CAIN AND ABEL 113 



markets and no supply, just as well as too large a supply for 

 existing markets, and it is the want of comprehension of this 

 fact that gives rise to the talk of one community dumping its 

 commodities on another, which is fallacious, for in the whole 

 course of evolution races and species may become extinct 

 because they get too lazy to hunt or work for food ; but I 

 cannot find a single instance where they died of starvation 

 through having too much to eat. Yet I do not wish the reader 

 to draw the conclusion that though I place the conversion of 

 the sinner, failure and waster as waste of time, I would not 

 advocate that he should entirely abandon his humane efforts 

 in the very few cases in which it is advisable to perform such 

 works of mercy. I simply contend that we should do more 

 to prevent than cure, whereas in the past we have devoted too 

 much attention to curing and too little to prevention. So in 

 the same way I do not wish the reader to think that when I 

 advocate restriction on criminal breeding, I would advocate 

 universal matrimonial restriction that would extend to non- 

 criminal classes. For evolution shows clearly that all attempts 

 to interfere with the laws of natural selection, which places the 

 choice of her mate in the hands of the female, are prejudicial 

 except under very exceptional cases. 



I have mentioned these facts in this chapter because the 

 Glacial Period, which is the age we now have under considera- 

 tion, is the age of evolution that did most to evolve the condi- 

 tions that evolved the seeds which produced the roots of these 

 problems of mental evolution, which are vexing the minds of 

 man to-day, and really laid the fundamental casus belli for the 

 physical, commercial and racial conflicts that call imperatively 

 for the highest efficiency in cruelty, barbarity, cunning and 

 invention which we see are now attaining their highest magni- 

 tude of possible evolution in the Great War to-day.. 



To return to the probable evolutions that presumably 

 were being enacted at the time of the Glacial Period upon the 

 world's stage, we find that as this struggle engenders higher 

 competition amongst man and animals to retain possession 

 of the Globe's surface, man having evolved a standing posture 

 relies less on his fingers and more on his thumbs for his self- 

 preservation. Hitherto he has only required to put a large 

 strain upon his fingers to suspend himself from overhanging 



