Crete and Egypt, the predominance of the female element in State
and family is well attested; it is reflected in the natural religions of
the Eastern races--both Semitic and Aryan--and we find innumerable
traces of it in Greek mythology. The merit of discovering this important
stage in the relationship of the sexes is due to _Bachofen_. "Based on
life-giving motherhood," he says, "gynecocracy was completely dominated
by the natural principles and phenomena which rule its inner and outer
life; it vividly realised the unity of nature, the harmony of the
universe which it had not yet outgrown.... In every respect obedient to
the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it
worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." The
children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring
from the soil, raised altars to Gaea, Demeter and Isis, the deities of
inexhaustible fertility and abundance. These early races of men realised
themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea
of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle
with its blind laws. Incapable of realising their individuality, they
bowed in passive submission to nature's undisputed sway. They were
members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single
individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the
clan. The family--centred round the mother--and the tribe were the real
individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the
individual bee, makes the whole. They lived in complete harmony with
nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the
creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history
depend on the rise of a community above primitive conditions.
Differentiation had hardly begun to exert its modifying influence; all
men (not unlike the Eastern Asiatics of our day) resembled each other in
looks, character and habits.

In the countries on the Mediterranean (as well as in India and
Babylonia) the first stage of sexual intercourse, irresponsible and
promiscuous, was systematised by religion. The annual spring-festivals
in honour of Adonis, Dionysus, Mylitta, Astarte and Aphrodite,
celebrated unbridled licentiousness. The whole community greeted the
re-awakening vitality of the earth by an unrestrained abandonment to
passion. Man aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its
seed to