When, perhaps in the twenty-first century, the native population has reached the point of progress we have been imagining, the position may be for both races a grave or even a perilous one, if the feeling and behaviour of the whites continue to be what they are now. The present contented acquiescence of the coloured people in the dominance of the whites, and the absence of resentment at the contempt displayed toward them, cannot be expected from a people whose inferiority, though still real, will be much less palpable. And if trouble comes, the preponderance of numbers on the black side may make it more serious than it could be in the United States, where the Southern whites are the outmost fringe of an enormous white nation. These anxieties are little felt, these problems are little canvassed, in South Africa, for things which will not happen in our time or in the time of our children are for most of us as though they would never happen; and we have become so accustomed to see the unexpected come to pass as to forget that where undoubted natural causes are at work—causes whose working history has examined and verified—a result may be practically certain, uncertain as may be the time when and the precise form in which it will arrive.
There are, however, some thoughtful men in the Colonies who see the magnitude of the issues involved in this native problem. They hold, so far as I could gather their views, that the three chief things to be done now are to save the natives from intoxicating liquor, which injures them even more than it does the whites, to enact good land laws, which shall keep them from flocking as a loafing proletariate into the towns, as well as just labour laws, and to give them much better opportunities than they now have of industrial education. Manual training and the habit of steady industry are quite as much needed as book education, a conclusion at which the friends of the American negro have also arrived. Beyond this the main thing to be done seems to be to soften the feelings of the average white and to mend his manners. At present he considers the native to exist solely for his own benefit. He is harsh or gentle according to his own temper; but whether harsh or gentle, he is apt to think of the black man much as he thinks of an ox, and to ignore a native's rights when they are inconvenient to himself.
Could he be got to feel more kindly toward the native, and to treat him, if not as an equal, which he is not, yet as a child, the social aspect of the problem—and it is the not least serious aspect—would be completely altered.
CHAPTER XXII
MISSIONS
The strength and vitality of a race, and its power of holding its own in the world, depend less on the quickness of its intelligence than on the solidity of its character. Its character depends upon the moral ideas which govern its life, and on the habits in which those ideas take shape; and these, in their turn, depend very largely upon the conceptions which the race has formed of religion, and on the influence that religion has over it. This is especially true of peoples in the earlier stages of civilization. Their social virtues, the beliefs and principles which hold them together and influence their conduct, rest upon and are shaped by their beliefs regarding the invisible world and its forces. Races in which religious ideas are vague and feeble seldom attain to a vigorous national life, because they want one of the most effective bonds of cohesion and some of the strongest motives that rule conduct. It may doubtless be said that the religion of a people is as much an effect as a cause, or, in other words, that the finer or poorer quality of a race is seen in the sort of religion it makes for itself, the higher races producing nobler religious ideas and more impressive mythologies, just as they produce richer and more expressive languages. Nevertheless, it remains true that a religion, once formed, becomes a potent factor in the future strength and progress of a people. Now the religious ideas of the Bantu races, as of other negroes, have been scanty, poor, and unfruitful. And accordingly, one cannot meditate upon their condition and endeavour to forecast their progress without giving some thought to the influence which better ideas, and especially those embodied in Christianity, may have upon them.
Neither the Kafirs nor the Hottentots have had a religion in our sense of the word. They had no deities, no priesthood, no regular forms of worship. They were, when Europeans discovered them, still in the stage in which most, if not all, primitive races would seem to have once been—that of fearing and seeking to propitiate nature spirits and the ghosts of the dead, a form of superstition in which there was scarcely a trace of morality. Hence the first task of the missionaries who came among them was to create a religious sense, to give them the conception of an omnipotent spiritual power outside natural objects and above man, and to make them regard this power as the source of moral ideas and the author of moral commands. To do this has been a difficult task.
Besides this constructive work, which was less needed in some other more advanced heathen races, the missionaries had also a destructive work to do. Though the Kafirs had no religion, they had a multitude of superstitious rites and usages closely intertwined with the whole of their life and with what one may call their political system. These usages were so repugnant to Christian morality, and often to common decency, that it became necessary to attack them and to require the convert to renounce them altogether. Renunciation, however, meant a severance from the life of the tribe, contempt and displeasure from the tribesmen, and possibly the loss of tribal rights. These were evils which it required courage and conviction to face, nor had the missionary any temporal benefits to offer by way of compensation. There was, however, very little direct persecution, because there were no gods who would be incensed, and the witch-doctors were less formidable opponents than a regular priesthood would have been. The chiefs were often friendly, for they recognized the value of missionary knowledge and counsel. Even the ferocious Mosilikatze showed kindness to Robert Moffat, and Livingstone complained far more of the Boers than he ever did of Kafir enemies. Lo Bengula protected the missionaries: Gungunhana listened, and made his chiefs listen, to their discourses, though his nearest approach to conversion was his expression of detestation for Judas Iscariot. But it rarely befell that a chief himself accepted Christianity, which would have meant, among other things, the departure of all his wives but one, and possibly the loss of his hold upon his tribe. All these things being considered, it need excite no surprise that the Gospel should have made comparatively little progress among the wild or tribal Kafirs.