“Just so. It was inevitable from the moment they accepted help from Sol. They’d have to adopt Solar science, Solar economics, ultimately the whole Solar culture. Because that would be the only pattern which would make sense to the humans who were taking the lead in reconstruction. And, since that culture was obviously successful, Cundaloa adopted it. Now it’s too late. They can never go back. They don’t even want to go back.
“It’s happened before, you know. I’ve studied the history of Sol. Back before the human race even reached the other planets of its system, there were many cultures, often radically different. But ultimately one of them, the so-called Western society, became so overwhelmingly superior technologically that.. well, no others could coexist with it. To compete, they had to adopt the very approach of the West. And when the West helped them from their backwardness, it necessarily helped them into a Western pattern. With the best intentions in the world, the West annihilated all other ways of life.”
“And you wanted to save us from that?” asked Thor-din. “I see your point, in a way. Yet I wonder if the sentimental value of old institutions was equal to some millions of lives lost, to a decade of sacrifice and suffering.”
“It was more than sentiment!” said Skorrogan tensely. “Can’t you see? Science is the future. To amount to anything, we had to become scientific. But was Solarian science the only way? Did we have to become second-rate humans to survive — or could we strike out on a new path, unhampered by the overwhelming helpfulness of a highly developed but essentially alien way of life? I thought we could. I thought we would have to.
“You see, no nonhuman race will ever make a really successful human. The basic psychologies — metabolic rates, instincts, logical patterns, everything — are too different. One race can think in terms of another’s mentality, but never too well. You know how much trouble there’s been in translating from one language to another. And all thought is in language, and language reflects the basic patterns of thought. The most precise, rigorous, highly thought out philosophy and science of one species will never quite make sense to another race. Because they are making somewhat different abstractions from the same great basic reality.
“I wanted to save us from becoming Sol’s spiritual dependents. Skang was backward. It had to change its ways. But — why change them into a wholly alien pattern? Why not, instead, force them rapidly along the natural path of evolution — our own path?”
Skorrogan shrugged. “I did,” he finished quietly. “It was a tremendous gamble, but it worked. We saved our own culture. It’s ours. Forced by necessity to become scientific on our own, we developed our own approach.
“You know the result. Dyrin’s semantics was developed — Solarian scientists would have laughed it to abortion. We developed the tetrahedral ship, which human engineers said was impossible, and now we can cross the Galaxy while an old-style craft goes from Sol to Alpha Centauri. We perfected the spacewarp, the psychosymbology of our own race — not valid for any other — the new agronomic system which preserved the freeholder who is basic to our culture — everything! In fifty years Cundaloa has been revolutionized, Skontar has revolutionized itself. There’s a universe of difference.
“And we’ve therefore saved the intangibles which are our own, the art and handicrafts and essential folkways, music, language, literature, religion. The balm of our success is not only taking us to the stars, making us one of the great powers in the Galaxy, but it is producing a renaissance in those intangibles equaling any Golden Age in history.
“And all because we remained ourselves.”