s are from their
bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an
infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the beliefs of
mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that
the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed
burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated
the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository
of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of
life and for the maintenance of life.

At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and
other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For
the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea
that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.

Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New
Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of
animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological role of
fertilization.[46]

There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at
a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to
believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in
animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of
cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was
fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were
devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of
generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier
than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation
of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely
more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing
power of water.

I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that
animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought
within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was
endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,
so the semen fertilized the female. Water was necessary for the
maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of
drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by
water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came