204 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and press, open debate, the habit of challenging, sifting, criticis- 

 ing — these are the conditions which foster the spirit of political 

 veracity ; where they do not exist we shall search for it in vain. The 

 famous conversation between Tom Brown and Harry East on the 

 ethics of lying, witli the conclusion of the latter that there is nothing 

 wrong in deceiving a master if you can do it with safety, simply ex- 

 presses in little what is everywhere exhibited at large by the moral 

 history of the world. For the spread, therefore, of this form of truth- 

 fulness we must look to the decline of despotic authority and to the 

 democratic habit of unchecked discussion; and we must expect to 

 see it accompanied, on the one hand, by increased self-dependence 

 and insistence on one's own right of thought and speech, and, on the 

 other hand, by a wider and more generous toleration of the opinions 

 of other people. 



3. Philosophical Veracity. — This may be defined as the most 

 abstract and disinterested form of truthfulness — the simple love of 

 truth for its own sake. The conditions of its development are com- 

 plete emancipation from prejudice and party contentiousness, free- 

 dom from the disturbing influences of passion, tradition, personal 

 and other kinds of bias, the cultivation of a calm and judicious spirit 

 in all matters of controversy, and that steadiness of mental vision 

 which enables us to envisage without wavering the hardest and most 

 disagreeable facts. It is this pure and unreserved devotion to truth 

 as such — this complete willingness to follow whithersoever it may 

 lead — that more than anything else distinguishes the man of the 

 highest mental character from those of lower types — which marks 

 off the philosopher, properly so called, from the heated partisan, the 

 bigoted sectary, the whole crowd of ignorant, ill-reasoning, or indif- 

 ferent adherents of churches, classes, schools. It is to be considered 

 as the last and noblest of the intellectual virtues — the very flower 

 and fruitage of the finest developments of thought. 



This form of veracity, it is evident, then, is possible only in certain 

 high states of civilization, wherein mental freedom and alertness, a 

 wide interest in every field of inquiry, and the largest and most solid 

 intellectual culture, combine at once to establish the ideal, and to 

 bring about and maintain the conditions necessary to its attainment. 

 But we must not rest content with these rather vague and general 

 statements. We must investigate a little more closely the habits of 

 life and thought, and particularly the kind of mental discipline, by 

 which philosophical veracity is fostered and strengthened. 



After all, the question thus introduced is, fortunately, a very 

 simple one. If, remembering that we have here to do with a love of 

 truth as such, with the desire to know all that is to be known about 

 any subject, and with the willingness to accept whatever is proved to 



