156 TABOO AND GENETICS 



of sanctity. The most persistent human re- 

 lationship, the one charged with a constant 

 emotional value, is not that of sex, which takes 

 manifold forms, but that of the mother and 

 child. It is to the mother that the child looks 

 for food, love, and protection. It is to the child 

 that the mother often turns from the mate, 

 either because of the predominance of mother 

 love over sex or in consolation for the loss 

 of the love of the male. We have only recently 

 learned to evaluate the infantile patterns en- 

 graved in the neural tissue during the years of 

 childhood when the mother is the central figure 

 of the child's life. Whatever disillusionments 

 may come about other women later in life, the 

 mother ideal thus established remains a constant 

 part of man's unconscious motivations. It is 

 perhaps possible that this infantile picture of a 

 being all-wise, all-tender, all-sacrificing, has 

 within it enough emotional force to create the 

 demand for a mother-goddess in any religion. 



To arrive at the concept of the Madonna, a 

 far-reaching process of synthesis and reinter- 

 pretation must have been carried out before the 

 Bible could be brought into harmony with the 

 demands made by a cult of a mother goddess. 

 Just as the views brought into the church by 

 celibate ideals spread among heathen people, 

 so the church must have been in its turn influ- 

 enced by the heathen way of looking at things. 



