140 lUTlRE OF XATIVK RACKS OF S. RHODESIA, 



being greatly diminished. Possibly it may be increased. So there 

 is nothing to be said under this head, and no comparisons need 

 be drawn for our purpose. 



The next is the question of intellectual attributes. Reverting 

 to the quotation I have pre\iously given, I cannot in the slightest 

 degree assent to the statement that there are very few natives in 

 this territory able to rise beyond the educational ability of a child 

 in the third standard. In so far as racial heredity is concerned, I 

 am inclined to believe there is nothing to choose between the 

 intellectual capacity of a white man and a Mashona or a Matabele. 

 Given the same environment, it appears to me, after fourteen 

 years' study of the native of this country, that his brain is capable 

 of just as much development, and that he starts life equipped 

 with just the same intellectual capabilities as a white man. 

 I should put his stake of Eacial Heredity into the ground of life 

 exactl}' alongside the white man's in the sphere of intellectual 

 attributes. The Environment, or Social Heredity, of intellectual 

 activity he has not in the same degree. His chain of environment, 

 within the limit of which he may roam, is much more restricted. 

 The part of the future is to add links to that chain of Intellectual 

 Social Heredity of the black man, as it is the part of the future to 

 add links to the chain of Intellectual Social Heredity of the white 

 man. Therein lies half of the problem of the future of the native 

 races of Ehodesia. The other half we come to next. 



We have dealt with the physical and intellectual spheres. 

 We come now to the moral sphere. I class as moral virtues the 

 following: mental vigour, moral stamina, the ability to accept 

 responsibility, the instinct to accept responsibility, the 

 capacity to take up a strong attitude towards life and 

 all it means. These are absolute virtues. The other moral 

 virtues as more usually meant, besides being relative, and, 

 to some extent, a matter of fashion, are altogether dependent for 

 their existence on the virtues I have named, and therefore I do 

 not take them into account in this connection. In the moral 

 sphere, as 1 have defined it in its virtues, we find the Eacial 

 Heredity of the Ehodesian native is not the same as that of the 

 white man, the Western European. Therein it differs from the 

 state of affairs in the intellectual sphere. In the moral sphere 

 the state of Eacial Heredity is not put down close to the white 

 man's. That is the conclusion to which I have come. I may be 

 wrong, and the out-and-out believers in the overwhelming influ- 

 ence of Social Heredity, Environment, will refuse to accept such 

 a limitation upon any portion of humanity; but careful observa- 

 tion, both of my own and of many unprejudiced investigators in 

 whom I have confidence, convinces me that the black man starts 

 life with a certain innate difference from the white man in respect 

 of those moral virtues which I have enumerated as absolute moral 

 virtues. (The relative virtues I do not touch upon.) The black 

 man's Eacial Inheritance of absolute moral virtues is inferior to 

 the white man's. And, for this reason, I say that our civilisa- 

 tion rests at present on the undisputed supremacy of the white 

 man. For this reason I state there is no incompatibility between 

 insisting that the M-hite races shall be supreme and endeavouring 

 to approximate the native races to the standards of the white 



