| MAN KNOW THYSELF For man to know himself is for him to feel that
for him there is no human master. For him Nature is his servant, and whatsoever he wills
in Nature, that shall be his reward. If he wills to be a pigmy, a serf or a slave, that
shall he be. If he wills to be a real man in possession of the things common to man, then
he shall be his own sovereign. When man fails to grasp his authority he sinks to the level
of the lower animals, and whatsoever the real man bids him do, even as if it were of the
lower animals, that much shall he do. If he says "go." He goes. If he says
"come," he comes. By this command he performs the functions of life even as by a
similar command the mule, the horse, the cow perform the will of their masters. For the
last four hundred years the Negro has been in the position of being commanded even as the
lower animals are controlled. Our race has been without a will; without a purpose of its
own, for all this length of time.
Because of that we have developed few men who are able to understand the strenuousness
of the age in which we live. Where can we find in this race of ours real men. Men of
character, men of purpose, men of confidence, men of faith, men who really know
themselves? I have come across so many weaklings who profess to be leaders, and in the
test I have found them but the slaves of a nobler class. They perform the will of their
masters without question. To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a
sovereign lord. As for the individual man, so of the individual race. This feeling makes
man so courageous, so bold, as to make it impossible for his brother to intrude upon his
rights.
So few of us can understand what it takes to make a man - the man who will never say
die; the man who will never give up; the man who will never depend upon others to do for
him what he ought to do for himself; the man who will not blame God, who will not blame
Nature, who will not blame Fate for his condition; but the man who will go out and make
conditions to suit himself. Oh, how disgusting life becomes when on every hand you hear
people (who bear your image, who bear your resemblance) telling you that they cannot make
it, that Fate is against them, that they cannot get a chance. If 400,000,000 Negroes can
only get to know thesmelves, to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an authority
that is absolute, then in the next twenty-four hours we would have a new race, we would
have a nation, an empire, - resurrected, not from the will of others to see us rise, - but
from our own determination to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks
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