Note 406.1 — Chapter XV · THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE BLOOD-TIE—CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE LIFE-TOKEN.

Readers who have followed the facts and arguments in the earlier chapters of this volume set forth will have no difficulty in arriving at the true interpretation of the usage. It is founded on the belief that the child is a part of the parent; and, just as even after apparent severance of hair or nails from the remainder of the body, the bulk is affected by anything which happens to the severed portion, so as well after as before the infant has been severed from the parent’s body, and in our eyes has acquired a distinct existence, he will be affected by whatever operates on the parent; and, conversely, the parent will feel whatever happens to him, as in some parts of England a mother absent for a while from her child is believed to feel her breasts painful when he cries.406.1 The separation is only in appearance; the connection is preserved in spite of it. Hence whatever the parent ought for the child’s sake to do or avoid before severance it is equally necessary to do or avoid after. Gradually, however, as the infant grows and strengthens he becomes able to digest the same food as his parents, and to take part in the ordinary avocations of their lives. Precaution then may be relaxed, and ultimately remitted altogether. But the observance is attended with inconveniences. The parents’ labour is required in hunting, in agriculture, in warfare, in all the various ways in which the life of a household or of a tribe is maintained. The custom therefore is liable to gradual diminution. It is worn away slowly, and compressed into a shorter period. With the tardy and half-unconscious recognition of natural laws it loses bit by bit its importance, until it fades away into little more than a ceremony. In spite of decay, however, and indeed in consequence of it, it may acquire another significance; and among a few tribes, as, for example, the Mundurucus, it becomes “the legal form by which the father recognises the child as his.” This result would have the effect of renewing its vitality. The change of intention is rare, and where the custom is found in its fullest development it is unknown. Accordingly, I venture with all respect to think it is a mistake to see in this legal form the origin of the Couvade, as Dr. Tylor has done, plausible though the explanation seems. Its origin really lies deeper; it lies in the widely pervasive conception of life I have endeavoured to exhibit in these chapters on the Life-token.