Stanton sat down and settled himself comfortably. "All right. In the first place, there's the notion of religion. In tribal cultures, the religion is usually—uh—animistic, I think the word is."
Yoritomo nodded silently.
"They believe there are spirits everywhere," Stanton said. "That sort of belief, it seems to me, would grow up in any race that had imagination, and the Nipes must have had plenty of that, or they wouldn't have the technology that we know they do have. Am I on the right track?"
"Very good. Very good," Yoritomo said in approval. "But what evidence have you that this technology was not given to them by some other, more advanced race?"
"I hadn't thought of that." Stanton stared into space for a moment, then nodded his head. "Of course. It would take too long to teach them. It wouldn't be worth all the trouble it would take to make them unlearn their fallacies and learn the new facts. It would take generations to do it unless this hypothetical other race killed off all the adult Nipes and started the little ones off fresh. And that didn't happen, because if it had, the ritual-taboo system would have died out, too. So that other-race theory is out."
"The argument is imperfect," Yoritomo said, "but it will suffice for the moment. Go on about the religion."
"Okay. Religious beliefs are not subject to pragmatic tests. That is, the spiritual beliefs aren't. Any belief that could be disproven by such a test would eventually die out. But beliefs in ghosts or demons or angels or life after death aren't disprovable by material tests, any more than they are provable. So, as a race increases its knowledge of the physical world, its religion would tend to become more and more spiritual."
"Agreed. Yes. It happened so among human beings," said Yoritomo. "But how do you link this fact with ritual-taboo?"
"Well, once a belief gains a foothold," Stanton said, "it is very difficult to wipe it out, even among human beings. Among Nipes, it would be well-nigh impossible. Once a code of ritual and of social behavior had been set up, it became permanent."
"For example?" Yoritomo urged.