Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/32

22 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 industrialism are, like the social traits, mingled with those proper to militancy. It is manifestly thus with ourselves. A nation which, besides its occasional serious wars, is continually carrying on small wars with uncivilized 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 personal characters proper to industrialism to be shown with clearness. In independence, in honesty, in truthfulness, in humanity, its citizens eventually raised being whether morality can exist without religion. Not much difficulty 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 immeasurable 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 assize proceedings, accounts of fraudulent bankruptcies, etc, which, in our journals, accompany advertisements of sermons and reports of religious meetings, we learn that the "amiable" Bodo and Dhimáls, who are so "honest and truthful," "have no word for God, for soul, for heaven, for hell" (though they have ancestor-worship and some derivative 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," nevertheless "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 Dhimáls, 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 belief 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 degradation shown in our treatment of the Boers; when we are held degraded because we have