The improvement has slowly arisen, along with other so- 24 Progress of Temperance. cial improvements, from natural causes. Nature's power of curing has been in operation. But this large fact and other large facts having like implications are ignored by our agitators. They cannot be made to recognize the pro- ! cess of evolution resulting from men's daily activities, though facts forced on them from morning till night show this in myriadfold ways. Undeveloped brains cannot recognize the results of slow, silent, invisible causes. Small changes wrought by officials are clearly conceived, but there is no conception of those vast changes which have been wrought through the daily process of things un- directed by authority. And thus the notion that a society is a manufacture and not an evolution vitiates political thinking at large, leading to the belief that only by coercion can benefits be achieved. Is an evil shown? Then it must be suppressed by law. Is a good thing suggested? Then let it be compassed by law. The Committee of Fifty through its Sub-Committee on the Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem has shown a marked decrease in drinking in the United States, even within a few generations. It is, as I say, the general drift of things towards better and higher conditions. The heroes of ancient Greece were repre- sented as tremendous eaters, it was one of the at-