The opinion so often expressed in South Africa that "Education is a kind
of thing that doesn't agree with the Nigger" is born of the same feeling
that animated the power-holding minorities against the illiterate
majorities in Europe not many years ago, and, in justice to the
minorities, it must be conceded that the effect of education upon the
masses has always been disturbing and often disastrous.

Speaking now from my own experience I can say that I have found no
ill-effects from education in Natives; on the contrary, I have found, as
a rule, that the Native who has had an ordinary school education is
generally more amenable to precept and admonition than the raw kaffir
though less bovinely submissive and therefore more resentful of
indignities offered to him. The fact that the educated kaffir comes more
often in the way of committing theft and dishonesty than his illiterate
brother is in itself sufficient to account for the not unduly large
number of theftuous crimes with which he is credited as a class; but on
the other hand, the propensity in the primitive male that leads to
sexual assaults upon women is undoubtedly checked and lessened by
education and school-discipline. Education will bring out and give scope
to all that is good and all that is bad in the Native as it has done
with the white man. If the Natives have not sunk to those depths of
infamy which are disclosed daily in the criminal courts of Europe and
America it is not because of want of the usual percentage of criminally
disposed people among them but because of want of education and
opportunity. Commercial immorality and developed swindling are
impossible without a commerce, but the cupidity that begets these forms
of vice is not lacking amongst the Natives and waits only for the
opportunities which developed commerce affords. The potential capacity
for criminality and immorality is indeed no less among the Natives than
among Europeans. Theft, arson, murder and rape are the most common forms