Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dowed them with an awe-inspiring power; and led on to the ascription to them of other powers, of magic and the like, which stood them in good stead as a defence against the physically stronger men.?* It was likened to the fertility of the earth, which brought forth vegetation, as at first appeared, in a simi- larly haphazard way. ‘The mysterious powers of production of nature were therefore made into female divinities—and these seem to have been the earliest of the beings worshipped by man- kind. When at length, after the need of seeds for plants had been noticed, the truth dawned upon them. It must have appeared a wonderful discovery, and it in all probability greatly exercised the minds of both men and women. Very likely it was then that phallic-worship was instituted ; which lasted till the won- der wore off. It must have greatly elevated the importance of men in their own eyes and in the eyes of women, and it gave them a claim to the children. It is believed that then the men who claimed to be fathers imitated women in child-birth by that curious custom, called the couvade, of pretending to be sick when the wife bore a child. Yet for a long time continued the belief in a pos- sible human parthenogenesis — now at the instigation of some other cause, as by something unusual eaten or touched, or even by things less substantial, as a sudden breath of air (or spirit), a startling shadow, a phantom whether seen awake or in a dream, or any other unusual occurrence, often suggesting the presence of a god. Of these there are indications in the myths and legends of many peoples.2* Even when this belief was nearly extinct, advantage was taken of it; for, as men in high position were proud of their ancestry, new men who rose from the common herd to high estate, and perhaps had no knowledge of their real father, found it convenient to ascribe their paternity to some god, or this was done for them by their flatterers, unless they could be linked to some line with an early hero or deity for its founder.” But in this we are anticipating. For at first the new discovery could not have had much effect 23 For the service rendered them by this fear which they inspired, cf. Mason, op. cit., 256, Westermarck, op. cit., in Sociological Papers, 159-60. ; 24E. S. Hartland has collected much evidence on this subject in his Primitive Pa- termty, London, 1909. 25 Even Christianity conformed to both these methods, Jesus being elevated to be the son of God and to be descended in the male line from David. Alexander the Great, as is well known, was tempted to look upon himself as the son of Zeus. Cesar made no such pretension; but for Augustus it was made by the poets, in the form that his line was descended from a goddess. This —the idea that a goddess could be fecundated by a man and bring forth a human child, which is ridiculed in the fable of Ixion — was a wholly poetical and later opinion, when the original belief was no longer understood. Even Homer could treat Achilles as goddess-born. At the border-line between myth and written history, another scheme was hit upon: to find something miraculous in their early bringing-up, as that they were foundlings and cared for by pe fea as by a river (Sargon, Moses), or by animals (Cyrus, How-tseih, omulus).
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