844 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION H. 



III. I now pass to my last and most important topic — natural laws in 

 relation to our own social legislation. We have seen that environment is 

 a powerful factor in the differentiation of the various races of man, alike in 

 physique, institutions, and religion. It is probable that the food-supply at hand 

 in each region may be an important element in these variations, whilst the 

 nature of the food and drink preferred there may itself be due in no small degree 

 to climatic conditions. Each zone has its own peculiar products, and beyond 

 doubt the natives of each region differ in their tastes for food and drink. The 

 aboriginal of the tropics is distinctly a vegetarian, whilst the Eskimo -within the 

 arctic circle is practically wholly carnivorous. In each case the taste is almost 

 certainly due to the necessities of their environment, for the raau in the arctic 

 regions could not survive without an abundance of animal fat. It is probable that the 

 more northward man advanced the more carnivorous he became in order to support 

 the rigours of the northern climate. The same holds equally true in the case of drink. 

 Temperance reformers would enforce by legislation complete abstinence from all 

 alcoholic liquors, and they point to the sobriety of the Spaniards, Italians, and 

 other South Europeans, and urge, if these nations are so temperate, why should 

 Britons and Irish continue to drink beer and spirits in such large quantities? 

 This appeal depends unfortunately on the false assumption that the natives 

 of these islands enjoy the same climate as the people of the sunny south. All 

 across Northern Europe and Asia there is a universal love of strong drink, which 

 is not the mere outcome of vicious desires, but of climatic law. In Shakespeare's 

 time ' your Englishman was most potent in potting,' and this was no new outbreak 

 of depravity, for the earliest reference in history to the natives of these islands 

 tells us the same tale. When Pytheas of Marseilles travelled in these regions, 

 about '350 B.C., he found the people making 'wine from barley,' and, though he 

 does not explicitly say so, we need not doubt that it was meant for home con- 

 sumption. In view of these facts we must regard this tendency as essentially climatic. 

 This view derives additional support from the well-authenticated fact that one of the 

 chief characteristics of the descendants of British settlers in Australia is their strong 

 teetotalism. This cannot be set down to their having a higher moral standard 

 than their ancestors, but rather, as in the case of Spaniards and Italians, to the 

 circumstance that they live in a country much warmer and drier than the British 

 Isles. We must therefore, no matter how reluctantly, come to the conclusion 

 that no attempt to eradicate this tendency to alcohol in these latitudes can be 

 successful, for the most that can be done by the philanthropist and the legislator 

 is to modify and control it, but especially by moral means. 



I have spoken of the principles at work in the differentiation of one race from 

 another. It may be that the same principles or others closely allied may be at 

 work within each community, for each community is but the whole world writ 

 small. Within the United Kingdom itself there are not only different physical 

 types, but very different ideas respecting marriage and divorce embodied in the 

 laws regulating those fundamental institutions in England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

 If such fundamental differences exist in that most important of social institutions, 

 we may well expect that the natural laws which differentiate one race from 

 another may be at work w-itbin every community in the United Kingdom, 



Yet though the world has been ringing with the doctrine of natural selection 

 and the survival of the fittest for nearly half a century, no statesman ever dreams 

 of taking these great principles into consideration when devising any scheme of 

 education or social reform. On the contrary, it is a fundamental assumption in all 

 our educational and social reforms that all men are born with equal capacities ; 

 that there is no difference in this respect between the average child of the labourer, 

 sprung from many generations of labourers, and one born of many generations of 

 middle or upper-class progenitors ; and it is held that all that is necessary to make 

 the children of the working classes equal, if not superior, to the children of the 

 bourgeois is the same food, the same clothing, and the same educational advantages. 

 On that account we have devised the so-called educational ladder. Yet if we 

 ask any social reformer why are there middle classes, the answer will probably 

 be that they are better off. But why are they better off.** We are told that 



