246 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



pause to prepare his tobacco-quid, or if a woman who 

 has borne children to give suck to the child at her 

 breast. 1 Similar material is believed by the peoples 

 of Togoland in West Africa to be required for the 

 production of new human beings. The underjaws of 

 slaughtered enemies are consequently in Kunya 

 brought by the Guan and dedicated to the fetish 

 Kombi, an undergod of the great goddess Sia, by 

 whom they are applied to this purpose. 2 



I hope that I have now made it plain that stories of 

 metamorphosis, such as those we have found in the 

 examination of the theme of Supernatural Birth, are 

 founded upon the serious belief that at death men are 

 not annihilated, but pass into fresh forms, sometimes 

 appearing as plants and trees, sometimes as animals of 

 the lower creation, and sometimes as men and women 

 born again into their own kindred or among strangers. 

 This is a creed held so widely that though subject 

 perhaps to varying stress according to the degree and 

 direction of the evolving civilisation it may yet be 

 regarded as practically universal. 



The relation between Transformation and Trans- 

 migration calls for some remark. In the examples I 

 have set before the reader I have treated them as for 

 our purpose equivalent. In many cases it is probable 

 that our evidence is inaccurate, and that what the 

 observer set down as metempsychosis really presented 

 itself under a simpler conception to the people of whom 

 he is speaking. Personality as conceived by savage 

 thought is not bound to one definite, individual, 

 relatively invariable form. The form may change, yet 

 the personality remain. Tales soberly credited in all 

 1 Bradley-Birt, 285. 2 Globus, Ixxxix. 12. 



