366 THE EIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



misery and suffering ; it would be killed off by such a 

 " radical cure " within half a century. 



VI. — As Christ never knew the love of woman, he 

 had no personal acquaintance with that refining of 

 man's true nature that comes only from the intimate 

 life of man with woman. The intimate sexual union, 

 on which the preservation of the human race depends, 

 is just as important on that account as the spiritual 

 penetration of the two sexes, or the mutual comple- 

 ment which they bring to each other in the practical 

 wants of daily life as well as in the highest ideal 

 functions of the soul. For man and woman are two 

 different organisms, equal in worth, each having its 

 characteristic virtues and defects. As civilization 

 advanced, this ideal value of sexual love was more 

 appreciated, and woman held in higher honour, espe- 

 cially among the Teutonic races ; she is the inspiring 

 source of the highest achievements of art and poetry. 

 But Christ was as far from this view as nearly the 

 whole of antiquity ; he shared the idea that prevailed 

 everywhere in the East — that woman is subordinate 

 to man, and intercourse with her is " unclean." 

 Long-suffering nature has taken a fearful revenge for 

 this blunder ; its sad consequences are written in 

 letters of blood in the history of the papal Middle Ages. 



The marvellous hierarchy of the Roman Church, 

 that never disdained any means of strengthening its 

 spiritual despotism, found an exceptionally powerful 

 instrument in the manipulation of this "unclean" 

 idea, and in the promotion of the ascetic notion that 

 abstinence from intercourse with women is a virtue 

 of itself. In the first few centuries after Christ a 

 number of priests voluntarily abstained from marriage, 

 and the supposed value of this celibacy soon rose to 



