e going to show that in an earlier age of the world's history the
degradation of mankind, through the abuse of the creative functions, had
not been accomplished, and the ills of life resulting from such abuse
were unknown.

We may reasonably believe that those instincts in the female which are
correlated with maternal affection and which were acquired by her as
a protection to the germ, or, in other words, those characters which
Nature has developed in the female to insure the safety and well-being
of offspring, and which in a purer and more natural stage of human
existence acted as cheeks upon the energies of the male, were not easily
or quickly subdued; but when through subjection to the animal nature
of man these instincts or characters had been denied their natural
expression, and woman had become simply the instrument of man's
pleasure, the comparatively pure worship of the organs of generation
as symbols of creative power began to give place to the deification of
these members simply as emblems of desire, or as instruments for the
stimulation of passion.

We are assured that on the banks of the Ganges, the very cradle of
religion, are still to be found various remnants of the most ancient
form of Nature-worship--that there are still to be observed "certain
high places sacred to more primitive ideas than those represented by
Vedic gods."

Here devout worshippers believe that the androgynous God of fertility,
or Nature, still manifests itself to the faithful. Close beside
these more ancient shrines are others representing a somewhat later
development of religious faith--shrines, by means of which are indicated
some of the processes involved in the earlier growth of the god-idea.
Not far removed from these are to be found, also, numerous temples or
places of worship belonging to a still later faith--a faith in which are
revealed the "awakening and stimulation of every sensuous feeling,
and which has drowned in infamy every noble impulse developed in human
nature."

Of the depravity of the Jews and the immorality practiced in their
religious rites, Forlong says:

"No one can study their history, liberated from the blindness which our
Christian up-bringing and associations cast over us, without seeing
that the Jews were probably the grossest worshippers among all those
Ophi--Phallo--Solar devotees who then covered every land and sea, from
the sources of the Nile and Euphrates to all over the Mediterranean
coasts