This hypothesis that Totemism is derived from the fancies of women concerning the causes of their own pregnancy suggests several adverse considerations. In the first place, it is to me incredible that the Arunta are really ignorant of paternity; young women and children perhaps may be, but not the seniors. My reasons for thinking so are set out at length in the _J.R.A.I._, 1819 (p. 146), namely, that the facts of childbirth are too interesting to be overlooked or misconstrued, and are well within the grasp of savage understanding; that those who think the Arunta capable of such stupidity have attended too exclusively to particular incidents of pregnancy, especially the quickening, and have not considered that there is a definite series of closely connected incidents; that there is testimony, not to be lightly put aside, that the old men know the truth in the case of human beings, and that knowledge of the parallel phenomena amongst animals is shared even by the Arunta children; that it is possible for knowledge to be repressed by dogma without being extinguished; that this is an old man’s dogma, and that we must not assume that in Australia, any more than in Europe, what people are accustomed to say is good evidence of what they really believe;[525] that other tribes at the same level of culture, in South-East Australia, are so convinced of the importance of paternity that they say the child proceeds entirely from the father; that those who deny paternity show by their customs and myths that they are secretly aware of it; and, finally, that in some cases they have clear motives for maintaining the dogma and suppressing the truth.