482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cinnati 21*92 per cent of their total population live in dwellings 

 containing more than 20 persons. The per cent of population in 

 Chicago living in dwellings with more than 20 persons to a dwell- 

 ing is 16*63 per cent, in St. Louis 10'14 per cent, in Boston 13'93 

 per cent, in Buffalo 8*09 per cent, in Newark 10*25 per cent, and in 

 Providence 7*49 per cent. In Philadelphia only 3*41 per cent and 

 in Baltimore but 2*55 per cent of the population are contained in 

 dwellings with more than 20 persons." 







VERACITY.* 



By HERBEET SPENCEE. 



COMPLETE truthfulness is one of the rarest of virtues. Even 

 those who regard themselves as absolutely truthful are daily 

 guilty of over-statements and under-statements. Exaggeration is 

 almost universal. The perpetual use of the word " very," where 

 the occasion does not call for it, shows how widely diffused and 

 confirmed is the habit of misrepresentation. And this habit some- 

 times goes along with the loudest denunciations of falsehood. 

 After much vehement talk about " the veracities," will come ut- 

 terly unveracious accounts of things and people accounts made 

 unveracious by the use of emphatic words where ordinary words 

 alone are warranted : pictures of which the outlines are correct 

 but the lights and shades and colors are doubly and trebly as 

 strong as they should be. 



Here, among the countless deviations of statement from fact, 

 we are concerned only with those in which form is wrong as well 

 as color those in which the statement is not merely a perversion 

 of the fact but, practically, an inversion of it. Chiefly, too, we 

 have to deal with cases in which personal interests of one or other 

 kind are the prompters to falsehood : now the desire to inflict in- 

 jury, as by false witness ; now the desire to gain a material advan- 

 tage ; now the desire to escape a punishment or other threatened 

 evil ; now the desire to get favor by saying that which pleases. 

 For in mankind at large, the love of truth for truth's sake, irre- 

 spective of ends, is but little exemplified. 



Here let us contemplate some of the illustrations of veracity 

 and unveracity chiefly unveracity furnished by various human 

 races. 



The members of wild tribes in different parts of the world, who, 

 as hunters or as nomads, are more or less hostile to their neigh- 



* From The Principles of Ethics, vol. i, by Herbert Spencer. New York : D. Appleton 

 & Co., 1892. 



