woman'
is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire,
which goes to the service of the temple."

The extent to which ages of corruption have vitiated the purer instincts
of human nature, and the degree to which centuries of sensuality and
superstition have degraded the nature of man, may be noticed at the
present time in the admissions which are frequently made by male writers
regarding the change which during the history of the race has taken
place in the god-idea. None of the attributes of women, not even that
holy instinct--maternal love, can by many of them be contemplated apart
from the ideas of grossness which have attended the sex-functions during
the ages since women first became enslaved. As an illustration of this
we have the following from an eminent philologist of recent times, a
writer whose able efforts in unravelling religious myths bear testimony
to his mental strength and literary ability.

"The Chaldees believed in a celestial virgin who had purity of body,
loveliness of person, and tenderness of affection, and she was one to
whom the erring sinner could appeal with more chance of success than to
a stern father. She was portrayed as a mother with a child in her arms,
and every attribute ascribed to her showing that she was supposed to be
as fond as any earthly female ever was."(107)

107) Inman, Ancient Faiths, vol. i., p. 59.

After thus describing the early Chaldean Deity, who, although a pure
and spotless virgin, was nevertheless worshipped as a mother, or as
the embodiment of the altruistic principles developed in mankind, this
writer goes on to say: "The worship of the woman by man naturally led to
developments which our COMPARATIVELY SENSITIVE NATURES (the italics are
mine) shun as being opposed to all religious feeling," which sentiment
clearly reveals the inability of this writer to estimate womanhood, or
even motherhood, apart from the sensualized ideas which during the ages
in which passion has been the recognized god have gathered about it.

The purity of life and the high stage of civilization reached by an
ancient people, and the fact that these conditions were reached under
pure Nature-worship, or when the natural attributes of the female were
regarded as the highest expression of the divine in the human, prove
that it was neither the appreciation nor the deification of womanhood
which "led to developments which sensitive natures shun as being opposed