Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 281
very, oh ! very much Mr. Faciendum. If his above-
quoted words seem to be exaggerated and sweeping
(" the fullest expression of the abstract one has met with " !),
does he not substantiate them all in his 737 pages of
genuine Bantu idiom? Tortuous and tricky, and to
the tune of hundreds of instances, he it is who has
followed the marvellous negro far into the penetralia
of " thinking black." Emerging from it all, in a wonder
that is almost dismay, Dr. Scott gasps—for " gasp " is
the word—that Bantu has " the fullest expression of the
abstract one has yet met with." And philosophy is the
Abstract, remember; ergo the African is proved to be
both brainy and beefy—in fact, has brain as well as biceps.
Contrast Farrar's serious assertion as to the African's
-" utter deficiency in abstract " !