INTRODUCTION 
survival of human souls after death and their subsequent 
rebirth in an endless succession of human generations. Their 
fertile imagination peopled the wilderness—the rugged 
rocks, the desolate hills, the solitary trees, the lonely tarns— 
with the spirits of the dead awaiting reincarnation and watch¬ 
ing for women passing by in order to dart into them and be 
born again into the world. For, ignorant of the part played 
by the male in the reproduction of the species, they firmly 
believed that conception was thus effected by the entrance of 
a spirit into the mother’s womb, and that the place where 
she first felt the new burden was the spot where, at the same 
moment, the soul of the infant had entered into her. Strange 
as it may seem to us, this ignorance of physiological paternity 
must at one time have been universally prevalent among 
mankind, and though most savages are now aware of the part 
played by the father in the begetting of children, the childish 
ignorance on the subject still survives as an isolated pheno¬ 
menon in some parts of the world, as in the Trobriand 
Islands, the natives of which nevertheless stand at a much 
higher level of culture than the Australian aborigines, since 
they subsist mainly by agriculture, or rather horticulture, 
live in settled dwellings, and engage in seafaring and com¬ 
merce. But Spencer and Gillen were the first to record this 
more than Arcadian simplicity in regard to the birth of 
children among existing savages, and it is not the least 
remarkable of their discoveries for the light it throws on the 
mental condition of primeval man. The observations made 
by them in this respect among the natives of Central 
Australia were soon afterwards independently confirmed, 
or rather extended, for the aborigines of Queensland 
by the Rev. Dr. Frodsham, Bishop of that diocese. 
The scepticism with which the evidence of first-rate ob¬ 
servers on this point has been received by some critics is 
only one proof more of the utter incapacity of many civilized 
