THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



the old beliefs, (b) inspire an era of skepticism, (c) 

 reintroduce the old struggle of ideas between the 

 Insurgent and the Standpatter, and Radical and 

 the Conservative, (d) in the meantime furnish, from 

 the older civilization, materials, both in the thought- 

 world and in the object- world, for building slowly 

 a new set of customs more closely approximating 

 those we are building for ourselves. This is a longer 

 and slower and more complicated affair than teach- 

 ing the native to wear clothes and sing hymns; or 

 to build houses and drink gin; but it is what must 

 be accomplished step by step before the African 

 peoples are really civilized. I, personally, do not 

 think it can be done. 



Now having, a hundred thousand years or so ago, 

 worked out the highest good of the human race, ac- 

 cording to them, what must they say to them.selves 

 and what must their attitude be when the white 

 man has come and has unrolled his carpet of won- 

 derful tricks.^ The dilemma is evident. Either 

 we, as black men, must admit that our hundred- 

 thousand-year-old ideas as to what constitutes the 

 highest type of human relation to environment is all 

 wrong, or else we must evolve a new attitude to- 

 ward this new phenomena. It is human nature to 

 do the latter. Therefore the native has not aban- 

 doned his old gods; nor has he adopted a new. He 



216 



