The reader has a right to ask what qualification the writer may have fordealing with the subject upon which he offers his opinions.
The author of this book claims the qualifications of an observer who,during many years, has studied the ways and thoughts of the Natives ofSouth Africa on the spot, not through interpreters, but at first hand,through the medium of their own speech, which he professes to know aswell as the Natives themselves.
P.N.
The white man has taken up the burden of ruling his dark-skinned fellowsthroughout the world, and in South Africa he has so far carried thatburden alone, feeling well assured of his fitness for the task. He hasseen before him a feeble folk, strong only in their numbers and fit onlyfor service, a people unworthy of sharing with his own race theprivileges of social and political life, and it has seemed righttherefore in his sight that this people should continue to bend underhis dominant will. But to-day the white man is being disturbed by signsof coming strength among the black and thriving masses; signs of theawakening of a consciousness of racial manhood that is beginning to findvoice in a demand for those rights of citizenship which hitherto havebeen so easily withheld. The white people are beginning to askthemselves whether they shall sit still and wait till that voice becomesclamant and insistent throughout the land or whether they shall beginnow to think out and provide means for dealing with those coming eventswhose shadows are already falling athwart the immediate outlook. Thestrong and solid feeling among the whites in the past against giving anypolitical rights to the blacks however civilised they might be is not sostrong or as solid as it was. The number is growing of those among theruling race who feel that the right of representation should here alsofollow the burden of taxation, but while there are many who think thus,those who try to think the matter out in all its bearings soon come toapprehend the possibility that where once political equality has beengranted social equality may follow, and this apprehension makes thethinking man pause to think again before he commits himself to adefinite and settled opinion.
Taking the civilisation of to-day to mean an ordered and advanced stateof society in which all men are equally bound and entitled to share theburdens and privileges of the whole political and social life accordingto their individual limitations we ask whether the African Natives arecapable of acquiring this civilisation, and whether, if it be provedthat their capacity for progress is equal to that of the Europeans, thedemand for full racial equality that must inevitably follow can infairness be denied. This I take to be the crux of the Native Question inSouth Africa.
Before we attempt to answer this question it is necessary to find out,if we can, in what ways the African differs from the European; for if itbe found that there are radical and inherent differences between the tworaces of a kind that seem certain to remain unaltered by new influencesand changed environment then the whites will feel justified in denyingequality where nature herself has made it impossible, whereas if theexisting difference be proved to be only outwardly acquired and notinwardly heritable then the coming demand for equality will standsupported by natural right which may not be