HOW THE CULT WAS FOUNDED
Before the dramatic climax of the Eleusinian festival, the first
incident of which closed the last chapter, and the thrilling sequel of
which I shall have later to narrate, I had become, in spite of myself,
dragged deeper into the political arena than I wished.
In the first place I had not remained an unmoved spectator of Neaera's
dance. It was very new to me and altogether bewitching. She had a
faultless figure--or, if it had a fault, what it took away from the type
of ideal beauty it perhaps added to her feminine attractiveness. And so,
on returning with Ariston to our bachelor quarters she was the theme of
our conversation. Ariston had passed through a phase of _tendresse_ for
Neaera. Most of his generation who were of Neaera's class had
experienced her novitiate. Even Chairo had not returned unscathed. We
found him at the bath, and after a plunge into the bracing sea water we
lounged in our wraps on the couches prepared for that delightful moment.
Chairo declined to take Neaera seriously: "'Il y des gens,'" he said,
"'qui sont le luxe de la race.' She is a sprite created to awake
sentiments which must be satisfied by others; or, perhaps, remain
unsatisfied, and thus stimulate the brush of the painter and the pen of
the poet. She is an artist herself; utterly without conscience or heart;
but contributing greatly to the charm of life, and if not taken in too
heavy doses, altogether delightful."
Ariston was more severe! "She is a calculating little minx with her own
ends to serve; sometimes those ends are good and she secures a large
following by virtue of them; sometimes they are altogether bad, and then
she uses the following secured by her good ends to attain the bad. But
the worst of it is, she uses what she has of charm remorselessly and has
more than once been summoned before the priests of Demeter."
"That is no discredit," retorted Chairo. "The whole band of priests
ought to be consigned to the shades. They are an unmitigated curse----"
It was no easy matter to understand the working of the priestly system
but I gathered this from the discussion: According to Ariston, the cult
of Demeter was organized mainly through the influence of the women to
accomplish a reform in the marriage system and an intelligent,
scientific, and religious regulation of all sexual relations. The evils
to be remedied were threefold: To reconcile continence with love; to
retain the sanctity of marriage without imposing a life penalty for a
single innocent mistake; and to secure, without compulsion, the
improvement of the race.
In regard to the first of these three, it was recognized that no one
function in the human body contributed so much to the health or malady
of the race as this; and that free love, which had constituted one of
the planks of the Socialist party, would be fatal to the survival of the
community, in consequence of the physical and moral abuses to which
incontinence would give rise. The survival of the races which practised
continence over those which did not practise it was too clearly recorded
in history for its lesson to be neglected. Thus, the promiscuous savage
disappears before the savage who exercises the continence, however
slight, involved in metronymic institutions; these last disappear before
the races which exercise the higher degree of continence required by the
patriarchal or polygamous system; and these last succumb in the conflict
with those which practise the highest degree of continence, known in
our day under the name of monogamy. The lesson of history, then, is that
continence is essential to the progress of the race. The problem
consists in defining continence.
This could not be done by written laws; the attempt to regulate sexual
relations by law had broken down in my own day. Divorce was the attempt
of morality to rescue marriage from promiscuousness. The greatest
immorality prevailed where divorce was forbidden; in other words, the
institution of marriage became a screen for immorality; women took the
vow of marriage only the easier to break it, and even those who took it
with the sincere intention of being faithful to it, once the bond proved
intolerable, finding no moral escape from it adopted the only immoral
alternative. Divorce, therefore, was the only escape; and the easier
divorce became the more did the sanctity of marriage diminish; so that
at last it became impossible to decide which system resulted in more
demoralization--the one which maintaining a theoretically indissoluble
marriage resulted in secret promiscuousness, or the one which through
divorce by making marriage easily dissoluble opened the door wide to the
satisfaction of every caprice.
The only force that has ever seemed able to cope with this problem is
religion. Religion for centuries filled convents and monasteries with
men and women who under a mistaken morality offered love as a sacrifice
to God; religion has been the determining factor in the survival of
community life; that is to say, those communities which were animated by
religion--such as Shakers, and the conventual orders--have relatively
prospered, whereas those which were not animated by religion have
rapidly disappeared. Religion effectually preserves the chastity of
women, even outside of convents--as in Ireland--and has been the main
prop of such continence as survived during our time in the institution
of marriage. Religion, then, seemed to be the only human sentiment that
could determine continence, and to some religious institution,
therefore, it was thought this question must be referred.
What actually happened was this: The constitutional convention, which
put an end to the old order of things and brought in the new, was
controlled by the Socialist faction which believed in free love; a
provision, therefore, was inserted in the constitution forbidding all
laws on the subject of marriage. The same constitution, however,
provided that all adults over the age of twenty-five years who had
passed the necessary examinations--female as well as male--should have a
vote; and this last gave women a voice in political matters, which they
soon exercised with unexpected solidarity. They became a power in the
state, and threatened a modification of the constitution on the subject
of marriage, which would not only restore it to its original
inflexibility, but would impose penalties on both sexes for violation of
the marriage vow, such as the world had not up to that time seen or
dreamed of. The whole community was aghast at the conflict between the
sexes to which this question gave rise, and all the more so, that women
had become a fighting power that could no longer be disregarded. The
drill introduced into the schools for both sexes had demonstrated that
in marksmanship the average woman was quite equal to the average man,
and in ability to endure pain she proved altogether superior to him.
Already the licentiousness that prevailed in Louisiana and the adjacent
States between Louisiana and the Atlantic seaboard had given rise to a
civil war; and the women of the North had fought on the side of sexual
morality in a manner that opened the eyes of men to the existence of a
new and formidable power in the state. The issue upon which Louisiana
had undertaken to secede was upon the power of the federal Government
to enact penal laws against idleness. Obviously, idleness is, under a
Collectivist government, a most dangerous offence. Collectivism cannot
survive except upon the theory that all the members of the community
furnish their quota of work. It was supposed that this question could be
left to state legislation; and during a few generations every state did
secure enough work from its citizens to furnish the stipulated amount of
produce to the common store. But as dissoluteness prevailed in the
South, the Southern States fell more and more behind in their
contribution, and their failure was obviously due to the demoralization
which attended promiscuity in sexual relations. In the Northern States a
certain sense of personal dignity had created a public opinion on the
subject, that prevented free love from producing its worst results;
habits of industry, too, already existed there, and the creation of
state farm colonies--such as existed in our day in Holland--where the
unwilling were made to work prevented idleness from prevailing. In the
Southern States, the climate lent itself to all the abuses that attend
the surrender of self-control; the women never possessed the initiative
necessary for defense; the more the men abandoned themselves to
pleasure the less they were able either to govern or to tolerate
government; and, as a necessary consequence, there was a relaxation of
effort in every direction whether political, industrial, or domestic.
Much agitation prevailed in the rest of the Union over the condition of
the South; the women, particularly, fearing that the contagion would
spread, banded together to form purity leagues, with a view to meet the
evil by a system of social ostracism; but before the sexual issue came
to a head, the failure of the Southern States to furnish their quota to
the common store raised an economic issue easier to handle. The federal
Government passed a measure providing that in case any State failed to
furnish its quota, the President was to replace the elected governor by
one appointed by himself, and the whole penal administration was to pass
into federal hands, with power to the federal Government to create
pauper colonies and administer them. This aroused the ferocity of the
whole Southern people, and it was at this crisis that the women of the
North showed their prowess and initiative. They formed regiments which
rivaled those of the men in number, and even compared with them in
efficiency. The seceding States proved utterly unable to resist the
forces of the North, and were soon reduced to unconditional surrender.
In the period of reconstruction which followed this civil war, there
came to the front in Concord a woman of singular ability, who united the
mystic power of the founders of all religions with a personal beauty
that made of her the model of the great sculptor of that day--Phocas.
She early developed a faculty for divining thought, which secured for
her the wonder and awe of the entire neighborhood; and when upon
reaching maturity Phocas took her as his model for a statue of Demeter,
she entered into the spirit of his work and the spirit of his work
entered into her. The statue was his masterpiece, and was moved from
city to city until, coupled as it soon was with the personality of
Latona--for so the new priestess styled herself--it became the center of
a veritable cult. It drew the minds of men to the old Greek worship of
Fertility and Death in the personalities of Demeter and Persephone, so
that Fertility became dignified by Death, and Death disarmed by
Fertility--both merging, as it were, into a notion of immortality dear
to the hopes of men. The golden ear of corn that figured in the radiant
tresses of Demeter was shadowed by the death in the dark earth that
awaits it, and thus became to them an emblem of the annual resurrection
of the spring with its promise of a new after-life for man also.
To Latona the quality of the Greek myth most worthy of commemoration was
the spirit of sacrifice, which made of Demeter the Mater Dolorosa of the
ancient world. The mother seeking her ravished daughter through all the
kingdoms of the world, wresting her at last from the dark god--but for a
season only--and during the season of sorrow and solitude finding
compensation in caring for the sick child of a woodman in a forest
hut--here was a myth for which Latona could stand and through which she
could draw men to learn the lesson of progress and happiness through
sacrifice. The long hours she spent with Phocas in the study of these
things and the strength of his genius inspired her with a love for the
man as well as for his art; but as the thought that she was born to a
mission slowly dawned upon her she withdrew from his companionship, as,
indeed, from the companionship of her neighbors; performed the tasks she
owed the state with punctiliousness, and gathered about her a few women
who responded to her exalted ideas. Her love for Phocas, about which all
her earthly life centered, became to her the consummate sacrifice that
she could make to this new religion that was slowly taking shape in her.
She drew her votaries chiefly from the conventual order that had
gathered about the great cathedral on Morningside Heights; for the
Christian religion had experienced a great change since the revolution.
The Christian Church, released from the necessity of worldly
consideration of wealth, was now sustained by those only who sincerely
believed in her principles; and as soon as the city had been rebuilt to
suit the new conditions, those who had contributed their leisure to the
beautifying of the streets, turned their attention to the neglected
foundations on the Heights. They found in the new Christian spirit
something of the enthusiasm of the thirteenth century, and ridding the
creed of all save the principle of love which Christ had made the
foundation of His church, set themselves to embodying this principle
with its mystic consequences of sacrifice into gothic arch and
deep-stained glass, upon a scale and design heretofore never
accomplished. Abandoning the transitional style at first contemplated,
they adopted the general scheme of Chartres; but in lieu of the almost
discordant steeples of Chartres they substituted a design taken rather
from what is left of St. Jean, at Soissons, varying in height and
detail, but identical in style, stimulating wonder without shocking it.
The entrance porches of the western facade were inspired by Rheims and
Bourges, for there were five of them; the nave and choir towered to the
heights of Beauvais; and in the center rose the spire of Salisbury. The
lateral steeples flanking the north and south approaches were completed
with the same bewildering variety as on the west front, and the apse,
where rested the sanctuary, terminated the story with a cluster of
chapels that equaled, if not excelled, the _chevet_ of Le Mans; and so
every part of this tribute to Christ lifted itself up in adoration to
heaven like a flame. It rose from a green sward, and adjoining it, on
the north side, was a cloister that in the hush of its seclusion brought
back hallowed recollections of a bygone age.
It was from this cloister that Latona drew her following; for Latona,
with her thoughts turned to Eleusis and not to Galilee, conceived of a
worship which--though sorrow had a part in it--partook also of joy and
thanksgiving; sacrifice assuredly, but for the happiness of this world,
rather than for its mortification; an after life also, but an after life
for which preparation in this world might through the great
unselfishness of a few assure the happiness of the many. So that while
sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice had become the underlying principle
of the Christian religion, sacrifice for the making of joy became the
central idea of the new cult. And Latona, as indeed every mystic, the
more she dwelt upon these things, the more she grew to believe in her
mission; she began by dreaming dreams and ended by seeing visions; she
found that fasting and asceticism contributed to lengthen and strengthen
the moments when, losing consciousness of this world, she seemed to find
herself in direct communion with the divine. Her body soon showed the
traces of her spiritual life; she lost her beauty, but in the place of
it came a happiness so radiant that as she walked in the streets to her
allotted task it caused men and women to stand and wonder.
Meanwhile, her fame grew apace. But her personality was at first far
more impressive than her cult. The one was clear and striking, the other
vague and even obscure. At last on a day that afterward became the great
festival of the Demetrian calendar, Latona fell into an ecstasy that
lasted from the rising of the sun to the setting. She spent it on her
knees, in adoration; rigid and motionless, with her hands held out as
though upon a cross; none of those about her dared intrude; when
darkness came she swooned, and those watching lifted her to her couch.
For a week she lay as it were unconscious. Then she gathered her
votaries about her, and for the first time clearly enunciated her gospel
to the world. This done, a strange sickness came upon her, she was, as
it were, consumed by the fire of her inspiration; she wasted away, and
with her dying breath asked that what was left of her be placed in an
alembic, the gases into which her body passed be burned and the flame,
so lit, be never extinguished.
And it was done. The corpse of Latona gave birth to a new vestal fire
tended by new vestals, vowed no longer to barrenness, but to fertility
and sacrifice.
Her words were preserved by many of her votaries, but their stories
varied, as must indeed all such records vary in a world where minds
differ as much as inclinations. But the central idea remained and gave
rise to a cult which, unsupported by the state or by law, acquired
control over the minds of men, much as did the papacy in the eleventh
century. Some, as Ariston, believed it to be founded on reason, but
dreaded its power and increase; others, as Chairo, regarded it as an
unmitigated despotism. The issue was to be fought out--as, indeed, such
issues generally are--through the conflict between personal passions
and political beliefs, each using and abusing the other and out of both
emerging, after the appeasement to which every struggle eventually
tends, into a clearer idea and a popular verdict.
Meanwhile, the followers of Latona had built the temple of Demeter on
the old classic lines, and the solemn grove about the temple had not
detracted from the cathedral close, perhaps because each cult appealed
to different temperaments; perhaps, also, because many found that the
two cults appealed to the different sides of character and to the
different demands of each.
The cult, though unsupported by any law or statute, had acquired
extraordinary power in the state. It undertook to summon before its
council all persons charged with offenses against Demeter--Demeter
standing amongst other things for the purity of domestic life. If the
party summoned refused to appear before the council, the matter was
referred to the attorney general, who, under the influence of the cult,
prosecuted the charge in the criminal courts with the utmost severity;
and whether the person accused was convicted or not, a refusal to appear
before the council resulted in a social ostracism so complete that few
ventured to incur it. If, on the other hand, the party charged appeared
before the council, the case was likely to be treated with leniency, and
conviction seldom resulted in more than the imposing of some penitential
task. Should it, however, appear that the charge was more serious than
could be dealt with by the cult, it was referred to the attorney
general.
The cult was careful to abstain from any act or teaching which could
tend to encourage idolatry or superstition; thus, the statue of Latona,
which had first inspired the Demetrian idea, was not placed in the
temple where it might be thought properly to belong, but in the
cloister. The temptation to worship it, therefore, was removed. Indeed,
it was for the purpose of making the worship of a graven image the more
impossible that Latona had asked that her body be consumed and the flame
from it perpetuated on the altar. A flame could remain an emblem; it
could hardly itself, in our day, ever become an object of worship.
In this way was kept alive the idea that the divine, wherever else it
might also exist, exists certainly within each and every one of us, and
that by the cultivation of love and usefulness it can be made to prosper
and increase in us. For men, the active scope of usefulness lay chiefly
in the field of labor; for women, chiefly in the field of
fertility--neither field excluding the other--but rather both including
all. And so women contributed labor, in so far as labor did not impair
their essential function of motherhood, and men contributed continence
as the highest male duty in the field of fertility.
The duties of the male, therefore, were grouped into two classes, active
and passive; the former were for the most part exercised in willingness
to labor for the commonwealth without too grasping a regard for reward;
the latter consisted mainly in continence, carefully itself
distinguished from abstention--for it was a cardinal maxim of the
Demetrian faith--as old, indeed, as the days of Aristotle--that human
happiness could but be attained by conditions that permitted the due
exercise of _all_ human functions, each according to its laws. Science
therefore came to the rescue of human happiness by determining the laws
of human functions; and art completed its work by creating an
environment which to the highest degree possible enabled every man and
woman to exercise all their functions with wisdom, moderation, and
delight, to the best happiness of all and the ultimate advancement of
the race.
And although the future of the race was forever present to the priests
of the cult, yet were men and women not expected to make any great
sacrifice beyond the immediate generations that succeeded them, the
institution of marriage being carefully maintained because it kept alive
the care of the parent, each for its own offspring, thus providing for
every generation the protection furnished by paternal pride and maternal
solicitude.
The purity of the domestic hearth, its reverential care of offspring,
the lifting of motherhood out of the irreligion of caprice into the
religion of sacrifice; the exercise in all these matters of the highest,
because the most difficult, of all the virtues--moderation--these are
the special concerns of the Demetrian cult.