The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

the cotton manufacture at the

present time, could not have been obtained without the

assistance of the negro: and that the agitation on his behalf,

which was commenced by Granville Sharp, has assisted much to

expand the sympathies, and to educate the heart of the Anglo-Saxon people, who are somewhat inclined to pride of colour and

prejudice of race. Respecting the prospects of the negro, it is

difficult for me to form an opinion; but what I have seen of

the Africans in their native and semi-civilised condition

inclines me to take a hopeful view. The negroes are imitative

in an extraordinary degree, and imitation is the first

principle of progress. They are vain and ostentatious, ardent

for praise, keenly sensitive of blame. Their natural wants,

indeed, are few; they inherit the sober appetites of their

fathers who lived on a few handfuls of rice a day; but it will,

I believe, be found that when they enjoy the same inducements

to work as other men, when they can hope to distinguish

themselves in the Parliament, the pulpit, or in social life,

they will become as we are, the slaves of an idea, and will

work day and night to obtain something which they desire, but

do not positively need. Whether the negroes are equal in

average capacity to the white man, whether they will ever

produce a man of genius, is an idle and unimportant question;

they can at least gain their livelihood as labourers and

artisans; they are therefore of service to their country; let

them have fair play, and they will find their right place

whatever it may be: As regards the social question, they will

no doubt, like the Jews, intermarry always with their own race,

and will thus remain apart. But it need not be feared that they

will become hostile to those with whom they reside. Experience

has shown that, whenever aliens are treated as citizens, they

become citizens, whatever may be their religion or their race,

It is a mistake to suppose that the civilised negro calls

himself an African, and pines to return to his ancestral land.

If he is born in the States, he calls himself an American he

speaks with an American accent; he loves and he hates with an

American heart.

 

It is a question frequently asked of African travellers, What

is the future of that great continent? In the first place, with

respect to the West Coast, there is little prospect of great

changes taking place for many years to come. The commerce in

palm oil is important, and will increase. Cotton will be

received in large quantities from the Sudan. The East Coast

of Africa, when its resources have been developed, will be a

copy of the West Coast. It is not probable that European

colonies will ever flourish in these golden but unwholesome

lands. The educated negroes will in time monopolise the trade,

for they can live at less expense than Europeans, and do not

suffer from the climate. They may perhaps at some future day

possess both coasts, and thence spread with Bible and musket

into the interior. This prospect, however, is uncertain, and in

any case exceedingly remote.

 

That part of Africa which lies above the parallel 1O° North

belongs to the Eastern Question. What ever may be the ultimate

destiny of Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, will be shared by the

regions of the central Niger, from Haussa to Timbuctoo.

 

That part of the continent which lies below the parallel 2O°

South, already belongs in part, and will in time entirely belong to

settlers of the Anglo-Saxon race. It resembles Australia, not

only in its position with respect to the Equator, but also in

its natural productions. It is a land of wool and mines,

without great navigable rivers, interspersed with sandy

deserts, and enjoying a wholesome though sultry air. Whatever

may be the future of Australia will also be the future of

Southern Africa.

 

Between these two lines intervenes a region inhabited for the

most part by pagan savages, thinly scattered over swamp and

forest. This concealed continent, this unknown world, will at

some far-off day, if my surmises prove correct, be invaded by

three civilising streams; by the British negroes from the

coasts by the Mohammedan negroes in robe and turban from the

great empires of the Niger region; and by the farmers and

graziers and miners of South Africa.

 

When, therefore, we speculate on the future of Africa, we can

do no more than bring certain regions of that continent within

the scope of two general questions; the future of our colonies,

and the future of the East; and these lead us up to a greater

question still, the future of the European race.

 

Upon this subject I shall offer a few remarks; and it is

obvious that in order to form some conception of the future it

is necessary to understand the present and the past. I shall

therefore endeavour to ascertain what we have been and what we

are. The monograph of Africa is ended. I shall make my sketch

of history complete, adding new features, passing quickly over

the parts that have been already drawn. I shall search out the

origin of man, determine his actual condition, speculate upon

his future destiny, and discuss the nature of his relations

towards that unknown Power of whom he is the offspring and the

slave. I shall examine this planet and its contents with the

calm curiosity of one whose sentiments and passions, whose

predilections and antipathies, whose hopes and fears, are not

interested in the question. I shall investigate without

prejudice; I shall state the results without reserve.

 

What are the materials of human history? What are the earliest

records which throw light upon the origin of man? All written

documents are things of yesterday, whether penned on prepared

skins, papyrus rolls, or the soft inner bark of trees; whether

stamped on terra-cotta tablets, carved on granite obelisks, or

engraved on the smooth surface of upright rocks. Writing, even

in its simplest picture form, is an art which can be invented

only when a people have become mature.

 

The oldest books are therefore comparatively modern, and the

traditions which they contain are either false or but little

older than the books themselves. All travellers who have

collected traditions among a wild people know how little that

kind of evidence is worth. The savage exaggerates whenever he

repeats, and in a few generations the legend is transformed.

 

The evidence of language is of more value. It enables us to

trace back remotely divided nations to their common birthplace, and reveals the amount of culture, the domestic

institutions, and the religious ideas which they possessed

before they parted from one another. Yet languages soon die, or

rather become metamorphosed in structure as well as in

vocabulary; the oldest existing language can throw no light on

the condition of primeval man.

 

The archives of the earth also offer us their testimony: the

graves give up their dead, and teach us that man existed many

thousand years ago, in company with monstrous animals that have

long since passed away; and that those men were savages, using

weapons and implements of stone, yet possessing even then a

taste for ornament and art, wearing shell bracelets, and

drawing rude figures upon horns and stones. The manners and

ideas of such early tribes can best be inferred by a study of

existing savages. The missionary who resides among such races

as the Bushmen of Africa or the Botocudos of Brazil may be said

to live in pre-historic times.

 

But as regards the origin of man, we have only one document to

which we can refer; and that is the body of man himself. There,

in unmistakable characters, are inscribed the annals of his

early life. These hieroglyphics are not to be fully deciphered

without a special preparation for the task: the alphabet of

anatomy must first be mastered, and the student must be expert

in the language of all living and fossil forms. One fact,

however, can be submitted to the uninitiated eye, and it will

be sufficient for the purpose. Look at a skeleton and you will

see a little bone curled downwards between the legs, as if

trying to hide itself away. That bone is a relic of pre-human

days, and announces plainly whence our bodies come. We are all

of us naked under our clothes, and we are of all us tailed

under our skins. But when we descend to the man-like apes, we

find that, with them as with us, the tail is effete and in

disuse; and so we follow it downwards and downwards until we

discover it in all its glory in the body of the fish; being

there present, not as a relic or rudimentary organ, as in man

and the apes; not a mere appendage, as in the fox; not a

secondary instrument, a spare hand, as in certain monkeys, or a

fly-flapper, as in the giraffe; but as a primary organ of the

very first importance, endowing the fish with its locomotive

powers. Again, we examine the body of the fish, and we find in

it also rudimentary organs as useless and incongruous as the

tail in man; and thus we descend step by step, until we arrive

at the very bottom of the scale.

 

The method of development is still being actively discussed,

but the fact is placed beyond a doubt. Since The Origin of

Species appeared, philosophical naturalists no longer deny

that the ancestors of man must he sought for in the lower

kingdom. And, apart from the evidence which we carry with us in

our own persons, which we read in the tail-bone of the

skeleton, in the hair which was once the clothing of our

bodies, in the nails which were once our weapons of defence,

and in a hundred other facts which the scalpel and the

microscope disclose; apart from the evidence of our own voices,

our incoherent groans and cries, analogy alone would lead us

to, believe that mankind had been developed from the lowest

forms of life. For what is the history of the individual man?

He begins life as an ambiguous speck of matter which can in no

way be distinguished from the original form of the lowest

animal or plant. He next becomes a cell; his life is precisely

that of the animalcule. Cells cluster round this primordial

cell, and the man is so far advanced that he might be mistaken

for an undeveloped oyster; he grows still more, and it is clear

that he might even be a fish; he then passes into a stage which

is common to all quadrupeds, and next assumes a form which can

only belong to quadrupeds of the higher type. At last the hour

of birth approaches; coiled within, the dark womb he sits, the

image of an ape; a caricature and, a prophecy of the man that

is to be. He is born, and for some time he walks only on all-fours; he utters only inarticulate sounds; and even in his

boyhood his fondness for climbing trees would seem to be a

relic of the old arboreal life. Since, therefore, every man has

been himself in such a state that the most experienced observer

could not with the aid of the best microscopes have declared

whether he was going to be man or plant, man or animalcule, man

or mollusc, man or lobster, man or fish, man or reptile, man or

bird, man or quadruped, man or monkey; why should it appear

strange that the whole race has also had its animalcule and its

reptile days? But whether it appears strange or not, the public

must endeavour to accustom its mind to the fact which is now

firmly, established, and will never be overthrown.

 

Not only are the