Sex was immortal, sex and
primary matter, the [Greek: ule] contrasted by Aristotle with the
[Greek: eisos], the form. "The female principle is the mother of the
body, but the mother of the spirit is the male." The substance of those
ancient cults was birth and death, meaningless, purposeless, apparently
without rhyme or reason; their sacrament the perpetual union of the
sexes. Between the succeeding generations there was but one bond, the
natural bond of motherhood. It was the first tie realised by mankind, a
tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as
a general, maternal, natural force. The presiding divinities were the
"mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and
space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind.
Before their silent greatness the desire of man to know his whence and
whither, to win shape and individuality, became blasphemy. They had
given immortality to sex, but upon the individual they had laid the
curse of death.
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