Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/364

348 the Biblical story of the origin of woman as the most correct one, which sees in it the most strikingexpression of masculine egotism and despotism; in order to condemn woman to the most complete dependency upon himself, he traces her origin to his own sex, but at the same time, the cowardly barbarian is not ashamed, in the story of the "fall of man," to shift his own guilt on the shoulders of his own creature. The Christian myth of the origin of Eve corresponds to the Grecian myth of the birth of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, from the head of Zeus, who, on his part, manifested his chief wisdom by shaking his locks, by the noise of thunder and lightning, and occasionally by amorous adventures with the daughters of the earth. But the noble Greeks, however, greatly they sinned against woman elsewhere, at least did her the honor to let the source of her intelligence be the brain of the highest God, while the vulgar Bible, out of a masculine bone, creates a being possessing so little intelligence that she must call a serpent and an appletree to her aid, to make the man understand that she is a woman. If both sexes did not come into existence simultaneously, or were formerly united into one, if one is to claim priority before the other, then this priority must be granted to the woman, by the logic of development, and if, according to the most recent theory of development, man has evoluted from the ape, it certainly was the female ape who first smiled a human smile, and who weaned her forest-mate