latter was a by-product of man's surroundings, since every piece of matter with which he worked was provided by his environment.  The concepts of polar bears, walruses, icebergs, igloos, and reindeer were not part of the ideology of men confined to tropical regions, while the ideas of palm trees, coconuts, pineapples, reptiles, monkeys, and tree houses were not in the general philosophy of Lapplanders and eskimos.

So this was man in his early years--the complex product of millions of years of evolution.  His freedom was virtually nil; his thoughts, his beliefs, his physiological development were responses to, and products of, those material objects and forces affecting, in fact, controlling his life.  Without a real mind of his own and almost totally helpless, he resembled a babe-in-arms.  Lacking any significant control over his physical needs or surroundings, especially during the early, formative years of his life; forced to adopt an ideology which was a necessary by-product of those environmental factors influencing his life in order to survive; subjected to this ideology which, realistically, was made for him by those same material factors; physiologically evolving as nature so directed (organisms which chance failed to provide with adequate physiological changes to cope with environmental alterations perished); early man was, indeed, a pitiful, nearly helpless creature.

To what extent then, if any, did early man direct his destiny or was he comparable to a piece of wood being tossed and turned by river rapids.  All living matter by its very nature does exercise some influence over its movement and development; otherwise, it would be lifeless.  It retains in a storage house, be it ever so primitive, the results of previous experiences with its surroundings.  Through interactions with material conditions, its knowledge was enlarged, employed in making decisions, and passed on from generation to generation.  The largest compilation passed on to a living organism was given to early man.  The degree to which this record has been developed in an organism (its vastness, its complexity), combined with the latter's ability to act, determines the extent to which an organism is dominating events as opposed to being controlled by them.  In other words, in order to be free an organism must not only have some understanding of cause and effect in other matter but also possess sufficient resources and environmental control to be able to direct the behavior of that same matter.  To the extent that any living organism is able to so act, to that extent it moves from a period in which life exercised almost no discretion to a period in which it will demonstrate almost total control.  Only then will it truly command its fate and be free.  All forms of life possess this capacity to some extent; yet, only in the human species has it developed to a noteworthy degree.  Primarily because man's neurological system centered in the brain was the most effective cognitive apparatus yet to appear, ²¹man, more than any other organism, was able to learn from his environment and significantly restructure matter affecting his existence.  He, more than any other animal, accelerated movement on the extremely long journey from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

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²¹ (a) "Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter."
Source 8 , page 35
(b) (Add) "...the development of consciousness requires a particular structure of the organism and development of its nervous system."
Source 73 , page 21

Note:  ON DEFINING FREEDOM

One is only free to the extent that he possesses sufficient resources and environmental control to be able to act as he prefers after having studied the options available.  He is not free to commit any act merely because there are no laws, rules, regulations, or agencies preventing him from so acting.  A poor person is not free to take vacation trips to a distant continent every week-end, live in an expensive yacht for lengthy periods, live in a $500,000 home, wear expensive clothing, or eat the healthiest foods, even though there are no counteracting laws, because he does not have the resources.  He doesn't possess the requisite amount of control over his material conditions which can be as restrictive as any law ever passed.  In effect, one's freedom is directly proportional to the size of his pocketbook, because the size of the latter determines the extent to which an individual has control over his material conditions.  In reality, the poorer a man is the less freedom he has.  There is no such thing as a free poor man.  That's a contradiction in terms.  Anyone who is poor and thinks he is free is living under delusions of grandeur and only fooling himself.