“All that was done long ago,” said Acquilla interrupting. “Don’t excite yourself so, Bogardus. How like a man! Emotion should never precede knowledge. How agitated you are before you have even investigated.” “Is this true everywhere?” “Naturally. When the male civilization collapsed in the sanguinary World War it would have been a tragic futility to have returned man to power again, wouldn’t it?” “So it is an Amazon state that we have come to!” “You have said it. But don’t forget that an Amazon civilization existed three thousand years ago.” I contained my wrath and asked with new curiosity: “And this Amazon state, is it modelled on our communistic or despotic theories?” “You may call it a despotism, but it has certainly nothing to do with communism or socialism.” “Then democracy has survived?” “How absurd! You will be quoting to me the sentimentalities of Rousseau and your Declaration of Independence! ‘All men are created free and equal.’” “Well?” “My dear Bogardus, that was a male egotism. All men created free and equal! No woman ever really believed that!” “There you have scored,” I cried laughing. “I must admit that women did _not_ believe that.” “Exactly, and that is true in our sex, too. Even with our scientific methods of advanced eugenics, we create types but never equalities.” “Just what then, is the basis of the modern state?” “You can’t guess? And yet it was written on the walls of history for anyone to recognize. Well, Bogardus, I’ll help you. But first, you had a civilization based on the family. The fatherhead of course.” “Then the tribal chief.” “The kinghead, of course. Then oligarchies, democracies, and demagogueries. Now what were they based on? The army, the church or the mob.” “True,” I admitted, interested in spite of myself. “But after all, what makes the difference between human beings, the superior mind and the average?” “Power.” “In your days power became an artificial inheritance. In our days power is knowledge.” “Knowledge is power. I remember writing that as a child in a Spencerian copy book, I think,” I said meditatively. “Our state of course, is founded on the University, as any logical civilization must be. Success is simply the process of elimination. That is what the University accomplishes scientifically and impartially.” “But then,” I asked, remembering certain remarks, “you are organized on a system of castes.” “True. We have rejected your democratic sentimentalisms and have returned to the first principle of nature, the survival of the fittest. With that we have adopted Napoleon’s conception of an aristocracy of achievement.”