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increase if that virtue were to be acquired only by listening 

 to those who told them exactly what they had seen and 

 heard and felt. For my part I do not know anything more 

 unpleasant than to have to listen to an exact description of 

 what a person feels, but to be told all that a person — conscious 

 of his unbounded honesty — feels about his own special virtue, 

 would, it is to be feared, excite in many, and particularly in 

 children, a determination to try to be anything but honest. 

 But surely honesty is not one of the discoveries of the new 

 Philosophy, a characteristic which has only just been evolved 

 after a long course of natural selection? Potentially, of 

 course, honesty existed in the lower forms of life, and who 

 knows but that some correlate might have been discovered 

 in those simple Kving things that came to our planet after a 

 very long ride through space on the fragment of a more 

 ancient world, if our means of investigation had been suffi- 

 ciently exact ? 



It is not astonishing that our work has been found to be 

 rather slow and unexciting in times like these, but in the 

 quieter period that must succeed we may hope to engage a 

 little interest, and be permitted to teach to others some of 

 the facts familiar to ourselves, and even allowed to offer an 

 opinion of the bearing of these facts upon grander and more 

 momentous enquiries. No wonder that people who have 

 been dazzled by the illuminated undulations of infinity, 

 should scoff at the idea of discovering anything by looking at 

 a growing speck. But now that the whole course of physical 

 change upon our world has been fully determined and 

 adequately accounted for, it is possible that people may care 

 to be told something about the structure and mode of growth 

 of themselves and the living things by which they are 

 surrounded. 



Men who love science for her own sake take delight in 

 discussing the facts upon which their theories and hypotheses 



B 2 



