e victory and defeat
receive their due recompense in a future state. No! the world is
itself the Last Judgment on it. Every man carries with him the reward
and the disgrace that he deserves; and this is no other than the
doctrine of the Brahmins and Buddhists as it is taught in the theory
of metempsychosis.

The question has been raised, What two men would do, who lived a
solitary life in the wilds and met each other for the first time.
Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Rousseau have given different answers.
Pufendorf believed that they would approach each other as friends;
Hobbes, on the contrary, as enemies; Rousseau, that they would pass
each other by In silence. All three are both right and wrong. This
is just a case in which the incalculable difference that there is in
innate moral disposition between one individual and another would make
its appearance. The difference is so strong that the question here
raised might be regarded as the standard and measure of it. For there
are men in whom the sight of another man at once rouses a feeling of
enmity, since their inmost nature exclaims at once: That is not me!
There are, others in whom the sight awakens immediate sympathy; their
inmost nature says: _That is me over again_! Between the two there
are countless degrees. That in this most important matter we are so
totally different is a great problem, nay, a mystery.

In regard to this _a priori_ nature of moral character there is matter
for varied reflection in a work by Bastholm, a Danish writer, entitled
_Historical Contributions to the Knowledge of Man in the Savage
State_. He is struck by the fact that intellectual culture and moral
excellence are shown to be entirely independent of each other,
inasmuch as one is often found without the other. The reason of this,
as we shall find, is simply that moral excellence in no wise springs
from reflection, which is developed by intellectual culture, but
from the will itself, the constitution of which is innate and not
susceptible in itself of any improvement by means of education.
Bastholm represents most nations as very vicious and immoral; and on
the other hand he reports that excellent traits of character are found
amongst some savage peoples; as, for instance, amongst the Orotchyses,
the inhabitants of the island Savu, the Tunguses, and the Pelew
islanders. He thus attempts to solve the problem, How it is that some
tribes are so remarkably good, when their neighbours are all bad,