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