CHAPTER XVI 

 THE EVOLUTION AGAINST NARCOTICS 



Alcohol in ancient and modern times Among the lake-dwellers In Egypt 

 In Greece In Italy Among Jews In West Africa In Great Britain 

 In Germany In China In the Western Hemisphere Opium The poisonous 

 effects of narcotics The origin of the susceptibility to the charm of narcotics 

 Objections to the theory of narcotic evolution Education Strength of beverages 

 Civilization The memory of past racial disaster Convivial and industrial 

 drinking The alleged effect of alcohol on the germ-plasm. 



s 



496. ^| TRONG solutions of alcohol are products of the know- 

 ledge and skill which civilization brings. The lowest 

 savages, for example the Tierra del Fuegians and 

 Australians, are unacquainted with means of manufacturing in- 

 toxicating liquor. Settled tribes almost always possess intoxi- 

 cants in some form, alcoholic or other ; but, unless they are well 

 advanced in civilization, the beverages they manufacture are weak 

 and far from abundant. Thus it is recorded that the natives of 

 Guiana were obliged to drink their cassava intoxicant (which, 

 however, was not alcohol) for three days before a state of drunken- 

 ness satisfactory to them was achieved. Moreover, especially in 

 cold and temperate climates, the alcohol made by savages is 

 usually derived from the fermentation of articles of food milk, 

 honey, corn, and the like which are rarely abundant with them. 

 Owing, then, to the insufficiency of the supply, due partly to 

 difficulties of manufacture and partly to lack of materials, excessive 

 drinking amongst most savages is comparatively rare and spas- 

 modic. Consequently the elimination of the unfit is far from 

 stringent. But, as in the case of such a disease as tuberculosis, 

 with growing civilization comes an increasing and more regular 

 exposure to the evil in other words an increasing and more 

 effective stringency of selection. It follows that a race that has 

 evolved its own civilization or very slowly absorbed that of 

 another, tends to become resistant to alcohol and survive, whereas 

 a race which is suddenly introduced to civilization with its strong 

 solutions of alcohol, tends to drink to extinction. 



497. Probably in all the world alcohol has been most abundant 



