The
Difficulty The Children And Widows Have In Sharing In The
Distribution Of The Estate Of The Father And Husband
Arises, I
fancy, in the principle of the husband's brothers being the true
heir, which has sunk into a fossilised
State near the trading
stations in the face of the white culture. The reason for this
inheritance of goods passing from the man to his brother by the same
mother has no doubt for one of its origins the recognition of the
fact that the brother by the same mother must be a near relation,
whereas, in spite of the strict laws against adultery, the
relationship to you of the children born of your wives is not so
certain. Nevertheless this is one of the obvious and easy
explanations for things it is well to exercise great care before
accepting, for you must always remember that the African's mind does
not run on identical lines with the European - what may be self-
evident to you is not so to him, and vice versa. I have frequently
heard African metaphysicians complain that white men make great
jumps in their thought-course, and do not follow an idea step by
step. You soon become conscious of the careful way a Negro follows
his idea. Certain customs of his you can, by the exercise of great
patience, trace back in a perfectly smooth line from their source in
some natural phenomenon. Others, of course, you cannot, the traces
of the intervening steps of the idea having been lost, owing partly
to the veneration in which old customs are held, which causes them
to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason
enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of
all but oral tradition.
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