306 ANTHROPOLOGY 



Other writers have drawn attention to what they 

 describe as the grown-up African's stolidity, his 

 unintelhgence, compared with the brightness and 

 promise of his earlier years ; and although I agree 

 that there is a reason for this which connects itself 

 with the sexual preoccupations incidental to the 

 period of puberty and thereafter, I am nevertheless 

 of opinion that the mature males are by no means 

 so mentally ^^acant as their demeanour would often 

 give one occasion for supposing them. The African 

 mind works slowly, and while it plods along, vainly 

 endeavouring to keep pace with your questions 

 and as vainly asking itself the reason for them, 

 between caution on the one hand and bewilder- 

 ment on the other, the undeveloped intellect falls 

 behind in the race, and the face assumes the 

 appearance of unintelhgence which really arises 

 from the duller, slower mind having been run off 

 its shorter legs. The impatient European, there- 

 fore, whose want of perception has not permitted 

 him to grasp the situation, immediately forms the 

 erroneous impression that the man is dull-witted, 

 stolid, borne. He is not so in reality, or, at any 

 rate, to the extent many persons imagine. All he 

 requires is a little patience to win his confidence, 

 and conquer the shyness so characteristic of his race. 



There is no doubt, of course, that to the young 

 boys there comes a more or less prolonged period 

 of check to their mental expansion ; a sort of 

 intellectual hibernation during which, as they 

 approach to and attain the period of full sexual 

 development, their minds fall into a state of lethargy, 

 whilst other faculties contribute thereto by the 



