fallen under the supervision and control of men, the latter, as
they manipulated all the necessaries of life and the means of
supplying them, began to regard themselves as superior beings,
and later, to claim that as a factor in reproduction, or
creation, the male was the more important. With this change the
ideas of a Deity also began to undergo a modification. The dual
principle necessary to creation, and which had hitherto been
worshipped as an indivisible unity, began gradually to separate
into its individual elements, the male representing spirit, the
moving or forming force in the generative processes, the female
being matter--the instrument through which spirit works. Spirit
which is eternal had produced matter which is destructible. The
fact will be observed that this doctrine prevails to a greater or
less extent in the theologies of the present time.
A little observation and reflection will show us that during this
change in the ideas relative to a creative principle, or God,
descent and the rights of succession which had hitherto been
reckoned through the mother were changed from the female to the
male line, the father having in the meantime become the only
recognized parent. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the plea of
Orestes in extenuation of his crime is that he is not of kin to
his mother. Euripides, also, puts into the mouth of Apollo the
same physiological notion, that she who bears the child is only
its nurse. The Hindoo Code of Menu, which, however, since its
earliest conception, has undergone numberless mutilations to suit
the purposes of the priests, declares that "the mother is but the
field which brings forth the plant according to whatsoever seed
is sown."
Although, through the accumulation of property in masses and the
capture of women for wives, men had succeeded in gaining the
ascendancy, and although the doctrine had been propounded that
the father is the only parent, thereby reversing the established
manner of reckoning descent, still, as we shall hereafter
observe, thousands of years were required to eliminate the female
element from the god-idea.
We must not lose sight of the fact that human society was first
organized and held together by means of the gens, at the head of
which was a woman. The several members of this organization were
but parts of one body cemented together by the pure principle of
maternity, the chief duty of these members being to defend and
