Excerpt from Primitive Paternity, Vol. 1: The Myth of Supernatural Birth in Relation to the History of the Family In the year 1894, in the first volume of a study of The Legend of Perseus (3 vols., London, D. Nutt, 1894-5-6), I examined the world-wide story-incident of Supernatural Birth. Summing up the results of the inquiry, I suggested that the incident and the actual practices and superstitions corresponding to it originated in the imperfect recognition, or rather the non-recognition, in early times of the physical relation between father and child. At that time I was not in a position to carry the conjecture further. It remained, however, in my mind as a subject for investigation. During the period that has since elapsed large contributions have been made by explorers, missionaries, and scientific anthropologists to our knowledge of savage and barbarous peoples in many parts of the world. In the light of these contributions I now venture to lay before the reader the case for the conjecture I made sixteen years ago. The beliefs, customs, and institutions of tribes in a low degree of civilisation are our only clue to those of a more archaic condition no longer extant. They are evolved from them, and are in the last resort the outgrowth of ideas which underlay them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.