Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/482

466 singular character for truthfulness and honesty" they are "wonderfully honest" "honest and truthful in deed and word." Irrespective of race, we find these traits in men who are, and have long been, absolutely peaceful (the uniform antecedent); be they the Jakuns of the South Malayan Peninsula, who "are never known to steal anything, not even the most insignificant trifle" or be it in the Hos of the Himalaya, among whom "a reflection on a man's honesty or veracity may be sufficient to send him to self-destruction." So that in respect of conscience these uncivilized people are superior to average Europeans, as average Europeans are superior to the brutal savages previously described.

Had Kant had these and kindred facts before him, his conception of the human mind, and consequently his ethical conception, would scarcely have been what they were. Believing, as he did, that one object of his awe—the stellar Universe—has been evolved, he might by evidence like the foregoing have been led to suspect that the other object of his awe—the human conscience—has been evolved; and has consequently a real nature unlike its apparent nature.

For the disciples of Kant living in our day, there can be made no such defense as that which may be made for their master. On all sides of them lie classes of facts of various kinds, which might suffice to make them hesitate, if nothing more. Here are a few such classes of facts.

Though, unlike the uncultured who suppose everything to be what it appears, chemists had, for many generations, known that multitudinous substances which seem simple are really compound, and often highly compound; yet, until the time of Sir Humphry Davy, even they had believed that certain substances which, besides seeming simple resisted all their powers of decomposition, were to be classed among the elements. Davy, however, by subjecting the alkalies to a force not before applied, proved that they are oxides of metals; and, suspecting the like to be the case with the earths, similarly proved the composite nature of these also. Not only the common sense of the uncultured but the common sense of the cultured was shown to be wrong. Wider knowledge has, as usual, led to greater modesty; and since Davy's day chemists have felt less certain that the so-called elements are elementary. Contrariwise, increasing evidence of sundry kinds leads