purpose of playing games and later on for
war and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the
necessary conditions of life. It is obvious that innovations and
inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the
temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them
as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. These
confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship,
but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have been
an attack upon the natural ties of the family, an expression of a
feeling of hostility to and contempt for women, and probably stood in
close relationship to a striking characteristic of the past: a widely
spread homosexuality.

Whether Schurtz gives us a correct picture of these men's unions or not,
there can be no doubt that the struggle against matriarchy originated in
them. This struggle led eventually to the victory of the male principle,
the acknowledgment of the authority of the father, the institution of
male government which deprived women of all legal rights, and the
dominion of the spiritual; the victory of the gods of light over the
dark lords of fertility. This revolution of principles was perhaps the
completest revolution humanity has ever known.

A long road, marked by numerous compromises and limitations, led from
casual intercourse to the final establishment of the monogamous system.
Free intercourse had been sanctioned by the gods, who suffered no
restrictions and modifications, and sacrifices in the shape of a
temporary universal unfettering of instinct were required to pacify
their anger and reconcile them to the new system. The first and most
important of these compromises was the temple-prostitution practised by
many nations in Asia Minor, the Greek Archipelago, India and Babylonia.
Many a girl gained in this way the marriage portion which enabled her
later on to find a husband, to whom she invariably remained strictly
loyal. Thus all religious requirements were satisfied. At first this was
an annually recurring rite, but gradually it became an isolated ceremony
in the life of every female individual. "In the place of the annual
surrender," says Priester, "we now have a single act; the hetaerism of
the matrons is succeeded by the hetaerism of the maids; instead of being
practised during marriage, it is practised in spinsterhood; the blind
surrender has given way to a yielding to cert