302 THE EVOLUTION AGAINST NARCOTICS 



pleasure as other races, and Jewish abstainers are almost as rare 

 as Jewish drunkards. If, then, Jews are temperate only through 

 self-restraint, they must all be under the influence of that dire 

 craving which the toper feels, but must very bravely resist it. I do 

 not know if it is possible for anyone to believe this. Moreover, 

 the claim of superior moral training carries a corollary. The 

 Hebrew moral code inculcates a good deal besides sobriety the 

 Ten Commandments, for example. It will hardly be maintained 

 that Jews are as conspicuously superior to the English, for instance 

 in morals in general, as they are in sobriety. If, then, Jews are so 

 teachable and so well taught as to be sober mainly through 

 religious training, must we conclude that their religious training is, 

 speaking comparatively, conspicuously lax and faulty with regard 

 to morals in general? This inference flows logically from the 

 Jewish claim, but no Jew will care to press it. Notwithstanding 

 the fulminations in the Old Testament, some Jews maintain that 

 their race has always been temperate. But, whether we trace 

 their descent from Noah or the savages of the Stone Age, we arrive 

 at an ancestry actually or potentially drunken. What caused the 

 change of type ? The only real alternative to miracle is Natural 

 Selection. 



502. Palm wine is cheap and plentiful in West Africa, but it is 

 customary at missionary meetings to represent the natives as 

 debauched by the European liquor traffic. However, evidence 

 to the contrary is not lacking. " My business is to state facts, 

 not to reconcile those facts with the representations or fancies 

 of any other person. . . . The phrases that ' liquor is a great 

 scourge to the natives of this country,' that it 'commits great 

 ravages ' and ' possesses extraordinary power over the people,' are 

 not true. . . . The last phrase is certainly applicable to Great 

 Britain, but not to West Africa, . . . The whole subject of the 

 attitude of philanthropists towards liquor in this country is of 

 intense interest to the philosopher. . . . Therefore understand that 

 in my humble opinion the future of the people of this country is 

 not in any danger from liquor. One would like to be able to say as 

 much for Great Britain, and of her nearest neighbour, to which 

 nations, in the natural and logical course of circumstances, temper- 

 ance advocates should be sent from this country." 1 



1 " Extract from a speech on the Liquor Question delivered by Sir W. 

 MacGregor, K.C.M.G., in Legislative Council, on the i6th Oct. 1901, and re- 

 published for general information." Southern Nigeria Government Gazette, Sept. 

 9th, 1908, p. 1285. 



