uaded
persons, and because, what is more generally relevant, the presence of
this quality, honesty in word and deed, has more than almost any other
one characteristic helped to put us in the van of the world's advance
to-day, it may not unfittingly be cited here.

The argument in the case may be put thus. Have specially religious races
been proportionally truth-telling ones? If not, has there been any
other cause at work in the development of mankind tending to increase
veracity? The answer to the first question has all the simplicity of
a plain negative. No such pleasing concomitance of characteristics
is observable to-day, or has been presented in the past. Permitting,
however, the dead past to bury its shortcomings in oblivion, let us look
at the world as we find it. We observe, then, that the religious spirit
is quite as strong in Asia as it is in Europe; if anything, that at the
present time it is rather stronger. The average Brahman, Mahometan,
or Buddhist is quite as devout as the ordinary Roman Catholic or
Presbyterian. If he is somewhat less given to propagandism, he is not
a whit less regardful of his own salvation. Yet throughout the Orient
truth is a thing unknown, lies of courtesy being de rigueur and lies
of convenience de raison; while with us, fortunately, mendacity is
generally discredited. But we need not travel so far for proof. The same
is evident in less antipodal relations. Have the least religious nations
of Europe been any less truthful than the most bigoted? Was fanatic
Spain remarkable for veracity? Was Loyola a gentleman whose assertions
carried conviction other than to the stake? Were the eminently mundane
burghers whom he persecuted noted for a pious superiority to fact? Or,
to narrow the field still further, and scan the circle of one's own
acquaintance, are the most believing individuals among them worthy of
the most belief? Assuredly not.

We come, then, to the second point. Has there been any influence at work
to differentiate us in this respect from Far Orientals? There has. Two
separate causes, in fact, have conduced to the same result. The one is
the development of physical science; the other, the extension of trade.
The sole object of science being to discover truth, truth-telling is a
necessity of its existence. Professionally, scientists are obliged to be
truthful. Aliter of a Jesuit.

So long as science was of the closet, its influence upon mankind
generally was indirect and sl