and clear reasoning. Let us then bring to
bear that same blessed light upon our present enquiry into the reasons,
real or fancied, for those prejudices of race and colour which we still
retain, for it is only by removing the misconceptions and false notions
that obscure our view that we can come to a clear understanding of the
many complex issues that make up the great Native problem of Africa.

BODILY DIFFERENCES.

"That which distinguishes man from the beast," said Beaumarchais, "is
drinking without being thirsty, and making love at all seasons," and he
spoke perhaps truer than he knew, for the fact that man is not bound by
seasons and is not in entire subjection to his environment is the
cardinal distinction between him and the brutes. This distinction was
won through man's possession of a thinking brain which caused or
coincided with an upright carriage whereby his two hands were set free
from the lowly service of mere locomotion to make fire and to fashion
the tools wherewith he was enabled to control his environment instead of
remaining like the animals entirely controlled by it. This wonderful
brain also made possible the communication and tradition of his
experiences and ideas through articulate speech by which means his
successors in each generation were able to keep and develop the slowly
spelt lessons of human life.

Are the African Natives as far removed from the beasts as the Europeans,
and do they share equally with the Europeans this great human
distinction of ability to think?

The belief, at, one time commonly held, that in morphological
development and physical appearance the Bantu stand nearer in the scale
of evolution to our common ape-like ancestors than do the white people
does not seem to be warranted by facts. Careful investigations by
trained observers all over the world have shown that the various simian
features discernible in the anatomy of modern man are found fairly
evenly distributed amongst advanced and backward races.

The so-called prognathism of the Bantu has been cited as a racial mark
denoting comparative nearness to the brutes, but when it is noted that
anthropologists differ among themselves as to what constitutes this
feature, whether it is to be measured from points above or below the
nose or both, and when we are informed in some text books that while the
negroes are prognathous, bushmen must be classed with Europeans as being
the opposite, that is, orthognathous,[1] and