But again the education of the educated Kafir is very apt to "fall off." So much I have not only heard asserted generally by those who are antikafir-educational in their sympathies, but admitted also by many of those who have been themselves long exercised in Kafir education. And, in regard to religious teaching, we all know that the singing of psalms is easier than the keeping of the ten commandments. When we find much psalm-singing and at the same time a very conspicuous breach of what has to us been a very sacred commandment, we are apt to regard the delinquent as a hypocrite. And the Kafir at school no doubt learns something of that doctrine,—which in his savage state was wholly unknown to him, but with which the white man is generally more or less conversant,—that speech has been given to men to enable them to conceal their thoughts. In learning to talk most of us learn to lie before we learn to speak the truth. While dropping something of his ignorance the Savage drops something also of his simplicity. I can understand therefore why the employer of labour should prefer the unsophisticated Kafir, and am by no means sure that if I were looking out for black labour in order that I might make money out of it I should not eschew the Kafir from the schools.
The difficulty arises probably from our impatience. Nothing will satisfy us unless we find a bath in which we may at once wash the blackamoor white, or a mill and oven in which a Kafir may be ground and baked instantly into a Christian. That much should be lost,—should "fall off" as they say,—of the education imparted to them is natural.
