ns.

His only periods of relative relaxation occurred when he discussed the
psychological peculiarities of the Nipe mind with George Yoritomo.

One afternoon, after a particularly strenuous boxing session, he walked
into Yoritomo's office with a grin on his face. "I've been considering
the problem of the apparent paradox of a high technology in a
ritual-taboo system."

Yoritomo grinned back delightedly and waved Stanton to a chair.
"Excellent! It is always much better if the student thinks these things
out for himself. Now, while I fill this hand-furnace with tobacco and
fire up, you will please explain to me all about it."

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