precisely the ability of the ruling race to follow this counsel of
perfection that is in doubt. It is easy to urge that the Europeans must
maintain their position in South Africa as "a benevolent aristocracy of
ability," but we want to know how this can be done. A recent contributor
to the general question of colour has stated that the true conception
of the inter-relation of white and black races should be "complete
uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and
culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal admiration for
those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate path, each
pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserving his own race-purity
and race-pride; equality in things spiritual; agreed divergence in the
physical and material."[25] But, again, we want to know how this
abstract conception is to be put into actual practice in this world of
things as they are.

I have said that the Natives do not hanker after intimate social
intimacy with the whites, but this does not mean that the civilised
black man who has risen to the economic and educational level of the
European remains indifferent whenever his claim to ordinary social
recognition is denied or ignored. He would not, indeed, be human if he
did not feel hurt whenever he is slighted and treated with contempt by
people from whom he differs only in his physical appearance and colour.
In one of his essays, dealing with Native matters, Professor Jabavu, a
Native, describes how "high" feeling arose among the Native teachers and
boys in a certain training institution in South Africa at which he had
been invited to lecture because he was not allowed to see the inside of
the European principal's house, despite the fact that he had ten years
of English university life behind him.[26] Such feeling is only natural
and must tend always to create ill-will, and, knowing how strong is the
convention of the whites against social recognition of the educated