feelings of the two races we come now to consider the oft-alleged
difference in what is popularly called _pure intellect_ in favour of the
white man. Is there such a thing as pure intellect or pure rationality?
Obviously there is not. The thought that we call abstract is fashioned
in the same way as the thought that is formed by the recognition of
similarities between concrete objects. The abstract thought has its
source like all other forms of thought in the organic and emotional
structure of the individual, and it is, indeed, only by pointing to
instances that we can define what we mean by an abstract idea. But many
people still think that the white race is gifted with a special faculty
for thinking about general attributes as apart from the particular
objects in which the abstracted attributes may be concretely perceived.
There is no foundation in fact for this presumption. The Natives have no
difficulty in finding words wherewith to abstract the general essence
from a plurality of facts or instances; their vocabulary is as apt and
as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or
spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for
abstracting the general nature and character from the particular
experience or emotion into pithy expressions by way of simile or
metaphor that admirably convey the perceived generalisation is as highly
evolved in the Native as in any other human variety.[17]

I think that the magistrates, native commissioners, police officers,
missionaries, farmers, miners, and traders in South Africa who have had
first-hand experience of dealing with raw Natives will agree with me
that in sound reasoning ability, as applied to matters with which he is
familiar, the Native is no whit below the white man. It would be easy
for me to give hundreds of instances that have come under my own
observation of arguments stated and deductions made by Natives who were
innocent of all European education that would show a capacity for mental