ABSTRACT
We have not attempted to study mythology exhaustively, nor to gain a full knowledge of the deities. But we have sought to trace the influence of the mystery of sex on the human mind, and especially the influence of sex on the development or evolution of the religious feeling and sentiment, which is so intimately involved in man's effort to explain the origin and destiny of our own existence. We have learned how the human mind conceived the Creative Power first as a mere physical attribute of his earthly father, or parents; that this power became spiritualized and personified as a heavenly father (the Aryan Zeus-Pitar, or the Greek Zeus, etc.), then as gods like the great Lucifer or Light-giver, the sun, the moon, planets and stars, and finally as the “Father in Heaven” of modern Christianity; we have traced the same ideas running through primitive folklore all over the world, and from this common reservoir or stock of ideas the different nations and the various religions culled their ideas. We still retain traces of all the previous forms of religions in our own religions; we continue the use of the finger-ring as a relic of phallic worship, just as the lanugo of the foetus or of the grown up human being is a relic and reminder of the fur of his mammalian ancestry; we speak of God as “our father” because ancestor-worship was one step in the evolution of our religion; we retain a faith in astrology and “thank our lucky stars” when we escape from some dangers, because planet-worship was practiced by our ancestors; we hold our hands before our eyes during prayer, because untold numbers of our forebears prayed to the sun and needed to shield their eyes when they turned to their deity; we still say “by Jove,” —Hercules and Omphale, from painting by Boulanger https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315828251/ca226832-5963-497a-8fd3-07879cfd2408/content/fig371_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> because the ancients worshipped Jupiter; we worship the virgin because the Egyptians worshipped Isis and we call her Maria because the Greeks called her Maia; we speak of a holy family, because the ancients adored deities in sets of “father, mother and baby;” we “feel blue” when we are sad, because blue was the color of mourning, and still is so among the Mohammedans, whose women dye their clothing and faces blue with indigo as a mark of mourning; we use the sign of the cross, because the ancients used the pentagon for the same purposes; we believe, and use, and do vast numbers of things and rites, because we have inherited the habit from our ancestors. As these customs or habits or beliefs were simply steps in the evolution of human thought, transmitted from generation to generation, even though modified by generation after generation, we may, if we so desire, consider this gradual development of thought to have taken place in accord with a teleological plan, and we may possibly call it “revelation, “agreeing with the adherents of all religions who recognized their “sons of gods” as the great teachers to whom the gods, or God, had revealed the hidden mysteries of the universe.
