"Shouldn't Wonder If There Might Be
Something In The Idea Of The Immortality Of The Soul, And A Future
Heaven,
You know - but as for Hell, my dear sir, that's rank
superstition, no one believes in it now, and as
For Sabbath-keeping
and food-restrictions - what utter rubbish for enlightened people!"
So the backsliding African deals with his country-fashion ideas: he
eliminates from them the idea of immediate retribution, etc., and
keeps the polygamy and the dances, and all the lazy, hazy-minded
native ways. The education he has received at the mission school in
reading and writing fits him for a commercial career, and as every
African is a born trader he embarks on it, and there are pretty
goings on! On the West Coast he frequently sets up in business for
himself; on the South-West Coast he usually becomes a sub-trader to
one of the great English, French, or German firms. On both Coasts
he gets himself disliked, and brings down opprobrium on all black
traders, expressed in language more powerful than select. This
wholesale denunciation of black traders is unfair, because there are
many perfectly straight trading natives; still the majority are
recruited from missionary school failures, and are utterly bad.
"Post hoc non propter hoc" is an excellent maxim, but one that never
seems to enter the missionary head down here. Highly disgusted and
pained at his pupils' goings-on, but absolutely convinced of the
excellence of his own methods of instruction, and the spiritual
equality, irrespective of colour, of Christians; the missionary
rises up, and says things one can understand him saying about the
bad influence of the white traders; stating that they lure the
pupils from the fold to destruction. These things are nevertheless
not true. Then the white trader hears them, and gets his back up
and says things about the effect of missionary training on the
African, which are true, but harsh, because it is not the
missionaries' intent to turn out skilful forgers, and unmitigated
liars, although they practically do so. My share when I drop in on
this state of mutual recrimination is to get myself into hot water
with both parties. The missionary thinks me misguided for regarding
the African's goings-on as part of the make of the man, and the
trader regards me as a soft-headed idiot when I state that it is not
the missionary's individual blame that a lamb recently acquired from
the fold has gone down the primrose path with the trust, or the rum.
Shade of Sir John Falstaff! what a life this is!
The two things to which the missionary himself ascribes his want of
success are polygamy and the liquor traffic. Now polygamy is, like
most other subjects, a difficult thing to form a just opinion on, if
before forming the opinion you make a careful study of the facts
bearing on the case. It is therefore advisable, if you wish to
produce an opinion generally acceptable in civilised circles, to
follow the usual recipe for making opinions - just take a prejudice
of your own, and fix it up with the so-called opinion of that class
of people who go in for that sort of prejudice too.
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