I recollect that when I wrote these clear words of an honest doubter there came to mind the old Arab saying:  “Whosoever leaveth no male hath no memory,” which is but a confession of that sense of doubt that has haunted the minds of men of all races and at all times while the people as a whole have professed their hope and belief in a life everlasting.

I discussed the matter of polygamy with a Native youth one day, and made a note of his argument.  He said: 

“In our district the young women are beginning to go against the man who wants more than one wife.  I have a young wife, and when I talk to her about taking a second wife she says that she will not suffer it.  She says that the white people do well in that the man and his wife grow old together, whereas we Natives, as she says, we are like the cattle in the kraal; we do not behave like human beings.  But to this I answered that our fathers and mothers taught us that one wife by herself cannot be happy and comfortable because when she falls sick, as women often do, there is no one to help her, whereas when a man has two or more wives they can help and nurse one another, they need not be sad or unhappy.  I think our fathers way is the good way and I shall follow it, but I know there will be trouble because of the new thoughts my wife has taken from the white people.”

Now I do not say that these instances show any remarkable intelligence or power of thinking, but I do say that they show sound level-headed reasoning just like the common sense reasoning from cause and effect which we find in the average European, and that they show, moreover, that the same types of mental disposition and capacity are found in black and white alike.

It would indeed be easy for me to continue giving instances like these to show the essential sameness of the nature of the minds of the black and white people, but I must consider the weight of my book and the readers patience.  I have refrained from pointing to those Natives who have proved their scholastic capabilities at various universities and colleges because it is generally surmised that these men are exceptional or that their success is due to a highly developed imitative faculty coupled with a strong memory, with which it is fashionable to credit the successful Native student, and I have advisedly confined myself to instances drawn from the everyday life and thought of the normal and uneducated Native people.

I have lived amongst the Bantu for nearly thirty years and I have studied them closely, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no Native mind distinct from the common human mind.  The mind of the Native is the mind of all mankind; it is not separate or different from the mind of the European or the Asiatic any more than the mind of the English is different from that of the Scotch or Irish people.  The English way of speaking differs from that of the French, but there is no reason for thinking that the mind of the two people differs in any way whatever.  The languages of the world are many but the mind of the world is one.