The God-Idea of the Ancients | Page 8

old religion the sky was the husband of the earth and the earth was mother of all
the gods.[5] In the traditions of past ages the fact is clearly perceived that there was a
time when the mother was not only the one recognized parent on earth, but that the
female principle was worshipped as the more important creative force throughout Nature.
[5] Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 279.
Doubtless the worship of the female energy prevailed under the matriarchal system, and
was practised at a time when women were the recognized heads of families and when
they were regarded as the more important factors in human society. The fact has been
shown in a previous work that after women began to leave their homes at marriage, and
after property, especially land, had fallen under the supervision and control of men, the
latter, as they manipulated all the necessaries of life and the means of supplying them,
began to regard themselves as superior beings, and later, to claim that as a factor in
reproduction, or creation, the male was the more important. With this change the ideas of
a Deity also began to undergo a modification. The dual principle necessary to creation,
and which had hitherto been worshipped as an indivisible unity, began gradually to
separate into its individual elements, the male representing spirit, the moving or forming
force in the generative processes, the female being matter--the instrument through which
spirit works. Spirit which is eternal had produced matter which is destructible. The fact
will be observed that this doctrine prevails to a greater or less extent in the theologies of
the present time.
A little observation and reflection will show us that during this change in the ideas
relative to a creative principle, or God, descent and the rights of succession which had
hitherto been reckoned through the mother were changed from the female to the male line,
the father having in the meantime become the only recognized parent. In the Eumenides
of Aeschylus, the plea of Orestes in extenuation of his crime is that he is not of kin to his
mother. Euripides, also, puts into the mouth of Apollo the same physiological notion, that
she who bears the child is only its nurse. The Hindoo Code of Menu, which, however,
since its earliest conception, has undergone numberless mutilations to suit the purposes of
the priests, declares that "the mother is but the field which brings forth the plant
according to whatsoever seed is sown."
Although, through the accumulation of property in masses and the capture of women for
wives, men had succeeded in gaining the ascendancy, and although the doctrine had been
propounded that the father is the only parent, thereby reversing the established manner of

reckoning descent, still, as we shall hereafter observe, thousands of years were required
to eliminate the female element from the god-idea.
We must not lose sight of the fact that human society was first organized and held
together by means of the gens, at the head of which was a woman. The several members
of this organization were but parts of one body cemented together by the pure principle of
maternity, the chief duty of these members being to defend and protect each other if
needs be with their life blood. The fact has been observed, in an earlier work, that only
through the gens was the organization of society possible. Without it mankind could have
accomplished nothing toward its own advancement.
Thus, throughout the earlier ages of human existence, at a time when mankind lived
nearer to Nature and before individual wealth and the stimulation of evil passions had
engendered superstition, selfishness, and distrust, the maternal element constituted not
only the binding and preserving principle in human society, but, together with the power
to bring forth, constituted also the god-idea, which idea, as has already been observed, at
a certain stage in the history of the race was portrayed by a female figure with a child in
her arms.
From all sources of information at hand are to be derived evidences of the fact that the
earliest religion of which we have any account was pure Nature-worship, that whatever at
any given time might have been the object adored, whether it were the earth, a tree, water,
or the sun, it was simply as an emblem of the great energizing agency in Nature. The
moving or forming force in the universe constituted the god-idea. The figure of a mother
with her child signified not only the power to bring forth, but Perceptive Wisdom, or
Light, as well.
As through a study of Comparative Ethnology, or through an investigation into the
customs, traditions, and mythoses of extant races in the various stages of development,
have been discovered the beginnings