Sir H Rider Haggard

Child of Storm Sir H Rider Haggard

We white people think that we know everything. For instance, we think that we understand human nature. And so we do, as human nature appears to us, with all its trappings and accessories seen dimly through the glass of our conventions, leaving out those aspects of it which we have forgotten or do not think it polite to mention. But I, Allan Quatermain, reflecting upon these matters in my ignorant and uneducated fashion, have always held that no one really understands human nature who has not studied it in the rough. Well, that is the aspect of it with which I have been best acquainted. For most of the years of my life I have handled the raw material, the virgin ore, not the finished ornament that is smelted out of it-if, indeed, it is finished yet, which I greatly doubt. I dare say that a time may come when the perfected generations-if Civilisation, as we understand it, really has a future and any such should be allowed to enjoy their hour on the World-will look back to us as crude, half-developed creatures whose only merit was that we handed on the flame of life. Maybe, maybe, for everything goes by comparison; and at one end of the ladder is the ape-man, and at the other, as we hope, the angel. No, not the angel; he belongs to a different sphere, but that last expression of humanity upon which I will not speculate. While man is man-that is, before he suffers the magical death-change into spirit, if such should be his destiny-well, he will remain man. I mean that the same passions will sway him; he will aim at the same ambitions; he will know the same joys and be oppressed by the same fears, whether he lives in a Kafir hut or in a golden palace; whether he walks upon his two feet or, as for aught I know he may do one day, flies through the air. This is certain: that in the flesh he can never escape from our atmosphere, and while he breathes it, in the main with some variations prescribed by climate, local law and religion, he will do much as his forefathers did for countless ages.