198 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



Second, new diseases such as malaria may have been introduced. 

 And third, there may have been a general weakening of health and 

 thus of moral fiber such as seems today on a small scale to result 

 sometimes from our climatic fluctuations from year to year. 



In considering both the economic and moral effects of climatic 

 changes, it must be remembered that the change is what counts. 

 A chronic invalid thinks nothing of taking to her bed; it is no 

 great change. A man who has never been sick, on the other hand, 

 has a perfect horror of being sick. He actually feels ashamed if 

 he is obliged to go to bed. So too, a carpenter with $1,500 a year 

 feels prosperous, whereas a banker who has had $50,000 a year 

 feels himself in dire poverty if his income is reduced to $5,000. 

 The banker can in time accommodate himself to his diminished 

 income, but meanwhile he may be sorely tempted to recoup his 

 fortunes by dishonesty. Suppose that his income falls to $4,000, 

 then $3,000, and finally only $2,000. He will still have more 

 than the carpenter, but when he sees his boy at work instead of in 

 college, his daughter learning stenography instead of dancing, 

 and his wife riding in a street car instead of an automobile, he 

 feels defeated, bitter, disgraced. So in Italy, her climate and 

 resources in the second century before Christ may have been as 

 good as today or even better. Yet the change and the lack of 

 adjustment to it may have produced most deplorable consequences. 



We have already spoken of the evidence of agricultural decline 

 in Italy. Not only is there direct proof of this, but such events 

 as the Slave Revolt in Sicily probably sprang from it. Even in 

 good years during the second century B. C. Rome was never 

 entirely immune from partial famines. Little by little the troubles 

 of the farmers became the greatest political problem. Finally in 

 133 B. C. Tiberius Gracchus tried to remedy them by a series of 

 laws for the redistribution of the land. He paid with his life for 

 his attempts to change the old order. Ten years later his younger 

 and greater* brother, Caius, took up the problem once more, but 

 without permanent success. Yet at that very time relief was in 



