exist in forms at all as near our own as a buttercup is to a human
being, or a sea-anemone is to a cat or a pine-tree?"

"Well, it doesn't look likely, now you come to put it so," Frida
answered thoughtfully: for, though English, she was not wholly
impervious to logic.

"Likely? Of course not," Bertram went on with conviction.
"Planetoscopists are agreed upon it. And above all, why should one
suppose the living organisms or their analogues, if any such there
are, in the planets or fixed stars, possess any such purely human
and animal faculties as thought and reason? That's just like our
common human narrowness. If we were oaks, I suppose, we would only
interest ourselves in the question whether acorns existed in Mars
and Saturn." He paused a moment; then he added in an afterthought:
"No, Frida; you may be sure all human beings, you and I alike, and
thousands of others a great deal more different, are essential
products of this one wee planet, and of particular times and
circumstances in its history. We differ only as birth and
circumstances have made us differ. There IS a mystery about who I
am, and where I come from; I won't deny it: but it isn't by any
means so strange or so marvellous a mystery as you seem to imagine.
One of your own old sacred books says (as I remember hearing in the
joss-house I attended one day in London), 'God hath made of one
blood all the nations of the earth.' If for GOD in that passage we
substitute COMMON DESCENT, it's perfectly true. We are all of one
race; and I confess, when I talk to you, every day I feel our unity
more and more profoundly." He bent over on the bench and took her
tremulous hand. "Frida," he said, looking deep into her speaking
dark eyes, "don't you yourself feel it?"