THE NEGRO RACE AND EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 151
Munza, the monarch had forbidden all open cannibalism in order to keep offense from the eyes of his guest.
The greatest deficiency of the negro race lies on the side of the mechanical arts. While they practice the smelting and forg- ing of iron, and while some of the tribes have advanced con- siderably in the art of weaving, the negroes nevertheless show little originality, and have acquired most of these arts from the Hamites. They are far more ready to engage in trade; in fact, the trend of the African negro mind is primarily commercial. Living in a country endowed with abundant natural resources, the negro tribes have found it far easier to procure the few things they need, in addition to what nature furnishes them, by trading with Arabs and later with the Europeans, than by developing industries among themselves. This is, of course, especially true of the coast tribes, and in general it may be observed that indus- trial civilization is higher in the interior regions of Africa than on the coast, the negro race reversing in this particular the historical experience of Europe and America. No shrewder merchants can be imagined than the bush traders of the forest belt and the "trade boys" of the coast. The subtlest tricks for practicing deception are known to these simple-minded forest-dwellers. Women who have learned the art of mixing with the rubber balls sold to merchants the largest amount of dirt that can escape detection, are said to be especially sought after in the marriage- market.
When we pass on to the specific psychological traits of the African race, we enter a field of darkness and uncertainty. " Race psychology" has of late become a fashionable term; but with most writers it stands merely for a more or less interesting description of racial characteristics, without that close study of origins and causal relations which constitute the science of psy- chology. Even when employed with great care and scientific precision, as in the works of Herbert Spencer, the psychological method does not always produce convincing results ; and often the material it deals with becomes so unmanageable as to furnish no clear generalization, as in the painstaking and ponderous Afrikanische Jurisprudent of Post. Yet, from the point of view
