THE EVOLUTION AGAINST ALCOHOL 297 



tion. It is less favourable amongst clergymen than amongst 

 publicans. All this is very obvious and need not have been 

 mentioned were it not that a confused notion seems prevalent 

 amongst writers on the subject that selection is not selection if it 

 varies in intensity. Selection is selection, no matter what its 

 intensity. It may not be stringent enough to cause progression, 

 but selection it is nevertheless. Again, it must be noted that the 

 stringency of selection is not to be estimated by the magnitude of 

 the mortality due to the selecting agent, but by the greater or lesser 

 completeness with which it weeds out the unfit. When the unfit 

 are very numerous, a large mortality may indicate a lesser degree 

 of stringency than a lower mortality when the unfit are less 

 numerous. For example, in Italy, where people are ' naturally ' 

 disinclined to excessive indulgence, and where alcohol is very 

 abundant and accessible, the deaths of quite a few excessive 

 drinkers may indicate a greater stringency of selection than the 

 elimination of a much larger number in England. 



495. The people that alcohol eliminates are those who are so con- 

 stituted mentally that they are tempted to take it in excess. There- 

 fore " the tendency of evolution is to produce a race . . . capable 

 of sitting down in the presence of floods of alcoholic liquor . . . 

 without the desire to get drunk." x Is there any evidence of such 

 an evolution ? If the reader will call to mind all the races of the 

 world of which he has a knowledge, he will find, as in the case of 

 a prevalent and lethal disease, that every race is resistant (i.e. tem- 

 perate] in the presence of alcohol in proportion to the length and 

 severity of its past experience of the poison. There is no exception 

 to this rule. Moreover, whenever we possess a sufficiently detailed 

 and prolonged history of a race which is now temperate, we find that 

 it was anciently drunken. To this rule also there is no exception. 

 Of course, however, when we seek to compare the past with the 

 present of a race, we must not commit the absurdity of compar- 

 ing one year or decade with the next preceding or succeeding. 

 Man is a slow-breeding animal in whose race germinal changes 

 occur only very slowly, and the extent of his drinking is influenced, 

 not only by the depth of his desire, but by many other considera- 

 tions, such as the accessibility of alcohol and the tone of the society 

 in which he is reared. Therefore we must compare past eras or 

 centuries with much later times. 



1 Sir E. Ray Lankester, Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1896, p. 413. 



