Goddess-Woman History

MOST of the ideas which permeate our social, religious, and political institutions of to-day arise from misconceptions of the human body. These institutions which are the outcome of civilization define laws to regulate and control the actions of human beings; and yet, the proper understanding of the growth and development of man individually was, and is, considered of secondary importance in adjusting these laws. My philosophy has been on the lines of Aristotle, "The nature of everything is best seen in its smallest portions."

The inner life of the most remarkable woman that ever lived is here presented to American readers for the first time. Ninon, or Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, as she was known, was the most beautiful woman of the seventeenth century. For seventy years she held undisputed sway over the hearts of the most distinguished men of France; queens, princes, noblemen, renowned warriors, statesmen, writers, and scientists bowing before her shrine and doing her homage, even Louis XIV, when she was eighty-five years of age, declaring that she was the marvel of his reign.

IT is our design to present a pleasing and interesting miscellany, which will serve to beguile the leisure hour, and will at the same time couple instruction with amusement. We have used but little method in the arrangement: Choosing rather to furnish the reader with a rich profusion of narratives and anecdotes, all tending to illustrate the Female Character, to display its delicacy, its sweetness, its gentle or sometimes heroic virtues, its amiable weaknesses, and strange defects-than to attempt an accurate analysis of the hardest subject man ever attempted to master, viz-WOMAN.

All primitive peoples start alike; this we see again and again in the accounts given by travellers. Man hunts and fights. Woman contrives and dreams; she is the mother of fancy, of the gods. She possesses glimpses of the second sight, and has wings to soar into the infinitude of longing and imagination. The better to count the seasons, she scans the sky. But earth has her heart as well.

One of the most popular books published in the early 20th century, and banned from time to time in several nations.

A study into Middle Age superstition. Every stone turned over in this study of socery in society, religions, christianity, history, etc.