Eliza Burt Gamble

“ Justice, equality, and liberty are subjects upon which man descants loudly and long. He talks glibly of his free institutions and even designates a number of his one-sided governments as republics, and this too notwithstanding the fact that women are still denied representation in the governments to which they owe allegiance, and that a large proportion of men are still within the grasp of economic slavery; all of which shows the extent to which the moral sense and the judgment have been dwarfed by prejudice and selfishness. Democracy is still a meaningless term—an ideal yet to be realized. ”

“ Then shall the herds no longer dread the fury of the lion, nor shall the poison of the serpent any longer be formidable. Every venomous animal and every deleterious plant shell perish together. The fields shall be yellow with corn, the grape shall hang its ruddy clusters from the bramble, and honey shall distil spontaneously from the rugged oak. The universal globe shall enjoy the blessings of peace, secure under the mild sway of its new and divine sovereign. ”

“ The useless elements in human society are wearing themselves out, destroying themselves by their own rashness and folly. Impelled by a desire which they do not understand and which they are unable to resist, these victims of a decaying civilization rush madly on to destruction. Those men who voluntarily seek war represent a dissatisfied or discontented class. True to the primitive instincts of the race they crave the peculiar excitement which war brings. ”

“ In an age when every branch of inquiry is being subjected to reasonable criticism, it would seem that the origin and growth of religion should be investigated from beneath the surface, and that all the facts bearing upon it should be brought forward as a contribution to our fund of general information. As well might we hope to gain a complete knowledge of human history by studying only the present aspect of society, as to expect to reach reasonable conclusions respecting the prevailing God-idea by investigating the various creeds and dogmas of existing faiths. ”

“ A new era is about to dawn on the human race. The war which is now devastating Europe, and which will doubtless spread over the entire earth, is the beginning of the end. The effects of the causes which were set up in prehistoric times have reached their full measure of development and can no more be postponed or averted than can the thunderbolt which follows an electrical explosion. A thoroughly material civilization founded on selfishness and sensuality must be destroyed root and branch before the higher planes of activity for which humanity is destined may be reached. ”

“ From all sources of information at hand are to be derived evidences of the fact that the earliest religion of which we have any account was pure Nature-worship, that whatever at any given time might have been the object adored, whether it were the earth, a tree, water, or the sun, it was simply as an emblem of the great energizing agency in Nature. The moving or forming force in the universe constituted the god-idea. The figure of a mother with her child signified not only the power to bring forth, but Perceptive Wisdom, or Light, as well. ”

“ There is, therefore, little wonder that for thousands of years of human existence, the female principle was worshipped over the entire habitable globe as the source of all light and life—the Creator and Preserver of the Universe. ”

“ The highest development in Nature had become the slave of man's appetites, and motherhood, which had hitherto been accepted as the most exalted function either in heaven or on the earth, trailed in the dust.
Under these conditions it is not perhaps singular that the capacity to bring forth, and the qualities and attributes of women which are correlated with it, namely, sympathy—a desire for the welfare of others outside of self, or altruism,—should no longer have been worshipped as divine, or that in their place should have been substituted the leading characters developed in man. ”

“ Plutarch, like most writers who have dealt with the relations of the sexes, fails to observe the fact that just to the extent in the past history of mankind to which women have been free and independent, licentiousness has disappeared, and that just in proportion as the influence of women has declined, in just such proportion have shame, profligacy, disease, and infamy prevailed. To produce a state of society in which the animal instincts ruled supreme, and in which passion was the recognized god, women had first to become physically dependent and mentally enslaved. ”

“ Although it is declared that "great obscurity surrounds the God Hea," no one, I think, whose mind is free from prejudice, and who understands the significance of the early god-idea, and the true meaning of the symbols used in later ages to express it, can study the myths connected with this Deity without at once recognizing her identity with the great female God of Nature who was once worshipped by every people on the globe, but whose worship had become sensualized to satisfy the corrupted taste of a more depraved age—an age in which passion constituted the highest idea of a God. ”

“ It is plain that the object of the person or persons, whom history has named Lycurgus, was a return to the simpler manners and purer customs of a more primitive age, which the growth of the aristocratic spirit and the accumulation of wealth in masses in the hands of the few threatened entirely to subvert; and, as a community of goods was at this time impossible, he, or they, sought to level the distinctions between rich and poor by exalting virtue and moral excellence above the mere possession of wealth and hereditary titles. ”

“ He said that religion consists in knowing the truth and doing good, and his ideas show the grandeur and beauty of the earlier conception of a Deity. He declared that there is only one God who is not, "as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe," but that this great power is diffused throughout Nature. It is "the reason, the life, and the motion of all things."
Plato believed that human beings are possessed of two souls, the one mortal, which perishes with the body, the other immortal, which continues to exist either in a state of happiness or misery ”

“ When we compare present conditions with those which existed under early organized society at a time when every individual member of a group was equal in responsibility and power with every other member of the same group we are enabled to perceive the path which mankind has taken on its onward course.
When one reflects on the peculiar trend of human development one may feel no surprise over the fact that at this juncture in human affairs there should arise a ruler in whom the desire for world-dominion is clearly apparent. ”

“ Mary the Mother of Jesus is not a Creator, but simply a mediator between her Son and His earthly devotees—a doctrine only a trifle less masculine in texture than that of an Almighty Father and his victimized son. The worship of Mary was adopted by the so-called Christians in response to a craving in the human heart for a recognition of those characters developed in mankind which may be said to contain the germ of the divine. The masculine god of the Jews was feared not loved, and his son had already been invested with his attributes. ”

“ When Greek philosophy was no longer taught, the principles of equality and liberty which had been incorporated into the middle Roman law were annulled or practically forgotten; and when the doctrine of woman’s inferiority and total depravity became crystallized not only in religion but in law and in all the customs of the time, women sank to a degree of degradation never before witnessed in the history of mankind. ”

“ When women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the capture of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or instruments for the gratification and pleasure of men, Perceptive Wisdom or Light, and Maternal Affection the Preserver of the race, gradually became eliminated from the god-idea of mankind. Passion became God. It was the Creator in the narrowest and most restricted sense. ”

“ Therefore, in order fully to understand the status of the human race as it emerged from its animal conditions, we must bear in mind the nature of the inheritance which it had received during its passage from a formless lump of carbon, or an infinitesimal jelly dot in the primeval sea, to a creature endowed with sympathy, affection, courage, and perseverance. We must not lose sight of the fact that passion, the all-absorbing quality developed in males belonging to the orders lower in the scale of being, must have been conveyed without diminution or material change to man. ”

“ In the history of an earlier age of existence, there is not to be found the slightest trace of human sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people, or to appease the wrath of an offended God. On the contrary, throughout the traditions and monumental records of the most ancient nations, sacrifices to the Deity—the God of Nature—consisted simply in the acknowledgment of earth's benefits by means of a free-will offering of the bounties which she had brought forth. ”