Note 32 — Chapter III · THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY

Of course the same law of reversion might, under certain conditions, produce development and not retrogression. If, as is sometimes held (though we ourselves are very strongly of the opposite opinion), the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa are not human creatures caught in the very act of developing from lower forms, but are the result of degeneration from some higher type; then the creature resulting from a cross between the two might revert to that higher type, and be of higher social feeling and loftier intellectual power than either. We have ourselves in only one instance met an individual who was a cross between the English and Kaffir races, though we are aware that several such exist in South Africa. This man was certainly merely a composite of the two races, without any tendency to revert to a lower type. He was the son of an English gentleman, his mother was a wild Kaffir woman who had not been draggled under the feet of civilization. The man was proud, determined, resolute. Self-educated, he raised himself to a post of high trust under the English Government; he combined the dash and courage of the Kaffir with the pride and intelligence of the Englishman. He had the fault which is common to both his parent races, of being cruel and indomitable when opposed; but of the vices supposed to be inseparable from Half-castism, servility, and insincerity, he had not a trace. He was a man and a gentleman. But, whether if such crosses were common such men would generally arise, is quite another question.