254 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



or even vegetables ; and conversely that a human 

 being may after death take form by birth as one 

 of the lower animals, or may grow up as a plant 

 or tree. 



4. The birth of a previously existing creature may 

 result from the action of that creature, without 

 procreation by masculine aid. 



Put in another way these beliefs may be summed 

 up by saying that in the contemplation of peoples 

 in the lower culture birth is a phenomenon independent 

 of the union of the sexes. By this it is not meant 

 that at the present time everywhere among such 

 peoples physiological knowledge is still in so backward 

 a condition that the co-operation of the sexes is 

 regarded as a matter of indifference in the production 

 of children. That would be to contradict the facts. 

 Today the vast majority of savage and barbarous 

 nations are aware that sexual union is ordinarily 

 a condition precedent to birth. Even among such 

 peoples, however, exceptions are admitted without 

 difficulty ; and there are peoples like certain Australian 

 tribes who do not yet understand it. Their state 

 of ignorance was probably once the state of other 

 races and indeed of all humanity. The history of 

 mankind so far as we can trace it, whether in written 

 records or by the less direct but not less certain 

 methods of scientific investigation, exhibits the slow 

 and gradual encroachments of knowledge on the 

 confines of almost boundless ignorance. That such 

 ignorance should once have touched the hidden springs 

 of life itself is no more incredible than that it should 

 have extended to the cause of death. There are 

 plenty of races who even yet attribute a death by 



