The Ethnology and Climatology of Central Africa. 207 
are the terms used in describing the people. On the other 
hand, there are those who have remained longer among them, 
and have learned to know them better, and these discover 
that underneath that which is repulsive there exists method 
and much material for instruction, and that the people them- 
selves are found to be lovable instead of repellant. I 
suppose that nowadays no one would seek to find a proof in 
Central Africa that man has descended from the ape, for as 
Virchow, the great anthropologist, says, this idea is perfectly 
untenable. The gulf separating the lowest man and the 
highest ape cannot be bridged; and though one readily 
allows the difference between the highest civilised western 
and the lowest type of Affican, yet when one remembers 
that the Chinese and Mongolian are of the same race, and 
yet are at the opposite poles as far as civilisation is con- 
cerned, one cannot say that the difference in development is 
a proof of a different nature. It may be asked then, What 
is the character of the difference which exists between 
civilised and uncivilised people? It is in the more rapid 
development of language, religion, and political and com- 
mercial ideas that the difference is to be found. As Hamanns 
says, “ Without speech we have no reason, without reason no 
religion, and without this threefold cord we have no ground 
for either intellect or social ties.” 
One is in the habit of speaking of Africans and cognate 
races as children, when comparing them with more civilised 
races, and this may be justifiable. They possess language, 
fire, weapons, and implements, but owing to climatological 
causes they have been kept in a condition of childhood, 
although it must be admitted that the possibility of rapid 
advance is theirs if they could be placed under more favour- 
able circumstances. Culture means the sum total of all the 
intellectual conquests of time, but we are too apt to forget 
that this is only a superstructure built upon the childhood 
of the civilised nations now long since past. A_ highly 
cultured people may be likened to a mighty tree which, 
through hundreds of years of growth, has reached a stature 
and a permanence of character far above that of annuals, 
which, having a limited tenure of existence, grow rapidly, 
