ring to this
conclusion. One is the condition of affairs in a remote matriarchial
period, when descent was reckoned always through the maternal line, and
the fatherhood in each generation was obscure or unknown or commonly
left out of account; and the other is the fact--so strange and difficult
for us to realize--that among some very primitive peoples, like the
Australian aborigines, the necessity for a woman to have intercourse
with a male, in order to bring about conception and child-birth, was
actually not recognized. Scientific observation had not always got as
far as that, and the matter was still under the domain of Magic! (1)
A Virgin-Mother was therefore a quite imaginable (not to say
'conceivable') thing; and indeed a very beautiful and fascinating thing,
combining in one image the potent magic of two very wonderful words.
It does not seem impossible that considerations of this kind led to the
adoption of the doctrine or legend of the virgin-mother and the heavenly
father among so many races and in so many localities--even without any
contagion of tradition among them.

(1) Probably the long period (nine months) elapsing between
cohabitation and childbirth confused early speculation on the subject.
Then clearly cohabitation was NOT always followed by childbirth. And,
more important still, the number of virgins of a mature age in primitive
societies was so very minute that the fact of their childlessness
attracted no attention--whereas in OUR societies the sterility of the
whole class is patent to everyone.

Anyhow, and as a matter of fact, the world-wide dissemination of the
legend is most remarkable. Zeus, Father of the gods, visited Semele, it
will be remembered, in the form of a thunderstorm; and she gave birth to
the great saviour and deliverer Dionysus. Zeus, again, impregnated Danae
in a shower of gold; and the child was Perseus, who slew the Gorgons
(the powers of darkness) and saved Andromeda (the human soul (1)).
Devaki, the radiant Virgin of the Hindu mythology, became the wife
of the god Vishnu and bore Krishna, the beloved hero and prototype of
Christ. With regard to Buddha St. Jerome says (2) "It is handed down
among the Gymnosophists, of India that Buddha, the founder of their
system, was brought forth by a Virgin from her side." The Egyptian Isis,
with the child Horus, on her knee, was honored centuries before the
Christian era, and worshiped under the names of "Our Lady," "Queen of
Heaven,"