African Art

a crocodile” or “The young goat will browse on the leaf of the
plant that nourished its mother”. Sometimes the most elevated
sentiments are met with in a simple form which increases their
force, for example in the Tukulor saying: “What the laborer sees
when he straightens himself is the village. It is not the desire to eat
that is the cause of this, it is the entire past that draws him to this side.”
What more lovely definition could be given of the sentiment of a
fatherland? Do we expect to find it in the popular literature of a
Negro people?

RReeffuuttiinngg tthhee ssoo--ccaalllleedd IInntteelllleeccttuuaall IInnffeerriioorriittyy ooff tthhee NNeeggrrooeess

Do the African Negroes form a race intellectually inferior to the
other human races?^23 This has often been affirmed but without ever
giving convincing proof of it and generally a false point of
departure is taken.

It has been said that the Negroes are at present inferior in
respect of intellectual development to other types of humanity. It
seems to me that in saying this “ignorance” has been
confounded with “lack of intelligence”. The greatest genius of
the world, if he had never been to school and had lived only in
the midst of savages, would have been without any doubt, under
the complete impossibility of manifesting his high natural intelli-
gence, which would not mean that he did not possess it. But, it
is added, the African Negroes have received education and
have been placed in a highly developed intellectual environment
and just the same they have done nothing to show this intelli-
gence. To this it may be answered, first, that certain of them
have given very satisfactory results, and then that if the number
of these has been limited, it is that there has been too great a
difference between the environment whence came the subjects

that were to be educated and the environment into which they

found themselves brusquely transplanted: to resist the shock and

not destroy the brain, it would have been necessary to have the

intelligence of the elite – and undoubtedly this was the case with

the former – or else avoid the dangerous jolt by refusing to allow

oneself to be broken in – and such was the case with the

majority. I will add that particular examples should not constitute

a general rule.

To judge properly of the intellectual capacities of a population

en bloc, this population must be followed in the normal

evolution of its mass and not by taking a few individuals, more

or less happily chosen, and transporting them into a world so

far removed from their own that they can only play the part of

the uprooted and, like all uprooted plants, waste away and

perish, except under very exceptional circumstances. Now, the

Negroes of Africa have had this grievous mischance of not

being able to evolve as the other great human races have,

without its being in the least their fault. While, during many

centuries the descendants of the Gauls, our ancestors, were in

Zoomorphic drum (Loi).

Wood, length: 251 cm.

This drum’s elegancy hides its powerful sound. It was used to warn the tribe of

close danger and to send messages to neighbouring villages.