Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/350

338 malaria few—comparatively few—West Africans perish, but more natives of India, whereas comparatively few Englishmen survive, even when placed under the most favourable conditions. In the presence of abundant alcohol few—very few—South Europeans perish, more North Europeans, but few savages, of such races as have had no experience of the poison, survive. Such savage races, when introduced to concentrated modern forms of alcohol, are in as evil case as when introduced to tuberculosis under modern conditions—they cannot then accomplish in a few years, and a generation or two, that amount of evolution which other races, under stringent Alcoholic Selection, accomplished only after the lapse of scores of generations and thousands of years; and therefore they suffer extinction.

To sum up and complete the foregoing, it is plain (1) that races differ from one another in respect to the craving for alcohol as a result of a process of evolution due to Alcoholic Selection; (2) that the direction of this process has been towards a lesser craving from a greater craving; and (3) that in some cases—e.g. among the English—the process has been very rapid, since, side by side with individuals who have but a little craving for alcohol, are found others with a very great craving, and since it frequently happens that parents who crave but little for the poison have offspring that crave very greatly for it, i.e. offspring who have reverted to the ancestral type, in which the craving was very great, the greatness of reversion being due to the swiftness of the evolution, owing to which reversion to a not very remote ancestor results in a considerable change of type.