UNFOLDING OF MAN’S INTELLIGENCE 
ing trace of this once general belief. Owing both to their 
low alcoholic content and to their limited use, they did 
relatively slight, if any, harm. 
But when, during the past thousand years or so, man 
learned to subject various fermented fluids to distillation 
and thereby first produced spirituous or “‘hard’”’ liquor, 
containing a high percentage of alcohol, the question be- 
came vastly more serious. By a strange irony of fate, it 
seems to have been the Muhammadan Arabs, themselves a 
temperate people, who spread the knowledge of this 
process through the Old World during the Middle Ages, 
from Europe on the one hand to China on the other. 
At first distilled drinks were regarded and used as 
medicines. We still see a trace of this in our word “‘cor- 
dial” as applied to certain alcoholic beverages. Readers of 
Robinson Crusoe will recall that hero’s satisfaction upon 
finding a ‘‘case of cordials.” Later, particularly in Europe, 
as distilled liquors became common and cheap, they began 
to be consumed in enormous quantities. The frightful 
ravages wrought by the unrestricted drinking of gin 
among the poorer classes in England during the eighteenth 
century are an example. Then for the first time the 
“liquor problem”’ really became a serious menace to the 
welfare of mankind. It was distinctly a product of 
civilization. 
Certain practices which we now regard with abhorrence, 
such as infanticide or the putting to death of the old and 
decrepit, were usually based on economic causes. So long 
as man remained ignorant of any means of growing his 
food, and so had to depend entirely for his living upon 
what he could gather or capture, famine remained an 
ever-present danger. Just as savages try, almost in- 
stinctively, to kill or chase away intruders upon their 
special hunting grounds, so they have also felt obliged to 
restrict their own numbers by doing away: with an excess 
of newborn infants and those whom age or infirmity have 
rendered useless as food providers. In this respect 
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