Innumerable similar examples appear when we
consider the human species in time and space. The historical aspect of
this matter may thus be said in some degree to counterbalance the
biological aspect. If the fundamental constitution of the sexes renders
their mental characters necessarily different, the difference is still
not so pronounced as to prevent one sex sometimes playing effectively the
parts which are generally played by the other sex.
It is not necessary to go outside the white European race to find
evidences of the reality of this historical factor of the question before
us. It would appear that at the dawn of European civilisation women were
taking a leading part in the evolution of human progress. Various
survivals which are enshrined in the myths and legends of classic
antiquity show us the most ancient deities as goddesses; and, moreover,
we encounter the significant fact that at the origin nearly all the arts
and industries were presided over by female, not by male, deities. In
Greece, as well as in Asia Minor, India, and Egypt, as Paul Lafargue has
pointed out, woman seems to have taken divine rank before men; all the
first inventions of the more useful arts and crafts, except in metals,
are ascribed to goddesses; the Muses presided over poetry and music long
before Apollo; Isis was "the lady of bread," and Demeter taught men to
sow barley and corn instead of eating each other. Thus even among our own
forefathers we may catch a glimpse of a state of things which, as various
anthropologists have shown (notably Otis Mason in his _Woman's Share in
Primitive Culture_), we may witness in the most widely separated parts of
the world.
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