344 THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 



to a large and earnest section of the community, and 

 doubtless it will be said, especially by those who have 

 not taken the trouble to read this work, that I am an 

 advocate of intemperance, and probably — by a tran- 

 sition easy to a certain order of intellect — that I am 

 intemperate myself. The problem must be faced, how- 

 ever ; it is a great matter, and big with fate ; a step in 

 the wrong direction may result in untold evil. It is true 

 that races differ vastly in various respects, among others 

 in the intensity with which they crave for drunken- 

 ness ; and this latter difiPerence, like all other differ- 

 ences, must be due to a process of evolution in one 

 direction or another ; either from a condition in which 

 the craving was great towards a condition in which it 

 is less, or else from a condition in which the craving 

 was little, or practically non-existent, towards a condition 

 in which it is great. The popular belief is that the 

 racial use of alcohol results in ever-increasing racial 

 intemperance ; but the fact certainly is that races which 

 have had the most extended experience of the poison 

 are the most temperate ; whereas all primitive peoples 

 who have had no experience of alcohol or any other 

 narcotic, crave for it intensely, and if they have the 

 opportunity, poison themselves with it. Clearly the 

 direction of the • evolution has been from a greater 

 craving towards a lesser, and no probable cause for it 

 can be imagined except Alcoholic Selection, except 

 the survival of the fittest in relation to alcohol, i. e. the 

 survival, in generation after generation, during which 

 alcohol was manufactured in stronger and stronger, in 

 more and more poisonous solutions, of those individuals 

 who craved least for it, and the elimination of those 

 who craved most for it. 



It is true also as regards evolution in general, that, 

 whenever the stringency of selection is relaxed, any 

 race which has undergone evolution immediately begins 



