Finally: if absolutely happiness be held to lie largely in the unlimited control of a man over himself, and in the absolute right to do at every moment exactly that which is good in his own eyes, without being questioned or opposed, then the owner of an African farm is among the happiest of human creatures. The limited monarch is hedged round on every side by the conditions under which he is allowed to reign; the despot, whether he rules over a savage tribe or is Czar of all the Russias, has ultimately to consider at every moment whether he may not outrage the most subservient of his creatures so far that they may depose him, while for the ordinary citizen, in the conventional civilized society, life is so walled about with trivial Thou-shalts and Thou-shalt-nots, that for some of us it almost ceases to be worth living; but the owner of a solitary African farm reigns over land, bird, beast, and man as far as his eye reaches; as a small god, without opposition and without fear. Alexander Selkirk on his island was not more absolute than he. And if we except the eagle when she builds her eyrie on the inaccessible peak of a mountain, and dwells there alone with her mate and young, no intelligent thing drinks more deeply out of the cup of personal freedom or reigns so dominant in its own sphere. CHAPTER V THE BOER WOMAN AND THE MODERN WOMAN'S QUESTION Even in matters of sex and the inter-relations of the sexes, which form the very core of human life, the Boer's primitive condition is not without its vast advantages.[57] [57] It is perhaps hardly necessary to repeat that by the term "Boer" it is not intended to signify all the Dutch-descended inhabitants of South Africa, but only such as have retained the old seventeenth century habits and ideas of their forefathers, and who speak only the "Taal." Probably almost half the inhabitants of South Africa of Dutch or French descent now speak English, and are often entirely indistinguishable from the other inhabitants of the country; the interest therefore which attaches itself to the Boer who has preserved until to-day the manners and ideas of two centuries ago does not attach to them. We shall deal with such persons later among the other nineteenth century folk of South Africa.