Frida looked at him earnestly. “But I hope,” she said with an air of deprecation, pulling a rose to pieces, petal by petal, nervously, as she spoke, “you don't put us on quite the same level as Mohammedans. We're so much more civilised. So much better in every way. Do you know, Mr. Ingledew,” and she hesitated for a minute, “I can't bear to differ from you or blame you in anything, because you always appear to me so wise and good and kind-hearted and reasonable; but it often surprises me, and even hurts me, when you seem to talk of us all as if we were just so many savages. You're always speaking about taboo, and castes, and poojah, and fetiches, as if we weren't civilised people at all, but utter barbarians. Now, don't you think—don't you admit, yourself, it's a wee bit unreasonable, or at any rate impolite, of you?”
Bertram drew back with a really pained expression on his handsome features. “O Mrs. Monteith!” he cried, “Frida, I'm so sorry if I've seemed rude to you! It's all the same thing—pure human inadvertence; inability to throw myself into so unfamiliar an attitude. I forget every minute that YOU do not recognise the essential identity of your own taboos and poojahs and fetiches with the similar and often indistinguishable taboos and poojahs and 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 blood at their gladiatorial shows; the Athenians of the age of Pericles and Socrates offered up human sacrifices at the Thargelia, like the veriest savages; and the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the most civilised commercial people of the world in their time, as the English are now, gave their own children to be burnt alive as victims to Baal. The Mexicans were far more civilised than the ordinary North American Indians of their own day, and even in some respects than the Spanish Christians who conquered, converted, enslaved, and tortured them; but the Mexican religion was full of such horrors as I could hardly even name to you. It was based entirely on cannibalism, as yours is on Mammon. Human sacrifices were common—commoner even than in modern England, I fancy. New-born babies were killed by the priests when the corn was sown; children when it had sprouted; men when it was full grown; and very old people when it was fully ripe.”
“How horrible!” Frida exclaimed.
“Yes, horrible,” Bertram answered; “like your own worst customs. It didn't show either gentleness or rationality, you'll admit; but it showed what's the one thing essential to civilisation—great coherence, high organisation, much division of function. Some of the rites these civilised Mexicans performed would have made the blood of kindly savages run cold with horror. They sacrificed a man at the harvest festival by crushing him like the corn between two big flat stones. Sometimes the priests skinned their victim alive, and wore his raw skin as a mask or covering, and danced hideous dances, so disguised, in honour of the hateful deities whom their fancies had created—deities even more hateful and cruel, perhaps, than the worst of your own Christian Calvinistic fancies. I can't see, myself, that civilised people are one whit the better in all these respects than the uncivilised barbarian. They pull together better, that's all; but war, bloodshed, superstition, fetich-worship, religious rites, castes, class distinctions, sex taboos, restrictions on freedom of thought, on freedom of action, on freedom of speech, on freedom of knowledge, are just as common in their midst as among the utterly uncivilised.”
“Then what you yourself aim at,” Frida said, looking hard at him, for he spoke very earnestly—“what you yourself aim at is—?”
Bertram's eyes came back to solid earth with a bound.
“Oh, what we at home aim at,” he said, smiling that sweet, soft smile of his that so captivated Frida, “is not mere civilisation (though, of course, we value that too, in its meet degree, because without civilisation and co-operation no great 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.”