certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interests of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while, until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows."[79] The gradual change of this ceremony, from a getting rid of a dangerous supernatural infection to returning thanks for a natural danger passed, is on all fours with what takes place in other directions in relation to religious ideas and practices. The important part played by this conception of woman's nature may be traced in the fierce invective directed against her in the early Christian writings. Of course, by that time society had reached a stage when the primitive form of this belief had been outgrown, but ideas and attitudes of mind persist long after their originating conditions have disappeared. In this particular case we have the primitive idea expressed in a form suitable to altered circumstances, and the primitive feeling seeking new warranty in ethical or social considerations. But in the main the old notion is there. Woman is a creature threatening danger to man's spiritual welfare.[80] In this connection we may note an observation of Westermarck's during his residence among the country people of Morocco. He was struck, he says, with the superstitious fear the men had of women. They are supposed to be much better versed in magic, and therefore one ran greater danger in offending them. The curses of women are, generally, much more feared than those of men. To this we have a parallel in Christianity which so often revived and strengthened the lower religious beliefs. During the witch mania an overwhelming proportion of those charged with and executed for sorcery were women. As a matter of fact, women were more prone than men to credit themselves with possessing supernatural power. But the theological explanation was that the devil had more power over women than men. This was, obviously, a heritage from the primitive belief above described.[81] Another way in which religion becomes closely associated with sexualism is through the widely diffused phallic worship. The worship of the generative power in the form of stones, pillars, and carved representations of the male and female sexual organs plays an unquestionably important part in the history of religion, however hardly pressed it may have been by some enthusiastic theorisers. "The farther back we go," says Mr. Hargrave Jennings, "in the history of every country, the deeper we explore into all religions, ancient as well as modern, we stumble the more frequently upon the incessantly intensifying distinct traces of this supposedly indecent mystic worship."[82] On the lower Congo, says Sir H. H. Johnston:--