That Is
Levitation, And Is Probably Just As Simple To Him As Striking A
Match Is To You And Me.
After we get thoroughly accustomed to him
and his life, we are no longer vastly astonished, though always
interested, at the various manifestations of his extraordinary
powers.
We go right along using the marvellous wireless,
aeroplanes, motor cars, constructive machinery, and the like that
make us confident-justly, of course-in that we are about the
smartest lot of people on earth. And if we see red, white, and
blue streamers of light crossing the zenith at noon, we do not
manifest any very profound amazement. "There's that confounded
Superman again," we mutter, if we happen to be busy. "I wonder
what stunt he's going to do now!"
A consideration of the above beautiful fable may go a little way
toward explaining the supposed native stolidity in the face of
the white man's wonders. A few years ago some misguided person
brought a balloon to Nairobi. The balloon interested the white
people a lot, but everybody was chiefly occupied wondering what
the natives would do when they saw THAT! The natives did not do
anything. They gathered in large numbers, and most interestedly
watched it go up, and then went home again. But they were not
stricken with wonder to any great extent. So also with
locomotives, motor cars, telephones, phonographs-any of our
modern ingenuities. The native is pleased and entertained, but
not astonished. "Stupid creature, no imagination," say we,
because our pride in showing off is a wee bit hurt.
Why should he be astonished? His mental revolution took place
when he saw the first match struck. It is manifestly impossible
for any one to make fire instantaneously by rubbing one small
stick. When for the first time he saw it done, he was indeed
vastly astounded. The immutable had been changed. The law had
been transcended. The impossible had been accomplished. And then,
as logical sequence, his mind completed the syllogism. If the
white man can do this impossibility, why not all the rest? To
defy the laws of nature by flying in the air or forcing great
masses of iron to transport one, is no more wonderful than to
defy them by striking a light. Since the white man can provedly
do one, what earthly reason exists why he should not do anything
else that hits his fancy? There is nothing to get astonished at.
This does not necessarily mean that the native looks on the white
man as a god. On the contrary, your African is very shrewd in the
reading of character. But indubitably white men possess great
magic, uncertain in its extent.
That is as far as I should care to go, without much deeper
acquaintance, into the attitude of the native mind toward the
whites. A superficial study of it, beyond the general principals
I have enunciated, discloses many strange contradictions. The
native respects the white man's warlike skill, he respects his
physical prowess, he certainly acknowledges tacitly his moral
superiority in the right to command.
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