Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/344

332 The ancient conditions as regards alcohol, like those regarding tuberculosis, arc still persistent in various savage countries, in consequence of which we are enabled to institute comparisons between savage and civilized races, and therefore, in effect, between ancient and modern communities. In Guiana, for instance, the natives manufacture an intoxicant from cassava, of which a debauch of from thirty-six to forty-eight hours is necessary before the wished-for state of drunkenness is attained. The art of manufacturing alcohol must have been as imperfect among our early ancestors as among the Indians of Guiana; their first intoxicant must have been as dilute, indulgence to excess must have been at least as difficult, and the elimination of the unfit equally small. Under such conditions the least resistant individuals only of those that had the best opportunities for excessive indulgence can have perished. As the art improved, as intoxicants of greater and greater strength were manufactured, as indulgence to excess became more and more easy. Alcoholic Selection must have been exercised with greater and greater severity, and as a consequence, the evolution of the races affected must have proceeded further and further, with the result, in modern days, that some races have evolved so far that they are able to persist in the presence of what is practically an unlimited supply of alcohol. In Italy, for instance, until lately the peasantry, for a very trifling sum, drank at their taverns by the hour, not by the quantity, a custom that afforded great facilities for intemperance.

Various explanations other than that given above have been offered of racial differences in respect to over-indulgence in alcohol, all of them extremely unsatisfactory. It is said that some races are by nature abstemious. This is certainly true, but no attempt has been made to explain how this difference in "nature" arose. It