This is everywhere the sentiment of the truly civilized man. He may be lazy but he still recognizes the dignity of labour. But the African recognizes only the dignity of idleness and deems it the true badge of superiority. Work is not so obnoxious to his laziness as it is to his self-respect. It is the brand of inferiority. It is not _exertion_ that he hates: he exerts himself in war and in hunting. It is when work assumes the form of _service_ that it offends him. Manhood, he believes, consists in self-assertion as contrasted with self-sacrifice. His ideal is not to minister but to be ministered unto. Therefore work is relegated to women, who are weaker and cannot resist the imposition. It is only necessary to point out one more difference between Africa and civilization; and in this last, it seems to me, we have before us the difference that is really fundamental: it is _trustworthiness_. Civilization depends upon this quality in men. To the entire social structure of civilization each individual contributes strength or weakness according to his trustworthiness. In New York it has sometimes been found, upon investigation, that in the steel frame of certain high buildings many of the rivet holes were filled with soap and putty instead of rivets. In the same city not long ago, in the family of a prominent physician, the maid who had the care of the children went calling on a friend and found that in the friend’s home there was scarlet fever. The maid considered only that she had already had scarlet fever and was therefore safe from it. So she made the call, but she carried the fever back to the physician’s home and his children died from it. Such exceptions prove the rule, namely, that trustworthiness is the social cement of civilization. A Fang village of a hundred persons can hold together constituting a society; but as soon as it grows to a group of about two hundred it goes to pieces and forms new villages. The men of the smaller village are more closely related, are brothers, and affection, a sentiment of brotherhood, insures a certain amount of honesty in their mutual relations. As the relationship widens this sentiment weakens and distrust takes the place of confidence. And the worst of it is that they distrust each other because they really know each other; because they are _untrustworthy_. Distrust is the dissolution of society.