en the seeds were planted, or when from Nature's
own laws they were reproduced without the aid of man, was the occasion
of thanksgiving and rejoicing with general merry-making and general
good-will. Again, in harvest time there was feasting and rejoicing and
music and dancing; and we have no reason to believe that this very
natural method of showing their gratitude and their happiness was
accompanied by any suggestion of sacrifice or propitiation.

There is the best of evidence to support the claim that all the early
Deities were female and in all Mythology the earth is adored as the
"Divine Mother." The earliest Venus, worshipped as the goddess of
Universal Womanhood, was represented with a beard signifying her
androgynous character.

Venus worshipped as "the soul of the world" was said to be the "parent
of all things, the primary progeny of Time, the most exalted of all
the Deities." Neith, Minerva, Athena, Ceres, Cybele, all worshipped as
the first of all the Deities, were represented as female, and to this
day we refer to the qualities of wisdom, light, truth, and virtue as
feminine.

Even the sun is said to have been at one time worshipped as feminine,
as were all deities; but later, when it was shown that the sun
apparently fertilized the fecund earth, the gender was changed, and in
succeeding ages, when the male principle had become dominant as a
deific symbol, the earth was said to be but the nurse which cradled
and cared for the generic power resident in the male. Thus woman from
her lofty height of the one and only deity gradually sank to the level
of the nurse maid, permitted to care for man's offspring.

While the Female Principle of Sex was worshipped as the "giver of
life," the heads of families were female and descent was traced from
the mother only. The male parent was scarcely more than an intruder
and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the
mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon
the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this
ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law
is to be both feared and dreaded, if not propitiated. When we
contemplate the persistence of those traits of human nature that have
prevailed among all races and throughout all ages, we are easily
persuaded that time is a delusion, and that Eternity is Now. As it was
yesterday it is today and will be tomorrow in all that is really
fu