t or other), and that the child will be the
_nunu_ (something like an echo) of that thing or of a dead person (this
is not the transition of a soul--the child takes the place of the dead
person). In Mota there is a similar belief.[53] The Central Australians,
it is said, think that the birth of a child is due to the entrance of a
spirit into the body of a woman[54]--every child is thus the
reincarnation of some ancient person (an "ancestor"), and the particular
person is identified by the sacred object (stone or tree, or other
object) near which the woman is when she first becomes aware of the
child within her; every such object (and there are many of them near any
village) represents some spirit whose name is known to the old men of
the tribe, and this name is given the child.[55]

+35+. Similar theories of birth are found among the Eskimo[56] and the
Khonds,[57] in Melanesia,[58] in West Africa,[59] and elsewhere.[60]
Such views thus appear to have been widely diffused, and are in fact a
natural product of early biological science. They embody the earliest
known form of the doctrine of reincarnation, which is so important in
the Buddhistic dogma.[61] With it must be connected the fact that among
many peoples (savage, half-civilized, and civilized) birth was
intimately connected with supernatural beings, whence the origin of
numerous usages: the precautions taken to guard the woman before
delivery, the lustrations after the birth, the couvade, the dread of
menstrual and seminal discharges, and further, customs relating to the
arrival of boys and girls at the age of puberty.

+36+. At a later stage of culture the creation of the soul was
distinguished from that of the body, and was generally regarded as a
special act of the deity: the Hebrews conceived that the body was
fashioned out of dust, and that the breath of life was breathed into it
by God, so that man became a "living soul"[62]; Plato at one time[63]
thought that the soul of the world was created by God, out of certain
elements, before the body, and was made prior to it in origin and
excellence so that it should be its ruler, and that afterwards he placed
separate souls in the various separate bodies; the immortal gods, says
Cicero, have placed souls (_animos_) in human bodies, and the human soul
has been plucked (_decerptus_) from the divine mind.[64]

+37+. In the early Christian centuries the question of how the soul came
into the body was an intensely pra