  Nonetheless, the impact of Bantu Philosophy was substantial. Of particular consequence, the debates it prompted helped to direct the attention of researchers and scholars in several disciplines (anthropology, ethnology, history, religion, philosophy) to the identification and exploration of the articulate systems of thought of various groups of “traditional” Africans. A number of European scholars and researchers who had spent years studying and living among various African peoples were pleased to find confirmed in Tempels’ book their own positive assessments of Africans’ thought-systems, social organization, and artistic creativity. Others, however, disagreed and challenged Tempels’ claims, in a particular case criticizing him for mistaking an “impetus for” philosophy in the language and behavior of Bantu-speaking Africans as evidence of a developed capacity for articulating a proper Philosophy. This critic concluded that Bantu-Africans had not yet fulfilled the conceptual conditions for “taking off” into philosophizing properly (Crahay 1965). Other scholars engaged in comparative explorations of thought-systems of various African peoples countered the criticism by providing accounts of a number of such systems that gave clear evidence of their very capable and developed rationality (Forde 1954; Fortes 1965).