. In Eden there was none. Adam and
Eve emerged there adult. The phases of the delicate fever which others in
paradise since have experienced, left them unaffected. Instead of the
reluctances and attractions, the hesitancies and aspirations, the
preliminary and common conflagrations which are the beginnings, as they
are also the sacraments, of love, abruptly they were one. They were
married before they were mated.

The union, entirely allegoric--a Persian conceit--differed, otherwise,
only in the poetry of the accessories from that which elsewhere actually
occurred.

Primitive man was necessarily speechless, probably simian, and certainly
hideous. Women, if possible more hideous still, were joined by him
momentarily and immediately forgot. Ultimately, into the desolate poverty
of the rudimentary brain there crept a novelty. The novelty was an idea.
Women were detained, kept in lairs, made to serve there. Further novelties
ensuing, creatures that had learned from birds to talk passed from
animality. Subsequent progress originated in a theory that they were very
clearly entitled to whatever was not taken away from them. From that
theory all institutions proceed, primarily that of family.

In the beginning of things woman was common property. With individual
ownership came the necessity of defence. Man defended woman against even
herself. He beat her, stoned her, killed her. From the massacre of
myriads, constancy resulted. With it came the home: a hut in a forest, a
fort on a hill, in the desert a tent, yet, wherever situated, surrounded
by foes. The foes were the elements. In the thunderclap was their anger.
In the rustle of leaves their threats. They were placatable, however. They
could be appeased, as human beings are, by giving them something. Usually
the gift was the sacrifice of whatever the owner cared for most; in later
days it was love, pleasure, sense, but in these simpler times, when
humanity knew nothing of pleasure, less of love, and had no sense, when
the dominant sensation was fright, when every object had its spectre, it
was accomplished by the immolation of whatever the individual would have
liked to have had given to him. As intelligence developed, distinctions
necessarily arose between the animate and the inanimate, the imaginary and
the real. Instead of attributing a malignant spirit to every element, the
forces of nature were conglomerated, the earth became an object of
worship, the sun another, that