The God-Idea of the Ancients | Page 6

a
nation's development regulates its religion. Man creates his own gods; they are powerless

to change him.
As written history records only those events in human experience which belong to a
comparatively recent period of man's existence, and as the primitive conceptions of a
Deity lie buried beneath ages of corruption, glimpses of the earlier faiths of mankind, as
has already been stated, must be looked for in the traditions, monuments, and languages
of extinct races.
In reviewing this matter we shall doubtless observe the fact that if the stage of a nation's
growth is indicated by its religious conceptions, and if remnants of religious beliefs are
everywhere present in the languages, traditions, and monuments of the past through a
careful study of these subjects we may expect to gain a tolerably correct understanding
not alone of the growth of the god-idea but of the stage of development reached by the
nations which existed prior to the beginning of the historic age. We shall be enabled also
to perceive whether or not the course of human development during the intervening ages
has been continuous, or whether, for some cause hitherto unexplained, true progress
throughout a portion of this time has been arrested, thus producing a backward movement,
or degeneracy.
If we would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin
not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and
worship. Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent denial
of the existence of the religious nature in mankind, but is liable, also, to create an
aversion for and a distrust of the entire subject of religious experience. In view of this
fact it would appear to be not only useless but exceedingly unwise to spend one's time in
attempting to gain a knowledge of this subject simply by studying the later developments
in its history.
If we are really desirous of obtaining information regarding present religious phenomena,
it is plain that we should adopt the scientific method and turn our attention to the remote
past, where, by careful and systematic investigation, we are enabled to perceive the
earliest conception of a creative force and the fundamental basis of all religious systems,
from which may be traced the gradual development of the god-idea.



CHAPTER I.
SEX THE FOUNDATION OF THE GOD-IDEA.
In the study of primitive religion, the analogy existing between the growth of the
god-idea and the development of the human race, and especially of the two sex-principles,
is everywhere clearly apparent.

"Religion is to be found alone with its justification and explanation in the relations of the
sexes. There and therein only."[3]
[3] Hargrave Jennings, Phallicism.
As the conception of a deity originated in sex, or in the creative agencies female and male
which animate Nature, we may reasonably expect to find, in the history of the
development of the two sex-principles and in the notions entertained concerning them
throughout past ages, a tolerably correct account of the growth of the god-idea. We shall
perceive that during an earlier age of human existence, not only were the reproductive
powers throughout Nature, and especially in human beings and in animals, venerated as
the Creator, but we shall find also that the prevailing ideas relative to the importance of
either sex in the office of reproduction decided the sex of this universal creative force.
We shall observe also that the ideas of a god have always corresponded with the current
opinions regarding the importance of either sex in human society. In other words, so long
as female power and influence were in the ascendency, the creative force was regarded as
embodying the principles of the female nature; later, however, when woman's power
waned, and the supremacy of man was gained, the god-idea began gradually to assume
the male characters and attributes.
Through scientific research the fact has been observed that, for ages after life appeared on
the earth, the male had no separate existence; that the two sex-principles, the sperm and
the germ, were contained within one and the same individual. Through the processes of
differentiation, however, these elements became detached, and with the separation of the
male from the female, the reproductive functions were henceforth confided to two
separate individuals.
As originally, throughout Nature, the female was the visible organic unit within whom
was contained the exclusive creative power, and as throughout the earlier ages of life on
the earth she comprehended the male, it is not perhaps singular that, even after the
appearance of mankind on the earth, the greater importance of the mother element in
human society should have been recognized; nor, as the power to bring forth coupled
with perceptive wisdom originally constituted the Creator, that the god-idea should have