Chumfo, the Super-sense 



not as uncanny or queer, but, like the sure sense of 

 direction which a few men possess, as a precious 

 and perfectly natural inheritance from our primi- 

 tive ancestors. That it skips a dozen generations 

 to alight on an odd man here or there, like a 

 storm-driven bird on a ship at sea, is precisely 

 what we might expect of heredity, which follows a 

 course that seems to us erratic or at times marvel- 

 ous, as geometry appears to an Eskimo, because 

 we do not yet understand its law or working 

 principle. 



Among savage tribes, who live a natural out- 

 door life in close contact with nature, the percep- 

 tion of danger or of persons beyond the ordinary 

 sense range is much more common than among 

 civilized folk. Almost every explorer and mis- 

 sionary who has spent much time with African 

 natives, for example, has noticed that the Blacks 

 have some mysterious means of knowing when a 

 stranger is approaching one of their villages 

 mysterious, that is, because it does not depend 

 on runners or messengers or any other of our 

 habitual means of communication. A recent ob- 

 server of these people has at last offered an ex- 

 planation of the matter, with many other impres- 

 sions of native philosophy, in a work to which he 

 gives the suggestive title of Thinking Black. Of 

 the scores of books on Africa which I have read, 



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