Some years ago at Batanga the white traders introduced a “trust system,” whereby a quantity of goods were entrusted to a native, that he might go to the interior and trade with the expectation of paying for the goods with ivory or other trade produce upon his return to the coast. This simple arrangement was regarded by the trader as extremely satisfactory. He charged enormous prices in ivory for his goods, and besides—theoretically—he got the ivory, which otherwise was difficult to procure. He did not worry about the payment; for the German governor, being an obliging gentleman, and wishing to stimulate trade, threatened long imprisonment and lavish flogging to any and every native who should betray his trust; who, for instance, would spend the goods in buying a number of wives for the time being, in giving large presents to all his relations, or in making merry with the whole community and wasting his substance in riotous living. The iron hand of the Kaiser would prevent all that, and the trust-system would soon make Batanga a centre of commerce and civilization. Of course all the enterprising young natives hurried to get goods that they did not have to pay for until some other time, realizing only the foolishness of worrying about the future, and that possession is ten-tenths of the law in Africa. Well, after a great while they all came back accompanied by the Kaiser’s soldiers. When the old matter of the goods was mentioned to them and a longing for ivory was expressed, the response was uniform: “Dem goods? Dem goods you done give me? Why, mastah, all dem goods done loss.” At the very earnest appeal of the missionaries, reinforced by the limited capacity of the jail at Kribi, a law was finally passed abolishing the trust-system in that particular form. It was not fair. The poor native’s sense of moral responsibility was unequal to the demand made upon it. For the same reason a high form of civilization cannot be superimposed upon a morally degraded people. Their moral responsibility would not be equal to its demands; it would bear too hard upon them even as upon children; it would crush them. In thus recording the successive contrasts between civilization and the savage state, I am not conscious of exploiting a theory, but have rather recorded the differences that impressed me in the course of actual experience in Africa; and I have recorded them somewhat in the order of their importance, passing from outward and manifest differences to those that are less obvious and more fundamental. But we find that we have gradually passed from social conditions to individual qualities and that the fundamental difference is _personal character_.