ate in affecting
the social position of women, without reference to the analysis of the
elements that go to make up that influence.

There is only one further point to which attention may be called. I
allude to the way in which the more favorable side of the primitive
conception of the menstruating woman--as priestess, sibyl, prophetess, an
almost miraculous agent for good, an angel, the peculiar home of the
divine element--was slowly and continuously carried on side by side with
the less favorable view, through the beginnings of European civilization
until our own times. The actual physical phenomena of menstruation, with
the ideas of taboo associated with that state, sank into the background as
culture evolved; but, on the other hand, the ideas of the angelic position
and spiritual mission of women, based on the primitive conception of the
mystery associated with menstruation, still in some degree persisted.

It is evident, however, that, while, in one form or another, the more
favorable aspect of the primitive view of women's magic function has never
quite died out, the gradual decay and degradation of the primitive view
has, on the whole, involved a lower estimate of women's nature and
position. Woman has always been the witch; she was so even in ancient
Babylonia; but she has ceased to be the priestess. The early Teutons saw
"_sanctum aliquid et providum_" in women who, for the mediaeval German
preacher, were only "_bestiae bipedales_"; and Schopenhauer and even
Nietzsche have been more inclined to side with the preacher than with the
half-naked philosophers of Tacitus's day. But both views alike are but the
extremes of the same primitive conception; and the gradual evolution from
one extreme of the magical doctrine to the other was inevitable.

In an advanced civilization, as we see, these ideas having their ultimate
basis on the old story of the serpent, and on a special and mysterious
connection between the menstruating woman and the occult forces of magic,
tend to die out. The separation of the sexes they involve becomes
unnecessary. Living in greater community with men, women are seen to
possess something, it may well be, but less than before, of the
angel-devil of early theories. Menstruation is no longer a monstrific
state requiring spiritual taboo, but a normal physiological process, not
without its psychic influences on the woman herself and on those who live
with her.

FOOTNOTES:

[353] Several rec