Many of the details of these initiation ceremonies have, directly or indirectly, reference to the emotional attitude of the children towards their parents with which we have been concerned in the earlier chapters of this book[77]. A general effort to repress the mental attitude which the novice has at an earlier period adopted towards his parents is to be observed in the--real or feigned--amnesia[78] which so often occurs after the initiation, the newly initiated sometimes failing to recognise even their nearest relatives and being thus compelled to start life with them on a new footing. The same tendency to break loose from the old attitude is manifested in the actual separation from the parents which seems always to take place at the period of seclusion or at or before the ceremony of re-birth, the affectionate farewell which is taken before such separation (especially of the son from the mother) and in many of the symbolic prohibitions of the period of seclusion, such as that in virtue of which girls must, during their seclusion, neither touch the earth (a universal mother symbol), nor be exposed to the sun (an almost equally universal father symbol)[79]. [Sidenote: The attitude of the initiators towards the initiated] In the cruel rites which are so often inflicted on the novices by the elder members of the community it is possible to see a manifestation of that fear and hatred which fathers often feel towards their sons and which mothers often feel towards their daughters--feelings which often correspond in nature and intensity to the equivalent emotions in the children themselves (_Cp._ below Ch. XIV); the pretended killing or death of the novice being frequently of the nature of a punishment on the talion principle for the thoughts of parricide or matricide which the children may themselves have entertained towards their parents. Before initiation youths are often not allowed to carry arms, probably because of the fear that they may be tempted to hurt or kill the father; sometimes, however, before they can be admitted to the full privileges of maturity, they must have killed a man--in order, probably, to work off their hostile feelings on some third person who may serve as a substitute for the father who was the original object of these feelings.