But both views alike are but the
extremes of the same primitive conception; and the gradual evolution from
one extreme of the magical doctrine to the other was inevitable.
In an advanced civilization, as we see, these ideas having their ultimate
basis on the old story of the serpent, and on a special and mysterious
connection between the menstruating woman and the occult forces of magic,
tend to die out. The separation of the sexes they involve becomes
unnecessary. Living in greater community with men, women are seen to
possess something, it may well be, but less than before, of the
angel-devil of early theories. Menstruation is no longer a monstrific
state requiring spiritual taboo, but a normal physiological process, not
without its psychic influences on the woman herself and on those who live
with her.
FOOTNOTES:
[353] Several recent works, however, notably Frazer's _Golden Bough_ and
Crawley's _Mystic Rose_, throw light directly or indirectly on this
question.
[354] Robertson Smith points out that since snakes are the last noxious
animals which man is able to exterminate, they are the last to be
associated with demons. They were ultimately the only animals directly and
constantly associated with the Arabian _jinn_, or demon, and the serpent
of Eden was a demon, and not a temporary disguise of Satan (_Religion of
Semites_, pp. 129 and 442). Perhaps it was, in part, because the snake was
thus the last embodiment of demonic power that women were associated with
it, women being always connected with the most ancient religious beliefs.
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