The Hindoos were demoralized by the priests, but the moral degradation extended even to them, and the arms they employed were turned against themselves. "The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of woman, so respected and honored during the Vedic period. "If you would reign over the persons of slaves, over brutalized intelligence, the history of these infamous epochs presents a means of unequaled simplicity. _Degrade and demoralize the woman_, and you will soon have made of man a debased creature, without energy to struggle against the darkest despotisms; for, according to the fine expression of the Vedas, 'the woman is the soul of humanity.'" As did the Brahman priesthood, when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of Rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional. Search the records of all time, and the traditions and customs of every people, and you will find nowhere else such recognition and reverence paid to woman as in the early Vedic days. "Let it be well understood," says Jacolliot, "that it was but sacerdotal influence and Brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the East, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared from our social system. "Let us read these maxims taken at hazard from the sacred books of India." (I quote only a few.) "Man is strength--woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs, but she is the wisdom that moderates; the one cannot exist without the other, and hence the Lord created them two, for the one purpose. "He who despises woman, despises his mother. "Who is cursed by a woman, is cursed by God. "The tears of woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make them flow. "The songs of women are sweet in the ears of the Lord; men should not, if they wish to be heard, sing the praise of God without women. "Women should be protected with tenderness, and gratified with gifts, by all who wish for length of days. "It was at the prayer of a woman that the Creator pardoned man; cursed be he who forgets it." (See the Vedic "Garden of Eden.") Moses, trained only in the decay of the old religion by the degenerate priests of Egypt, while drawing his legend of creation from the ancient Vedic source, reverses all this and places the blame of the "Fall" on woman, and the women of the Bible are more often concubines and prostitutes than Love's pure evangels as in the ancient days. Jacolliot proves this from many citations, as witness also the following: (Numbers, Chapter XXI.) "And Moses was enraged against the chief officers of the army, against the tribunes, and the centurions who returned from battle. "And he said unto them, Why have you saved the women and the children? "Slay therefore all the males amongst the children, and the women who have been married.