two pallid moons.

Grant was shaking with laughter as he watched him.

"True," he said, "there is no inconsistency, my son of the red spear.
But there is a great deal of incompatibility of temper. I am very far
from being certain that the Zulu is on an inferior evolutionary stage,
whatever the blazes that may mean. I do not think there is anything
stupid or ignorant about howling at the moon or being afraid of devils
in the dark. It seems to me perfectly philosophical. Why should a man
be thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril of
existence itself? Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the
idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?"

Professor Chadd slit open a page of the magazine with a bone paper-knife
and the intent reverence of the bibliophile.

"Beyond all question," he said, "it is a tenable hypothesis. I allude
to the hypothesis which I understand you to entertain, that our
civilization is not or may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if I
apprehend you), is or may be a retrogression from states identical with
or analogous to the state of the Zulus. Moreover, I shall be inclined
to concede that such a proposition is of the nature, in some degree at
least, of a primary proposition, and cannot adequately be argued, in the
same sense, I mean, that the primary proposition of pessimism, or the
primary proposition of the non-existence of matter, cannot adequately
be argued. But I do not conceive you to be under the impression that you
have demonstrated anything more concerning this proposition than that it
is tenable, which, after all, amounts to little more than the statement
that it is not a contradiction in terms."

Basil threw a book at his head and took out a cigar.

"You don't understand," he said, "but, on the other hand, as a
compensation, you don't mind smoking. Why you don't object to that
disgustingly barbaric rite I can't think. I can only say that I began it
when I began to be a Zulu, about the age of ten. What I maintained was
that although you knew more about Zulus in the sense that you are a
scientist, I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage. For
instance, your theory of the origin of language, something about its
having come from the formulated secret language of some individual
creature, though you knocked me silly with facts and scholarship in its
favour, still does not convince me, because I have a feeling that that
is not the way