women

• rule men on some planets

52:2.7This is the dis­pen­sa­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of sex equal­ity. On some plan­ets the male may rule the fe­male; on oth­ers the re­verse pre­vails. Dur­ing this age nor­mal worlds es­tab­lish full equal­ity of the sexes, this be­ing pre­lim­i­nary to the fuller re­al­iza­tion of the ide­als of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule grad­u­ally gives way to the dual con­cept of na­tional life and fam­ily life.

• among primitives › maintained settled residence to cultivate soil
• where woman was has always been regarded as home

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

• among primitives › valued as food providers, burden bearers, means of sex gratification

68:2.7Woman thus early be­came in­dis­pens­able to the evolv­ing so­cial scheme, not so much be­cause of the fleet­ing sex pas­sion as in con­se­quence of food re­quire­ment; she was an es­sen­tial part­ner in self-main­te­nance. She was a food provider, a beast of bur­den, and a com­pan­ion who would stand great abuse with­out vi­o­lent re­sent­ment, and in ad­di­tion to all of these de­sir­able traits, she was an ever-pres­ent means of sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• among primitives › provided vegetable edibles in prepastoral society
• among primitives › scarcely more than human animals in pastoral age

68:5.8Prepas­toral so­ci­ety was one of sex co-op­er­a­tion, but the spread of an­i­mal hus­bandry re­duced women to the depths of so­cial slav­ery. In ear­lier times it was man’s duty to se­cure the an­i­mal food, woman’s busi­ness to pro­vide the veg­etable ed­i­bles. There­fore, when man en­tered the pas­toral era of his ex­is­tence, woman’s dig­nity fell greatly. She must still toil to pro­duce the veg­etable ne­ces­si­ties of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to pro­vide an abun­dance of an­i­mal food. Man thus be­came rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of woman; through­out the en­tire pas­toral age woman’s sta­tus steadily de­clined. By the close of this era she had be­come scarcely more than a hu­man an­i­mal, con­signed to work and to bear hu­man off­spring, much as the an­i­mals of the herd were ex­pected to la­bor and bring forth young. The men of the pas­toral ages had great love for their cat­tle; all the more pity they could not have de­vel­oped a deeper af­fec­tion for their wives.

• among primitives › girl babies often killed before era of wife purchase

68:6.8The early races of­ten re­sorted to prac­tices de­signed to re­strict pop­u­la­tion; all prim­i­tive tribes killed de­formed and sickly chil­dren. Girl ba­bies were fre­quently killed be­fore the times of wife pur­chase. Chil­dren were some­times stran­gled at birth, but the fa­vorite method was ex­po­sure. The fa­ther of twins usu­ally in­sisted that one be killed since mul­ti­ple births were be­lieved to be caused ei­ther by magic or by in­fi­delity. As a rule, how­ever, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh uni­ver­sal, they were never a part of the An­don­ite mores; these peo­ples al­ways re­garded twins as omens of good luck.

• among primitives › abortion common after taboo on childbirth among unmarried

68:6.9Many races learned the tech­nique of abor­tion, and this prac­tice be­came very com­mon af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the taboo on child­birth among the un­mar­ried. It was long the cus­tom for a maiden to kill her off­spring, but among more civ­i­lized groups these il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren be­came the wards of the girl’s mother. Many prim­i­tive clans were vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated by the prac­tice of both abor­tion and in­fan­ti­cide. But re­gard­less of the dic­tates of the mores, very few chil­dren were ever de­stroyed af­ter hav­ing once been suck­led—ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion is too strong.

• nature of women › desire protection of marriage because of attachment to offspring
• specialization of labor based on sex

69:3.21. Spe­cial­iza­tion based on sex. Woman’s work was de­rived from the se­lec­tive pres­ence of the child; women nat­u­rally love ba­bies more than men do. Thus woman be­came the rou­tine worker, while man be­came the hunter and fighter, en­gag­ing in ac­cen­tu­ated pe­ri­ods of work and rest.

• among primitives › taboos have kept w. strictly in own fields

69:3.3All down through the ages the taboos have op­er­ated to keep woman strictly in her own field. Man has most self­ishly cho­sen the more agree­able work, leav­ing the rou­tine drudgery to woman. Man has al­ways been ashamed to do woman’s work, but woman has never shown any re­luc­tance to do­ing man’s work. But strange to re­cord, both men and women have al­ways worked to­gether in build­ing and fur­nish­ing the home.

• among primitives › earliest traders

69:3.11The early traders were women; they were em­ployed as spies, car­ry­ing on com­merce as a side line. Pres­ently trade ex­panded, the women act­ing as in­ter­me­di­aries—job­bers. Then came the mer­chant class, charg­ing a com­mis­sion, profit, for their ser­vices. Growth of group barter de­vel­oped into com­merce; and fol­low­ing the ex­change of com­modi­ties came the ex­change of skilled la­bor.

• among primitives › earliest traders
• among primitives › valued as food providers, burden bearers, means of sex gratification
• specialization of labor based on sex

69:4.2The first barter was con­ducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on a neu­tral spot. Women held the first mar­kets; they were the ear­li­est traders, and this was be­cause they were the bur­den bear­ers; the men were war­riors. Very early the trad­ing counter was de­vel­oped, a wall wide enough to pre­vent the traders reach­ing each other with weapons.

• among primitives › man’s first trading was exchange of

69:5.107. Sex urge—the de­sire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trad­ing was woman ex­change; it long pre­ceded horse trad­ing. But never did the barter in sex slaves ad­vance so­ci­ety; such traf­fic was and is a racial dis­grace, for at one and the same time it hin­dered the de­vel­op­ment of fam­ily life and pol­luted the bi­o­logic fit­ness of su­pe­rior peo­ples.

• among primitives › selected as shamans because of tending home fires

69:6.5It was a sin to ex­tin­guish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was al­lowed to burn. The fires of the tem­ples and shrines were sa­cred and were never per­mit­ted to go out ex­cept that it was the cus­tom to kin­dle new flames an­nu­ally or af­ter some calamity. Women were se­lected as priests be­cause they were cus­to­di­ans of the home fires.

• among primitives › scarcely more than human animals in pastoral age

69:7.5When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but af­ter the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals, cou­pled with the Cali­gas­tia con­fu­sion, many tribes shame­fully treated their women. They treated them al­to­gether too much as they treated their an­i­mals. Man’s bru­tal treat­ment of woman con­sti­tutes one of the dark­est chap­ters of hu­man his­tory.

• among primitives › scarcely more than human animals in pastoral age
• among primitives › were property, slaves, partners, or playthings

69:8.1Prim­i­tive man never hes­i­tated to en­slave his fel­lows. Woman was the first slave, a fam­ily slave. Pas­toral man en­slaved woman as his in­fe­rior sex part­ner. This sort of sex slav­ery grew di­rectly out of man’s de­creased de­pen­dence upon woman.

• among primitives › unmarried w. were property of chief or men of tribe

69:9.7In ear­li­est times women were the prop­erty of the com­mu­nity, and the mother dom­i­nated the fam­ily. The early chiefs owned all the land and were pro­pri­etors of all the women; mar­riage re­quired the con­sent of the tribal ruler. With the pass­ing of com­mu­nism, women were held in­di­vid­u­ally, and the fa­ther grad­u­ally as­sumed do­mes­tic con­trol. Thus the home had its be­gin­ning, and the pre­vail­ing polyg­a­mous cus­toms were grad­u­ally dis­placed by mo­nog­amy. (Polygamy is the sur­vival of the fe­male-slav­ery el­e­ment in mar­riage. Mo­nog­amy is the slave-free ideal of the match­less as­so­ci­a­tion of one man and one woman in the ex­qui­site en­ter­prise of home build­ing, off­spring rear­ing, mu­tual cul­ture, and self-im­prove­ment.)

• among primitives › stealing w. always caused war

70:1.92. Woman scarcity—an at­tempt to re­lieve a short­age of do­mes­tic help. Woman steal­ing has al­ways caused war.

• among primitives › early warriors prohibited from associating with
• among primitives › exempted from war

70:1.20The first re­fine­ment of war was the tak­ing of pris­on­ers. Next, women were ex­empted from hos­til­i­ties, and then came the rec­og­ni­tion of non­com­bat­ants. Mil­i­tary castes and stand­ing armies soon de­vel­oped to keep pace with the in­creas­ing com­plex­ity of com­bat. Such war­riors were early pro­hib­ited from as­so­ci­at­ing with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have al­ways fed and nursed the sol­diers and urged them on to bat­tle.

• among primitives › some tribes had female rulers

70:5.4Some tribes had fe­male coun­cils, and from time to time many tribes had women rulers. Cer­tain tribes of the red man pre­served the teach­ing of Ona­mo­na­lon­ton in fol­low­ing the unan­i­mous rule of the “coun­cil of seven.”

• among primitives › formed secret societies

70:7.13Many later tribes sanc­tioned the for­ma­tion of women’s se­cret clubs, the pur­pose of which was to pre­pare ado­les­cent girls for wife­hood and moth­er­hood. Af­ter ini­ti­a­tion girls were el­i­gi­ble for mar­riage and were per­mit­ted to at­tend the “bride show,” the com­ing-out party of those days. Women’s or­ders pledged against mar­riage early came into ex­is­tence.

• among primitives › primitive men could kill wives if paid for

70:10.11One of the ear­li­est for­mu­la­tions of ad­vanced tribal law had to do with the tak­ing over of the blood feud as a tribal af­fair. But strange to re­late, even then a man could kill his wife with­out pun­ish­ment pro­vided he had fully paid for her. The Es­ki­mos of to­day, how­ever, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for mur­der, to be de­creed and ad­min­is­tered by the fam­ily wronged.

• among Adam and Eve’s administrators

74:3.5On the fourth day Adam and Eve ad­dressed the Gar­den as­sem­bly. From the in­au­gu­ral mount they spoke to the peo­ple con­cern­ing their plans for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the world and out­lined the meth­ods whereby they would seek to re­deem the so­cial cul­ture of Uran­tia from the low lev­els to which it had fallen as a re­sult of sin and re­bel­lion. This was a great day, and it closed with a feast for the coun­cil of men and women who had been se­lected to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the new ad­min­is­tra­tion of world af­fairs. Take note! women as well as men were in this group, and that was the first time such a thing had oc­curred on earth since the days of Dala­ma­tia. It was an as­tound­ing in­no­va­tion to be­hold Eve, a woman, shar­ing the hon­ors and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of world af­fairs with a man. And thus ended the fourth day on earth.

• nature of women › tendency to look upon immediate results

75:2.4It was far­thest from Eve’s in­ten­tion ever to do any­thing which would mil­i­tate against Adam’s plans or jeop­ar­dize their plan­e­tary trust. Know­ing the ten­dency of woman to look upon im­me­di­ate re­sults rather than to plan far­sight­edly for more re­mote ef­fects, the Mel­chiz­e­deks, be­fore de­part­ing, had es­pe­cially en­joined Eve as to the pe­cu­liar dan­gers be­set­ting their iso­lated po­si­tion on the planet and had in par­tic­u­lar warned her never to stray from the side of her mate, that is, to at­tempt no per­sonal or se­cret meth­ods of fur­ther­ing their mu­tual un­der­tak­ings. Eve had most scrupu­lously car­ried out these in­struc­tions for more than one hun­dred years, and it did not oc­cur to her that any dan­ger would at­tach to the in­creas­ingly pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial vis­its she was en­joy­ing with a cer­tain Nod­ite leader named Ser­a­p­ata­tia. The whole af­fair de­vel­oped so grad­u­ally and nat­u­rally that she was taken un­awares.

• among primitives › more restrictive taboos on w. than men

82:2.5Women have al­ways been sub­ject to more re­stric­tive taboos than men. The early mores granted the same de­gree of sex lib­erty to un­mar­ried women as to men, but it has al­ways been re­quired of wives that they be faith­ful to their hus­bands. Prim­i­tive mar­riage did not much cur­tail man’s sex lib­er­ties, but it did ren­der fur­ther sex li­cense taboo to the wife. Mar­ried women have al­ways borne some mark which set them apart as a class by them­selves, such as hair­dress, cloth­ing, veil, seclu­sion, or­na­men­ta­tion, and rings.

• among Jews › were property in Old Testament
• equality with men › Islam teaches inferiority of w.

82:4.3As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced and pri­vate prop­erty gained fur­ther rec­og­ni­tion in the mores, steal­ing be­came the great crime. Adul­tery was rec­og­nized as a form of steal­ing, an in­fringe­ment of the hus­band’s prop­erty rights; it is not there­fore specif­i­cally men­tioned in the ear­lier codes and mores. Woman started out as the prop­erty of her fa­ther, who trans­ferred his ti­tle to her hus­band, and all le­gal­ized sex re­la­tions grew out of these pre-ex­is­tent prop­erty rights. The Old Tes­ta­ment deals with women as a form of prop­erty; the Ko­ran teaches their in­fe­ri­or­ity. Man had the right to lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this cus­tom still ob­tains among cer­tain peo­ples.

• among primitives › more restrictive taboos on w. than men

82:4.4Mod­ern sex jeal­ousy is not in­nate; it is a prod­uct of the evolv­ing mores. Prim­i­tive man was not jeal­ous of his wife; he was just guard­ing his prop­erty. The rea­son for hold­ing the wife to stricter sex ac­count than the hus­band was be­cause her mar­i­tal in­fi­delity in­volved de­scent and in­her­i­tance. Very early in the march of civ­i­liza­tion the il­le­git­i­mate child fell into dis­re­pute. At first only the woman was pun­ished for adul­tery; later on, the mores also de­creed the chas­tise­ment of her part­ner, and for long ages the of­fended hus­band or the pro­tec­tor fa­ther had the full right to kill the male tres­passer. Mod­ern peo­ples re­tain these mores, which al­low so-called crimes of honor un­der the un­writ­ten law.

• among primitives › unmarried w. were property of chief or men of tribe

83:5.1In the early his­tory of mar­riage the un­mar­ried women be­longed to the men of the tribe. Later on, a woman had only one hus­band at a time. This prac­tice of one-man-at-a-time was the first step away from the promis­cu­ity of the herd. While a woman was al­lowed but one man, her hus­band could sever such tem­po­rary re­la­tion­ships at will. But these loosely reg­u­lated as­so­ci­a­tions were the first step to­ward liv­ing pair­wise in dis­tinc­tion to liv­ing herd­wise. In this stage of mar­riage de­vel­op­ment chil­dren usu­ally be­longed to the mother.

• among primitives › aged very early

83:5.13The olden taboos on sex re­la­tions with a preg­nant or nurs­ing wife tended greatly to fos­ter polyg­yny. Prim­i­tive women aged very early be­cause of fre­quent child­bear­ing cou­pled with hard work. (Such over­bur­dened wives only man­aged to ex­ist by virtue of the fact that they were put in iso­la­tion one week out of each month when they were not heavy with child.) Such a wife of­ten grew tired of bear­ing chil­dren and would re­quest her hus­band to take a sec­ond and younger wife, one able to help with both child­bear­ing and the do­mes­tic work. The new wives were there­fore usu­ally hailed with de­light by the older spouses; there ex­isted noth­ing on the or­der of sex jeal­ousy.

• equality with men › increased rights

83:8.8The ide­als of mar­riage have made great prog­ress in re­cent times; among some peo­ples woman en­joys prac­ti­cally equal rights with her con­sort. In con­cept, at least, the fam­ily is be­com­ing a loyal part­ner­ship for rear­ing off­spring, ac­com­pa­nied by sex­ual fi­delity. But even this newer ver­sion of mar­riage need not pre­sume to swing so far to the ex­treme as to con­fer mu­tual monopoly of all per­son­al­ity and in­di­vid­u­al­ity. Mar­riage is not just an in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ideal; it is the evolv­ing so­cial part­ner­ship of a man and a woman, ex­ist­ing and func­tion­ing un­der the cur­rent mores, re­stricted by the taboos, and en­forced by the laws and reg­u­la­tions of so­ci­ety.

83:8.9Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury mar­riages stand high in com­par­i­son with those of past ages, not­with­stand­ing that the home in­sti­tu­tion is now un­der­go­ing a se­ri­ous test­ing be­cause of the prob­lems so sud­denly thrust upon the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion by the pre­cip­i­tate aug­men­ta­tion of woman’s lib­er­ties, rights so long de­nied her in the tardy evo­lu­tion of the mores of past gen­er­a­tions.

• nature of women › desire protection of marriage because of attachment to offspring

84:1.2Woman, be­cause of phys­i­cal and emo­tional at­tach­ment to her off­spring, is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the male, and this urges her into the shel­ter­ing pro­tec­tion of mar­riage. But no di­rect bi­o­logic urge led man into mar­riage—much less held him in. It was not love that made mar­riage at­trac­tive to man, but food hunger which first at­tracted sav­age man to woman and the prim­i­tive shel­ter shared by her chil­dren.

• nature of women › compelling mother love is handicapping emotion

84:1.7The mother and child re­la­tion is nat­u­ral, strong, and in­stinc­tive, and one which, there­fore, con­strained prim­i­tive women to sub­mit to many strange con­di­tions and to en­dure un­told hard­ships. This com­pelling mother love is the hand­i­cap­ping emo­tion which has al­ways placed woman at such a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage in all her strug­gles with man. Even at that, ma­ter­nal in­stinct in the hu­man species is not over­pow­er­ing; it may be thwarted by am­bi­tion, self­ish­ness, and re­li­gious con­vic­tion.

• among Jews › were property in Old Testament

84:3.2The scant cour­tesy paid wom­ankind dur­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment era is a true re­flec­tion of the mores of the herds­men. The He­brew pa­tri­archs were all herds­men, as is wit­nessed by the say­ing, “The Lord is my Shep­herd.”

• nature of women › compelling mother love is handicapping emotion
• nature of women › did not function in emergency

84:3.3But man was no more to blame for his low opin­ion of woman dur­ing past ages than was woman her­self. She failed to get so­cial rec­og­ni­tion dur­ing prim­i­tive times be­cause she did not func­tion in an emer­gency; she was not a spec­tac­u­lar or cri­sis hero. Ma­ter­nity was a dis­tinct dis­abil­ity in the ex­is­tence strug­gle; mother love hand­i­capped women in the tribal de­fense.

• nature of women › capitalized on men’s stronger sex urges

84:3.5Among the more ad­vanced races, women are not so large or so strong as men. Woman, be­ing the weaker, there­fore be­came the more tact­ful; she early learned to trade upon her sex charms. She be­came more alert and con­ser­va­tive than man, though slightly less pro­found. Man was woman’s su­pe­rior on the bat­tle­field and in the hunt; but at home woman has usu­ally out­gen­eraled even the most prim­i­tive of men.

• among primitives › valued as food providers, burden bearers, means of sex gratification

84:3.7Woman has al­ways had to work; at least right up to mod­ern times the fe­male has been a real pro­ducer. Man has usu­ally cho­sen the eas­ier path, and this in­equal­ity has ex­isted through­out the en­tire his­tory of the hu­man race. Woman has al­ways been the bur­den bearer, car­ry­ing the fam­ily prop­erty and tend­ing the chil­dren, thus leav­ing the man’s hands free for fight­ing or hunt­ing.

• among primitives › before herding era, mothers nursed until 4 to 5

84:3.9The pro­vi­sion of milk for the young led to ear­lier wean­ing of ba­bies, hence to the bear­ing of more chil­dren by the moth­ers thus re­lieved of their some­times tem­po­rary bar­ren­ness, while the use of cow’s milk and goat’s milk greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity. Be­fore the herd­ing stage of so­ci­ety, moth­ers used to nurse their ba­bies un­til they were four and five years old.

• nature of women › loose methods of labor

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.

• nature of women › capitalized on men’s stronger sex urges
• nature of women › shrewd managers of men

84:4.2Woman’s sta­tus has al­ways been a so­cial para­dox; she has al­ways been a shrewd man­ager of men; she has al­ways cap­i­tal­ized man’s stronger sex urge for her own in­ter­ests and to her own ad­vance­ment. By trad­ing sub­tly upon her sex charms, she has of­ten been able to ex­er­cise dom­i­nant power over man, even when held by him in ab­ject slav­ery.

• among primitives › were property, slaves, partners, or playthings

84:4.3Early woman was not to man a friend, sweet­heart, lover, and part­ner but rather a piece of prop­erty, a ser­vant or slave and, later on, an eco­nomic part­ner, play­thing, and child­bearer. Nonethe­less, proper and sat­is­fac­tory sex re­la­tions have al­ways in­volved the el­e­ment of choice and co-op­er­a­tion by woman, and this has al­ways given in­tel­li­gent women con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence over their im­me­di­ate and per­sonal stand­ing, re­gard­less of their so­cial po­si­tion as a sex. But man’s dis­trust and sus­pi­cion were not helped by the fact that women were all along com­pelled to re­sort to shrewd­ness in the ef­fort to al­le­vi­ate their bond­age.

• among primitives › legends of Eve and Pandora
• men regarded w. with ignorant mistrust, fearful fascination

84:4.4The sexes have had great dif­fi­culty in un­der­stand­ing each other. Man found it hard to un­der­stand woman, re­gard­ing her with a strange mix­ture of ig­no­rant mis­trust and fear­ful fas­ci­na­tion, if not with sus­pi­cion and con­tempt. Many tribal and racial tra­di­tions rel­e­gate trou­ble to Eve, Pan­dora, or some other rep­re­sen­ta­tive of wom­ankind. These nar­ra­tives were al­ways dis­torted so as to make it ap­pear that the woman brought evil upon man; and all this in­di­cates the one­time uni­ver­sal dis­trust of woman. Among the rea­sons cited in sup­port of a celi­bate priest­hood, the chief was the base­ness of woman. The fact that most sup­posed witches were women did not im­prove the olden rep­u­ta­tion of the sex.

• among primitives › were property, slaves, partners, or playthings

84:4.10A great ad­vance was made when a man was de­nied the right to kill his wife at will. Like­wise, it was a for­ward step when a woman could own the wed­ding gifts. Later, she gained the le­gal right to own, con­trol, and even dis­pose of prop­erty, but she was long de­prived of the right to hold of­fice in ei­ther church or state. Woman has al­ways been treated more or less as prop­erty, right up to and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ. She has not yet gained world-wide free­dom from seclu­sion un­der man’s con­trol. Even among ad­vanced peo­ples, man’s at­tempt to pro­tect woman has al­ways been a tacit as­ser­tion of su­pe­ri­or­ity.

• nature of women › desire protection of marriage because of attachment to offspring

84:5.1In self-per­pet­u­a­tion woman is man’s equal, but in the part­ner­ship of self-main­te­nance she labors at a de­cided dis­ad­van­tage, and this hand­i­cap of en­forced ma­ter­nity can only be com­pen­sated by the en­light­ened mores of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion and by man’s in­creas­ing sense of ac­quired fair­ness.

• equality with men › increased rights

84:5.4But man did not con­sciously nor in­ten­tion­ally seize woman’s rights and then grad­u­ally and grudg­ingly give them back to her; all this was an un­con­scious and un­planned episode of so­cial evo­lu­tion. When the time re­ally came for woman to en­joy added rights, she got them, and all quite re­gard­less of man’s con­scious at­ti­tude. Slowly but surely the mores change so as to pro­vide for those so­cial ad­just­ments which are a part of the per­sis­tent evo­lu­tion of civ­i­liza­tion. The ad­vanc­ing mores slowly pro­vided in­creas­ingly bet­ter treat­ment for fe­males; those tribes which per­sisted in cru­elty to them did not sur­vive.

• among early Christians › Paul did not consider w. equals

84:5.6The early Chi­nese and the Greeks treated women bet­ter than did most sur­round­ing peo­ples. But the He­brews were ex­ceed­ingly dis­trust­ful of them. In the Oc­ci­dent woman has had a dif­fi­cult climb un­der the Pauline doc­trines which be­came at­tached to Chris­tian­ity, al­though Chris­tian­ity did ad­vance the mores by im­pos­ing more strin­gent sex obli­ga­tions upon man. Woman’s es­tate is lit­tle short of hope­less un­der the pe­cu­liar degra­da­tion which at­taches to her in Mo­hammedanism, and she fares even worse un­der the teach­ings of sev­eral other Ori­en­tal re­li­gions.

• equality with men › science emancipated, not religion

84:5.7Sci­ence, not re­li­gion, re­ally eman­ci­pated woman; it was the mod­ern fac­tory which largely set her free from the con­fines of the home. Man’s phys­i­cal abil­i­ties be­came no longer a vi­tal es­sen­tial in the new main­te­nance mech­a­nism; sci­ence so changed the con­di­tions of liv­ing that man power was no longer so su­pe­rior to woman power.

• equality with men › increased rights
• equality with men › prove worthy of new accomplishments?

84:5.10In the ide­als of pair mar­riage, woman has fi­nally won rec­og­ni­tion, dig­nity, in­de­pen­dence, equal­ity, and ed­u­ca­tion; but will she prove wor­thy of all this new and un­prece­dented ac­com­plish­ment? Will mod­ern woman re­spond to this great achieve­ment of so­cial lib­er­a­tion with idle­ness, in­dif­fer­ence, bar­ren­ness, and in­fi­delity? To­day, in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, woman is un­der­go­ing the cru­cial test of her long world ex­is­tence!

• equality with men › w.’s rights are not men’s rights

84:5.11Woman is man’s equal part­ner in race re­pro­duc­tion, hence just as im­por­tant in the un­fold­ing of racial evo­lu­tion; there­fore has evo­lu­tion in­creas­ingly worked to­ward the re­al­iza­tion of women’s rights. But women’s rights are by no means men’s rights. Woman can­not thrive on man’s rights any more than man can pros­per on woman’s rights.

84:5.12Each sex has its own dis­tinc­tive sphere of ex­is­tence, to­gether with its own rights within that sphere. If woman as­pires lit­er­ally to en­joy all of man’s rights, then, sooner or later, piti­less and emo­tion­less com­pe­ti­tion will cer­tainly re­place that chivalry and spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion which many women now en­joy, and which they have so re­cently won from men.

• nature of women › compelling mother love is handicapping emotion
• nature of women › desire protection of marriage because of attachment to offspring

84:5.13Civ­i­liza­tion never can oblit­er­ate the be­hav­ior gulf be­tween the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but in­stinct never. In­nate ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion will never per­mit eman­ci­pated woman to be­come man’s se­ri­ous ri­val in in­dus­try. For­ever each sex will re­main su­preme in its own do­main, do­mains de­ter­mined by bi­o­logic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and by men­tal dis­sim­i­lar­ity.

• nature of women › moral standard-bearers and spiritual leaders
• nature of women › more intuitive than men; somewhat less logical

84:6.4Women seem to have more in­tu­ition than men, but they also ap­pear to be some­what less log­i­cal. Woman, how­ever, has al­ways been the moral stan­dard-bearer and the spir­i­tual leader of man­kind. The hand that rocks the cra­dle still frat­er­nizes with des­tiny.

• nature of women › desire protection of marriage because of attachment to offspring

84:7.2Woman’s in­stinct to love and care for chil­dren con­spired to make her the in­ter­ested party in pro­mot­ing mar­riage and prim­i­tive fam­ily life. Man was only forced into home build­ing by the pres­sure of the later mores and so­cial con­ven­tions; he was slow to take an in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of mar­riage and home be­cause the sex act im­poses no bi­o­logic con­se­quences upon him.

• among primitives › daughters desired because they were salable

84:7.143. Daugh­ters were sal­able.

• among primitives › committed suicide on husbands’ graves

87:2.7The an­cients were so anx­ious to get rid of a ghost that they of­fered it ev­ery­thing which might have been de­sired dur­ing life. Ghosts wanted wives and ser­vants; a well-to-do sav­age ex­pected that at least one slave wife would be buried alive at his death. It later be­came the cus­tom for a widow to com­mit sui­cide on her hus­band’s grave. When a child died, the mother, aunt, or grand­mother was of­ten stran­gled in or­der that an adult ghost might ac­com­pany and care for the child ghost. And those who thus gave up their lives usu­ally did so will­ingly; in­deed, had they lived in vi­o­la­tion of cus­tom, their fear of ghost wrath would have de­nuded life of such few plea­sures as the prim­i­tives en­joyed.

• among primitives › ate children to renew strength lost in childbearing

89:5.4The taste for hu­man flesh grows. Hav­ing been started through hunger, friend­ship, re­venge, or re­li­gious rit­ual, the eat­ing of hu­man flesh goes on to ha­bit­ual can­ni­bal­ism. Man-eat­ing has arisen through food scarcity, though this has sel­dom been the un­der­ly­ing rea­son. The Es­ki­mos and early An­don­ites, how­ever, sel­dom were can­ni­bal­is­tic ex­cept in times of famine. The red men, es­pe­cially in Cen­tral Amer­ica, were can­ni­bals. It was once a gen­eral prac­tice for prim­i­tive moth­ers to kill and eat their own chil­dren in or­der to re­new the strength lost in child­bear­ing, and in Queens­land the first child is still fre­quently thus killed and de­voured. In re­cent times can­ni­bal­ism has been de­lib­er­ately re­sorted to by many African tribes as a war mea­sure, a sort of fright­ful­ness with which to ter­ror­ize their neigh­bors.

• equality with men › Islam teaches inferiority of w.

95:7.6The strength of Is­lam has been its clear-cut and well-de­fined pre­sen­ta­tion of Al­lah as the one and only De­ity; its weak­ness, the as­so­ci­a­tion of mil­i­tary force with its pro­mul­ga­tion, to­gether with its degra­da­tion of woman. But it has stead­fastly held to its pre­sen­ta­tion of the One Uni­ver­sal De­ity of all, “who knows the in­vis­i­ble and the vis­i­ble. He is the mer­ci­ful and the com­pas­sion­ate.” “Truly God is plen­teous in good­ness to all men.” “And when I am sick, it is he who heals me.” “For when­ever as many as three speak to­gether, God is pres­ent as a fourth,” for is he not “the first and the last, also the seen and the hid­den”?

• among early Christians › admitted into full fellowship of early church

98:6.4Al­ways had it been the prac­tice of Mith­raic wor­shipers, on en­ter­ing the tem­ple, to dip their fin­gers in holy wa­ter. And since in some dis­tricts there were those who at one time be­longed to both re­li­gions, they in­tro­duced this cus­tom into the ma­jor­ity of the Chris­tian churches in the vicin­ity of Rome. Both re­li­gions em­ployed bap­tism and par­took of the sacra­ment of bread and wine. The one great dif­fer­ence be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, aside from the char­ac­ters of Mithras and Je­sus, was that the one en­cour­aged mil­i­tarism while the other was ul­tra­pa­cific. Mith­ra­ism’s tol­er­ance for other re­li­gions (ex­cept later Chris­tian­ity) led to its fi­nal un­do­ing. But the de­cid­ing fac­tor in the strug­gle be­tween the two was the ad­mis­sion of women into the full fel­low­ship of the Chris­tian faith.

• among Jews › not required to attend Passover in Jerusalem

125:0.2Women sel­dom went to the Pass­over feast at Je­ru­sa­lem; they were not re­quired to be pres­ent. Je­sus, how­ever, vir­tu­ally re­fused to go un­less his mother would ac­com­pany them. And when his mother de­cided to go, many other Naz­a­reth women were led to make the jour­ney, so that the Pass­over com­pany con­tained the largest num­ber of women, in pro­por­tion to men, ever to go up to the Pass­over from Naz­a­reth. Ever and anon, on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem, they chanted the one hun­dred and thir­ti­eth Psalm.

• among Jews › against custom › for w. to sit in main area of temple
• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

125:0.4In com­pany with his par­ents Je­sus passed through the tem­ple precincts on his way to join that group of new sons of the law who were about to be con­se­crated as cit­i­zens of Is­rael. He was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by the gen­eral de­meanor of the tem­ple throngs, but the first great shock of the day came when his mother took leave of them on her way to the women’s gallery. It had never oc­curred to Je­sus that his mother was not to ac­com­pany him to the con­se­cra­tion cer­e­monies, and he was thor­oughly in­dig­nant that she was made to suf­fer from such un­just dis­crim­i­na­tion. While he strongly re­sented this, aside from a few re­marks of protest to his fa­ther, he said noth­ing. But he thought, and thought deeply, as his ques­tions to the scribes and teach­ers a week later dis­closed.

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

125:5.42. Why should moth­ers in Is­rael be seg­re­gated from the male tem­ple wor­shipers?

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

127:1.5This year Si­mon started to school, and they were com­pelled to sell an­other house. James now took charge of the teach­ing of his three sis­ters, two of whom were old enough to be­gin se­ri­ous study. As soon as Ruth grew up, she was taken in hand by Miriam and Martha. Or­di­nar­ily the girls of Jew­ish fam­i­lies re­ceived lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but Je­sus main­tained (and his mother agreed) that girls should go to school the same as boys, and since the syn­a­gogue school would not re­ceive them, there was noth­ing to do but con­duct a home school es­pe­cially for them.

• equality with men › men have no rightful authority over w. not voluntarily given

133:2.2And then, in bid­ding him farewell, Je­sus said: “My brother, al­ways re­mem­ber that man has no right­ful au­thor­ity over woman un­less the woman has will­ingly and vol­un­tar­ily given him such au­thor­ity. Your wife has en­gaged to go through life with you, to help you fight its bat­tles, and to as­sume the far greater share of the bur­den of bear­ing and rear­ing your chil­dren; and in re­turn for this spe­cial ser­vice it is only fair that she re­ceive from you that spe­cial pro­tec­tion which man can give to woman as the part­ner who must carry, bear, and nur­ture the chil­dren. The lov­ing care and con­sid­er­a­tion which a man is will­ing to be­stow upon his wife and their chil­dren are the mea­sure of that man’s at­tain­ment of the higher lev­els of cre­ative and spir­i­tual self-con­scious­ness. Do you not know that men and women are part­ners with God in that they co-op­er­ate to cre­ate be­ings who grow up to pos­sess them­selves of the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal souls? The Fa­ther in heaven treats the Spirit Mother of the chil­dren of the uni­verse as one equal to him­self. It is God­like to share your life and all that re­lates thereto on equal terms with the mother part­ner who so fully shares with you that di­vine ex­pe­ri­ence of re­pro­duc­ing your­selves in the lives of your chil­dren. If you can only love your chil­dren as God loves you, you will love and cher­ish your wife as the Fa­ther in heaven hon­ors and ex­alts the In­fi­nite Spirit, the mother of all the spirit chil­dren of a vast uni­verse.”

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

138:8.11The apos­tles were at first shocked by, but early be­came ac­cus­tomed to, Je­sus’ treat­ment of women; he made it very clear to them that women were to be ac­corded equal rights with men in the king­dom.

• among Jews › against custom › for w. to approach strange men

143:5.2The wa­ter of Ja­cob’s well was less min­eral than that from the wells of Sy­char and was there­fore much val­ued for drink­ing pur­poses. Je­sus was thirsty, but there was no way of get­ting wa­ter from the well. When, there­fore, a woman of Sy­char came up with her wa­ter pitcher and pre­pared to draw from the well, Je­sus said to her, “Give me a drink.” This woman of Samaria knew Je­sus was a Jew by his ap­pear­ance and dress, and she sur­mised that he was a Galilean Jew from his ac­cent. Her name was Nalda and she was a comely crea­ture. She was much sur­prised to have a Jew­ish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for wa­ter, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self-re­spect­ing man to speak to a woman in pub­lic, much less for a Jew to con­verse with a Samar­i­tan. There­fore Nalda asked Je­sus, “How is it that you, be­ing a Jew, ask for a drink of me, a Samar­i­tan woman?” Je­sus an­swered: “I have in­deed asked you for a drink, but if you could only un­der­stand, you would ask me for a draught of the liv­ing wa­ter.” Then said Nalda: “But, Sir, you have noth­ing to draw with, and the well is deep; whence, then, have you this liv­ing wa­ter? Are you greater than our fa­ther Ja­cob who gave us this well, and who drank thereof him­self and his sons and his cat­tle also?”

• among early Christians › apostles believed w. inferior

143:5.11The apos­tles never ceased to be shocked by Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with women, women of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter, even im­moral women. It was very dif­fi­cult for Je­sus to teach his apos­tles that women, even so-called im­moral women, have souls which can choose God as their Fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing daugh­ters of God and can­di­dates for life ev­er­last­ing. Even nine­teen cen­turies later many show the same un­will­ing­ness to grasp the Mas­ter’s teach­ings. Even the Chris­tian re­li­gion has been per­sis­tently built up around the fact of the death of Christ in­stead of around the truth of his life. The world should be more con­cerned with his happy and God-re­veal­ing life than with his tragic and sor­row­ful death.

• among Jews › against custom › for man to salute woman in public
• among Jews › words of law better burned than delivered to
• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

149:2.8The most as­ton­ish­ing and the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary fea­ture of Mi­chael’s mis­sion on earth was his at­ti­tude to­ward women. In a day and gen­er­a­tion when a man was not sup­posed to salute even his own wife in a pub­lic place, Je­sus dared to take women along as teach­ers of the gospel in con­nec­tion with his third tour of Gal­i­lee. And he had the con­sum­mate cour­age to do this in the face of the rab­binic teach­ing which de­clared that it was “bet­ter that the words of the law should be burned than de­liv­ered to women.”

149:2.9In one gen­er­a­tion Je­sus lifted women out of the dis­re­spect­ful obliv­ion and the slav­ish drudgery of the ages. And it is the one shame­ful thing about the re­li­gion that pre­sumed to take Je­sus’ name that it lacked the moral cour­age to fol­low this no­ble ex­am­ple in its sub­se­quent at­ti­tude to­ward women.

• among early Christians › Paul did not consider w. equals
• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

• among early Christians › Andrew’s strict rules upon apostles’ work with

150:2.2It was at Mag­dala that the women first demon­strated their use­ful­ness and vin­di­cated the wis­dom of their choos­ing. An­drew had im­posed rather strict rules upon his as­so­ciates about do­ing per­sonal work with women, es­pe­cially with those of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. When the party en­tered Mag­dala, these ten women evan­ge­lists were free to en­ter the evil re­sorts and preach the glad tid­ings di­rectly to all their in­mates. And when vis­it­ing the sick, these women were able to draw very close in their min­istry to their af­flicted sis­ters. As the re­sult of the min­istry of these ten women (af­ter­ward known as the twelve women) at this place, Mary Mag­da­lene was won for the king­dom. Through a suc­ces­sion of mis­for­tunes and in con­se­quence of the at­ti­tude of rep­u­ta­ble so­ci­ety to­ward women who com­mit such er­rors of judg­ment, this woman had found her­self in one of the ne­far­i­ous re­sorts of Mag­dala. It was Martha and Rachel who made plain to Mary that the doors of the king­dom were open to even such as she. Mary be­lieved the good news and was bap­tized by Pe­ter the next day.

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

167:6.4Woman’s sta­tus in Pales­tine was much im­proved by Je­sus’ teach­ing; and so it would have been through­out the world if his fol­low­ers had not de­parted so far from that which he painstak­ingly taught them.

• among Jews › against custom › for w. to sit at public banquet

172:1.2Six days be­fore the Pass­over, on the evening af­ter the Sab­bath, all Beth­any and Beth­page joined in cel­e­brat­ing the ar­rival of Je­sus by a pub­lic ban­quet at the home of Si­mon. This sup­per was in honor of both Je­sus and Laz­a­rus; it was ten­dered in de­fi­ance of the San­hedrin. Martha di­rected the serv­ing of the food; her sis­ter Mary was among the women on­look­ers as it was against the cus­tom of the Jews for a woman to sit at a pub­lic ban­quet. The agents of the San­hedrin were pres­ent, but they feared to ap­pre­hend Je­sus in the midst of his friends.

• among Jews › exempt from temple head tax

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

• among Jews › against custom › for w. to approach strange men

190:0.5In view­ing the promi­nent part which Mary Mag­da­lene took in pro­claim­ing the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion, it should be re­corded that Mary was the chief spokesman for the women’s corps, as was Pe­ter for the apos­tles. Mary was not chief of the women work­ers, but she was their chief teacher and pub­lic spokesman. Mary had be­come a woman of great cir­cum­spec­tion, so that her bold­ness in speak­ing to a man whom she con­sid­ered to be the care­taker of Joseph’s gar­den only in­di­cates how hor­ri­fied she was to find the tomb empty. It was the depth and agony of her love, the full­ness of her de­vo­tion, that caused her to for­get, for a mo­ment, the con­ven­tional re­straints of a Jew­ish woman’s ap­proach to a strange man.

• equality with men › Jesus taught equality

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”

• among primitives › degradation of w. a reason for Roman decline

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.