TABOO AND GENETICS 159 



fertility goddesses in all the pagan religions. 

 The power of these rites was still believed in, 

 but they were supposed to be the work of 

 demons, and we find them strictly forbidden in 

 the early ecclesiastical laws. The phallic cere- 

 monials which formed so large a part of heathen 

 ritual became marks of the devil, and the deities 

 in whose honour they were performed, although 

 losing none of their power, were regarded as 

 demonic rather than divine in nature. Diana, 

 goddess of the moon, for example, became iden- 

 tified with Hecate of evil repute, chief of the 

 witches. " In such a fashion the religion of 

 Greece, that of Egypt, of Phoenicia and Asia 

 Minor, of Assyria and of Persia, became mingled 

 and confused in a simple demonology." (21.) 

 In addition to the condemnation of Pagan 

 deities and their ritualistic worship, there was 

 a force inherent in the very nature of Chris- 

 tianity which worked toward the degradation 

 of the sex Hfe. After the death of Christ, his 

 followers had divorced their thoughts from all 

 things earthly and set about fitting themselves 

 for their places in the other world. The thought 

 of the early Christian sects was obsessed by 

 the idea of the second coming of the Messiah. 

 The end of the world was incipient, therefore 

 it behooved each and every one to purge himself 

 from sin. This emphasis on the spiritual as 

 opposed to the fleshly became fixated especially 



