III: Black Renaissance
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After I had finished my survey, I added a kind of poetic foreword to precede the various pages of statistics my associates and I had gathered and the twenty-six pages of comment I had prepared. A poetic foreword has no place in a sociological survey, but, nevertheless, I put it there as a kind of extra flourish. This was the
FOREWORD
In the primitive world, where people live closer to the earth and much nearer to the stars, every inner and outer act combines to form the single harmony, life. Not just the tribal lore then, but every movement of life becomes a part of their education. They do not, as many civilized people do, neglect the truth of the physical for the sake of the mind. Nor do they teach with speech alone, but rather with all the acts of life. There are no books, so the barrier between words and reality is not so great as with us. The earth is right under their feet. The stars are never far away. The strength of the surest dream is the strength of the primitive world.
This meant, I suppose, that where life is simple, truth and reality are one.