io2 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



race was doomed, and its higher intelligence utterly 

 unavailing, unless they could thus save themselves. 



The males, immature females, and virgins might 

 be ever so able to preserve their lives, yet that could 

 not secure the survival of the race, for in the end this 

 unavoidably depends exclusively on the preservation 

 of the pregnant females and embryos. And since 

 the pregnant females were prohibited by their con- 

 dition from resorting successfully to any of the modes 

 or class of actions before mentioned, there remained 

 but one line of intellectually initiated conduct possi- 

 ble for them with chance of success, and this was the 

 selection of suitable places for their own concealment. 

 Casteris paribus, and in average cases, only so long 

 as they continued in concealment might their lives 

 and those of the embryos within them remain avail- 

 able for the perpetuation of the race. 



Even if it had not been demonstrated in a pre- 

 vious chapter that the assumption that man's two- 

 footed brute ancestors used clubs and missiles from 

 the very beginning is utterly untenable; that is to 

 say, if this supposition, for the sake of argument, is 

 assumed to be true, that would not avail the brute- 

 woman in the last stages of pregnancy. For the 

 violent motions required, in the effective defensive 

 use of these weapons, would be as dangerous to the 

 lives of the females and embryos as the enemies 

 against which they were supposed to use them. 



How did the needful tendency to hide arise in the 

 natural course of events ? During the last three or 



