CHAPTER VII 



PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE ON THE SUBJECT 

 OF CONCEPTION. CONCLUSION 



The foregoing considerations lead to the conclusion that 

 paternity was not understood by early man, and even yet 

 the cause of birth is more or less of a mystery to some 

 peoples in the lower culture. Reasons for this ignorance : 

 among others the disproportion of births to acts of sexual 

 union. Every woman in the lower stages of culture is 

 accustomed to intercourse. Premature intercourse very 

 widespread. It is not only unproductive, but it impairs 

 fertility. Even where the true cause of birth has been 

 discovered it has been nowhere held invariable and indis- 

 pensable. In Australia and a few other countries it is 

 still unrecognised. Summary of the argument. 



THE beliefs the practices and the institutions passed in 

 review in previous chapters point beyond mistake to 

 the conclusion that actual paternity is, speaking gene- 

 rally, of small account in the lower culture. If paternity 

 carried the value, the social and legal importance, 

 assigned to it among the highly civilised peoples of 

 Europe and America, it is inconceivable that husbands 

 would as a more or less ordinary incident of social life 

 sanction or submit to the bestowal by their wives on 

 other men of the favours which ought to be reserved 

 to themselves alone. Motherright might indeed be 

 conceivable as the social condition of our earliest 

 human progenitors ; but it would have been speedily 



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