Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/480

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
464
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The mixed state of the bones, for which the busy puffins are to some extent responsible, renders it absolutely impossible to secure the skeleton of any given individual, and makes it necessary to procure a large number of bones in order that there should be the least chance of reconstructing an entire specimen. A skeleton recently mounted for the exhibition series of the United States National Museum is absolutely perfect, while the number of bones secured by our party on the Grampus probably exceeds that of all other collections combined. Some of these are naturally in a poor state of preservation, but others are quite perfect, and, save for their discoloration, in as good condition as if buried only for two or three years.

It would scarcely be just to close this article without giving all due credit to Captain J. W. Collins, whose cordial support of the proposed expedition finally determined the sending of the Grampus to Funk Island, and made the trip so decidedly a success. The thanks of the party are also tendered to the Rev. M. Harvey, of St. John's, for the advice and information so cheerfully given them.

THE ETHICS OF KANT.

By HERBERT SPENCER.

IF, before Kant uttered that often-quoted saying in which, with the stars of Heaven he coupled the conscience of Man, as being the two things that excited his awe, he had known more of Man than he did, he would probably have expressed himself somewhat otherwise. Not, indeed, that the conscience of Man is not wonderful enough, whatever be its supposed genesis; but the wonderfulness of it is of a different kind according as we assume it to have been supernaturally given or infer that it has been naturally evolved. The knowledge of Man in that large sense which Anthropology expresses, had made, in Kant's day, but small advances. The books of travel were relatively few, and the facts which they contained concerning the human mind as existing in different races, had not been gathered together and generalized. In our days, the conscience of Man as inductively known has none of that universality of presence and unity of nature which Kant's saying tacitly assumes. Sir John Lubbock writes:

"In fact, I believe that the lower races of men may be said to be deficient in the idea of right. . . . That there should be any races of men so deficient in moral feeling, was altogether opposed to the preconceived ideas with which I commenced the study of savage life, and I have arrived at the conviction by slow degrees, and even with reluctance."—Origin of Civilization, 1882, pp. 404, 405.

But now let us look at the evidence from which this impression