to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode
from the life of the Dominican friar Suso: "In crossing a field, Suso
met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. When he was close to
her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her
to pass. The woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'How is it, Sir,' she
said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow
me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that I should
stand aside and make room for you?' 'Why, my good woman,' replied Suso,
'I like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle Mother of God in
Heaven.'"

It may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and
really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German
philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In his _Essence
of Christianity_, as well as in his treatise _On the Cult of Mary_, he
refers to it more than once. "The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of
God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable
and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of
worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the
goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from
dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery
from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed
with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he
continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in
exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the
Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her
sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they
dispense with the women of flesh and blood. The more they emphasised in
their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent
became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped
in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God."
Feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest
sentiments on Heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing
in the Mother of God, because the love of a child for its mother is the
first strong feeling of man. "Where the faith in the Mother of God
declines, the faith in the Son of God, and in God the Father, declines
also."

I will now leave the region of the historical and exam