e seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the
occurrence of this supremely important event--even on the physical
side--still remains profound. Pregnancy, even for us, the critical and
unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the
children of more primitive ages, a mystery. Conception itself is a mystery
for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways
apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[204] The pregnant
woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up
in a place apart.[205] Her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme
potency; even in some parts of Europe to-day, as in the Walloon districts
of Belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is
dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[206] The mystery
has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is
bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early
days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the
mother. On her manner of life--eating, drinking, sleeping, and
thinking--what greatness may not hang?"[207] Schopenhauer observed, with
misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than
the state of pregnancy, while Weininger exclaims: "Never yet has a
pregnant woman given expression in any form--poem, memoirs, or
gynaecological monograph--to her sensations or feelings."[208] Yet when we
contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial
all such considerations become! We are here lifted into a region where our
highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a
process in which the operations of Nature become one with the divine task
of Creation.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] See, e.g., Groos, _AEsthetische Genuss_, p. 249. "We have to admit,"
Groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and
foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. It is seemingly due to
the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during
courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. In man
'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two
needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the
emotion is not quite perfect. Heine's expression, 'With my mantle I
protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic."
Sometimes th