There is no doubt but this doctrine was the legitimate outcome of the decay of female influence. Through the further stimulation of the lower nature of man its absurdity gradually increased, until under the system calling itself Christian it finally reached its height. This subject will be referred to later in these pages. When we remember that the original representation of the Deity among the nations of the earth consisted of a female figure embracing a child, and when we observe that subsequently in the development of the god-idea woman appears associated with a serpent as the cause of evil in the world, the history of the God Seth, who, as we have seen, represented the processes of Nature, namely Destruction and Regeneration, seems quite significant as indicating some of the actual processes involved in this change. There can be little doubt that the facts relating to this Deity indicate the source whence has sprung the great theological dogma underlying Christianity, that woman is the cause of evil in the world. CHAPTER X. ANCIENT SPECULATIONS CONCERNING CREATION. "Daughters of Jove, All hail! but O inspire The lovely song! the sacred race proclaim Of ever-living gods; who sprang from Earth, From the starred Heaven, and from the gloomy Night, And whom the salt Deep nourished into life. Declare how first the gods and Earth became; The rivers and th' immeasurable sea High-raging in its foam; the glittering stars, The wide impending Heaven; and who from these Of deities arose, dispensing good; Say how their treasures, how their honors each Allotted shar'd: how first they held abode On many-caved Olympus:--this declare, Ye Muses! dwellers of the heavenly mount From the beginning; say, who first arose? First Chaos was: next ample-bosomed Earth, Of deathless gods, who still the Olympian heights Snow-topt inhabit.... Her first-born Earth produced Of like immensity, the starry Heaven: That he might sheltering compass her around On every side, and be forevermore To the blest gods a mansion unremoved."(92) 92) Hesiod, The Theogony.