MORAL EVOLUTION 311 



social strata. A good deal has been heard lately about a 

 recrudescence of the habit of drinking at the universities. It is 

 difficult, however, to regard it as anything but the backward 

 swirl of a little eddy in the stream that sets towards sobriety. 

 Already there are signs that a race of men is arising who are 

 unequal to the heavy potations of their grandfathers or even such 

 amounts as their fathers made light of. As the generations 

 pass, we may expect that this defect, with its accompanying 

 superiority, will proceed further. Englishmen will be less able 

 to stand alcohol, and also less tempted by it. 



The process at work is not an entirely simple one. Physical 

 and moral evolution by means of alcohol are always proceeding 

 side by side. Alcohol supplies a physical test to which numbers 

 submit themselves. But as the power of self-restraint increases, 

 more and more persons avoid the test. And thus the average of 

 physique is lowered through the strengthening of moral principle. 

 But there are always a number of persons exceeding the amount 

 their physique can withstand. Alcohol maintains the physique 

 of the nation while it develops power of self-restraint. 



But it eliminates others besides those whose love of it is 

 excessive. Its victims are often men or women who have 

 come to grief owing to some other defect of character, and who 

 strive to drown their cares. Thus many defects, many moral 

 contortions, eliminate indirectly, using alcohol as their agent. 

 Here we are in dim regions which can never be illumined by 

 the light of statistics. Could we penetrate the gloom, we should 

 see numberless tragedies of individual lives, first some incipient 

 failure or deviation from the right course, after a while loss of 

 hope, and finally drink sweeping away the refuse of society. 

 And so alcohol appears as the benefactor of the community. 

 Unfortunately, as everyone knows, its methods are such as to 

 bring untold misery, and not only on those who succumb to it. 

 But this must not blind us to the services it renders, and among 

 them we must rank high its weeding out of bad tendencies, 

 which, however injurious to society, might otherwise wait long 

 for the penalty which they deserve. 



We have now seen on what an enormous scale elimination for 



