+183+. Among many half-civilized peoples and generally in Christian communities marriage is regarded both as a religious ceremony and as a civil contract, and is controlled in the one case by the religious authorities, in the other case by the civil authorities. In Mohammedan communities marriage is simply a civil contract, but religious ceremonies are often connected with it.[337]
+184+. It is possible that early man was so impressed by the fact of life and the wonderfulness of the birth of a human being that he included this latter fact in the sphere of the supernatural, and that the taboos connected with it arose from his dread of supernatural, dangerous influence.[338] Many of the ceremonies connected with the birth of a child may be explained easily as resulting from the natural care for mother and child. Both of these are, in the modern sense of the term, sacred; and even in very early times ordinary humane feeling would seek to protect them from injury.[339]
+185+. Thus the curious custom of the couvade,[340] in which the husband, and not the wife, goes to bed on the birth of the child, may be an effort on the man's part to share in the labor of the occasion, since he has to take care of the child; or it may be primarily an economical procedure--the woman must go out to work and the man must therefore stay at home to take care of the house and the child. But probably something more than this is involved--there seems to be fear of supernatural danger. It is not necessary to suppose that the man takes the woman's place in order to attract to himself the malevolent spirits that figure on such occasions; but the belief in the intimate vital connection between father and child may induce the desire to guard the former against injury. Similar precautions are taken in regard to the mother;[341] some of these have a natural basis in her physical condition which necessitates a certain carefulness. Where such customs connected with birth prevail, departure from them is thought to be dangerous or fatal; but such a feeling exists in regard to all social customs.
+186+. The belief that the newborn child is the reincarnation of an ancestor is scientific rather than religious. In Central Australia every child is held to be the reincarnation of a spirit ancestor; a similar idea is found in North America, in Western Africa, and in Orissa.[342] In searching for the cause of birth it is not unnatural that it should be ascribed to a preëxistent being who desires to enter again into human life.[343]