cadence.

As might well be expected in those instances where women did enjoy a
degree of liberty that was due to financial and social advantages,
they took a mean delight in ruling it over their male relatives, and,
as we may note in our own time, men who yielded to the seduction of
wealth, and married women to whom they were forced to accord the
freedom and the deference which wealth confers, complained bitterly of
their lot; as witness the following complaint of a Roman husband: "I
have married a witch with a dowry; I took her to have her fields and
houses, and that, O Apollo, is the worst of evils."

One dominant idea controlled the status of marriage in early Greece
and Rome--an idea in full accord with the materialistic phase of their
civilization; this was the idea of procreation; an idea that logically
was inevitable, since continuous warfare resulted in a population in
which women predominated, and we are told that in the interest of
procreation both childlessness and celibacy were severely punished.
Thus the situation of women was that best described by the phrase
"between the devil and the deep sea."

Regarding the "ideal of marital fidelity," Plutarch is authority for
the story that Cato loaned his wife to his friend Hortensius and took
her back on the death of the latter, plus a rich inheritance from the
transaction. However, should Martha have yielded herself voluntarily
to Hortensius, from motives of affection, the chances are that she
would have met death at the hands of her "justly outraged" spouse.

In Europe, similar conditions prevailed, and although monogamy was the
rule, concubinage and prostitution in all its forms existed. The wife
was subject to the husband in every wish and whim, and after him to
the eldest son. This is true today in Germany and among the Saxons in
a degree whose modifications do not accord with other advances in our
social ethics.

It is a mistake to claim that religious systems have had any direct
influence in the emancipation of women during the nineteen hundred
years of Christian civilization among the white races.

Religious systems have only reflected the race-thought; they have not
molded it. This is true, despite the fact that true religion, when
esoterically understood, has always aimed at union, and union means
equality along all lines, sex-equality; social equality; race
equality.

We must here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough
to explai