252 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



observer's attention would be inevitably diverted by a 

 variety of objects, most of them of far more pressing 

 import and many of them involving his own life or 

 death. The sexual passion would be gratified in- 

 stinctively without any thought of the consequences 

 and in an overwhelming proportion of cases without 

 the consequence of pregnancy at all. When that 

 consequence occurred it would not be visible for weeks 

 or months after the act which produced it. A hundred 

 other events might have taken place in the interval 

 which would be liable to be credited with the result by 

 one wholly ignorant of natural laws. If any of these 

 were once accepted as a hypothetic cause the attention 

 would be concentrated upon it, the observation would 

 speedily appear to be confirmed by other real or 

 imagined occurrences, and the partially developed 

 reason of primitive man would be caught in the snare 

 of the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc. Such a 

 speculation once germinated would be very difficult 

 to uproot from the uncultivated soil : it would interlace 

 and wind itself about the kindred hypotheses equally 

 false and equally plausible that choked the healthier 

 growths of the human intellect. Thus the correction 

 of a mistake, even where the attention was directed to 

 the subject, would be extremely tardy and gradual, 

 extending' over many generations and leaving traces 

 perhaps to the end of time. Other blunders of archaic 

 thought on matters that seem perfectly obvious to us 

 have become permanent as part of the mental equip- 

 ment of the race. In this way Animism originating 

 far back in the ages of childhood is now an enduring 

 and vital endowment of the thought the poetry and the 

 religion of the loftiest civilisation. When the notion 



