Another point strikingly illustrated by many of these ancient legends is the struggle for power between the two sexes--a struggle that would seem to have been present at all stages of civilisation, but always most active in periods of transition. One out of many examples is all that I can give. In Hawaii, worship is given to the goddess Pele, the personification of the volcano Kilauea, and the god Tamapua, the personification of the sea, or rather, of the storm which lashes the sea and hurls wave after wave upon the land. The myth tells that Tamapua wooed Pele, who rejected his suit, whereupon he flooded the crater with water, but Pele drank up the water and drove him back into the sea.[233] [233] Starcke, pp. 249-250, citing Bachofen’s _Antiquarische Briefe_, Vol. I, p. 140. Here a brief digression into the early mythologies may be made, although this question of the connection between mother-right and religious ideas is one on which I have already enlarged. The most primitive theogony is that of Mother-Earth and her son. Goddesses are at first of greater importance than gods. The Earth-mother springs from chaos, and in the beginning her children have no father.[234] Traces of such a goddess are to be found in many ancient religions. Afterwards as a modification, or rather a development, of the Earth-mother, we have the goddesses of fertility. This idea arose with the development of agriculture, and was closely connected in the primitive mind with the sex functions. Demeter is of this type; and there are many of these mother-deities who once were universally worshipped. Virgin goddesses are a much later creation, and must be connected with the patriarchal ideals for women. The original god-idea symbolised as woman is the free mother; she is the source of all fertility; she is the goddess of love. The servants of these goddesses were priestesses, or at a later date men dressed as women. At first the gods, in so far as they had any existence, appear in the form of temporary lovers of the goddesses; they are very plainly the transitory male element needful for fertilisation, and then destined to disappear.[235] We find very early the brother as the husband and dependent of the Mother-goddess. Thus Isis did not change or lose her independent position after her marriage to her brother Osiris; her importance as a deity remained always greater than his.[236] Only at a much later stage--the patriarchal stage--was the wandering lover-god or dependent brother-spouse raised to the position of authority of the All-Father. We may find in the religious sexual festivals, common to all civilisations, abundant confirmation of these facts. As one illustration out of many that might be chosen, I will refer to the account given by Prof. K. Pearson[237] of the festival of Sakäēs, held in Babylon in honour of the great goddess Mylitta, who was essentially a mother-goddess of fertility. The festival lasted for five days in the month of July.