592 THE NATIVES IN THE LARGER TOWNS. 



The former report states : — 

 In their homes the Natives are a hospitable and social people, clever 

 and bright in repartee, fond of music, open-hearted and generous hosts, 

 imitative and tractable, and interesting in many ways. They are, speaking 

 generally, not energetic of disposition, but the struggle for life has not 

 been so hard with them as with the European nations, and there has in 

 their past history been little to make them continuous workers. 



A subtle humour runs through a passag^e of the Natal Native 

 Affairs Commission's report (1906-7) in which some disabilities 

 of the Native are set off by his countervailing advantages as a 

 polygamist : — 



He can . . . possess movable and immovable property, and if, for 

 his own good, he is restricted in the use of liquor, firearms, and the 

 franchise, he enjoys a much wider connubial experience than the Euro- 

 pean. 



The report continues : — 



These people are admitted by all competent judges to be wonderfully 

 easy to govern, if only they are dealt with in the right way. Allegiance 

 and dependence are amongst their most striking characteristics. These 

 sentiments owe their existence to the patriarchal system, and are the 

 product of close personal relationship and common interest. 



Process of Evolution. 



The progressive change in the tone of official reports on this 

 subject from 1852 to 1907 indicates either that the Native as a 

 member of the community has improved in the process of evolu- 

 tion more than is admitted by common consent, or that the same 

 p'-ocess has predisposed the investigators themselves to a more 

 charitable view of the Native's character. 



What Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of another race will, by 

 the ordinary prompting of comparison, be found to be an apposite 

 epitome of the elemental qualities of the South African Native : — 



Savagely surrounded, savagely descended . . . who should have 

 blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely 

 barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect 

 virtues; infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; 

 sitting down amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and 

 the attributes of deity ; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an 

 idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection, bringing 

 forth in pain, rearing, with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch 

 the heart of his mystery we find in him one thought, strange to the point 

 of lunacy; the thought of duty, the thought of something owing to himself,, 

 to his neighbour, to his God ; an ideal of decency to which he would rise, 

 if it were possible ; a limit of shame below which, if it were possible, he will 

 not stoop. 



Many students of the Native will, on their first acquaintance 

 with this passage, echo Stevenson's own words : 



I could have thought that he had been eavesdropping at the doors of 

 my heart, so entire was the coincidence between his writing and my 

 thought. 



As an antidote against too sentimental a view of the Natives. 

 it may be mentioned that Livingstone, though he saw their 

 splendid possibilities underneath their degradation, never expected 

 too much of them. His scientific mind appreciated all that they 

 owed to centuries of savagery and superstition.* 



* C. Sylvester Home : " Dr. Livingstone." 



