should have attempted to lessen the importance of the female
element in the god-idea.
Wherever in the history of the human race we observe a change in
the relations of the sexes involving greater or more oppressive
restrictions on the natural rights of women, such change, whether
it assume a legal, social, or religious form, will, if traced to
its source, always be found deeply rooted in the wiles of
priestcraft. Since the decay of the earliest form of religion,
namely, Nature-worship, the gods have never been found ranged on
the side of women.
Later investigations are proving that the primitive idea of a
Deity had its foundation in actual physical facts and
experiences; and, as the maternal principle constituted the most
important as well as the most obvious of the facts which entered
into the conception of a Creator, and as it was the only natural
bond capable of binding human society together, so long as reason
was not wholly clouded by superstition and warped by sensuality,
it could not be eliminated. In other words, a Creator in which
the more essential element of creative force was wanting, was
contrary to all human experience and observation. Indeed nothing
could be plainer than that the deified male principle could of
itself create nothing, and that it was dependent for its very
existence on the female element.
By this attempt to construct a masculine Deity, absurdities were
presented to the human judgment and understanding which for ages
could not be overcome, and by it contradictions were necessitated
which could not be reconciled with human reason and with the
ideas of Nature which had hitherto been held by mankind. It was
not, therefore, until reason had been suspended in all matters
pertaining to religion, and blind faith in the machinations of
priestcraft had been established, that a male God was set up as
the sole Creator of the universe.
When women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of
individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the
capture of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or
instruments for the gratification and pleasure of men, Perceptive
Wisdom or Light, and Maternal Affection the Preserver of the
race, gradually became eliminated from the god-idea of mankind.
Passion became God. It was the Creator in the narrowest and most
restricted sense.
Although in an age of pure Nature-worship the ideas connected
