akin to the galvanic or electric fluid.
This masculine element, the manifestation of which is desire, or heat,
and which was finally set up as an eternal, self-existent, creative
force, or God, was originally regarded as a manifestation of matter, and
as having no independent existence. In an earlier age, this so-called
creative agency is associated with a force far superior to itself,
namely, Light or Wisdom. Minerva, who is the first emanation from the
Deity, "formed" all things. She it is who discriminates all things
and gives laws to the universe. "She represented to the Greeks that
spiritual element which lifts knowledge into wisdom, and talent into
genius."(97) But with the importance which began to be assumed by man
when he began to regard himself as a creator, and when through ignorance
and sensuality the principles of a more enlightened race were forgotten,
desire, or heat, was separated from matter and came to be regarded as an
independent entity, which itself had created matter out of nothing.
Thus is noticed the extent to which the god-idea has been developed in
accordance with the relative positions of the sexes.

97) L. T. Ives, Art Words.

According to the Grecian mythology, much of which was a comparatively
late development, mortal woman was the handiwork of Vulcan the Firegod,
who, being commissioned by Jove to execute "a snare for gods and man,"
moulded the beauteous form of woman. This is a worthy example of the
contempt and scorn shown by the Greeks for women during the later period
of their career as a nation. That such contempt was a later development
is shown in the fact that woman was originally the gift of Pallas
Athene, or Wisdom. When she first appeared on the scene she was crowned
by the gods, in fact she was the first object honored with a crown.
Concerning the conceptions regarding women as held at an earlier age,
and those which came to prevail after she had become "the cause of evil
in the world," we have the following from Tertullian:

"If there was a Pandora, whom Hesiod mentions as the first woman, hers
was the first head the Graces crowned, for she received gifts from all
the gods, whence she got her name Pandora. But Moses, a prophet, not
a poet-shepherd, shows us the first woman Eve having her loins more
naturally girt about with leaves than her temples with flowers. Pandora
then is a myth."(98)

98) Tertullian, vol. i., p. 341.

Woman, who was originally the