MORAL EVOLUTION 313 



preaching and exhortation, and thus many who are constitution- 

 ally prone to it are prevented from falling victims. The 

 minority who have reached a higher plane struggle by every 

 means in their power and not without success to raise the 

 lives of their fellow-countrymen. And as a result there is 

 undeniable progress. Yet it would be folly to deny the 

 necessity of the slowly working process that prepares the ground 

 for the reception of a higher ideal of life. This truth has a very 

 practical bearing. Supposing that a strong-willed minority were 

 to banish alcohol from the country and make temperance com- 

 pulsory, there would result an absence of drink but not 

 temperance, and the process of moral evolution would be 

 checked. This point has been very clearly brought out by 

 Mr Archdall Reid. 1 If we allow it due weight, we must shrink 

 from advocating any system of compulsory abstinence. At the 

 same time there is no reason why drunkenness should be made 

 so easy for the poor, no reason why better pleasures should not 

 be put in their way to act as counter attractions. Alcohol will 

 Jong continue to claim a large quota of victims annually and so 

 help to evolve a race strong to resist its temptations. But it is 

 to be hoped that less degrading pleasures will be brought more 

 to the people's notice and become more easily obtainable than at 

 present, so that the taste for them may grow and compete with 

 the love of drink. The two means of dealing with the great 

 evil may well work hand in hand. 



The atmosphere of thought in which the people live has as 

 much to do with their lives as evolution, and this atmosphere 

 derives its character very largely from the great men whose 

 guidance the nation accepts. Among these, great poets and 

 thinkers must rank high and also the really great among men of 

 action. The claim of the latter is so indisputable that it can 

 only be matter for wonder that great soldiers or sailors are 

 not admitted to the Comtist Calendar of great men. It is in war 

 that you most often see the utmost nobility of human nature 

 concentrated in a moment of self-sacrifice, uncalculating and 

 complete. Certainly magnanimous men of action must be counted 



1 See his book The Present Evolution of Man. 



