still very
primitive. How many thousands years of culture, think you, have rubbed
and polished at our raw edges? One, probably; at the best, not more than
two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body
and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as
highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla. And before that
time, think you, how many thousands of years of savagery did we endure?
and how many myriads of thousands in the long procession of life up from
the first vitalised inorganic? Two thousand years are an extremely thin
veneer with which to cover the many millions.

And further, our much-vaunted two thousand years of culture is a thing
of the mind, an acquired character. We are not born with it. Each must
gather it for himself after he is born, from the spoken and written
words of his fellow and forerunners. Isolate a babe from all of its kind
and it will never learn to speak, and without speech words, it can never
think save in the concretest possible way. Yet it will possess all the
brute instincts and passions--the raw edges which do constantly shove
through the culture varnish of the civilised man.

Our culture is the last to come, the first to go. I have seen it go from
a man in an hour, nay, on the instant. Our culture is nothing more than
the accumulated wisdom of the race. It is not part of us, not a thing or
attribute handed down from father to son. It is a something acquired in
varying degree by each individual for himself. Yes, I do well to hark
back to the primitive. It tells me where I am to-day and describes to me
the world I am living in. You, Dane, are hyper-refined, or refined
beyond the times. You are like the idealistic and advanced zealots, who,
when such action would mean destruction, advise these United States to
disarm in the face of the war-harnessed world.

But no more of this jerky letter. Soon I shall proceed to make my
contention good. I shall show the higher part intellect plays in
conjugal love, the control, restraint, forbearance, sacrifice. And I
shall show that conjugal love is higher and finer than romantic love.

HERBERT.

XV

FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE

LONDON,
3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.
March 15, 19--.

Clyde Stebbins was here an hour after your theories and definitions
reached me. The fact that I had been reading treason against his sister
made me pick my subjects a little too carefully for smoot