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