22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of course, on turning to civilized peoples to observe the form of 

 individual character which accompanies the industrial form of society, 

 we encounter the difficulty that the personal traits proper to industrial- 

 ism are, like the social traits, mingled with those proper to militancy. 

 It is manifestly thus with ourselves. A nation which, besides its occa- 

 sional serious wars, is continually carrying on small wars with uncivil- 

 ized tribes ; a nation which is mainly ruled in Parliament and through 

 the press by men whose school-discipline led them during six days in 

 the week to take Achilles for their hero, and on the seventh to admire 

 Christ ; a nation which at its public dinners habitually toasts its army 

 and navy before toasting its legislative bodies has not so far emerged 

 out of militancy that we can expect either the institutions or the per- 

 sonal characters proper to industrialism to be shown with clearness. 

 In independence, in honesty, in truthfulness, in humanity, its citizens 



tion eventually raised being whether morality can exist without religion. Not much diffi- 

 culty in answering this question will be felt by those who, from the conduct of these rude 

 tribes, turn to that of Europeans during the Christian era, with its innumerable and im- 

 measurable public and private atrocities, its bloody aggressive wars, its ceaseless family 

 vendettas, its bandit barons and fighting bishops, its massacres, political and religious, its 

 torturings and burnings, its all-pervading crime from the assassinations of and by kings 

 down to the lyings and petty thefts of slaves and serfs. Nor do the contrasts between 

 our own conduct at the present time and the conduct of these so-called savages leave us 

 in doubt concerning the right answer. When, after reading police reports, criminal as- 

 size proceedings, accounts of fraudulent bankruptcies, etc, which, in our journals, accom- 

 pany advertisements of sermons and reports of religious meetings, we learn that the 

 " amiable " Bodo and Dhimals, who are so " honest and truthful," " have no word for 

 God, for soul, for heaven, for hell " (though they have ancestor-worship and some deriva- 

 tive beliefs), we find ourselves unable to recognize the alleged connection. If side by 

 side with narratives of bank frauds, railway jobbings, turf chicaneries, etc., among people 

 who are anxious that the House of Commons should preserve its theism untainted, we 

 place descriptions of the " fascinating " Lepchas, who are so " wonderfully honest," but 

 who " profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence of good and bad spirits " 

 (to the latter of whom only they pay any attention), we do not see our way to accepting 

 the dogma which our theologians think so obviously true ; nor will acceptance of it be 

 made easier when we add the description of the conscientious Santal, who " never thinks 

 of making money by a stranger," and " feels pained if payment is pressed upon him" for 

 food offered ; but concerning whom we are told that " of a supreme and beneficent God 

 the Santal has no conception." Admission of the doctrine that right conduct depends on 

 theological conviction becomes difficult on reading that the Veddahs, who are " almost 

 devoid of any sentiment of religion " and have no idea " of a Supreme Being," neverthe- 

 less " think it perfectly inconceivable that any person should ever take that which does 

 not belong to him, or strike his fellow, or say anything that is untrue." After finding 

 that, among the select of the select who profess our established creed, the standard of 

 truthfulness is such that the statement of a minister concerning Cabinet transactions is 

 distinctly falsified by the statement of a seceding minister, and after then recalling the 

 marvelous veracity of these godless Bodo and Dhimals, Lepchas, and other peaceful tribes 

 having kindred beliefs, going to such extent that an imputation of falsehood is enough to 

 make one of the Hos destroy himself, we fail to see that in the absence of a theistic be- 

 lief there can be no regard for truth. When, in a weekly journal specially representing 

 the university culture shared in by our priests, we find a lament over the moral degrada- 

 tion shown in our treatment of the Boers ; when we are held degraded because we have 



