become associated with sexual phenomena. In truth, there is not a stage
of any importance in the sexual life of men and women where the same
association does not transpire. There is, for example, the important
phenomenon of puberty--important from both a physiological and
sociological point of view. Pubic ceremonies of some kind are found all
over the world, and in all forms, from those current amongst savages up
to the contemporary practice of confirmation in the Christian Church. At
all stages the period of puberty is the time of initiation. With
uncivilised peoples a very general rule is the separation of the sexes,
with fasting. Mr. Stanley Hall in his elaborate work on _Adolescence_
has dealt very exhaustively with these customs, with which we shall be
more closely concerned when we come to deal with the subject of
conversion. At present it is only necessary to point out that the
governing idea is that at puberty the boy and the girl are brought into
special relationship with the tribal spirits, the proof of which
relationship lies in the sexual functions originated.

With boys, once puberty is attained, the sexual development is orderly
and unobtrusive. In the case of girls certain recurring phenomena make
the essential fact of sex much more impressive to the primitive mind,
with far-reaching sociological consequences. "Ignorance of the nature of
female periodicity," says A. E. Crawley, "leads man to consider it as
the flow of blood from a wound, naturally, or more usually,
supernaturally produced."[69] In Siam an evil spirit is believed to be
the cause of the wound. Amongst the Chiriguanas the girl fasts, while
women beat the floor with sticks in order to drive away "the snake that
has wounded the girl." Similar beliefs are found very generally among
people in a low stage of culture, and customs and beliefs still
surviving among people more advanced point to the conclusion that
convictions of the same kind were once fairly universal. It is this
function, combined with the function of childbirth, that brings woman
into close contact with the supernatural world, makes her an object of
fear and wonder to primitive man, accounts for a number of the customs
and beliefs associated with her, and finally helps to determine her
social position. It is because her periodicity is taken as evidence of
her communion with spiritual forces that special precautions have to be
taken concerning her. She becomes spiritually contagi