160 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



integration, or its opposite, follows inevitably upon causes 

 which can be analysed into physical elements, racial, 

 geographical, or economic, and that the element of 

 deliberate purpose imagined to exist in politicians is the 

 final result of the thrust of the energy behind them which 

 they voice, it seems hardly likely that such action can be 

 attributed to the prehistoric tribes of Australia. As I 

 happen to know them I am far from underrating their 

 intelligence, which, taking into consideration their con- 

 ditions, is far higher than is generally supposed ; but to 

 believe them capable of performing such a moral and 

 political feat as Frazer suggests is to outrage all prob- 

 ability. Communities are certainly not like crystals, 

 and the importation of such a simile is in the nature of a 

 rhetorical argument, which assumes in an opponent opinions 

 to which he would never subscribe. But quite indepen- 

 dent of any conclusion which, as its basis, takes for granted 

 the facts of division, and then argues that it must have 

 been deliberate, there is the ignored hypothesis that 

 division never took place at all, but that what did occur 

 was aggregation or integration. Since I put aside as 

 untenable on the face of it, in view of our knowledge of 

 the working of the human brain shown in the descent 

 and progression of abstract notions, the theory that 

 incest, as horrible or even undesirable on some real or 

 fancied ground of eugenics or innate morality, can have 

 anything to do with such phenomena, and that therefore 

 division is much more than exceedingly unlikely, we are 

 forced to consider whether, on a totally opposite hypothesis, 

 political integration did not take place for reasons which 

 may be discovered, or at least suggested, by considering 

 facts it explains, or by parallels in the history of our own 

 or other countries. Such facts and such parallels are 



