794: Dynamic Theory. 



Adam and Eve. During the earl}- centuries of the Christian era, the 

 opinion was common to both Pagans and Christians. Cato said if there 

 were no women, men would hold converse with the Gods. Cicero's ideas 

 were about the same. Chrysostom, and other Christian fathers, believed 

 in the depravity of women, their 'malignitj 7 , inconceivable subtlety, fri- 

 volity, and unconquerably evil propensities. This led to celibacy as the 

 only possible chance for men to be holy, and it also led to the habit of 

 ascribing the crime of witchcraft, of which there were many forms, al- 

 most entirely to women. (See Lecky's Rationalism. ) 



The belief in witchcraft was implicitly entertained by all the world, 

 both Pagan and Christian, from time immemorial, until a century or so 

 ago, and is yet held by a few even in Christian lands. Hundreds of 

 thousands of people were condemned to death for this crime during the 

 middle ages in Europe, many of them upon their own confession. In 

 these days of free inquiry and discussion, we have no conception of the 

 tenacity with which the traditional ideas of this sort grasped and bound 

 our ancestors. Such men as John Wesley and Dr. Adam Clark believed 

 in witchcraft, and the former inveighed against the growing disbelief in 

 it, as an incipient form of infidelity. 



When a man is born into the world, he finds everything prepared for 

 him. The ideas of the past are worked out and expressed in the forms 

 of everything he sees. From these forms the ideas are reflected into 

 his brain, and the representative standard organs are there built up in 

 close imitation of those of the preceding generation. His education 

 consists chiefly in becoming thus placed in touch with the ideas that 

 have been thought out before his time. He must adopt the language of 

 the community, their style of dress, their manners and deportment, 

 their tools, utensils and appliances, their money, weights and measures. 

 He must conform to the established laws and usages in regard to prop- 

 erty and trade, the magistracy and the courts, his social and domestic 

 relations, his courtship, marriage and divorce. He is almost certain to 

 acquiesce in the religious opinions of those nearest to him, and to im- 

 bibe their political bias. He is necessarily a patriot, and whether he be 

 an inhabitant of torrid Africa, or frigid Alaska, or desolate Patagonia, 

 or fertile India, he thinks his own land the most delightful, and his own 

 people the best. All this is because he is made of plastic protoplasm, 

 which is kneaded and moulded like dough by the influences of his sur- 

 roundings, then formed and stamped with the monogram of his environ- 

 ment, and finally baked into the statutory loaf of precisely sixteen 

 ounces, like all the rest. These traditional and hereditary influences 

 which bind us to the past, necessarily resist change and progress. But 

 the investigations of science bring to view new facts, some of which 

 contradict the notions upon which some of the hereditary ideas are 



