AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



This acute intelligence is not at all incompatible 

 with the rather bigoted and narrow outlook on 

 life inevitable to a people whose ideals are made up 

 of fancied superiorities over the rest of mankind. 

 Witness, the feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages. 



With this type the underlying theory of masculine 

 activity is the military. Some outlet for energy was 

 needed, and in war it was found. Even the ordinary 

 necessities of primitive agriculture and of the chase 

 were lacking. The Masai eats neither vegetable, 

 grain, nor wild game. The whole of young manhood, 

 then, can be spent in no better occupation than the 

 pursuit of warlike glory — and cows. 



On this rests the peculiar social structure of the 

 people. In perusing the following fragmentary ac- 

 count the reader must first of all divest his mind of 

 what he would, according to white man's standards, 

 consider moral or immoral. Such things must be 

 viewed from the standpoint of the people believing 

 in them. The Masai are moral in the sense that 

 they very rigorously live up to their own customs 

 and creeds. Their women are strictly chaste in the 

 sense that they conduct no affairs outside those 

 permitted within the tribe. No doubt, from the 

 Masai point of view, we are ourselves immoral. 



The small boy, as soon as he is big enough to be 

 responsible — and that is very early in life — Is 



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