132 VII. SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE FOREST 
when a negro, with his cap on his head and a pipe in 
his mouth, pushed himself into the group and said to 
him : “ Well, what are we to have for supper to- 
night ? ” The cook wanted to show on what good 
terms he stood with his master ! 
The prevention of unsuitable freedom is, however, 
only the external and technical part, so to say, of the 
problem of authority. A white man can only have 
real authority if the native respects him. No one must 
imagine that the child of nature looks up to us merely 
because we know more, or can do more, than he can. 
This superiority is so obvious to him that it ceases to 
be taken into account. It is by no means the case that 
the white man is to the negro an imposing person 
because he possesses railways and steamers, can fly in 
the air, or travel under water. " White people are 
clever and can do anything they want to,” says Joseph. 
The negro is not in a position to estimate what these 
technical conquests of nature mean as proofs of mental 
and spiritual superiority, but on one point he has an 
unerring intuition, and that is on the question whether 
any particular white man is a real, moral personality 
or not. If the native feels that he is this, moral 
authority is possible ; if not, it is simply impossible to 
create it. llie child of nature, not having been 
artificialised and spoilt as we have been, has only 
elementary standards of judgment, and he measures us 
by the most elementary of them all, the moral standard, 
^^ere he finds goodness, justice, and genuineness of 
character, real worth and dignity, that is, behind the 
external dignity given by social circumstances, he bows 
and acknowledges his master ; where he does not find 
them he remains really defiant in spite of all appearance 
