Is
it to be wondered at that marriage was merely regarded as a duty to the
State, and that a great number of men were not sufficiently patriotic to
take such a burden upon their shoulders?"
Thus the victory of the male spiritual principle over universal sexual
intercourse ushered in the second stage which checked the sexual impulse
and directed it upon certain individuals, a distinction however, which
bears no relation to love.
Monogamy had conquered, in principle at least and as an ideal.
The profoundly mystical core of the most powerful Greek tragedy which
has come down to our time, the _Orestes_ of Aeschylus, represents the
victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. Orestes
has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's
death, he has slain his mother. The sun-god Apollo and the sinister
Erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over
the justifiableness of the deed. To the Erinnys, matricide is the
foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than
to the father.
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