been eliminated, and the subterfuges which have been and still
are employed to construct and sustain a Creator who of himself is
powerless to create, is as amusing as it is suggestive, and
forcibly recalls to mind la couvade, in which, among certain
tribes, the father, assuming all the duties of procreation, goes
to bed when a child is born.[59]
[59] The Evolution of Woman, p. 127.
All mythologies prove conclusively that ages elapsed before human
beings were rash enough, or sufficiently blinded by falsehood and
superstition, to attempt to construct a creative force unaided by
the female principle. Just here it may not be out of place to
refer to the fact that in the attempt to divorce God from Nature
have arisen all the superstitions and senseless religious
theories with which, since the earliest ages of metaphysical
speculation, the human mind has been crowded.
To this separation of the two original elements in the Deity, and
the consequent exaltation of one of the factors in the creative
processes, is to be traced the beginning of our present false,
unnatural, and unphilosophical masculine system of religion--a
system under which a father appears as the sole parent of the
universe.
The fact is tolerably well understood that mysticism and the
accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the
over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the
agencies which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became
inoperative--when man began to regard himself as a Creator and
therefore as the superior of woman--he had reached a point at
which he was largely controlled by supernatural or mystical
influences.
The fact is observed that in course of time the governmental
powers are no longer in the hands of the people; the masses have
become enslaved. Their rulers are priests--deified tyrants who
are unable to maintain their authority except through the
ignorance and credulity of the masses. Hence one is not
surprised to find that the change which took place at a certain
stage of human growth in respect to the manner of reckoning
descent was instigated and enforced by religion. Apollo had
declared that woman is but the nurse to her own offspring.
Neither is it remarkable at this stage in the human career, as
women had lost their position as heads of families, and as they
were no longer recognized as of kin to their children, that man
