The world, then, is not merely a battlefield where 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,

It seems to me that the difficulty may be explained as follows:  Moral qualities, as we know, are heritable, and an isolated tribe, such as is described, might take its rise in some one family, and ultimately in a single ancestor who happened to be a good man, and then maintain its purity.  Is it not the case, for instance, that on many unpleasant occasions, such as repudiation of public debts, filibustering raids and so on, the English have often reminded the North Americans of their descent from English penal colonists?  It is a reproach, however, which can apply only to a small part of the population.