eren't civilised people at all, but
utter barbarians. Now, don't you think--don't you admit, yourself, it's
a wee bit unreasonable, or at any rate impolite, of you?"

Bertram drew back with a really pained expression on his handsome
features. "O Mrs. Monteith!" he cried, "Frida, I'm so sorry if I've
seemed rude to you! It's all the same thing--pure human inadvertence;
inability to throw myself into so unfamiliar an attitude. I forget every
minute that YOU do not recognise the essential identity of your
own taboos and poojahs and fetiches with the similar and often
indistinguishable taboos and poojahs and fetiches of savages generally.
They all come from the same source, and often retain to the end, as in
your temple superstitions and your marriage superstitions, the original
features of their savage beginnings. And as to your being comparatively
civilised, I grant you that at once; only it doesn't necessarily make
you one bit more rational--certainly not one bit more humane, or moral,
or brotherly in your actions."

"I don't understand you," Frida cried, astonished. "But there! I often
don't understand you; only I know, when you've explained things, I shall
see how right you are."

Bertram smiled a quiet smile.

"You're certainly an apt pupil," he said, with brotherly gentleness,
pulling a flower as he went and slipping it softly into her bosom. "Why,
what I mean's just this. Civilisation, after all, in the stage in which
you possess it, is only the ability to live together in great organised
communities. It doesn't necessarily imply any higher moral status or any
greater rationality than those of the savage. All it implies is greater
cohesion, more unity, higher division of functions. But the functions
themselves, like those of your priests and judges and soldiers, may be
as barbaric and cruel, or as irrational and unintelligent, as any that
exist among the most primitive peoples. Advance in civilisation doesn't
necessarily involve either advance in real knowledge of one's relations
to the universe, or advance in moral goodness and personal culture.
Some highly civilised nations of historic times have been more cruel and
barbarous than many quite uncultivated ones. For example, the Romans,
at the height of their civilisation, went mad drunk with blood at their
gladiatorial shows; the Athenians of the age of Pericles and Socrates
offered up human sacrifices at the Thargelia, like the veriest savages;
and the Phoenic