The oldest attitude, which is undoubtedly based on solid psychological foundations since it tends to reappear in each of us when we are placed in an unexpected situation, consists in repudiating purely and simply the moral, religious, social, aesthetic cultural forms, which are furthest from those with which we identify. » Habits of savages », « this is not from us », « we should not allow this », etc., so many rude reactions that reflect this same thrill, this same repulsion, in the presence of ways of living, believing or thinking that are foreign to us. Thus antiquity confused everything that did not participate in Greek (then Greco-Roman) culture under the same name of barbarian; Western civilization then used the term « savage » in the same sense… In the Greater Antilles, a few years after the discovery of America, while the Spanish sent commissions of inquiry to investigate whether or not the natives possessed a soul, the latter worked to immerse white prisoners in order to verify by prolonged surveillance whether or not their corpses were subject to putrefaction. This anecdote, both baroque and tragic, illustrates well the paradox of cultural relativism (which we will find elsewhere in other forms): it is to the extent that one claims to discriminate between cultures and customs that one most fully identifies with those one tries to deny. By denying humanity to those who appear to be the most « savage » or « barbaric » of its representatives, we are only borrowing from them one of their typical attitudes. The barbarian is first and foremost the man who believes in barbarism. »