as, also, many other curious gaps in his knowledge.  In the second group we may put those facts which are common, that is, of frequent occurrence, and are classed as obvious.  Such facts are accepted at face-value by the 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 man and woman, or to such things as he considered symbolical of them—­that is to say, to understand the extensiveness of those religions which are grouped under the term “phallicism”.  Nor, to my mind, is the symbol of sex a wholly inadequate one under which to conceive of the origin of things.  And, as I have said before, that phallicism usually appears to have degenerated into immorality of a very pronounced type is to be deplored, but an immoral view of human relations is by no means a necessary corollary to a sexual theory of the universe.[1]