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but the getting away from more primitive conditions. Progress of Temperance in Eating and Drinking. The very fact that we have anti-alcoholists today proves that conditions have greatly improved. As long as everybody ate and drank to excess, there was nothing improper seen in it. Now that higher ideas are gaining, these practices are recognized as evil, and ill-balanced minds want to do away, not with the abuse, but with the use of the good things of the world. I cannot help thinking of what Herbert Spencer said in this connection : Elsewhere I have illustrated the curious truth that while an evil is very great it attracts little or no attention; that when, from one or other cause, it is mitigated, recognition of it brings efforts to decrease it; and when it has much diminished, there comes a strong demand that strong meas- ures shall be taken for its extinction; natural means hav- ing done so much, a peremptory call for artificial means arises. One of the instances T named was the immense decline in drunkenness which has taken place since the . eighteenth century, followed during recent times by a loud advocacy of legislation for suppressing it. The occasion for recalling this instance has been the discovery of evid- ence showing how extreme were the excesses 6f our great- grandfathers. What has produced the transformation that has since taken place? Not legislation, not stern repression, not coercion.