PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 31 



answer is, that it has been, and still is, thought 

 possible. In other words, the traditions of past 

 miracles are organically connected in the popular mind 

 with practices expressly calculated to produce re- 

 petitions of those miracles. It will be observed, how- 

 ever, that parthenogenesis is often spoken of in the 

 stories ; whereas, for the most part, the object of the 

 practices I am about to describe is to promote concep- 

 tion by women who are in the habit of having sexual 

 intercourse. The distinction is often immaterial, In 

 the stage of civilisation, whether among a barbarous 

 or savage people, or among the more backward classes 

 of modern Europe, wherein the stories are told and the 

 practices obtain, medicine and surgery are not as yet 

 separated from magic, nor is there any clear boundary 

 in the mind between the natural and the supernatural. 

 We cannot, therefore, speak positively as to the mean- 

 ing and intention of all the practices. But it is clear 

 that a large number of them, as well as of the stories, 

 imply, if we are not told in so many words, that the 

 origin of the child afterwards born is not the semen 

 received in the act of coition, but the drug or the 

 magical potency of the ceremony or the incantation. 

 In the stories, especially those that have reached us 

 from a comparatively developed civilisation, this is 

 often emphasised by the allegation of the mother's 

 virginity. Among savages and very commonly among 

 peoples whose civilisation is low, though they may be 

 above the status of actual savagery, virginity is of 

 little account, and maidenhood, except of mere infants, 

 is practically unknown. But the fact that the failure 

 of the ordinary means of reproduction in these circum- 

 stances leads to the trial of other methods presupposes 



