profound and intelligent is their contempt for our civilization,
how worthless they hold our aims and activities, how illusory our
progress, how futile our intelligence, one begins to wonder whether,
after all, it is not merely by an effect of habit that one judges them
to be wrong and ourselves right, and whether there is anything at
all except blind prejudice in any opinions and ideas about Right and
Wrong."

"In fact," interposed Audubon, "you agree, like me, with Sir Richard
Burton:

"'There is no good, there is no bad, these be the whims of mortal will;
What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill.
They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of
time,
Each vice has worn a virtue's crown, all good been banned as sin or
crime.'"

"Yes," he assented, "and that is what is brought home to one by
travel. Though really, if one had penetration enough, it would not be
necessary to travel to make the discovery. A single country, a single
city, almost a single village, would illustrate, to one who can look
below the surface, the same truth. Under the professed uniformity of
beliefs, even here in England, what discrepancies and incongruities
are concealed! Every type, every individual almost, is distinguished
from every other in precisely this point of the judgments he makes
about Good. What does the soldier and adventurer think of the life of
a studious recluse? or the city man of that of the artist? and vice
versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging
and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real