PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE 281 



most if not all languages means producer, procreatrix, 

 it is probable that in very many the word for father 

 means in its origin no more than elder man, 1 or 

 provider, and is quite unconnected with the notion of 

 begetting. But philological considerations cannot here 

 be discussed. Enough has been said to prove that 

 the physiological process of conception is not recog- 

 .nised even yet by various Australian tribes, and to 

 render it doubtful how far the relation of father and 

 child is understood by peoples in other parts of the 

 world. 



The argument which I have endeavoured to put 

 before the reader may now be recapitulated. 



We set out to investigate stories found in every 

 part of the world attributing the birth of a hero to 

 supernatural impregnation of his mother. These 

 narratives are not merely ebullitions of the fancy, 

 tales told for the pleasure of telling. Many of them 

 are soberly credited by nations in various stages of 

 civilisation. They frequently form part of the sacred 

 store of religious tradition, and the main incident has 

 been taken up into Christianity. Turning to practical 

 superstitions we found means for producing children, 

 analogous and even identical with those described 

 in the stories, actually in use as widely as the stories 

 themselves. We found, moreover, a number of pre- 

 cautions against such impregnation, as well as similar 

 beliefs with regard to the impregnation of certain of 

 the lower animals. 



Among the stories many either explicitly or im- 

 plicitly identify the hero thus supernaturally born as a 

 new birth of a dead man or some other animal. The 



1 As among the Yakut (Sumner, /. A. I. xxxi. 92 ; cf. 80). 



