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.