TRANSFORMATION 191 



in human blood, must also be understood in the 

 parallel cases where fishes and fruit are eaten and 

 result in the production of children. Here then we 

 have the real meaning of many of the tales and super- 

 stitions we have been considering. At their root lies 

 the belief in Transformation. Flowers fruit and other 

 vegetables eggs fishes spiders worms and even 

 stones are all capable of becoming human beings. 

 They only await absorption in the shape of food or in 

 some other appropriate manner into the body of a 

 woman to enable the metamorphosis to be accom- 

 plished. It would be going too far to attribute this 

 meaning to every story of supernatural birth and to 

 all the practices detailed in the last chapter. Where 

 drugs and other compounds are used, where water or 

 a sunbeam is the fructifying power, credit for the birth 

 is given to a vague divine or magical virtue. It 

 matters little, however, whether such a belief was or 

 was not primary. Enough evidence remains that the 

 belief in Transformation was equally original. It is 

 intimately bound up with the savage theory of the 

 universe. In that theory no strict line of cleavage 

 runs across Nature. All things may change their 

 shape, some at will (for they are all endowed with 

 personality and will), others on the fulfilment of certain 

 conditions, whereof death as applying to all animal 

 and vegetable life is perhaps the most usual. Our 

 farther illustrations of the doctrine of Transformation 

 are intended to emphasise the widespread distribution 

 in the lower culture of the belief that dead men and 

 women may reappear in human form and live a new 

 human life. The dead are not lost : they have only 

 departed for awhile, to come back by means of birth 



