84 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTIOX E. 



Yet it is easy to see that this practice is highly 

 detrimental. It paralyses any attempt to use reason or 

 experience in practical life. It annihilates moral conscience, 

 as it makes reflection useless. Bones are tliro"vyn. They 

 reveal the cause as well as the remedy of any disease or 

 misfortune. There is no need any more to make an effort, 

 to fight a battle, to employ energy in order to free oneself 

 from the hardships of life. It can l)e safely asserted that no 

 real progress in civilisation or morality can be obtained as 

 long as the basket of the bone-thrower remains the Bible of 

 the Bantu. But one can go further, and state that, however 

 picturesque this magic conception of Nature may be, it is not 

 only a check to progress, but it is decidedly harmful, and 

 as long as it is still predominant it is impossible for the 

 European ruler to govern the black race in a satisfactory 

 manner. There is not only what I called white magic — these 

 innumerable rites and practices which might be considered 

 as quite innocent by a superficial observer, and as deserving 

 only to be laughed at — there is a black magic, namely, rites 

 performed to injure or to kill, or to attain certain aims by 

 criminal means. 



In the month of January of this year the IS^ative Com- 

 missioner of Sibasa, Northern Transvaal, put in gaol the son 

 of the chief, who was found guilty of having killed a man. 

 When he inquired into the reason of the crime, he found 

 that it had been accomplished for magic purposes. Ha in was 

 wanting, and the crop of the year compromised. An intelligent 

 man who was a particularly good cultivator had been chosen, 

 probably on the advice of the bones, and murdered. His head 

 had been cut off and thrown into a mealie pit. Like acts 

 on like. The wisdom and power of that distinguished native 

 farmer would in this way spread all through the land, the 

 gardens would be full of grain just the same as the gardens of 

 that man, because rain would fall. And, indeed, rain fell — 

 plenty of rain ! 



The murderer was arrested, but nobody really thought he 

 was guilty. When the official tried to inquire into the 

 opinion of the Ba-Yenda on the subject, he received the 

 following answer: " The chief's son is a fool. Why did he 

 not send somebody else to kill that man? " As regards the 

 murder itself, it was quite legitimate according to the 

 conscience of the tribe. 



I think, therefore, that my conclusion cannot be opposed : 

 As long as the Bantu is so completely plunged in this magic 

 conception of Nature, he cannot go ahead, because he is resting 

 on fallacious ground ; nor can he really be influenced by his 

 white master. The European and the Bantu are living in two 

 separate and opposite worlds of thought, and it is impossible 

 in those circumstances to obtain any true communion of mind 

 between them. 



However, the position is not desperate, because it is 

 bound to change. Let us remember that our fathers, though 

 belonging to the so-called superior Aryan race, held con- 



