Page:Marcus Garvey - Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (2009 printing).pdf/26

 Purpose of Creation The man or woman who has no confidence in self is an unfortunate being, and is really a misfit in creation. God Almighty created each and every one of us for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating us. God Almighty created us all to be free. That the Negro race became a race of slaves was not the fault of God Almighty, the Divine Master, it was the fault of the race. Sloth, neglect, indifference caused us to be slaves. Confidence, conviction, action will cause us to be free men today.

Purity of Race I believe in a pure black race just as how all self-respecting whites believe in a pure white race, as far as that can be. I am conscious of the fact that slavery brought upon us the curse of many colors within the Negro race, but that is no reason why we of ourselves should perpetuate the evil; hence instead of encouraging a wholesale bastardy in the race, we feel that we should now set out to create a race type and standard of our own which could not, in the future, be stigmatized by bastardy, but could be recognized and respected as the true race type anteceding even our own time.

Man Know Thyself For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master. For him Nature is his servant, and whatsoever he wills in Nature, that shall be his reward. If he wills to be a pigmy, a serf or a slave, that shall he be. If he wills to be a real man in possession of the things common to man, then he shall be his own sovereign.

When man fails to grasp his authority he sinks to the level of the lower animals, and whatsoever the real man bids him do, even as if it were of the lower animals, that much shall he do. If he says "go." He goes. If he says "come," he comes. By this command he performs the functions of life even as by a similar command the mule, the horse, the cow performs the will of their masters. For the last four hundred years the Negro has been in the position of being commanded even as the lower animals are controlled. Our race has been without a will; without a purpose of its own, for all this length of time. Because of that we have developed few men who are able to understand the strenuousness of the age in which we live. 26 Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey The Journal of Pan African Studies 2009 eBook