The
Country He Lives In Is Unfitted For It, And The Nature Of The Man
Himself Is All Against It - The Truth Is The West Coast Mind Has Got
A Great Deal Too Much Superstition About It, And Too Little Of
Anything Else.
Our own methods of instruction have not been of any
real help to the African, because what he wants teaching is how to
work.
Bishop Ingram would have been able to write a more cheerful
and hopeful book than his Sierra Leone after 100 Years, if the
Sierra Leonians had had a thorough grounding in technical culture,
suited to the requirements of their country, instead of the ruinous
instruction they have been given, at the cost of millions of money,
and hundreds of good, if ill-advised, white men's lives. For it is
possible for a West African native to be made by European culture
into a very good sort of man, not the same sort of man that a white
man is, but a man a white man can shake hands with and associate
with without any loss of self-respect. It is by no means necessary,
however, that the African should have any white culture at all to
become a decent member of society at large. Quite the other way
about, for the percentage of honourable and reliable men among the
bushmen is higher than among the educated men.
I do not believe that the white race will ever drag the black up to
their own particular summit in the mountain range of civilisation.
Both polygamy and slavery {514} are, for divers reasons, essential
to the well-being of Africa - at any rate for those vast regions of
it which are agricultural, and these two institutions will
necessitate the African having a summit to himself.
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