I must warn you also that your own mind requires protection when you
send it stalking the savage idea through the tangled forests, the
dark caves, the swamps and the fogs of the Ethiopian intellect.
The
best protection lies in recognising the untrustworthiness of human
evidence regarding the unseen, and also the seen, when it is viewed
by a person who has in his mind an explanation of the phenomenon
before it occurs. The truth is, the study of natural phenomena
knocks the bottom out of any man's conceit if it is done honestly
and not by selecting only those facts that fit in with his
preconceived or ingrafted notions. And, to my mind, the wisest way
is to get into the state of mind of an old marine engineer who oils
and sees that every screw and bolt of his engines is clean and well
watched, and who loves them as living things, caressing and scolding
them himself, defending them, with stormy language, against the
aspersions of the silly, uninformed outside world, which persists in
regarding them as mere machines, a thing his superior intelligence
and experience knows they are not. Even animistic-minded I got
awfully sat upon the other day in Cameroon by a superior but kindred
spirit, in the form of a First Engineer. I had thoughtlessly
repeated some scandalous gossip against the character of a naphtha
launch in the river. "Stuff!" said he furiously; "she's all right,
and she'd go from June to January if those blithering fools would
let her alone." Of course I apologised.
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