(d) in the meantime furnish, from the
older civilization, materials, both in the thought-world and in the
object-world, for building slowly a new set of customs more closely
approximating those we are building for ourselves. This is a longer
and slower and more complicated affair than teaching the native to wear
clothes and sing hymns; or to build houses and drink gin; but it is what
must be accomplished step by step before the African peoples are really
civilized. I, personally, do not think it can be done.

Now having, a hundred thousand years or so ago, worked out the highest
good of the human race, according to them, what must they say to
themselves and what must their attitude be when the white man has come
and has unrolled his carpet of wonderful tricks? The dilemma is evident.
Either we, as black men, must admit that our hundred-thousand-year-old
ideas as to what constitutes the highest type of human relation to
environment is all wrong, or else we must evolve a new attitude toward
this new phenomena. It is human nature to do the latter. Therefore the
native has not abandoned his old gods; nor has he adopted a new. He
still believes firmly that his way is the best way of doing things, but
he acknowledges the Superman.

To the Superman, with all races, anything is possible. Only our Superman
is an idea, and ideal. The native has his Superman before him in the
actual flesh.

We will suppose that our own Superman has appeared among us,
accomplishing things that apparently contravene all our established
tenets of skill, of intellect, of possibility. It will be readily
acknowledged that such an individual would at first create some
astonishment. He wanders into a crowded hotel lobby, let us say,
evidently with the desire of going to the bar. Instead of pushing
laboriously through the crowd, he floats just above their heads, gets
his drink, and floats out again! 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,