nts in the Deity, and the
consequent exaltation of one of the factors in the creative processes,
is to be traced the beginning of our present false, unnatural, and
unphilosophical masculine system of religion--a system under which a
father appears as the sole parent of the universe.

The fact is tolerably well understood that mysticism and the
accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the
over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the agencies which
had hitherto held the lower nature in check became inoperative--when man
began to regard himself as a Creator and therefore as the superior of
woman--he had reached a point at which he was largely controlled by
supernatural or mystical influences.

The fact is observed that in course of time the governmental powers are
no longer in the hands of the people; the masses have become enslaved.
Their rulers are priests--deified tyrants who are unable to maintain
their authority except through the ignorance and credulity of the
masses. Hence one is not surprised to find that the change which took
place at a certain stage of human growth in respect to the manner of
reckoning descent was instigated and enforced by religion. Apollo had
declared that woman is but the nurse to her own offspring. Neither is
it remarkable at this stage in the human career, as women had lost their
position as heads of families, and as they were no longer recognized as
of kin to their children, that man should have attempted to lessen the
importance of the female element in the god-idea.

Wherever in the history of the human race we observe a change in the
relations of the sexes involving greater or more oppressive restrictions
on the natural rights of women, such change, whether it assume a legal,
social, or religious form, will, if traced to its source, always be
found deeply rooted in the wiles of priestcraft. Since the decay of the
earliest form of religion, namely, Nature-worship, the gods have never
been found ranged on the side of women.

Later investigations are proving that the primitive idea of a Deity had
its foundation in actual physical facts and experiences; and, as the
maternal principle constituted the most important as well as the most
obvious of the facts which entered into the conception of a Creator,
and as it was the only natural bond capable of binding human society
together, so long as reason was not wholly clouded by superstition and
warped by sensuality, it