Another striking difference between America and Africa is the _authority of custom_ in Africa, and its resulting social immobility. Returning to America after only a few years in Africa one is surprised and somewhat bewildered by the changes that have taken place. It takes considerable time to adjust oneself to altered conditions. In Africa there is no trace of any change in customs, or any alteration of methods, from time immemorial. Conduct, even in its details, is governed by custom. Nobody questions its authority; nobody violates it. The appeal to custom is final. For instance, the rite of circumcision is universally practiced and rigidly regarded, but nobody knows why. There may be a good reason for it—I believe there is—but they have forgotten it. Or, to give an example of its authority even in trivialities, the slavers in the old days trained the men of the Kru tribe to work on ships and thereafter finding them useful allies persuaded them to put a distinguishing mark upon themselves so that none of them might be taken and enslaved by mistake. The mark is a tattooed band running down the middle of the forehead to the tip of the nose. With the suppression of the slave-trade the usefulness of this ugly disfigurement of course became obsolete; but the fashion was meanwhile established and to this day every Kruman is thus tattooed. He has forgotten its origin. If you ask him the reason for this mark he thinks that he gives a perfect explanation when he says: “It be fashion for we country.” To ask him the reason for the custom is equivalent to asking why right is right. The finality of the appeal to custom is like our appeal to the ten commandments. Of course the authority of custom in Africa serves to check personal tyranny and to modify the principle that might is right. It thus prevents society from going backward; but it also prevents it from going forward; a thousand years are as a day. Mobility is a condition of progress. A more radical difference between the civilized man and the African than any we have yet mentioned is that of _work_. It is not merely a contrast between actual work and idleness, but a contrast of attitudes that constitutes this difference. “Use, labour of each for all,” says Emerson, “is the health and virtue of all beings. _Ich dien_, I serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to volunteer the lowest service, the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God is God, because He is the servant of all.... All honest men are daily striving to earn their bread by their industry. And who is this who tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise, and calls labour vile, and insults the workman at his daily toil?”