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It has been from the complete failure to grasp this attitude of the Boer towards South Africa that curious mistakes have been made by far-seeing politicians and keen diplomatists in dealing with South African problems; mistakes only to be comprehended when one considers that curious inability inherent in the so-called "practical intellect" in all ages to comprehend anything beyond the narrow aims and ambitions which constitute its own little world. It is this inability which so often makes the conduct of these shrewd people, when they have to deal with the wider problems and deeper emotions of human life, like the conduct of a child who, to remove a speck of dust from the eye, should insert a needle and stir it about in the living substance.[17]

The Huguenot, by implanting this religious passion for South Africa in the heart of the Boer, and by the fact that he brought with him no political sympathies with France, helped to sever the Boer from his parent States; but even these influences while they would account for his division from his parents' nationalities, would not alone account for that complete severance from the common social and intellectual life of Europe, and from all civilized European societies, which characterizes the Boer of the past and of to-day, and we must seek for its cause further.