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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: our tattooed ancestors who drove their chariots on the wrong side
of the Roman wall. We have passed the feudal system; they are not
yet clear of the patriarchal. We are in the thick of the age of
finance; they are in a period of communism. And this makes them
hard to understand.
To us, with our feudal ideas, Samoa has the first appearance of a
land of despotism. An elaborate courtliness marks the race alone
among Polynesians; terms of ceremony fly thick as oaths on board a
ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet - and urchins as
they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect
is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo,
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