Woman is the bearer of the sex-element in this world. In man sex is more differentiated and specialized: in woman it is diffused through the whole tissue of the organism, through the whole structure of the soul. In man sexual attraction demands more immediate satisfaction than in woman, but he is more independent of sex than is woman: he is a less sexual being. Man is greatly dependent, sexually, on woman: he has a weakness for the other sex, a radical weakness which may be the source of all his weaknesses.

And for man his weakness for woman is something degrading. By himself man is less sexual than woman. In woman there is nothing which is not sexual: she is sexual in her strength and in her weakness, sexual even in the weakness of her sexual desire. Woman is the cosmic universal bearer of the sexual element, of the elemental in sex. The element of sex natural to the genus is a feminine element. The power of the race (genus) over man is realized through woman. This power entered the world of nature and took control of it through the first mother, Eve. Eve is the natural-racial womanliness.

The creation of Eve brought the old Adam under the power of race-sexuality, fettered him to the natural world, to "this world." "The world" caught Adam and rules him through sex: Adam is fettered to natural necessity at the point of sexuality. Eve’s power over Adam became the power of all nature over him. Man, bound to the birth-giving Eve, became the slave of nature, the slave of a womanliness separate and differentiated from his androgynous image and likeness of God. The attitude of the male man towards womanliness is the root of his attitude towards nature. He can escape neither womanliness nor nature—there is nowhere where he can get away. Deliverance is possible only through the new Adam, who comes into the world through a new womanliness. The sinful power of female nature over the fallen man began with the woman, Eve: with the Virgin Mary began man’s liberation from that natural power. In the Virgin Mary the earth takes into its house the Logos, the new Adam, the Absolute Man.

And if the fall and enslavement of the old Adam, the old man, confirmed in the world the rule of nature-racial birth through the sexual act, the new Adam, the new man, could be born only of a virgin, who conceived by the Spirit.

The new birth from a virgin was a mystical conquest of the old birth in the natural order the “this world.” Eternal womanliness, as the basis of a new world, liberated from sin, shall not give birth as the result of the sexual act of man. Eternal womanliness bears within itself release from natural necessity, since natural necessity rules over man only through the birth-giving sex. The religion of redemption denies both race and the sexual act and set up the cult of eternal womanliness, the cult of a Virgin giving birth only through the Spirit.

~ Nicolas Berdyaev, from The Meaning of the Creative Act