protect each other if needs be with their life blood. The fact
has been observed, in an earlier work, that only through the gens
was the organization of society possible. Without it mankind
could have accomplished nothing toward its own advancement.
Thus, throughout the earlier ages of human existence, at a time
when mankind lived nearer to Nature and before individual wealth
and the stimulation of evil passions had engendered superstition,
selfishness, and distrust, the maternal element constituted not
only the binding and preserving principle in human society, but,
together with the power to bring forth, constituted also the
god-idea, which idea, as has already been observed, at a certain
stage in the history of the race was portrayed by a female figure
with a child in her arms.
From all sources of information at hand are to be derived
evidences of the fact that the earliest religion of which we have
any account was pure Nature-worship, that whatever at any given
time might have been the object adored, whether it were the
earth, a tree, water, or the sun, it was simply as an emblem of
the great energizing agency in Nature. The moving or forming
force in the universe constituted the god-idea. The figure of a
mother with her child signified not only the power to bring
forth, but Perceptive Wisdom, or Light, as well.
As through a study of Comparative Ethnology, or through an
investigation into the customs, traditions, and mythoses of
extant races in the various stages of development, have been
discovered the beginnings of the religious idea and the mental
qualities which among primitive races prompted worship, so, also,
through extinct tongues and the symbolism used in religious rites
and ceremonies, many of the processes have been unearthed whereby
the original and beautiful conceptions of the Deity, and the
worship inspired by the operations of Nature, and especially the
creative functions in human beings gradually became obscured by
the grossest ideas and the vilest practices. The symbols which
appear in connection with early religious rites and ceremonies,
and under which are veiled the conceptions of a still earlier and
purer age, when compared with subsequently developed notions
relative to the same objects, indicate plainly the change which
has been wrought in the original ideas relative to the creative
functions, and furnish an index to the direction which human
development, or growth, has taken.
