at thing is possible), but
rationality and tenderness. We think reason the first good--to recognise
truly your own place in the universe; to hold your head up like a man,
before the face of high heaven, afraid of no ghosts or fetiches or
phantoms; to understand that wise and right and unselfish actions
are the great requisites in life, not the service of non-existent
and misshapen creatures of the human imagination. Knowledge of facts,
knowledge of nature, knowledge of the true aspects of the world we live
in,--these seem to us of first importance. After that, we prize next
reasonable and reasoning goodness; for mere rule-of-thumb goodness,
which comes by rote, and might so easily degenerate into formalism or
superstition, has no honour among us, but rather the contrary. If any
one were to say with us (after he had passed his first infancy) that he
always did such and such a thing because he had been told it was right
by his parents or teachers--still more because priests or fetich-men had
commanded it--he would be regarded, not as virtuous, but as feeble or
wicked--a sort of moral idiot, unable to distinguish rationally for
himself between good and evil. That's not the sort of conduct WE
consider right or befitting the dignity of a grown man or woman, an
ethical unit in an enlightened community. Rather is it their prime duty
to question all things, to accept no rule of conduct or morals as sure
till they have thoroughly tested it."

"Mr. Ingledew," Frida exclaimed, "do you know, when you talk like that,
I always long to ask you where on earth you come from, and who are these
your people you so often speak about. A blessed people: I would like to
learn about them; and yet I'm afraid to. You almost seem to me like a
being from another planet."

The young man laughed a quiet little laugh of deprecation, and sat down
on the garden bench beside the yellow rose-bush.

"Oh, dear, no, Frida," he said, with that transparent glance of his.
"Now, don't look so vexed; I shall call you Frida if I choose; it's your
name, and I like you. Why let this funny taboo of one's own real name
stand in the way of reasonable friendship? In many savage countries a
woman's never allowed to call her husband by his name, or even to know
it, or, for the matter of that, to see him in the daylight. In your
England, the arrangement's exactly reversed: no man's allowed to call
a woman by her real name unless she's tabooed for life to him--what you
E