FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73  
74   75   76   77   78   >>  
rate majorities in Europe not many years ago, and, in justice to the minorities, it must be conceded that the effect of education upon the masses has always been disturbing and often disastrous. Speaking now from my own experience I can say that I have found no ill-effects from education in Natives; on the contrary, I have found, as a rule, that the Native who has had an ordinary school education is generally more amenable to precept and admonition than the raw kaffir though less bovinely submissive and therefore more resentful of indignities offered to him. The fact that the educated kaffir comes more often in the way of committing theft and dishonesty than his illiterate brother is in itself sufficient to account for the not unduly large number of theftuous crimes with which he is credited as a class; but on the other hand, the propensity in the primitive male that leads to sexual assaults upon women is undoubtedly checked and lessened by education and school-discipline. Education will bring out and give scope to all that is good and all that is bad in the Native as it has done with the white man. If the Natives have not sunk to those depths of infamy which are disclosed daily in the criminal courts of Europe and America it is not because of want of the usual percentage of criminally disposed people among them but because of want of education and opportunity. Commercial immorality and developed swindling are impossible without a commerce, but the cupidity that begets these forms of vice is not lacking amongst the Natives and waits only for the opportunities which developed commerce affords. The potential capacity for criminality and immorality is indeed no less among the Natives than among Europeans. Theft, arson, murder and rape are the most common forms of crime committed by the Natives to-day because the opportunities for perpetrating systematic fraud are as yet few among them. Unnatural immorality is common enough in the kraals and in the "compounds," for the Natives have their "perverts" as well as the whites. At the Native "beer-drinks" crapulous lewdness is as common as it is in the bucolic orgies of European peasantry. There is no "Native" innocence nor is there any "Native" vice, the virtue and the vice, the capacity and the character of the Native are the human qualities and failings that are common to mankind. The Native is no more able to withstand the enervating effects of isolation than the European,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73  
74   75   76   77   78   >>  



Top keywords:

Native

 

Natives

 

education

 

common

 

immorality

 

capacity

 

effects

 

developed

 

school

 
kaffir

opportunities
 

Europe

 

European

 
commerce
 

potential

 

cupidity

 
affords
 

lacking

 
begets
 

people


criminal
 

courts

 

disclosed

 

isolation

 

depths

 

infamy

 

America

 

Commercial

 

swindling

 

impossible


opportunity

 

enervating

 

percentage

 
criminally
 

disposed

 

character

 

whites

 
qualities
 

perverts

 
failings

drinks
 
crapulous
 

innocence

 

virtue

 

peasantry

 

lewdness

 

bucolic

 

orgies

 
compounds
 

kraals