334 THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 



to differences in education and example, but it is forgot- 

 ten that the craving for alcohol, albeit a bye-product 

 of mental evolution, is an instinct, not an acquired 

 trait. It is comparable to hunger or thirst, or to sexual 

 or parental love, not to a love of books, or of paintings, 

 or of scenery, or of country, or of a particular religious 

 system. It is conceivable that a man might be reared 

 in entire ignorance of women, but in such a case, though 

 he knew not what he desired, he would yet crave for 

 them, and his passive desires would instantly be stimu- 

 lated into activity by their presence. So a savage, of a 

 race not rendered resistant by AlcohoUc Selection, craves 

 unknowingly for alcohol, for that state of mind which 

 alcohol induces, and his passive desires are quickly 

 stimulated into activity by indulgence in it. 



It is true, as regards man, in whose mental nature 

 acquired traits play so large a part, that example and 

 precept may do much to counteract instinct. Thus, for 

 example, religious enthusiasm, a purely acquired trait, 

 may so counteract the dictates of sexual instinct as to 

 cause men and women to become monks and nuns, or so 

 counteract the instinctive love of life as to cause them 

 to throw themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernath 

 or mount the funeral pyre ; thus also love of country, 

 obviously another acquired trait, often impels men to 

 difiScult and dangerous enterprises, from which all their 

 instincts call them to abstain ; thus also religious 

 enthusiasm has, more or less, banished alcohol from 

 Mahomedan countries. When, however, an instinct is 

 not opposed by counteracting acquired traits, the part 

 played by it is of course generally proportionate to its 

 strength, and we know of nothing, and it is inconceiv- 

 able that there is anything, in the mental traits acquired 

 by the Greeks and Italians, for example, that would 

 counteract the craving for alcohol, were it as strong in 

 them as it is in savages, or even in some North 



