The
sexual impulse in those remote days, unconscious of its nature and
far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other
powerful instinct. Every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who
happened to desire her. As is still the case with the aborigines of
Central and Northern Australia, the phenomena of pregnancy and
childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.[1] The concept of _father_ had
not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in
her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of
government. In early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was
systematised by religion in India and the countries round the
Mediterranean and survived in the Temple Prostitution and the Mysteries.
Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more
than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the
endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis
and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled
licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses their sacrament.
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