white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed,
most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness
upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's
paramour, and was impudently careless of the general knowledge.
Of all the photographs that illustrate missionary publications--and I
have contributed enough villainous half-tones to warrant me in a
criticism--the ones I dislike most are of the "Before and After" type.
Here is a group of savages clad in skins, or furs, or feathers, or palm
fibre, or some patient, skilful weave of native wool or grass; in each
case clad congruously with their environment and out of the products it
affords. Set against it is the same or a similar group clad out of the
slop-shop, clad in hickory shirts and blue-jean trousers, clad so that,
if faces could be changed as easily as clothing, they would pass for any
commonplace group of whites anywhere. And, as if such change were in
itself the symbol and guarantee of a change from all that is brutal and
idolatrous to all that is gentle and Christian, there follows the
triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all
the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all
the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of
superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead.
Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a
shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth,
usually suppressed, which a London bookseller once pulled out of a
portfolio in the back room of his shop and showed me. They bore the same
title.
I profess myself a friend of the native tongue because it is the native
tongue--the easy, familiar, natural vehicle of expression; of the native
dress because it is almost always comfortable and comely; of the native
customs, whenever they are not unhealthy or demoralising, because they
are the distinctive heritage of a people; and again, of tongue, dress,
and customs alike, if you will, simply because they are dissimilar.
[Sidenote: A BARREN UNIFORMITY]
For it has always seemed a trumpery notion that uniformity in these
things has any connection with the upbuilding of a people, has any
ethical relation at all, and I have always wondered that so trumpery a
notion should have so wide an influence. Moreover, is it not a little
curious that, whereas the trend of biological evolution on its upward
course, as Spencer assures us, is towards differentiation and
dissimilarity, the trend of sociological evolution should be so marked
towards this bald and barren uniformity? But these be deep matters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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