Although of all the members of the family, the father, as its head, most frequently and regularly undergoes apotheosis, the other members of the family are not without considerable influence on the conceptions that are formed as to the nature and qualities of divine beings. Foremost as regards such influence, after the father, is of course the mother. In a strict monotheism the mother elements would seem to be almost always, if not invariably, subordinate to those of the father; the former, so far as they are represented at all, being submerged or incorporated into the latter[180]. But very few religions remain strictly and consistently monotheistic; and in most of those that show tendencies towards polytheism the mother elements are represented in a separate person or a separate principle. Thus, both in primitive and in more advanced forms of religion it is usual to find mother goddesses who bear the same relation to the earthly mother as does the father-god to the earthly father. [Sidenote: The mother-son relationship and its repression] [Sidenote: The struggle round the mother element in Christianity] Nevertheless, it would appear that the mother-goddess is, at a certain stage of culture at any rate, liable to meet with opposition from which the corresponding father-god is usually exempt. This opposition would seem to be due to the admixture of incestuous passion which is brought over into religion from the original attachment of the child (and especially of course the son) to his earthly mother. The relations between mother and son fairly often find expression in religious stories, as in the cases of Cybele and Attis, Ishtar and Tammuz, Mary and Christ and (in the displaced form of brother and sister love) Isis and Osiris. As a rule however the mother-son relationship is not permanent but is disturbed and broken by evil plottings and brutal actions on the part of some third person (usually a father or a brother substitute), as a result of which the young son-god often meets with his death. The relations of Attis and of Christ to their mothers are of special interest in this connection, inasmuch as they plainly indicate the existence of an inner inhibition on the son's part as well as a separation brought about by interference from without. Attis according at least to some versions of his story, unmans himself on discovering the incestuous nature of his affection (as Œdipus himself had done, in a symbolic form, by putting out his eyes). In Christ the repression of the mother-regarding tendencies seems to have led to an attitude of aloofness towards his mother, and through her towards all women (_cp._ his words "Woman, what have I to do with thee?," John 2, 4)--an attitude that has profoundly affected his followers throughout the ages: for in the history of the Christian religion there is evidence--even apart from its notorious aversion from and distrust of women in general--of the existence of a constant struggle centering round the idea