This primitive theory of the origin of menstruation probably brings before us in its earliest shape the special and intimate bond which has ever been held to connect women, by virtue of the menstrual process, with the natural or supernatural powers of the world.  Everywhere menstruating women are supposed to be possessed by spirits and charged with mysterious forces.  It is at this point that a serious misconception, due to ignorance of primitive religious ideas, has constantly intruded.  It is stated that the menstruating woman is “unclean” and possessed by an evil spirit.  As a matter of fact, however, the savage rarely discriminates between bad and good spirits.  Every spirit may have either a beneficial or malignant influence.  An interesting instance of this is given in Colenso’s Maori Lexicon as illustrated by the meaning of the Maori word atua.

The importance of recognizing the special sense in which the word “unclean” is used in this connection was clearly pointed out by Robertson Smith in the case of the Semites.  “The Hebrew word tame (unclean),” he remarked, “is not the ordinary word for things physically foul; it is a ritual term, and corresponds exactly to the idea of taboo.  The ideas ‘unclean’ and ‘holy’ seem to us to stand in polar opposition to one another, but it was not so with the Semites.  Among the later Jews the Holy Books ‘defiled the hands’ of the reader as contact with an impure thing did; among Lucian’s Syrians the dove was so holy that he who touched it was unclean for a day; and the taboo attaching to the swine was explained by some, and beyond question correctly explained, in the same way.  Among the heathen Semites,[362] therefore, unclean animals, which it was pollution to eat, were simply holy animals.”  Robertson Smith here made no reference to menstruation, but he exactly described the primitive attitude toward menstruation.  Wellhausen, however, dealing with the early Arabians, expressly mentions that in pre-Islamic days, “clean” and “unclean” were used solely with reference to women in and out of the menstrual state.  At a later date Frazer developed this aspect of the conception of taboo, and showed how it occurs among savage races generally.  He pointed out that the conceptions of holiness and pollution not having yet been differentiated, women at childbirth and during menstruation are on the same level as divine kings, chiefs, and priests, and must observe the same rules of ceremonial purity.  To seclude such persons from the rest of the world, so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall not spread, is the object of the taboo, which Frazer compares to “an electrical insulator to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting, harm by contact with the outer world.”  After describing the phenomena (especially the prohibition to touch the ground or see the sun) found among various races, Frazer concludes:  “The object of