A Group of Bulu.
]
This personal independence is a fact and it is one that appeals strongly
to the imagination of those who see the savage at a distance and who
think of him only as _primitive_, instead of savage. His state seems
closely akin to that social condition, described by an ancient poet, in
which law, commerce, literature, science and religion are not
specialized, but implicit in the daily life of each individual. Man
loves the exercise of liberty for its own sake, regardless of aim and
consequence. It seems to be a condition of manhood—of moral spontaneity
and development. But the personal independence of the savage (when we
see him not with the imagination but with the eyes) is the expression of
his brute selfishness. Even his wife has no share in it; nor anybody
else if he can help it; for the desire for liberty is but a step from
the desire for power. There is no word in his vocabulary to express the
idea of justice. And when we pass from his social condition to the
inward man, himself, we find him the victim of a thousand abject fears
and cruel tyrannies that enslave him.
Mr. George L. Bates, a naturalist, who spent several years among the
Fang and gave me both sympathy and assistance in missionary work, tells
a story of a Fang feud, the last incident of which took place a few
months before I left Africa. I repeat the story told by Mr. Bates,
almost in his own words:
Nzwi Amvam, a man of the Esen clan, had been killed by Bibane, chief of
the Amvom clan, the enemies of the Esen. After some days a palaver was
held to divide the dead man’s estate and decide to whom his seven widows
should be given. These seven women were seated on the ground, in the
middle of the street, while the assembled company, a miscellaneous crowd
from that and surrounding villages, were seated on either side of the
street in the shade of the low projecting palm-leaf roofs. The important
men of the clan sat in the open palaver-house at the end of the street.
After much oratory it was agreed that Ngon, eldest son of Nzwi Amvam,
should receive two of his father’s wives, the other five being
distributed among the near relations. Then the palaver broke up to be
followed in the evening by a great dance with much drumming.
When young Ngon lay down that night he considered that he had become an
important man. Before his father’s death he had one wife; now he had
three. He had also received from his father’s estate a store of iron
rods and spearheads sufficient to purchase another wife. And, besides,
he had a gun—the only one in his town—which, it is said, had come from
the land of white men, beyond the great sea. He was in a fair way to
become a great man. But Ngon was not happy. He was thinking of the man
who killed his father; he was thinking of Bibane, and a passion stronger
than the desire for wealth and greatness took possession of him. He felt
_olun_, that is _shame_, _grief_, _rage_, an intolerable thirst for
_revenge_—he felt _olun_.
Many moons Ngon waited his opportunity. Many times he had his men
conceal themselves along the forest paths that led to the village of the
Amvom; but the enemy was too wary for them. At length, the day came that
Ngon levelled his gun from behind a tree at the son of his enemy, who
was passing alone and unsuspecting, and sent a rude fragment of an iron
pot tearing into his chest. The wound was mortal. In a few hours they
heard the wailing of the women of old Bibane’s village. Then the
death-drum of the Amvom boomed through the forest and Ngon heard it with
fierce delight. The _olun_ was removed from his breast. And, besides, he
was now a great man beyond question, for he had killed an enemy with his
own hands.
In Ngon’s village, however, when the shouting was over they reflected
that Bibane was a man to take revenge with interest; and the Amvom were
a powerful clan. It was the beginning of a period of alarms. Often at
dead of night the whole town was terrorized when the cry was raised,
“The Amvom are coming!” For many moons the women never went to the
plantations except when armed men went before and behind them in the
path. Ngon himself usually headed the company. He also kept strict watch
of the gloomy border of the forest surrounding the plantation while his
wives dug cassava and filled their baskets, or cut bunches of plantains
and bananas to carry home. But as time passed and the Amvom did not
appear Ngon began to keep less strict watch.
One day his most faithful wife, young Asangon, went to a plantain grove
under her care, far from the village, and came back reporting other
enemies to be watched besides the Amvom. The plantain stocks were
twisted and eaten off and all the bushes around trodden flat. Elephants!
A few nights and their depredations would cause famine in the village.
So with some of his young men, Ngon went to the place, built a booth of
palm branches, prepared a bed, gathered fuel for a fire, and returned to
the village. At dusk he set out for the plantain grove, accompanied by
his wife, Asangon, and their little son, whom Asangon carried astride
her right hip, sitting in a wide strap of monkey-skin which was slung
over her shoulder. Ngon walked ahead with his gun and a gum torch
lighted to show the way and to frighten evil spirits in the dark forest.
They were going to sleep in the booth among the plantains for the
purpose of scaring away the elephants. As he set out his white-haired
mother cautioned him to look out for the Amvom. “They’re a crafty lot,”
she said, “and want to cut your throat and eat you.” But the young man
declared that Bibane’s people were far away on a hunt.
Four nights they slept among the plantains and scared the elephants
away. It was noticed also that Asangon seemed to enjoy going out thus,
and spending the night with only her husband and her baby. It had
probably never occurred to her to form a distinct wish to be Ngon’s only
wife, but her happiness in the present arrangement was none the less
keen, and was made all the keener by the apprehension that it would not
last long.
The fourth morning, as they went through a bit of uncleared forest,
suddenly at a turn in the path a spear whizzed past Ngon, and he saw
among the trees the face of Bibane and the Amvom. He raised his gun and
pulled the trigger; but the white man’s weapon failed him this time. The
powder flashed in the pan and that was all. At the same moment hearing a
cry behind him, he turned to see his little son pierced with the spear
that had missed himself, and dying in his mother’s arms. The Amvom
sprang out upon him; and it was all he could do to break from them and
escape into the forest, leaving his wife a captive and his son dead. It
was now in the Esen villages that the wailing was heard; while there was
dancing and drumming among the Amvom.
But Ngon Nzwi again felt _olun_. In the dusk of the following morning
while the people were still in their beds, his voice was heard in the
street, rousing them from their sleep.
“People of this village,” he cried, “descendants of Ndong Amvam, who
first came from the east and founded this settlement, I am Ngon Nzwi,
son of Nzwi Amvam, son of Amvam Ndong, son of Ndong Amvam; I am head man
of this village. Bibane of the Amvom killed my father, Nzwi Amvam, and
now he has killed my child, captured my wife, and tried to take my own
life. May that man of the family of Amvam who fails to help me in my
revenge see his own people dead corpses! And my revenge will not be
complete until I have eaten the flesh of the arm that threw the spear
yesterday.”
The gruesome threat was literally fulfilled. Many seasons passed before
the opportunity came; but it came at last and the dead body of Bibane
lay at his feet. His wives knew what was to be done with the right arm
and they prepared the feast for Ngon. Some of his closest friends joined
him in it, but there was no dancing or story-telling, and not many words
were spoken about it by his people. For the memory of it weighed upon
their spirits.
The personal independence of the savage does not constitute the _simple
life_ of our idealizing imagination. There still are foes without and
_olun_ within,—not to speak of hostile spirits and the fear of
witchcraft.
Guizot in his _History of Civilization_ defines civilization as
_progress_, the progress of _society_, and the progress of
_individuals_; the melioration of the social system and the expansion of
the intellectual and moral faculties of man. And these two elements,
according to Guizot, are so intimately connected that they reciprocally
produce one another. When we speak of the authority of example and the
power of habit we admit, perhaps unconsciously, that a world better
governed, a world in which justice more fully prevails, renders man
himself more just.
That is true; but society is moralized by ideas; and ideas must work
through the brains and the arms of good and brave men. Therefore
Christianity addresses itself primarily to the individual; though it
does not ignore social conditions. It is easier to love men, especially
alien men, in the mass than to love them individually. Rousseau, it is
said, loved mankind but hated each particular man; and there are those
among us who would fight for the freedom of the Negro race but would not
walk a block with an individual Negro. The love of Jesus is an aggregate
of individual and personal loves. It was _one sheep_ that went astray
whom the shepherd followed weary and footsore till he found it; it is
_one_ sinner over whose return there is joy in heaven. The missionary is
first of all an evangelist, not a social reformer. Christianity aims at
the redemption of man, first in his individual character, and then in
his associate life.
Christianity is so intricately interwoven with our own civilization, its
influence upon our characteristic institutions is so subtle, that it is
not easy to say where its beneficence begins or ends; and many among us
are constantly attributing its social effects to other causes. But
introduced into Africa its power as a social force at once becomes
obvious. It comes in contact with a social condition which presents the
extremest contrast to that of our civilization, a condition which is
hostile at almost every point to the spirit of Christianity and that has
remained unchanged probably for ages; it comes as an evangelistic
agency, not working directly for social reforms; but within the lifetime
of one man society is transformed almost beyond recognition by the
abolishment of social evils, the implantation of institutions of
education and philanthropy, and the beginning of all that is highest and
best in our civilization.
Let us not exaggerate the difference between civilization and savagery.
It is always necessary to check the dramatic instinct, which for the
sake of a telling contrast would set the worst aspects of heathen
barbarism over against the best or even ideal aspects of Christian
civilization. Civilization is still far from perfect and savagery is not
wholly savage.
The interval between civilization and the savage state is never so great
as that between the latter and an animal state. No animal uses fire;
though I recall that Emin Pasha declared that he had witnessed a
procession of African monkeys carrying torches;—but we didn’t see it. No
animal cooks its food; no animal wears clothing; no animal makes either
tools or weapons; no animal breeds other animals for food; no animal has
an articulate language. Moreover without a certain degree of order,
intelligence and justice, human society, even that of the savage, could
not continue to exist.
But one going from America to Africa is impressed only by the contrast;
and he necessarily reflects upon it and seeks to define it.
The first contrast between civilized society and that of Africa which
impresses one is that of _interdependence_ and _independence_. I lived
very simply in Africa, and yet the whole world contributed to my simple
fare. On my table there was butter from Denmark, milk from Switzerland,
rice from India, sugar from Cuba, coffee from Brazil, dates from Arabia,
other fruits from France or from California, vegetables from England,
meats from America—and so forth. I did not even know where the wheat was
grown from which my bread was made; nor whether the cattle that supplied
beef had first grazed in Argentina or on the prairies of the Canadian
Northwest. It was the same with the materials and furnishings of the
house I lived in and the clothing I wore. The whole world contributes to
the material well-being of each civilized man. In contrast to this the
native African—before conditions are modified by civilization—supplies
all his own needs. He has the assistance only of his wife and he could
dispense with that. The entire provision for his material well-being is
furnished within the area of his visible horizon or within the radius of
an hour’s walk from his village. There is no regular buying or selling
and no money.
In this social condition men are very much alike, and there is a close
approximation to equality. Each man possesses all the knowledge of his
tribe and can do what any other man can do; there is no “differentiation
of function,” and no interdependence. There is only nature’s own
difference of male and female; the only real society is that of the
family. The village is an enlarged family the maximum size of which
depends upon the necessity of combining against a common foe. African
society, therefore, beyond the family, has scarcely more coherence than
a herd of gregarious animals. It is not an organism but a mere
aggregation of individuals.
The interdependence of civilization is largely the result of man’s
increasing _conquest of nature_; and this is the next contrast between
civilized society and that of Africa. The difference between the canoe
and the steamship is typical. Improved means of transportation,
beginning with the use of steam, has made possible the exchange of
products between remote countries. The ever-increasing knowledge of
nature, resulting in mechanical inventions, has made near neighbours of
the nations. We read the news of the world each morning. Money
contributed in New York to-day for the relief of a famine in China is
distributed there to-morrow. The whole world is embraced in our daily
thought and interest. The African, unless he lives by a river, knows
nothing of the world beyond the farthest village to which he has walked.
Not even the invention of the wheel has reached him. The civilized man
has made nature supplement himself; has made himself swifter than the
swiftest of animals and stronger than the strongest, and has multiplied
a thousandfold the product of his labour. In order to disseminate the
benefits of this increasing conquest of nature there arises a demand for
skilled labour; and upon the principle that a man can do but one thing
in a lifetime and do it well, different classes appear, performing
different functions in the social body, dependent upon one another as
the various organs of the body depend upon one another, and society
becomes an organism developing from simplicity to complexity.
The _intellectual development_ of the civilized man as compared with the
savage—his knowledge of the world in which he lives, and of man
himself—his science and philosophy, his refining enjoyments of
literature and music—all that is embraced in _education_ creates even a
greater difference than that of material well-being. As steam and
electricity have annihilated space so the printing-press has annihilated
time. The knowledge and the wisdom of the past are recorded for our
benefit. A pigmy standing on a giant’s shoulders (Macaulay observes) can
see further than the giant; and a schoolboy of our times knows more
astronomy than Galileo. Each generation stands upon the shoulders of the
preceding generation. There is nothing in any way corresponding to this
in Africa. There is no increase of knowledge and no expanding
intelligence. The intellectual stagnation, the stifling mental torpor of
an African community must be experienced in order to be realized.
Another striking difference between America and Africa is the _authority
of custom_ in Africa, and its resulting social immobility. Returning to
America after only a few years in Africa one is surprised and somewhat
bewildered by the changes that have taken place. It takes considerable
time to adjust oneself to altered conditions. In Africa there is no
trace of any change in customs, or any alteration of methods, from time
immemorial. Conduct, even in its details, is governed by custom. Nobody
questions its authority; nobody violates it. The appeal to custom is
final.
For instance, the rite of circumcision is universally practiced and
rigidly regarded, but nobody knows why. There may be a good reason for
it—I believe there is—but they have forgotten it. Or, to give an example
of its authority even in trivialities, the slavers in the old days
trained the men of the Kru tribe to work on ships and thereafter finding
them useful allies persuaded them to put a distinguishing mark upon
themselves so that none of them might be taken and enslaved by mistake.
The mark is a tattooed band running down the middle of the forehead to
the tip of the nose. With the suppression of the slave-trade the
usefulness of this ugly disfigurement of course became obsolete; but the
fashion was meanwhile established and to this day every Kruman is thus
tattooed. He has forgotten its origin. If you ask him the reason for
this mark he thinks that he gives a perfect explanation when he says:
“It be fashion for we country.” To ask him the reason for the custom is
equivalent to asking why right is right. The finality of the appeal to
custom is like our appeal to the ten commandments. Of course the
authority of custom in Africa serves to check personal tyranny and to
modify the principle that might is right. It thus prevents society from
going backward; but it also prevents it from going forward; a thousand
years are as a day. Mobility is a condition of progress.
A more radical difference between the civilized man and the African than
any we have yet mentioned is that of _work_. It is not merely a contrast
between actual work and idleness, but a contrast of attitudes that
constitutes this difference. “Use, labour of each for all,” says
Emerson, “is the health and virtue of all beings. _Ich dien_, I serve,
is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to volunteer the
lowest service, the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God
is God, because He is the servant of all.... All honest men are daily
striving to earn their bread by their industry. And who is this who
tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise, and calls labour
vile, and insults the workman at his daily toil?”
This is everywhere the sentiment of the truly civilized man. He may be
lazy but he still recognizes the dignity of labour. But the African
recognizes only the dignity of idleness and deems it the true badge of
superiority. Work is not so obnoxious to his laziness as it is to his
self-respect. It is the brand of inferiority. It is not _exertion_ that
he hates: he exerts himself in war and in hunting. It is when work
assumes the form of _service_ that it offends him. Manhood, he believes,
consists in self-assertion as contrasted with self-sacrifice. His ideal
is not to minister but to be ministered unto. Therefore work is
relegated to women, who are weaker and cannot resist the imposition.
It is only necessary to point out one more difference between Africa and
civilization; and in this last, it seems to me, we have before us the
difference that is really fundamental: it is _trustworthiness_.
Civilization depends upon this quality in men. To the entire social
structure of civilization each individual contributes strength or
weakness according to his trustworthiness. In New York it has sometimes
been found, upon investigation, that in the steel frame of certain high
buildings many of the rivet holes were filled with soap and putty
instead of rivets. In the same city not long ago, in the family of a
prominent physician, the maid who had the care of the children went
calling on a friend and found that in the friend’s home there was
scarlet fever. The maid considered only that she had already had scarlet
fever and was therefore safe from it. So she made the call, but she
carried the fever back to the physician’s home and his children died
from it. Such exceptions prove the rule, namely, that trustworthiness is
the social cement of civilization.
A Fang village of a hundred persons can hold together constituting a
society; but as soon as it grows to a group of about two hundred it goes
to pieces and forms new villages. The men of the smaller village are
more closely related, are brothers, and affection, a sentiment of
brotherhood, insures a certain amount of honesty in their mutual
relations. As the relationship widens this sentiment weakens and
distrust takes the place of confidence. And the worst of it is that they
distrust each other because they really know each other; because they
are _untrustworthy_. Distrust is the dissolution of society.
Some years ago at Batanga the white traders introduced a “trust
system,” whereby a quantity of goods were entrusted to a native, that
he might go to the interior and trade with the expectation of paying
for the goods with ivory or other trade produce upon his return to the
coast. This simple arrangement was regarded by the trader as extremely
satisfactory. He charged enormous prices in ivory for his goods, and
besides—theoretically—he got the ivory, which otherwise was difficult
to procure. He did not worry about the payment; for the German
governor, being an obliging gentleman, and wishing to stimulate trade,
threatened long imprisonment and lavish flogging to any and every
native who should betray his trust; who, for instance, would spend the
goods in buying a number of wives for the time being, in giving large
presents to all his relations, or in making merry with the whole
community and wasting his substance in riotous living. The iron hand
of the Kaiser would prevent all that, and the trust-system would soon
make Batanga a centre of commerce and civilization. Of course all the
enterprising young natives hurried to get goods that they did not have
to pay for until some other time, realizing only the foolishness of
worrying about the future, and that possession is ten-tenths of the
law in Africa.
Well, after a great while they all came back accompanied by the Kaiser’s
soldiers. When the old matter of the goods was mentioned to them and a
longing for ivory was expressed, the response was uniform: “Dem goods?
Dem goods you done give me? Why, mastah, all dem goods done loss.”
At the very earnest appeal of the missionaries, reinforced by the
limited capacity of the jail at Kribi, a law was finally passed
abolishing the trust-system in that particular form.
It was not fair. The poor native’s sense of moral responsibility was
unequal to the demand made upon it. For the same reason a high form of
civilization cannot be superimposed upon a morally degraded people.
Their moral responsibility would not be equal to its demands; it would
bear too hard upon them even as upon children; it would crush them.
In thus recording the successive contrasts between civilization and the
savage state, I am not conscious of exploiting a theory, but have rather
recorded the differences that impressed me in the course of actual
experience in Africa; and I have recorded them somewhat in the order of
their importance, passing from outward and manifest differences to those
that are less obvious and more fundamental. But we find that we have
gradually passed from social conditions to individual qualities and that
the fundamental difference is _personal character_.
A short time after the organization of a church among the Fang, the
_Ayol Church_, I held a communion service in which about sixty persons,
some of them from distant towns, sat together at the “Lord’s Table.” Let
the reader imagine himself at that service with me; and let us consider
briefly the social energy of the new moral forces represented by that
service.
The very first thing that we observe in contrast to the surrounding
heathenism is that both men and women are partaking together of this
symbolic feast. The Fang man does not eat with his wife; so here
immediately a custom is violated and the equality of woman is
recognized. This same principle has abolished polygamy, and there is not
a polygamist at this table. The authority of custom in its chief
stronghold is challenged and overthrown by a divine law that judges all
customs, however ancient, and which is henceforth the highest authority.
The sacred institution of the family is purified. It is not by
ecclesiastical enactment that polygamy is abolished; the enactment would
be ineffective but for the higher estimate of woman which Christianity
has introduced by exalting those qualities in which she especially
excels, and establishing a mutual relation as incompatible with polygamy
as with polyandry.
We also observe that these sixty persons represent many various clans of
the Fang, and even different tribes, for there are two Mpongwe women
present. The heathen Mpongwe despise the Fang. And between the different
clans of the Fang themselves there are ancient feuds and relentless
hatreds. But the very meaning of this service is _fellowship_.
The heathen Fang have no salutation, and need none; their instinct is to
hide rather than to meet. But the people who meet at this service salute
each other with the word _monejang_—_brother_, or _sister_. And they did
not learn this salutation from me; for I had never used it thus; but
where the Spirit of Christ is, there is the instinct of brotherhood.
This Christian society, therefore, although scattered far and wide, and
having no material interests in common, is yet drawn together by an
invisible bond which is already stronger than all the disintegrating
forces of the savage state. When the population of a Fang village
reaches the number of two hundred its dissolution is imminent. But each
member of this Christian society has pledged himself to the conversion
of others; and as the society grows its coherence increases.
In their worship also, as well as in their fellowship, we find certain
principles of social energy. Their view of God and of the world makes
possible the _conquest of nature_, which is the basis of our material
civilization. These men and women have all parted with their fetishes.
That means that they have defied the multitude of evil spirits in whom
they once believed and have definitely committed themselves to faith in
one God, the Father of all, in whom mankind are brothers.
But it means more than this. The spirits of evil in whom they believed
were localized in the objects of nature and to their presence all
natural phenomena were due. Nature was therefore lawless and hostile.
But these demons have all been cast out by the presence and power of God
in nature. They now thank Him for the fruitfulness of their gardens and
they pray to Him in the midst of the storm. One mind, a divine
intelligence, presides over nature and the world is not run by magic,
but governed by law. They do not comprehend the full content of their
faith; neither do we. But they are fundamentally right and education
will do the rest. They already have that knowledge upon which the
_conquest of nature_ depends.
We observe that many of those present in this service have books. The
books are the Gospel of Matthew and the book of Genesis, which have been
translated into their own language—the first Fang books. Nearly all the
younger persons present and some of those who are old have learned to
read that they might read these books. We are never quite prepared for
the thirst for knowledge, the intellectual awakening, incident to their
spiritual birth. They live in a new world; they are citizens of a
world-wide kingdom and they want to know all about it. Poor as they are
they will soon be giving of their slender means for the spread of the
Gospel among people whom they have never seen. We are bound to respond
to this desire for knowledge and to encourage it to the utmost.
Education is not a mere expedient by which the missionary obtains the
good-will of the people and secures a hearing for the Gospel; it is a
demand created by the Gospel itself and henceforth the necessary adjunct
of evangelistic work. Many, like myself, have gone to Africa intent upon
evangelistic work, and before long have chosen to spend most of their
time in the schoolroom.
Again, in this service, they celebrate, in the death of Christ, a
_self-sacrificing service_; and to this same spirit of self-sacrifice as
against self-assertion, they all are solemnly pledged. This attitude of
mutual service is another strong factor of coherence. It constitutes not
only the best society possible, but also the most progressive, and it
is, for our purpose, especially significant in that it implies an
altered attitude towards work. They still have to contend with natural
laziness, but they are no longer the victims of a false ideal. Service
is not a disgrace, but a duty.
In the organization represented in this service, as well as in its
fellowship and its worship, we shall find principles of social progress;
we shall find this Christian society a model of organization for all the
social institutions and native governments that progress may in the
future demand.
Guizot, speaking of legitimacy in government, says:
“The conditions of legitimacy are the same in the government of a
religious society as in all others. They may be reduced to two: the
first is, that authority should be placed and constantly remain, as
effectually at least as the imperfection of all human affairs will
permit, in the hands of the best, the most capable; so that the
legitimate superiority, which lies scattered in various parts of
society, may be thereby drawn out, collected and delegated to discover
the social law,—to exercise its authority. The second is that the
authority thus legitimately constituted should respect the legitimate
liberties of those whom it is called to govern. A good system for the
formation and organization of authority, a good system of securities for
liberty, are the two conditions in which the goodness of government
resides, whether civil or religious. And it is by this standard that all
should be judged.”
And to this standard the government of this mission church conforms. The
two elders who officiate in this service have been chosen by the members
of the church themselves, and for no reason whatever except their moral
worth and wisdom. One of the elders is Mb’Obam, a noted chief, a man of
wide influence even among the heathen. The other, Okeh, is in all,
except moral worth, the opposite extreme from Mb’Obam; diminutive and
weak in body, he is useless for war and non-combative in disposition,
the kind of a man whom the heathen despise and ridicule—but so kind, so
pure in heart, so humble, that none was more worthy to be exalted and
these Christians proved themselves by their perception of his worth. The
progress of this African community, implied in the choice of such a one
as Okeh for leader, has leaped across uncounted centuries.
The man whom the Mpongwe church has recognized as pastor for many
years—though he was never ordained—was born a slave. The place of
highest authority is attainable to those in every rank; no class is
especially privileged; no privileges are hereditary; there is no such
thing as _caste_ within this society; and therefore it is more likely to
be progressive and not stationary. In short, superiority, wherever
found, is recognized, drawn out, and invested with authority to govern.
For the _security of liberty_ it is only needful to mention the Bible,
the authoritative word, to which all have equal access. But there is
another factor. This government uses no force. It declares that temporal
and spiritual authority are essentially different and must be kept
forever separate; that physical force has rightful authority only over
the actions of men, but never over the mind or its convictions. This
declaration of the _liberty of conscience_ is the parent of civil and
political liberty.
It is difficult for the American, accustomed to the separation of
spiritual and temporal power, to realize the utter confusion in the
African mind—and in heathen minds elsewhere—of moral authority and
physical force. Tyranny is the inevitable consequence of this confusion.
It is easy to object that Europe at one period in her history had to
contend against the Church itself for this very principle of separation
and the liberty of conscience which it involves. But at an earlier
period, it was the Church which first instructed Europe in this
principle by insisting upon the separation of the two authorities, and
which implanted the idea of liberty; and when it became obscured it was
by rebellion within the Church that it was recovered. The Church is not
repeating on the field of missions the mistakes of its history in
Europe; and therefore as a social force it progresses with accelerated
velocity.
Such then are the forces of social progress which are inherent in this
Christian society, forces which are altogether new and strange in
Africa, forces which place this society in the line of continuous and
indefinite progress towards civilization.
[Illustration:
A FASHIONABLE WEDDING IN KAMERUN.
]
Already we may see the beginning of civilization in material things. The
first thing that emerges from the inchoate society is the home. I have
already spoken of the abolishment of polygamy; but a home also implies a
house. The houses of a Fang village are built on either side of one
narrow street, under one continuous roof, and consist of a single room
separated from the next dwelling by a half-open bamboo partition. But
the Christian wants a better house, because he is a better man. It is
noticeable that the Christian man separates himself from this common
village life and builds a single house of several rooms for himself and
his family. All Christians do not immediately do so; but the tendency is
sufficiently marked to insure the certainty that the idea of the home
will prevail. These better houses have windows, and doors on hinges, and
sometimes even a board floor. There is therefore a demand for carpenters
and other skilled workmen. Here is where the industrial school responds
to an exigent need and is both an adjunct and a direct result of
evangelization. Here also is the beginning of a division of labour and
that interdependence which characterizes civilization.
The Fang Christians are all clothed; for decency is a Christian
instinct. The cloth which they now wear is imported from England and
America. They pay for it with the produce of their gardens. For this
purpose they raise more than they need for their own consumption. Their
gardens are therefore much larger than they used to be, and both men and
women work in them. Having better clothing they must take care of it;
therefore they want to sit on chairs, instead of on the ground. Neither
can they keep their clothing decently clean if they eat their food with
their hands. Knives and forks and plates and tables are soon added to
the household furnishings. One thing demands another; each added comfort
requires more work. Those men now expend in productive labour the energy
which they formerly wasted in conflict.
Such is the general course of development towards a social community
having intercourse with the civilized world; receiving much, and adding
its increment to the material welfare of the race and the sum of
happiness.
All the constitutive elements of civilization may be summed up in two
things: a condition of interdependence in material things, and a
sentiment of human brotherhood. But we have seen that the progressive
interdependence of civilization is based upon an increasing knowledge of
nature, and that this knowledge of nature becomes possible to the
African through the Christian view of God and the world. We have seen
that faith in Christ effects a mental and moral regeneration of the
individual from which springs a sentiment of brotherhood and spirit of
mutual trust which is the coherence of society without which it becomes
a heap of sand. The saying is reasonable, therefore, that civilization
is but the secular side of Christianity; and all the good which social
progress comprehends is embodied in the prayer which these Fang
Christians unitedly offer: _Ayong dia nzak_—_Thy kingdom come_.
Commerce and government in our day are making the claim that they are
the all-sufficient forces of civilization throughout the world. But
however much they have accomplished that is beneficial, we cannot forget
the evils which have attached to them; that in Africa and elsewhere
commerce is responsible for the sale of rum and for other evils as
degrading; and that government by the civilized powers, despite such
grandiloquent phrases as “the onward march of civilization,” has
consisted very much in taking territory from those to whom it belonged,
because, forsooth, “they have a darker complexion or a flatter nose.”
Both commerce and government are invaluable adjuncts of Christianity;
but it has within itself the potentialities of both.
That prayer, _Thy Kingdom Come_, is being offered daily in every land
and in every language of the world and everywhere it has the same
meaning. It means that all those who sincerely offer it, however great
the contrast of their history and traditions, are a community, united by
the stronger bonds of aims and ideals. It means that they have a vision
of a united race of mankind; a vision of all nations drawn into one
common brotherhood in commerce, government and religion, and that they
believe in the abounding adequacy of the Gospel of Christ for its
realization. Society resounds with the cry of the oppressed and the
dissonance of human passion; but still they cherish the vision of unity
and peace; and they believe that this _kingdom of God_ is the end
towards which all social progress moves.
XVII
THE CRITICS
Elsewhere I have represented the _climate_ as the theme of the Old
Coaster whom the voyager meets after leaving Liverpool, or some other
European port, for West Africa. He makes free use of all the adjectives
that have usually been appropriated to the characterization of sin and
death.
But I may not have said that the Old Coaster has what musicians call a
_sub-theme_. His sub-theme is _Missions_. The unity of his conversation
is secured by the use of the same adjectives. If the missionary is
coddled at home or foolishly praised, the severe and relentless
criticism to which he is subjected after leaving Europe may be regarded
as a providential discipline. According to the Old Coaster every evil
that infests West Africa is due directly or indirectly to the
missionary. I have heard him blamed for the Belgian atrocities of the
Congo, and for the Hut Tax War of Sierra Leone, and even for the
fatality of the climate. For, it is said, everybody knows that it is not
malaria but quinine that kills the white man in Africa; the belief in
quinine is simply fatuous, and its use is criminal; and the missionary
alone is responsible. Rum, which is the only protection against malaria,
would keep the traders alive, but sooner or later, following the example
of the missionary, they take quinine and die.
These criticisms serve to while away the time, and do no harm unless
there should be on board a smart traveller who is bent upon learning all
about Africa from the deck of a steamer and then giving his knowledge to
the world in a book. The Old Coaster (and the name often includes the
captain and officers of the ship) is obsessed with the desire to impart
information. The missionary has magazines through which his voice is
heard: but the smart traveller is the Old Coaster’s opportunity and he
makes the best of it and pours forth a volume of misinformation
sufficient to fill the most capacious mental vacuum. The Old Coaster
thus employed is not more than half malicious. He sometimes winks at a
missionary standing by, as much as to say: “The joke’s on you.” He
generally divides missionaries into two classes, _deliberate impostors_
and _well-meaning fools_, generously assuming that the missionary
present belongs to the latter class, so that the relation of
good-fellowship on board is not necessarily disturbed by the
anti-missionary acrimony.
One of these travelling critics was so wrought upon by the reported
misdoings of missionaries and their destructive influence upon the
religion and the morals of the natives that before he reached the Congo
he went clean crazy—as witness the following from his book: “What
religions furies with unholy rage have demolished those weird gods, and
disturbed fervent but unobtruding piety in the exercise of its duties?”
It may have been the result of going ashore without an umbrella. I never
heard whether this man recovered; but let travellers take warning and
not trifle with the dangers of the coast and the Old Coaster.
One is impressed by the bewildering inconsistency of the criticisms, so
contradictory that if all were published no further answer would be
necessary than to cite critic against critic. The more numerous class of
critics contend that the native is so morally inferior that he cannot be
improved; and a profession of Christian faith only adds to his heathen
vices a more disgusting hypocrisy. The other class of critics, less
numerous, but more intelligent and reputable, contend, on the contrary,
that the native is all right as he is, his pristine morality becomes
him; there is no need to improve him and we ought not to try.
Not long ago Prof. Frederick Starr after a brief visit to the Congo
published his opinions in the Chicago _Tribune_ and made many strictures
upon missionary work. He wrote under the rather complacent caption, “The
truth about the Congo,” quite confident that his word and hasty
observations were sufficient to discredit the hundreds who had gone
before him, as able and as honest as himself, and who had lived many
years in the Congo. Professor Starr confesses at the outset that he
personally “dislikes the effort to elevate, civilize, and remake a
people,” and that he “should prefer to leave the African as he was
before the white contact.” It is his opinion that civilized folk have no
right to change the customs, institutions or ideas of any tribe, even
with the purpose of saving their souls. Such critics regard the African,
not at all with a human and sympathetic interest, as a fellow man,
capable of progress, and possibly endowed with an immortal soul; but
with an esthetic and historical interest, as constituting a link between
us and our ape-ancestry, an object to be appraised like a piece of
antique art, not for its present or future use, but for the past. To
change him shows a want of good taste and historical imagination, even
if the change relieve his suffering and improve his morals; that were a
small compensation if we thereby impoverish the variety of human types
and leave the world less interesting to the connoisseur. Incidentally,
Professor Starr denied categorically the reported atrocities of the
Belgians in the Congo Free State. He had asked the Belgians themselves
about the matter.
In seeking to explain the wide-spread criticism of missions and of
missionaries it ought to be frankly admitted that among missionaries
there are misfits and occasional freaks whose misconduct scandalizes the
well deserving. If we have any knowledge of human nature, and realize
that in every society there are unworthy and false members, we should
not even expect that the ranks of missionaries alone would be exempt. By
denying a palpable fact we only exasperate our critics and lead them to
doubt the sincerity of all instead of a very few. It is always wholesome
to admit the truth, and indiscriminate praise is as foolish and
misleading as wholesale criticism.
On one of my voyages to Africa a certain missionary was regarded as “the
biggest liar on board.” What in the world ever attracted him to the
mission field it were hard to imagine. Criticism of other and all
missionaries was his favourite employment, especially when conversing
with those who were hostile to the work. While we were anchored at Accra
I heard him say to a trader, as he pointed ashore towards the splendid
English mission: “That is where the missionaries take in heathen and
turn out devils.” He did not stay long in the mission but he did
considerable harm in a short time and created painful misunderstandings
that were by no means removed by his departure. Imagine the position of
a missionary placed perhaps alone with such a man, with no other
companionship and no escape from his neighbourhood! Moreover the report
of the missionary’s work, and even his reputation, depends upon the
other man; he is therefore at his mercy. For the reputation of one who
labours in a lonely and distant field may be indefinitely greater or
less than he deserves. The man of whom I speak, after his return to
America, figured in the police courts in New York City, where he was
arrested on a very serious and odious charge. His record there is still
accessible.
Well-meaning missionaries sometimes make themselves ridiculous in the
eyes of white men by their attitude and manner towards the natives. I
once witnessed such a scene, when a missionary standing on deck, in the
presence of white men, conversed with a group of natives in a manner so
unseemly and so silly that the comments of the white men were chiefly
oaths and ribald laughter. When at last the natives after an hour on
board were about to go ashore, one of them, a young savage about sixteen
or seventeen years of age with scarcely a stitch of clothing on him,
came to the missionary and said: “Me, I go for shore;” whereupon the
missionary extended his hand and lifting his huge helmet exclaimed in a
very loud voice accompanied by a sweeping bow: “Goodbye, sir; good-bye;
and I’m happy to have met you, sir.”
The captain in a voice of thunder turned to me and said: “Who is that
fool?” I have weakened the captain’s forceful language by omitting his
expletive, which the average reader will easily supply.
More frequently, yet perhaps not often, the missionary errs in his
attitude towards his worldly-minded fellow passengers on these long
voyages—is unamiable, or indulges in moral strictures in a way that
cannot possibly do good, and is calculated to create prejudice and
antipathy.
I recall one Sunday when two army officers thought to kill time by
playing ball on deck. Like others of their class, they regarded all
civilians with contempt and missionaries with abhorrence. They were
interesting when drunk, but extremely stupid when sober. A lady
missionary came and sat down in her chair on the side of the deck where
they were playing ball. As the man at the bat began to strike more
vigorously the ball occasionally flew past the lady at an uncomfortably
short distance. There were chairs on the other side of the deck where
she could have been quite as comfortable, and there was only one place
where there was room to play ball; but those men were breaking the
Sabbath, and she must protest by staying there and looking righteous,
that is to say, very cross. She was naturally modest as well as
kind-hearted, and she remained there wholly from a sense of duty. She
was a small, scanty person, with a prominent nose, and she sat bolt
upright, her nose looking like an intentional target for the ball. Once
when it whizzed past her one of the men said, “Aren’t you afraid you
will get hit with this ball if you stay there?” It never seemed to occur
to him that there was another alternative, namely, for them to stop
playing.
She seemed not to hear, but looked more cross than ever, and appeared as
if she wanted to get hit, so as to be a martyr to her principles; or at
least so as to have a better reason for looking so cross. The captain
came along and after contemplating for a moment the smiling levity of
those worldly men and the contrasting acerbity of the Christian woman’s
countenance, as she sat there keeping the Sabbath day holy, he went to
the side and laughed overboard. At length a fellow missionary approached
her and asked if she would go with him to the other side of the deck,
adding that he wanted to talk with her on a matter of missionary
interest. She was a real good woman with a mistaken sense of duty. We
must surely seek to be amiable to people as we find them, and try to
like people as they are. Such conduct is a source of irritation to those
who indulge in it, and it inspires dislike and consequent criticism.
Another source of criticism is the missionary magazines of the various
societies engaged in missionary work. These magazines fall into the
hands of the trader; and sometimes he finds a glowing account of the
great work being done by Missionary A who happens to be his neighbour,
and he is unable to reconcile the report with the work which he has seen
with his own eyes. Usually his eyes are at fault. He is blind to
spiritual values. There are old traders in Gaboon who do not know that
there is a native Christian in the community.
But we cannot dismiss the whole matter in this cavalier manner, and I
feel like adding that the missionary magazine, however necessary, is not
an unmixed good. It is not good that a man should let his left hand know
all that his right hand does. The missionary magazine reports to the
world what the missionary chooses to write about his own work. If his
letters are interesting and report large success they are eagerly sought
and published; and he of course is not callously indifferent to his
reputation. But, inasmuch as there are few or no witnesses but himself,
the magazine puts a premium on egotism and immodesty; and it sometimes
fosters a kind of spiritual impotence which needs the stimulus of
publicity. One of the bravest and best missionaries it has ever been my
privilege to know, the Rev. William Chambers Gault, was seldom mentioned
in a missionary magazine and little known to the church at home, though
he laboured for many long years in Africa and is buried there. Mr. Gault
was incorrigibly modest.
But even with the utmost margin of excuse—admitting the foolishness of
fulsome and indiscriminate praise; admitting that missionaries are
mortal, and some few of them _desperately_ mortal—it remains that the
wholesale criticism and violent denunciation that one hears on the
voyage is unjust and outrageous. We must look for the reason of it in
the critics themselves—the non-missionary white men residing in Africa.
And in themselves we will find reason enough.
First of all, many or most of these men, according to their own
confession, are not men of personal faith in Christ, but men who deride
the Gospel in which we believe. Of all those who have criticized
missions, I have only known of one man who himself professed to be a
Christian; his criticism was rather mild and was due more to what he had
heard than what he had seen.
Carlyle has said: “Unbelief talking about belief is like a blind man
discussing the laws of optics.” How can a man think it worth while to
expend lives and money in preaching to the heathen a Gospel which he
himself rejects? If the Gospel itself is foolishness those who preach it
must be fools, and the greatest fools are those who preach it at the
greatest sacrifice. What does cynicism know about enthusiasm? It was not
“much learning,” but much Christianity, that made Paul seem mad to
Festus. Manifestly the first question to ask the disbeliever in missions
is whether he is also a disbeliever in Christianity and in Christ. It is
really astonishing that so many critics of missions, and so many of
their readers, should treat this latter question as entirely irrelevant.
Racial antipathy towards the black man is also a reason of hostility to
missions. The intensity of this feeling where the inferior race is in
the majority is surprising, even in men who in all their other relations
are generous and considerate. In the opinion of many a white man in
Africa the black man is little better than a beast, and they treat him
accordingly. To speak of him as a brother man is to insult the white
man.
This antipathy actually prefers that the black man should remain in his
present degradation—perhaps to justify itself. It resents every effort
to elevate him; and as it sees him actually rising to the moral level of
the white man it is only intensified into hatred. One soon perceives
that the object of the white man’s greatest aversion is not the lowest
native, but the best. The critic may therefore be sincere when he
declares that he can see no good in the native product of missions, for
he is blinded by this special prejudice. Racial antipathy is much more
marked in the government official than in the trader; yet even the
traders when they live in communities often have a code of arrogant
manners according to which they ostracize any of their number who may
extend to the native a degree of social recognition.
This antipathy must necessarily be hostile to missionary work. For the
work of the missionary implies that he regards the black man as a
brother man; one who is also capable of moral elevation. He is not
necessarily blind to the present degradation of the native; but he
insists that he does not belong to the present, but to the future; that
he is endowed with an immortal soul and the moral possibilities which
immortality implies. He admits the worst but “sees the best that
glimmers through the worst,” and “hears the lark within the songless
egg.” And experience has justified his faith.
The missionary treats the native according to this belief, and as he
rises gives him exactly the social place to which his character as an
individual entitles him. He takes very little interest in the abstract
question of equality, or whether the black man is inherently inferior
and different in kind from the white man. But he believes that in
Christian brotherhood there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither black nor
white. This attitude and the behaviour which comports with it are
obnoxious to many white men, and are inevitably a source of much
hostility to missions.
To the impulse of racial antipathy there is often added that of angry
passion unchecked by social restraints, and stimulated by the
irritability of a malaria-infected temper.
One day during a sea voyage a white man was telling a number of us how
the native workman ought to be managed. Addressing a missionary he said:
“You missionaries make a great mistake in being kind to the native
workman. To let him know that you value him is to spoil him; to praise
him is to make him impudent; to trust him is to make him a thief. The
proper way to manage him is never to speak to him without swearing; and
to curse him even when he does his best. They are all misbegotten sons
of rum-puncheons, whose highest idea of heaven is idleness and drink.
They hate us all, and the only way to get any service out of them is to
use the club. Every man who has ever worked for me bears the mark of my
club, and some of them I have maimed for life. It is the only way to get
the brutes to do anything.”
The missionary replied: “I believe every word that you say in regard to
your treatment of the native. But this much at least is to be said for
my method, as against yours, that mine is a complete success, and yours
a complete failure, even according to your own confession. Most men do
not brag about their failures, nor try to teach others what they
themselves have not yet learned. In spite of kicks and curses you do not
get the natives to work. One must conclude, therefore, that you like
kicking and cursing more than you like success. Now my method succeeds
to the extent that I usually get from the native all the service for
which I pay him; and, besides, they have nursed me when I was sick; and
they have vied with each other in protecting me from the sun by day and
storms by night; they have exposed themselves to danger for my sake, and
they have even saved my life at the extremest peril of their own. But
would you therefore exchange your method for mine? No; not even for the
sake of success.”
But the worst cruelty of the foreigner towards the native results from
the union of trade and government—when the government official is also a
trader. This is what happened in the miserable Congo Free State, when
the king of the Belgians became the king of traders. The concession
system of the Belgians was afterwards introduced into the French Congo.
But at length a voice was heard that had long been silent, and De
Brazza, rival of Stanley and founder of the French Congo, came forth
from his well-earned retirement, and France was stirred with the
eloquence of a great man’s indignation. The result was that the worn-out
explorer himself was appointed the head of a commission that was sent to
investigate the conditions in those parts of the French Congo in which
the concession system was in operation. De Brazza died at Dakar on his
return, a martyr to his efforts for justice and humanity in Africa. But
his report was already written, in which he charged M. Gentil,
Commissioner General of the French Congo, with maladministration and
great cruelty towards the natives. He reported a number of natives
flogged to death with knotted whips. He stated that on one occasion, at
the colonial office at Bangui, in order to force the natives to bring
trade produce—called taxes—fifty-eight women and ten children were taken
and held as prisoners and that within five weeks forty-seven of these
died of starvation. Is it any wonder that to certain white men the usual
methods of the missionary seem very slow and ineffective?
The missionary is the champion of the helpless native against the white
man’s cruelty, and if he sometimes oversteps the limit of discretion, as
is often said (though I do not know of a single instance), his excessive
zeal is at least on the side of justice and humanity, and it is also in
behalf of the weak against the strong. The government official seldom
burns down native towns for pastime in the community where there is a
missionary. When remonstrance is unavailing the missionary will at
length report the matter to a higher official, and even the highest. And
if such cruelty be general and atrocities abound, he even carries his
remonstrance to the governments of Europe, or appeals to the civilized
world, as he has done in regard to the Belgian Congo.
Again, there is no doubt that the particular vices which so many white
men practice in Africa are a source of estrangement between them and the
missionaries and a reason for hostility and consequent criticism of
missions.
It is easy to be uncharitable and even unjust when writing on this
subject. The contrast between the _selfish_ motives of the trader and
the unselfish motives of the missionary has been overworked. It is not
necessarily greed for gold that takes the trader to Africa, but often a
perfectly honourable ambition. Besides, I have known traders who went to
Africa chiefly because it offered the most immediate opportunity in
sight for them to help out at home when younger brothers and sisters
were to be educated and the family was in straitened circumstances. The
pity is that they did not know the subtlety of the temptations awaiting
them. They were strong enough to live up to their moral standards, but
they did not see that those standards themselves would imperceptibly be
lowered. Yet this is what happens.
In a recent book, _The Basis of Ascendancy_, the author, Mr. Edgar
Gardner Murphy, speaking of the small proportion (as it seems to him) of
the nation’s brains which the Southern white man of the United States
supplies as compared with the New Englander, sets forth most earnestly
the danger to the white man in the Southern states of contact with the
low standards of an inferior race. The significant fact, Mr. Murphy
says, is not the mere pressure of a lower racial standard, but the white
man’s cumulative modification of his own standards of self-criticism and
self-direction:
“Through the conditions of his familiar contact with less highly
developed habits of efficiency, with forms of will more immature than
his, he is deprived of that bracing and corrective force, resident in
the standard of his peers, which, manifesting itself within every
personal world as one of the higher forms of social coöperation, is, in
fact, the moral equivalent of competition. He may sin and not die. His
more exacting expectations of himself are not echoed from without. Of
himself, as he would prefer to see himself, there is no spiritual
mirror. The occasional tendency to take himself at his second best is
socially unchecked, and both his powers and his inclinations tend to
assume the forms of approximation imposed by a life of habitual
relationship with a mind lower than his own.
“To say that the stronger tends to become brutal because the weaker is
brutal, or slovenly because the weaker is slovenly, is to touch the
process only on its surface. The deeper fact is not that of imitation,
nor yet that of contagion. It is that tragedy of recurrent
accommodations, of habitual self-adjustment to lower conceptions of life
and to feebler notions of excellence, which is nothing less than
education in its descending and contractive forms.”
This is incomparably more true in Africa than it ever has been or ever
can be in the Southern states. The worst of the remote possibilities
which Mr. Murphy describes are fully realized in Africa. The velocity of
the process is accelerated by the depressing effect of the climate.
The missionary too is more or less sensible of this influence upon
himself; but he is guarded by the fact that his very purpose in Africa
is to introduce and teach his own standards to the natives and he is
constantly occupied in pointing out the superiority of his own and the
inferiority of theirs. Moreover any definite accommodation to native
standards would mean disgrace and failure; to other white men it means
neither. Indeed the white man, other than the missionary, who proposes
to maintain the home standards in Africa will sometimes find himself
ostracized by his fellows.
The use of rum by the natives the missionary is bound to denounce and
within the membership of the church it is absolutely forbidden. But in
doing this the missionary by implication reflects very seriously upon
many white men. For the excessive drinking of the majority of white men
in Africa, with its appalling consequences, is so well known that there
is no need to exploit it. And when the native connected with the mission
church refuses either to drink rum or to sell it, thereby professing
moral superiority to those white men, the latter are exasperated. And
shall the missionary not teach the native the strict observance of the
seventh commandment because the white man so flagrantly violates it? The
discord arising from this source is greatly aggravated by the fact that
so many girls educated in mission schools are enticed by the
extraordinary temptations of the white men to a life that the
missionary, if he be true to his Christian standards, must condemn; for
the girls of the mission are the most intelligent and attractive.
These various reasons are ample explanation of the hostility to missions
and the consequent criticisms that are heard all along the coast, and
which are occasionally disseminated over the world by some writer who
has made a brief stay in Africa and who is so ignorant of the whole
subject of missions that it ought not to require much discretion to be
silent.
Those who condemn missions on sociological grounds—who, like Professor
Starr, think that civilized folk have no right to change the customs,
institutions or ideas of any tribe, even with the purpose of saving
their souls—are easily answered. For not only does such a view utterly
repudiate the claim of Christ to be the world’s Saviour—the “Light of
the world,” to which every man and nation has a right—but it is also
contrary to the accepted principles of sociology. It is untrue and
unscientific to say that the social structure of any given people has
been fashioned by the people themselves, and therefore meets their
needs; and that progressive changes must be brought about by the people
themselves without the introduction of outside elements. The student of
social evolution knows that the social structure is not always fashioned
by the people themselves: it is sometimes altered radically by conquest.
Neither does it always meet the people’s needs. The first need of a
people is bread; and wherever the population is pressing too hard
against the means of subsistence, as in India and China, with their
recurring famines, there is a sure sign of weakness and defect in the
social structure. Neither is it true that progressive changes must be
brought about by the people themselves; for there may be social
evils—impediments to progress, or tendencies to degeneration—which can
only be corrected by the introduction of new ethical elements from
without. Mohammedanism, a foreign religion, has become perfectly
naturalized in a large portion of Africa, and our critics—most of
them—vie with each other in proclaiming the good it has wrought. The
spread of Buddhism in the Orient introduced new ideals. Christianity,
originating in the Orient, brought new ideals to Europe. In Japan many
of the elements worked out by Western civilization have been adopted and
naturalized.
Besides, the let alone policy for Africa even if it were rational is
hopelessly late. Foreign trade and government have long been established
and show no sign of withdrawing. And the question is whether we shall
send to Africa our civilization, with all its burden of new demands and
moral responsibilities, without disclosing to its primitive and
childlike people that which alone supports our material civilization and
enables us to bear its moral weight—that which is deepest and best in
our thought and life.
One of unusual gifts and attainments, who in all probability would have
occupied a position of great influence in the church in America if he
had remained at home, after labouring more than forty years in Africa,
speaks thus of the temporal benefits consequent upon the spread of
Christianity:
“For the feeling with which I was impressed on my very first contact
with the miseries of the sociology of heathenism, entirely aside from
its theology and any question of salvation in a future life, has been
steadily deepened into conviction that, even if I were not a Christian,
I still ought to, and would, do and bear and suffer whatever God has
called or allowed me to suffer or bear or do since 1861 in my
proclamation of His Gospel, simply for the sake of the elevation of
heathen during their present earthly life from the wrongs sanctioned by
or growing out of their religion.”[3]
Footnote 3:
Rev. Robert Hamill Nassau, D. D., _Fetishism in West Africa_, p. 26.
But to this apologetic the missionary adds his confident belief that the
Christian faith affects not only the Africans’ redemption from “the
miseries of the sociology of heathenism,” but also and chiefly the
salvation of their souls; for he has seen the evidence in the lives of
many who have been morally transformed by the power of a new and
transcendent hope. Christian missions have made high claims, but their
self-estimate has been justified by their achievement.
When I was on the voyage to Africa for the first time it chanced that
Miss Mary H. Kingsley, the famous English traveller and writer, had just
made one of her journeys down the West Coast and her name was in
everybody’s mouth. Expressions of opinion were remarkable for lack of
moderation, and oscillated between extremes of praise and criticism.
When I went to Africa the second time Miss Kingsley had finished her
travels on the coast and written her books, with their strong indictment
of missions. I was amazed at the frequency and assurance with which Miss
Kingsley was everywhere quoted. The captain of the steamer upon which I
travelled knew her books almost by heart. He could repeat whole pages;
which he did with as much reverence as if he were quoting from _Science
and Health_. He had no doubt but that she had dealt the final death-blow
to missions, and that the era of missionary activity was already drawing
to an inglorious close by reason of her indictment. The captain himself
seemed to feel real bad about it.
Some years have passed since Miss Kingsley wrote; but she is quoted as
much as ever, especially in England. _The African Society_ was founded
as a memorial to her, and the organ of this society, _The African
Society Journal_, bears a medallion portrait of her on its title-page.
In short, in English trade circles Miss Kingsley is a kind of religious
cult.
Besides being a remarkably clever woman and a brilliant writer, she had
the prestige of a great name, being the niece of Charles Kingsley and
the daughter of George Kingsley; a name of such historical significance
in the Church of England that we should naturally expect Miss Kingsley
to be in intellectual and moral sympathy with the Christian religion.
Such however is by no means the case. She avows her disbelief in
Christianity and frankly tells us that Spinoza is the exponent of her
creed,[4] which is therefore pure pantheism. God does not transcend
nature; nor is He separable from it. Moreover, Miss Kingsley does not
hold this opinion dispassionately. For instance, the effort to draw
moral inspiration from our relation to a personal God (which she chooses
to call “emotionalism”), she tells us she regards with “instinctive
hatred.”[5]
Footnote 4:
_West African Studies_, p. 112.
Footnote 5:
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 506.
With such views Miss Kingsley finds, when she comes to the study of
fetishism, that she half believes in it herself, and she is reluctant to
speak against it. She says: “It is a most unpleasant thing for any
religious-minded person to speak of a religion unless he either
profoundly believes or disbelieves in it. For if he does the one he has
the pleasure of praise; if he does the other, he has the pleasure of
war, but the thing in between these is the thing that gives neither
pleasure; it is like quarrelling with one’s own beloved relations. Thus
it is with fetish and me!”[6]
Footnote 6:
_West African Studies_, p. 113.
We need not be surprised, then, when Miss Kingsley frankly says: “I am
unsympathetic, for reasons of my own, with Christian missions.”[7]
Footnote 7:
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 214.
And not only was there a want of intellectual sympathy with the
Christian religion, but a want of moral sympathy as well.
Miss Kingsley says: “An American magazine the other day announced, in a
shocked way, that I could evidently ‘swear like a trooper.’ I cannot
think where it got the idea from.”[8] I _can_. And I venture the simple
guess that the editor had read Miss Kingsley’s books—for instance, the
interesting _preface_ to _West African Studies_.
Footnote 8:
_West African Studies_, p. 299.
But there are several more serious phases of this want of sympathy with
the spirit of Christianity which would militate against Miss Kingsley’s
competence as a critic of missions, namely, her avowed belief in
_slavery_, in _polygamy_, and in the _liquor traffic_. Miss Kingsley,
after contending that domestic slavery is “for divers reasons essential
to the well-being of Africa,” appends the following opinion in a
foot-note: “I am of the opinion that the suppression of the export slave
trade to the Americas was a grave mistake.”[9] Even more vehemently does
Miss Kingsley defend native polygamy; and still more vehemently the
liquor traffic.
Footnote 9:
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 514.
We are grateful for the perfect frankness with which she expresses her
views on these three subjects, as it makes it an easier task to
discredit her opinion on Christian missions; for, in this day and
generation, to believe in these three social evils of Africa and at the
same time to believe in missions were impossible. If these are not evils
it is a foregone conclusion that the missionary, who is fighting them to
the death, is doing more harm than good, is wasting both blood and
money, and is at the best a “well-meaning fool.”
Miss Kingsley assures us that she went to Africa in the belief that the
missionary represented everything that was good and the trader
everything that was evil. But on shipboard, long before she reached
Africa, when Miss Kingsley was mistaken for a missionary she thought it
the greatest joke of modern times—and I rather agree with her. This is
the one joke that she repeats with infinite laughter every time that it
occurs. Her laughter of course measures her inward sense of utter
incongruity and want of sympathy. Her fellow passengers knew her
attitude before she reached the first African port.
Another marked feature about Miss Kingsley’s books is the author’s want
of sympathy for the sufferings of the natives, and her want of pity when
they bleed under the cruel lash of the white man. Though written by a
woman, they are books without tears.
For instance, a story of heartrending wrong and suffering was told me by
a trader of Fernando Po, who, although he had been on the coast for
years, and, one would think, had been hardened by cruel sights, was yet
deeply affected as he related it. I was able to verify it afterwards. It
was a story of the cruelty of Portuguese planters to certain Krumen,
whom by a false contract they enticed to San Thomé Island and then
compelled them to remain and labour on the coco plantations as slaves.
The conduct of the Portuguese in Africa justifies the opinion of the
Kruman, who says: “God done make white man and God done make black man
but dem debil done make Portuguee.” These enslaved Krumen, watching
their opportunity, after two years escaped from San Thomé in canoes by
night. They did not know that they were one hundred and fifty miles from
the mainland, and they hoped that by some unforeseen means they might
reach their own country. They all perished; most of them by hunger and
thirst. After many days one or two canoes drifted to Fernando Po. In
these the men were still alive—but scarcely alive, and they died after
being rescued.
This story Miss Kingsley tells, in substance, though in abridged form,
and with no comment except the following apology for the Portuguese: “My
Portuguese friends assure me that there never was a thought of
permanently detaining the boys, and that they were only just keeping
them until other labourers arrived to take their place on the
plantation. I quite believe them, for I have seen too much of the
Portuguese in Africa to believe that they would in a wholesale way be
cruel to natives.”[10] Surely the quality of Miss Kingsley’s charity is
not strained! I scarcely know a white man in West Africa who would offer
any apology for those men, or who would call them his “friends.” If the
poor Krumen had been captured, Miss Kingsley’s friends would probably
have flogged them to death. As a matter of fact, there are always a
number of escaped slaves leading a wretched existence in the deep forest
of San Thomé. And the Portuguese have been known to go hunting them as
we would hunt wild animals. They sometimes find them hiding in the tops
of the tall trees, and it is considered uncommonly fine sport to shoot
them in the trees and bring them crashing to the ground.
Footnote 10:
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 49.
Miss Kingsley disliked any and every change that threatened to improve
the native and thus to mar the picturesque wildness of his savage state.
She is perfectly consistent with her anti-mission views when she tells
us the kind of native that she admires, as follows: “A great, strong
Kruman, for example, with his front teeth filed, nothing much on but
oil, half a dozen wives, and half a hundred jujus [fetishes], is a sort
of person whom I hold higher than any other form of native.”[11] Well,
it is proverbial that tastes differ; but the missionary thinks that, as
compared with this, the Christian ideal is higher and nobler. Miss
Kingsley informs us (through the words of another whom she quotes with
approval) of the treatment received, at the hands of these same Krumen,
by shipwrecked and half-drowned passengers cast helpless upon the shore:
“If you get ashore you don’t save the things you stand up in—the natives
strip you.” “Of course they are cannibals; they are all cannibals when
they get a chance.”[12] And this is the sort of person whom Miss
Kingsley holds “higher than any other form of native”!
Footnote 11:
_West African Studies_, p. 385.
Footnote 12:
_Ibid._, p. 42.
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