We white people think that we know everything. For instance, we think
that we understand human nature. And so we do, as human nature appears
to us, with all its trappings and accessories seen dimly through the
glass of our conventions, leaving out those aspects of it which we have
forgotten or do not think it polite to mention. But I, Allan Quatermain,
reflecting upon these matters in my ignorant and uneducated fashion,
have always held that no one really understands human nature who has
not studied it in the rough. Well, that is the aspect of it with which I
have been best acquainted.
For most of the years of my life I have handled the raw material, the
virgin ore, not the finished ornament that is smelted out of it--if,
indeed, it is finished yet, which I greatly doubt. I dare say that a
time may come when the perfected generations--if Civilisation, as we
understand it, really has a future and any such should be allowed
to enjoy their hour on the World--will look back to us as crude,
half-developed creatures whose only merit was that we handed on the
flame of life.
Maybe, maybe, for everything goes by comparison; and at one end of the
ladder is the ape-man, and at the other, as we hope, the angel. No, not
the angel; he belongs to a different sphere, but that last expression
of humanity upon which I will not speculate. While man is man--that is,
before he suffers the magical death-change into spirit, if such should
be his destiny--well, he will remain man. I mean that the same passions
will sway him; he will aim at the same ambitions; he will know the same
joys and be oppressed by the same fears, whether he lives in a Kafir
hut or in a golden palace; whether he walks upon his two feet or, as for
aught I know he may do one day, flies through the air. This is certain:
that in the flesh he can never escape from our atmosphere, and while
he breathes it, in the main with some variations prescribed by climate,
local law and religion, he will do much as his forefathers did for
countless ages.
That is why I have always found the savage so interesting, for in him,
nakedly and forcibly expressed, we see those eternal principles which
direct our human destiny.
To descend from these generalities, that is why also I, who hate
writing, have thought it worth while, at the cost of some labour to
myself, to occupy my leisure in what to me is a strange land--for
although I was born in England, it is not my country--in setting down
various experiences of my life that do, in my opinion, interpret this
our universal nature. I dare say that no one will ever read them; still,
perhaps they are worthy of record, and who knows? In days to come they
may fall into the hands of others and prove of value. At any rate, they
are true stories of interesting peoples, who, if they should survive in
the savage competition of the nations, probably are doomed to undergo
great changes. Therefore I tell of them before they began to change.