primitive mind, and are used as the basis of
explanation of facts in the two remaining groups, namely, those facts
which, though common, are apt to escape the attention owing to their
inconspicuousness, and those which are of infrequent occurrence. When
the mind takes the trouble to observe a fact of the third group, or
is confronted by one of the fourth, it feels a sense of surprise. Such
facts wear an air of strangeness, and the mind can only rest satisfied
when it has shown them to itself as in some way cases of the second
group of facts, or, at least, brought them into relation therewith. That
is what the mind--at least the primitive mind--means by "explanation".
"It is obvious," we say, commencing an argument, thereby proclaiming
our intention to bring that which is at first in the category of the
not-obvious, into the category of the obvious. It remains for a more
sceptical type of mind--a later product of human evolution--to question
obvious facts, to explain them, either, as in science, by establishing
deeper and more far-reaching correlations between phenomena, or in
philosophy, by seeking for the source and purpose of such facts, or,
better still, by both methods.

Of the second class of facts--those common and obvious facts which
the primitive mind accepts at face-value and uses as the basis of
its explanations of such things as seem to it to stand in need of
explanation--one could hardly find a better instance than sex. The
universality of sex, and the intermittent character of its phenomena,
are both responsible for this. Indeed, the attitude of mind I have
referred to is not restricted to primitive man; how many people
to-day, for instance, just accept sex as a fact, pleasant or unpleasant
according to their predilections, never querying, or feeling the need
to query, its why and wherefore? It is by no means surprising, that when
man first felt the need of satisfying himself as to the origin of the
universe, he should have done so by a theory founded on what he knew
of his own generation. Indeed, as I queried on a former occasion, what
other source of explanation was open to him? Of what other form of
origin was he aware? Seeing Nature springing to life at the kiss of the
sun, what more natural than that she should be regarded as the divine
Mother, who bears fruits because impregnated by the Sun-God? It is
not difficult to understand, therefore, why primitive man paid divine
honours to the organs of sex in