Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/176

 It is a question primarily of psychology. The tropical African is essentially a creature of moods; a child of joy and a child of sorrow; a being of strong emotions which must find an outlet. He likes to dance, to linger chatting over camp fires, to vary his life according to the seasons. In his natural state the twin emotions of joy and sorrow merge into one another. The African woman will cry bitterly over her dead child, exclaim that the sorrow is sweet because it is not hopeless, mingle with her lamentations many loving messages of appeal to the dead. The African is an intensely sociable being. He droops under perpetual restraint. Solitary confinement kills him. European industrialism saps his vitality. Every race and every people has its peculiar psychology. That is why alien rulers, however just according to their own lights, never reach the hearts of the subject race. With some notable exceptions, the European knows little and cares probably less about the psychology of the African he governs as an administrator or as an employer of labour. But, put a Russian to rule over Englishmen, a German to rule over Spaniards, an Italian to rule over Swedes—what an unholy muddle they would make of the job. Yet the difference is trifling by comparison. Climate also steps in with its inexorable laws. As man's habitat advances nearer to the equator, his power for sustained and continuous labour decreases: his need for relaxation increases. The southern European is incapable of the prolonged labour, month in month out, which the northern European is able to endure: nor can the latter when transplanted to these warmer climes keep up the pace he was accustomed to. The tropical African has flourished exceedingly in North America and the West Indies, despite the abominable treatment to which he was so long subjected. But he passed from a tropical zone to a temperate or semi-tropical one. He has multiplied in the tropical parts of the southern American continent where men work less prolonged hours and at less high pressure. The climate of tropical Africa makes immense demands upon the human constitution, white and black. Europeans who can spend several years at a stretch in Burma, which is hotter than tropical Africa, can rarely stand more than eighteen months or two years continuous residence in tropical Africa. Few African women can bear more than three or four children, and they