studied the phenomena
which mark the contact of dissimilar peoples. But the traveller in South
Africa is astonished at the strong feeling of dislike and contempt--one
might almost say of hostility--which the bulk of the whites show to
their black neighbours. He asks what can be the cause of it. It is not
due, as in the Southern States of America, to political resentment, for
there has been no sudden gift to former slaves of power over former
masters. Neither is it sufficiently explained by the long conflicts with
the south-coast Kafirs; for the respect felt for their bravery has
tended to efface the recollection of their cruelties. Neither is it
caused (except as respects the petty Indian traders) by the dislike of
the poorer whites to the competition with them in industry of a class
living in a much ruder way and willing to accept much lower wages. It
seems to spring partly from the old feeling of contempt for the slaves,
a feeling which has descended to a generation that has never seen
slavery as an actual system; partly from physical aversion; partly from
an incompatibility of character and temper, which makes the faults of
the coloured man more offensive to the white than the (perhaps morally
as grave) faults of members of his own white stock. Even between
civilized peoples, such as Germans and Russians, or Spaniards and
Frenchmen, there is a disposition to be unduly annoyed by traits and
habits which are not so much culpable in themselves as distasteful to
men constructed on different lines. This sense of annoyance is naturally
more intense toward a race so widely removed from the modern European as
the Kafirs are. Whoever has travelled among people of a race greatly
weaker than his own must have sometimes been conscious of an impatience
or irritation which arises when the native either fails to understand or
neglects to obey the command given. The sense of his superior
intelligence and energy of will produces in the European a sort of
tyrannous spirit, which will not condescend to argue with the native,
but overbears him by sheer force, and is prone to resort to physical
coercion. Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for
human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of
superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this
fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to
race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival
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