an inch or two
above the soft turf or heavy rugs, and falling off with shrieks of
infant joy, to rush back to the end of the line and try again. Surely we
have noticed how children love to get up on something and walk along it!
But we have never thought to provide that simple and inexhaustible form
of amusement and physical education for the young.

Water they had, of course, and could swim even before they walked. If I
feared at first the effects of a too intensive system of culture, that
fear was dissipated by seeing the long sunny days of pure physical
merriment and natural sleep in which these heavenly babies passed their
first years. They never knew they were being educated. They did not
dream that in this association of hilarious experiment and achievement
they were laying the foundation for that close beautiful group feeling
into which they grew so firmly with the years. This was education for
citizenship.

CHAPTER 10. Their Religions and Our Marriages

It took me a long time, as a man, a foreigner, and a species
of Christian--I was that as much as anything--to get any clear
understanding of the religion of Herland.

Its deification of motherhood was obvious enough; but there was far more
to it than that; or, at least, than my first interpretation of that.

I think it was only as I grew to love Ellador more than I believed
anyone could love anybody, as I grew faintly to appreciate her inner
attitude and state of mind, that I began to get some glimpses of this
faith of theirs.

When I asked her about it, she tried at first to tell me, and then,
seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon
found that we had many, that they varied widely, but had some points
in common. A clear methodical luminous mind had my Ellador, not only
reasonable, but swiftly perceptive.

She made a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as
I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were; their
common basis being a Dominant Power or Powers, and some Special
Behavior, mostly taboos, to please or placate. There were some common
features in certain groups of religions, but the one always present was
this Power, and the things which must be done or not done because of
it. It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the Divine Force up
through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, proud, and cruel
gods of early times to the conception of a Common Father with its
corollary