Note 134.4 — Chapter V · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.

The ancient Persians held a curious belief anent Saoshyant, the future hero who was to come from the region of the dawn to free the world from death and corruption before the Resurrection. Three drops of the seed of Zoroaster, we are told in the sacred books, fell from him. What was bright and strong in it has been preserved by the agency of angels. At the appointed time a maid, bathing in the lake Kâsava, will come in contact with it, and will conceive by it and bring forth the Saviour. Indeed, the orthodox view appears to be that she will triple the miracle, by thrice conceiving in this way and bringing forth three sons, of whom the two elder will be forerunners of the third. He will come with authority to reduce all peoples under the yoke of the true religion; and the general Resurrection will follow his conquest of the world.134.4 The Middle Ages, which believed that Antichrist, in rivalry with Christ, would declare himself born of a virgin,134.5 would have seen nothing impossible in the kind of birth foretold for Saoshyant. Averrhoes, in fact, put forward as having actually occurred a case of a woman who became pregnant in a bath, by attracting the semen of a man bathing near. The admirable common sense of Sir Thomas Browne rejected this, with many more absurdities current in his day.135.1 But he failed to convince those who stood by tradition. A singular little book, refuting “Doctor Brown’s Vulgar Errors, the Lord Bacon’s Natural History and Doctor Harvey’s Book De Generatione, Comenius and Others,” was published in the year 1652. The writer, conscious no doubt of powers commensurate to the task he had undertaken, too modestly concealed his name, and has left the world baffled at the mystery of his identity. Admitting Averrhoes’ story to be a strange one, he reproves Sir Thomas Browne’s incredulity by saying: “Hee that denyeth a matter of fact, must bring good witnesses to the contrary, or else shew the impossibility of the fact.” This, he declares, had not been done. Then, after arguing in favour of the “fact,” he goes on to uphold the belief in Incubi, “for to deny this, saith Augustine, doth argue impudence;” and moreover it is “to accuse the ancient Doctors of the Church and the Ecclesiastick Histories of falshood,” and “to contradict the common consent of all Nations, and experience.”135.2 This is crushing, though assuredly an appeal to “the ancient Doctors of the Church” has always been successful in putting to shame the wisdom of the world; and Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne and the rest will for ever lie under the stigma of impudence, impiety and egregious folly.