i6o TABOO AND GENETICS 



on the sex relationship, which came to be the 

 symbol of the lusts of the body which must be 

 conquered by the high desires of the soul. 

 Consequently the feelings concerning this relation 

 became surcharged with all the emotion which 

 modern psychology has taught us always attaches 

 to the conscious symbol of deeply underlying 

 unconscious complexes. In such a situation 

 man, who had come to look with horror on the 

 being who reminded him that he was flesh as 

 well as spirit saw in her " the Devil's gateway," 

 or " a fireship continually striving to get along 

 side the male man-of-war to blow him up into 

 pieces." (22.)* 



With the rejection of the idea of the sanctity 

 of sex as embodied in the phallic rituals of the 

 pagan cults, the psychic power of woman 

 became once more a thing of fear rather than of 

 worship, and her uncleanness was emphasized 

 again more than her holiness, even as in primi- 

 tive times. The power of woman to tell the 

 course of future events which in other days had 

 made her revered as priestess and prophetess 

 now made her hated as a witch who had control 

 of what the Middle Ages knew as the Black 

 Art. (23.) The knowledge of medicine which 



*Dr Donaldson, translator of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, 

 says : "I used to believe . . . that woman owes her present 

 position to Christianity . . . but in the first three centuries I 

 have not been able to see that Christianity had any favourable 

 effect on the position of woman." 



