now witnessing is one in which individual mistakes and failures will be
more conspicuous, though no more significant, than the general advance.


MISCEGENATION.

If it is true that the human nature of the Bantu is no whit different
from the human nature of the Europeans then it is a fair question to
ask why the two races should not be able to live together in liberty,
equality and fraternity as people of one nation or body politic. It is
because human nature is governed by laws which, unlike the laws of
mathematics, cannot be laid down with certainty that we find ourselves
unable to give a positive answer to this question. The human nature of
the whites, like the human nature of all races that have been
predominant before, is swayed by the feelings of pride and prejudice
that arise through differences of complexion, physical appearance and
bodily odour, as well as the difference in racial achievement, and these
essentially human feelings, if they remain as strong as they now are in
South Africa, will render impossible the fraternity that implies the
liberty to intermarry, so that there arises for our consideration a
second question, namely, whether without full fraternity and social
equality the two races may yet live together in the land in political
liberty and equality.

We observe from the earliest times a rhythmic play, as it were, of
opposite forces that tends, alternately, to build up and to break down
and mingle human races, but of the laws that underlie and govern these
forces we know little or nothing. On the one hand we see how man has
always and everywhere shown what the advocates of so-called racial
purity have called "a perverse predisposition to mismate" which has made