  A humanistic morality, whose central focus is the concern for the welfare and interest of each member of community, would expectably be a social morality which is enjoined by social life itself. Such is the nature of African morality. Social life or sociality is natural to the human being because every human being is born into an existing human society. A traditional Akan thinker asserted in a previously quoted proverb that says that ‘When a human being descends from the heavens, he [or she] descends into a human town [or, a human society].’ The point of the maxim is that the human being is social by nature. This view finds a variant in Aristotle's celebrated dictum that ‘The human being is by nature a social animal’, that is, that a human being is by nature a member of a polis, a human community. [The word politikon used in Aristotle's dictum means ‘social’ rather than ‘political’.] Being a member of the human community by nature, the individual is naturally related or oriented toward other persons and must have relationships with them. The natural sociality or relationality of human beings would—and should—prescribe a social ethic, rather than the ethic of individualism. Individualistic ethics that focuses on the welfare and interests of the individual is hardly regarded in African moral thought.