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192 At the Back of the Black Man's Mind By R. E. Dennett
CHAPTER XXIII. CONCLUSION
IT is said that the earliest traditions represent rulers as Gods or demigods.
In times and among races less barbarous we find these beliefs a little modified, the
monarch is conceived to be a man having divine authority. He retains, however, as in the
East to the present day titles representing his heavenly descent.
Later on the progress of civilisation, as during the middle ages in Europe, the current
opinions respecting the relationship of rulers and ruled are further changed, for the
theory of divine origin is substituted that of divine right.
With advancing political opinion have come still greater restrictions of imperial power.
The writer does not think that the eternal and everlasting principles founded on man's
senses and the seasons and retained in the titles of Maluango and other kings have by
any means passed away.
Although we do not talk of our most gracious King by seven titles he is certainly
represented by six great dignities in the six offices of state which King Alfred like King
Maluango may have managed in person.
It is this wide gap, between European constitutions and their developments and the
constitutions as we find them in Africa -and their developments-that blinds most people
to a proper valuation of the latter and makes the government of the Africans by the
former so great a puzzle.
It needs but a glance at the following lists for us to be convinced of the psychic unity of
mankind, and that in the art of ruling man this must be accepted as a working
hypothesis inductively established.
I must now conclude hoping that these notes may be of service both to the intelligent
black man anxious to remind his people of their greater past and to encourage them
once more to search after higher things, and to the white man who for want of
information has been inclined to undervalue the material he is expected to understand
and I am sure hopes to guide or mould in the right way.
Both in the case of the white and black man environment has done its fatal work, it is
therefore as foolish for the white man at the present juncture to impose many of his
laws and customs upon the black man living in the tropics as it would evidently be for
the black man to impose his upon the white man. It is, of course, easy to say that we
should act up to the ideals set before us by great philosophers and be superior to our
environment; but as a matter of fact we are not, and while in Africa we find the ruins of
what were once great kingdoms wanting in strength to maintain themselves for any
length of time free from the gravest internal disorders and so degenerating into a series
of enclosed despotisms which in anything beyond the management of village affairs do
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