Tài liệu THE BLACK MAN''''''''S PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA pdf

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that the Bantu women exhibit a straightness of form which may well be envied by the
ladies of civilisation.
It is generally accepted that the African Natives have a bodily odour of their own
which is sui generis in that it is supposed to be different from that of other human
races. Some early travellers have compared it with the smell of the female crocodile,
and many people believe it to be a racial characteristic denoting a comparatively
humble origin and intended by nature as a signal or warning for the rest of human kind
against close physical contact with the African race. A recent student of the Negro
question in America gives it as his opinion that this odour is "something which the
Negroes will have difficulty in living down."
[4]
To most Europeans this smell seems to
be more or less unpleasant but it must not be forgotten that it does not seem to affect
the large numbers of white men of all nationalities who have found and still find
pleasure in continued and intimate intercourse with African women. It would seem as
if highly "refined" Europeans are nowadays given to exaggerate the sensation
produced on their over delicate olfactory nerves by the exhalations caused by
perspiration through a healthy and porous skin. In many of the so-called Ladies'
Journals published in England and America advertisements appear regularly vaunting
chemical preparations for the disguising of the odour of perspirationwhich, it is
alleged, mars the attractiveness of women. If this is so it would seem that the nostrils
of the modern European are rather too easily offended by the natural smell of his kind.
However this may be there is no evidence for believing that the African's bodily smell
is more animal-like than that of any other race.
If there is one thing which the white man of South Africa is sure about it is the
comparative thickness of the "nigger skull," but this notion also would appear to be
one of the many which have no foundation in fact.
The opinion of medical men, based upon actual observation and measurement, is to
the effect that there is no evidence to support the contention that the Native skull is
thicker than that of the European.
[5]
That the thick, woolly hair of the Native may
account for his supposed comparative invulnerability to head injuries has not occurred
to the layman observer who is more often given to vehement assertion than to careful
enquiry.
The supposed arrest of the brain of the Bantu at the age of puberty owing to the
closing of the sutures of the skull at an earlier age than happens with Europeans is
another popular notion for which a sort of pseudo-scientific authority may be quoted
from encyclopædias and old books of travel. The opinion of modern authorities on this
subject is that those who say that the closure of the sutures of the skull determines
brain growth would or should also say that the cart pulls the horse, for, if the sutures
of the Native skull close at a somewhat earlier date in the average Native than in the
average European then it simply means that the Native reaches maturity slightly
earlier than the average white man.
The loss of mental alertness which is said by some to be peculiar to the Natives at the
time of puberty is very often met with in the European youth or girl at that period of
life. Competent observers have of late years come to the conclusion that this supposed
falling off in intelligence, in so far as it may differ in degree from what has so often
been noticed in European boys and girls at that point of development, is due to
psychological and not to physiological causes. It is realised that this lapse in mental
power of concentration in European youth in the stage of early adolescence is
prevented by the force of example and fear of parental and general reprobation
coupled with unbroken school-discipline, all of which factors are as yet seldom
present in the surroundings of the average Bantu boy or girl.
The outward ethnic differentiæ of the Bantu are admittedly palpable and patent to
everyone, but in the opinion of competent observers there is nothing in the anatomy of
the black man to make him a lower beast than the man with the white skin. It is now
seen that there is no apparent relation between complexion or skull shape and
intelligence, but while this is so there appears to be a correlation between the size of
the brain and the number of cells and fibres of which it is made up, although this
correlation is so weak as to be difficult of demonstration.
[6]

The capacity of the normal human cranium varies from 1,000 cubic centimetres to
1,800 cubic centimetres, the mean capacity of female crania being 10 per cent. less
than the mean of male crania. On this basis skulls are classified in the text books as
being microcephalic when below 1,350 cubic centimetres, such as those of the extinct
Tasmanians, Bushmen, Andamanese, Melanesians, Veddahs, and the Hill-men of
India; mesocephalic, those from 1,350 to 1,450 cubic centimetres, comprising
Negroes, Malays, American Indians, and Polynesians; and megacephalic, above 1,450
cubic centimetres, including Eskimos, Europeans, Mongolians, Burmese and
Japanese. The mean capacity among Europeans is fixed at 1,500 cubic centimetres,
and the average weight of the brain at 1,300 grams.
These figures show that the skull capacity of the average European is larger than that
of the average Negro, and as it seems plausible that the greater the central nervous
system, the higher will be the faculty of the race, and the greater its aptitude for
mental achievements, the conclusion that the European is superior in this respect
seems on the face of it to be well grounded. There are, however, certain relevant facts
which qualify this inference, and these must be briefly considered.
The anthropologist Manouvrier measured thirty-five skulls of eminent white men and
found them to be of an average capacity of 1,665 cubic centimetres as compared to
1,560 cubic centimetres general average derived from 110 ordinary individuals. On
the other hand he found that the cranial capacity of forty-five murderers was 1,580
cubic centimetres, also superior to the general average. Professor Franz Boas, in
discussing this experiment, says that most of the brain weights constituting the general
series are obtained in anatomical institutes, and the individuals who find their way
there are poorly developed on account of malnutrition and of life under unfavourable
circumstances, while the eminent men represent a much better nourished class. As
poor nourishment reduces the weight and size of the whole body, it will also reduce
the size and weight of the brain.
[7]
Dr. Arthur Keith when dealing with the so-called
Piltdown skull in his book "The Antiquity of Man" says to the same effect that the size
of brain is a very imperfect index of mental ability in that we know that certain
elements enter into the formation of the brain which take no direct part in our mental
activity, so that a person who has been blessed with a great robust body and strong,
massive limbs requires a greater outfit of mere tracts and nerve cells for the purposes
of mere animal administration than the smaller person with trunk and limbs of a
moderate size.
[8]

It seems fair, therefore, to assume that the brain-weights of big men of the Zulu, the
Xosa and the Fingo tribes will be considerably above those of European women, but
to conclude from this that the capacity of the big black man is higher than that of the
average white woman would hardly be possible to-day. I would say here that I do not
accept the suggestion, recently advanced, that the mental faculty of woman is
qualitatively different from that of man. I hold that there is no difference of any kind
between the intellectual powers of the male and female human being. The
comparative lack of mental achievement on the part of women in the past I believe to
have been due to a natural, and, as I think, wholesome feminine disinclination to take
up intellectual studies and scientific pursuits that until recently have been deemed the
prerogative of men, and not to any innate inferiority of the female brain.
According to Professor Sollas, whose high authority cannot be disputed, the size of
the brain when looked at broadly seems to be connected with the taxinomic rank of
the race, but when we come to details the connection between cranial capacity and
mental endowment becomes less obvious. The Eskimo, for instance, who is of short
stature, has a cranial capacity of 1,550 cubic centimetres, thus surpassing some of the
most civilised peoples of Europe, and yet no one of this race has so far startled the
world with any kind of mental achievement. "The result," says Professor Sollas, "of
numerous investigations carried out during the last quarter of a century is to show that,
within certain limits, no discoverable relation exists between the magnitude of the
brain—or even its gross anatomy—and intellectual power," and he illustrates this
statement by a list giving the cranial capacities and brain-weights of a number of
famous men which shows that though Bismarck had a skull capacity of 1,965 cubic
centimetres, Liebniz, who attained to the highest flights of genius, had a cranium
measuring only 1,422 cubic centimetres.
Dealing more particularly with the assumed relation between highly specialised
mental faculties and the anatomy of the brain, as apart from its mere size, the same
author cites the case of Dr. Georg Sauerwein, who was master of forty or fifty
languages, and whose brain after his death at the age of 74 in December, 1904, was
dissected by Dr. L. Stieda with the idea that, since it is known that the motor centre for
speech is situated in what is called Broca's area, some connection between great
linguistic powers and the size or complication of the frontal lobe might be found in
this highly specialised brain, but the examination revealed nothing that could be
correlated with Sauerwein's exceptional gift.
[9]

Professor R.R. Marett in his handbook on Anthropology says, in discussing the
subject of race, "You will see it stated that the size of the brain cavity will serve to
mark off one race from another. This is extremely doubtful, to put it mildly. No doubt
the average European shows some advantage in this respect as compared, say, with
the Bushmen. But then you have to write off so much for their respective types of
body, a bigger body going in general with a bigger head, that in the end you find
yourself comparing mere abstractions. Again, the European may be the first to cry off
on the ground that comparisons are odious; for some specimens of Neanderthal man,
in sheer size of brain cavity, are said to give points to any of our modern poets and
politicians Nor, if the brain itself be examined after death, and the form and number
of its convolutions compared, is this criterion of hereditary brain-power any more
satisfactory. It might be possible in this way to detect the difference between an idiot
and a person of normal intelligence, but not the difference between a fool and a
genius."
[10]

In his book, "The Human Body," Dr. Keith, in dealing with racial characters, begs his
readers to break away from the common habit of speaking and thinking of various
races as high and low. "High and low," he says, "refers to civilisation; it does not refer
to the human body."
[11]

The foregoing authoritative opinions serve to show that the Bantu, as compared with
other races, labour under no apparent physiological disabilities to hinder them in the
process of mental development. Let us now consider in the light of modern
psychology upon first-hand and reliable evidence the allegation of mental inferiority
that is constantly brought against these people.
THE MIND OF THE NATIVE.
The white man has conquered the earth and all its dark-skinned people, and when he
thinks of his continued success in the struggle for supremacy he feels that he has a
right to be proud of himself and his race. He looks upon the black man as the fool of
the human family who has failed in every way, whereas he, the lord of creation, has
achieved the impossible, and this comparison which is so favourable to himself
naturally leads him to set up achievement as the sole test of ability. If asked why the
African Native has never accomplished anything at all comparable with the feats of
the European or the Asiatic the average white man will answer, without hesitation,
that it is because the Native has always lacked the necessary capacity.
The average white man has a more or less vague notion that his own proud position at
the top of human society is the result of the continuous and assiduous use of the brain
by his forefathers in the struggle for existence under the rigorous conditions of a
northern climate during thousands of generations by which constant exercise the
mental faculty of his race grew and increased till it became, in course of time, a
heritable intellectual endowment, whereas the Natives of Africa by failing always to
make use of whatever brain power they might have been blessed with in the beginning
have suffered a continuous loss of mental capacity.
The idea that the evolution of the human intellect is a perpetually progressive process
by means of the constant use of the brain in the pursuits of increasing civilisation
towards the eventual attainment of god-like perfection is one that appeals strongly to
the popular fancy, and its corollary, that those who fail during long periods to make
full use of their mental equipment in the ways of advancing civilisation must
gradually lose a part, if not the whole, of their original talents, is commonly accepted
as being warranted by the teaching of modern science.
But science, as a body, does not support the view that bodily characters and
modifications acquired by an individual during his lifetime are transmissible to his
offspring; in other words, science does not, as a body, accept the theory that the
effects of use and disuse in the parent are inherited by his children. Modern science
does not, indeed, definitely foreclose discussion of the subject, but what it says is that
the empirical issue is doubtful with a considerable balance against the supposed
inheritance of acquired characters.
Very recently evidence has, indeed, been adduced to prove that "Initiative in animal
evolution comes by stimulation, excitation and response in new conditions, and is
followed by repetition of these phenomena until they result in structural modifications,
transmitted and directed by selection and the law of genetics." The student who
tenders this evidence is Dr. Walter Kidd
[12]
who claims that his observations of the
growth of the hair of the harness-horse prove that the prolonged friction caused by the
harness produces heritable effects in the pattern of the hairy coat of this animal. It is
admitted by this observer that such momentary and acute stimuli as are involved in the
mutilation of the human body by boring holes in the ears, knocking out teeth, and by
circumcision, which practices have been followed by so-called savages during long
ages, seldom, if ever, lead to inherited characters, but he maintains that the effect of
prolonged friction by the collar on the hair on the under side of the neck of the
harness-horse has produced marks or patterns in the same place on certain young foals
born by these horses.
These observations must, of course, be submitted to strict examination before
science will pronounce its opinion. Meanwhile I may be allowed to cite what Dr. Kidd
calls an "undesigned experiment," which to my mind goes far to prove that the effects
of prolonged friction on the human body during many generations is not heritable. The
custom followed by many Bantu tribes of producing in their women an elongation of
the genital parts by constant manipulation must have been practiced during very many
generations, certainly much longer than the comparatively recent harnessing of horses
in England, for we know how tenaciously primitive people cling to their old customs,
generation after generation, for thousands of years, and yet no instance has ever been
noticed by these people, who are very observant in these matters, of any sign of such
an inherited characteristic in any of their female children.
The ordinary layman, though he may feel strongly interested in the problems of
heredity and evolution, has seldom the leisure or the opportunity for the careful study
of biological data, and he must therefore leave these to the specialists in scientific
enquiry, but he is by no means precluded from using his own common-sense in
drawing conclusions from the ordinary plain facts of life observable around him. It is
when we come to consider this most important question in its bearing upon the mental
side of the human being that the ordinary layman feels himself to be no less competent
to form an opinion than the trained man of science.
Is it possible, then, we ask, for the parent whose intellect has been developed through
training in his lifetime to transmit to his children any portion of this acquired
increment of mental capacity, or, putting the question in more concrete terms, is it
possible for a parent to transmit to his offspring any part of that power to increase the
size and quality of the brain which may be assumed to have resulted in his own case
from mental exercise? The question must not be misunderstood. We do not ask
whether clever parents do as a rule have clever children; what we want to know is
whether the successive sharpening of the wits of generations of people does, or does
not, eventually result in establishing a real and cumulative asset of mental capacity.
Seeing that universal education has only come about within the latter part of the
last century it must be clear that the vast majority of the present generation of
educated Europeans are descended from people who never had any of that education
which so many people nowadays regard as essential to the development and growth of
the intellectual powers. But although education has only recently become, in various
degrees, common to all white people, the light of learning has always been kept
burning, however dimly at times, in certain places and circles, and it may, perhaps, be
possible to find people to-day who are the descendants of those favoured few who
have enjoyed, during many unbroken generations, the privilege of liberal education.
Now let us assume that there are at present a small number of such people in the
forefront of the intellectual activity of the day, and then let us ask ourselves whether
these leaders of thought who can claim long lineal descent from learned ancestors
show any mental capacity over and above that which is displayed by those commoners
who are also in the foremost ranks of thought and science, but who cannot lay claim to
such continuous ancestral training.
If we admit the existence of two such separate classes to-day then the answer must
surely be that there is no mental difference discernible between them. But I think we
may safely conclude that there has been very little of the kind of descent here
presumed. It would be well-nigh impossible to find people who could prove an
unbroken lineage of educated forbears going back more than four hundred years.
During the middle ages the monks of the Church were the chief and almost sole
depositories of education and learning, and as they were bound by their vows to life-
long celibacy there could be no transmission from them to posterity of any of that
increased capacity of brain which we are supposing as having been acquired by each
individual through his own mental exertion. We know, of course, that there were
frequent lapses from the unnatural restraint imposed on these men so that some of
them may have propagated their kind, but such illegitimate offspring was not likely to
remain within the circle of learning and therefore could not perpetuate the line. We of
to-day know full well that the son of the common labourer whose forefathers had no
education can, with equality of opportunity, achieve as much and travel as far in any
field of mental activity as can the scion of the oldest of our most favoured families.
There does not seem to have been any augmentation of human brain power since
written records of events were begun. Indeed it would seem rather as if there had been
in many places a decrease in intellectual capacity, as when we compare the fellahin of
modern Egypt with their great ancestors whom they resemble so closely in physical
appearance that there can be little doubt about the purity of their descent. The same
may be said about the modern descendants of the people who created "the glory that
was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." And when we consider the period of
the Renaissance we cannot say that civilised man of to-day is superior to those people
who after centuries of stagnation and general illiteracy were yet able to seize and
develop the long-forgotten wisdom and philosophy of antiquity.
To go still further back and to venture beyond the historical horizon into the dim past
when prehistoric man roamed over Europe is a task manifestly beyond the powers of
the ordinary layman, and here we must, perforce, trust ourselves to the guidance of
those students whose training and special learning entitle them to speak with
authority.
The so-called Piltdown skull which was discovered in 1912 is accepted as
representing the most ancient of human remains yet found in England, its age being
estimated at somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 years. In discussing the size
and arrangement of the lobes and convolutions of the brain which this cranium must
have contained, Dr. Arthur Keith, who is admittedly the highest authority on the
subject to-day, makes the following statement: "Unfortunately our knowledge of the
brain, greatly as it has increased of late years, has not yet reached the point at which
we can say after close examination of all the features of a brain that its owner has
reached this or that status. The statement which Huxley made about the ancient human
skull from the cave of Engis still holds good of the brain: 'It might have belonged to a
philosopher or might have contained the thoughtless mind of a savage.' That is only
one side of our problem, there is another. Huxley's statement refers to the average
brain, which is equal to the needs of both the philosopher and the savage. It does not
in any way invalidate the truth that a small brain with a simple pattern of convolutions
is a less capable organ than the large brain with a complex pattern. If then we find a
fairly large brain in the Piltdown man, with an arrangement and development of
convolutions not very unlike those of a modern man, we shall be justified in drawing
the conclusion that, so far as potential mental ability is concerned, he has reached the
modern standard. We must always keep in mind that accomplishments and inventions
which seem so simple to us were new and unsolved problems to the pioneers who
worked their way up from a simian to a human estate."
In his concluding remarks upon this important find, Dr. Keith iterates his opinion:
"Although our knowledge of the human brain is limited—there are large areas to
which we can assign no definite function—we may rest assured that a brain which
was shaped in a mould so similar to our own was one which responded to the outside
world as ours does. Piltdown man saw, heard, felt, thought and dreamt much as we
still do. If the eoliths found in the same bed of gravel were his handiwork, then we can