Taking negative considerations first, it cannot be denied that, however frequently alcoholism in parents is found to be followed by juvenile mortality, imbecility, disease, pauperism, or other signs of unfitness in the children of the drunkard, this sequence of events cannot be quoted as a decisive proof that alcohol is a cause of such troubles; because the alcoholism of the parent and the defects of the children may both be the result of some common factor, such as inherited natural weakness of mind or body. Comparisons between the characteristics of children in the same family born before and after a parent had become alcoholic would go far towards settling this dispute if such investigations could be made in sufficient numbers, which is, however, as yet impossible. At present we are, therefore, driven to form a judgment on the issue by other more general considerations.

That parental alcoholism does harm the offspring has been confirmed by certain experiments on animals, though here again hardly any indication has been given as to the effects on the third and subsequent generations. Those who disbelieve in these racial effects will, moreover, point out that, if alcohol did injuriously affect the racial qualities of succeeding generations, it would be reasonable to suppose that the evil effects would continue to accumulate generation after generation, as long as the cause continued to be operative. But, looking to the English nation between the tenth and the eighteenth centuries, for example, we see no clear signs of any progressive deterioration during that period, though too much alcohol was doubtless consumed.

What would be said to anyone who, after weighing carefully all these conflicting considerations, gave it as his provisional conclusion that the inborn characters of the generations beyond the second or third will not be injured by existing alcoholism? This is my position, and I wish to know whether I ought to be blamed for an open confession of my faith, or, rather, of my very hesitating conclusions. I do not now wish to defend this view, but I do want to give my reasons for holding that those who are thus persuaded should announce their opinions openly. Why should they not do so? Can anyone who sees a drunken man really wish that his entirely innocent descendants should suffer for an indefinite number of generations because of his weakness or sin? Merely

to put this question plainly is, in fact, to deny the possibility of any desire for the natural inheritance of the evils of drink being consciously entertained.

THE RACIAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL

Is it certain that a really useful argument in favor of temperance can now be founded on the racial effects of alcohol? The temperance reformer should rather keep forcing the attack on the places where his enemy is weakest, and should never, if he can help it, allow the discussion to stray away from the crime, the misery, the degradation, and the squalor due to existing alcoholism.

The attitude of mind which demands silence irrespective of beliefs will very often lead to a search for those arguments only which support the conclusions desired. Those who in this spirit wish to prove that alcoholism has evil consequences on posterity are likely to make an endeavor to show that acquired characters of all kinds are inherited. The acceptation of this belief would, however, lead to the conclusion that sobriety in this generation, however promoted or enforced, would lessen the innate temptation to drink felt by our descendants. But those who would be thus persuaded would be let into a fool's paradise if the prevailing scientific disbelief in the racial effects of environment is justified; for on that hypothesis, and if no other considerations had to be held in view, we should have to look forward with confidence, however sober this generation may be, to succeeding generations being endowed with the same innate tendencies to drink as ourselves, and to the difficulty of the fight against drunkenness remaining forever undiminished, except in so far as we might be able to hand on to our descendants wiser traditions concerning alcohol than those which we ourselves received from our ancestors.

THE ETIOLOGY AND ARREST OF ALCOHOLISM

Alcoholism is due to three separate factors: namely, (1) excessive temptation, (2) great innate desire for stimulants, and (3) exceptional innate weakness in resisting temptation; and, in order to reduce alcoholism now and in future to a minimum, all these three factors must be studied. To lessen immediate temptation is now the special aim of the temperance reformer; and, though the

eugenist wishes him every success in that field, he must point out that the necessity which all admit of striving for immediate reform affords no excuse whatever for neglecting the other two factors. When we pass on to study the effects of inborn characters, we see that great desire for stimulants must often lead to crimes of violence, and that great weakness of character must often result in minor offenses and habitual criminality. The natural qualities which lead to crime are, in fact, those which we have seen lead to intemperance, and here the eugenist finds a reason why crime and alcoholism are closely correlated. If we could lessen crime in the generations to come, we should also inevitably lessen that intemperance which we now recognize as its close companion, because both evils are largely due to heritable weakness of character. Again, drunkenness, which so often results from weakness of will, is as a fact found to be closely correlated with definite feeblemindedness.

COMMUNICATIONS ON ALCOHOLISM AND EUGENICS

FROM G. ARCHDALL REID, M.D., C.M., F.R.S.E. Author of "The Present Evolution of Man," "Alcoholism, a Study in Heredity," "Principles of Heredity," etc.

Alcoholism has a number of aspects, biological, political, financial, oratorical, and the like. Major Darwin has chosen the biological aspect. It is to be hoped that the issues he raises will not be confused more than is inevitable.

The following are the data for the special problem of alcoholism: (1) Individuals vary in their susceptibility to the charm of alcohol. A short experience of it awakens in some men a craving for deep indulgence. In others a lifelong experience arouses at most only a desire for moderate doses. More than a little would be disagreeable to them. It is the fashion to attribute differences in sobriety to unlikenesses in self-control. Doubtless self-control is the salvation of many susceptible people. But it is not the principal factor in the case of most of the people we meet. It is their good fortune to be more or less incapable of temptation. (2) Alcohol, taken in excess, is a poison which shortens not only the lives of its victims, but also the lives of the offspring reared in

their wretched homes. (3) All races are temperate in proportion to the length and severity of their past experience of alcohol. The history of every race which is now temperate reveals that its ancestry was drunken. For instance, modern Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, and Germans are more temperate than their own ancestors and than Englishmen, who are more temperate than their own ancestors and than American aborigines. In the case of savages whose history cannot be traced, those races are always the more temperate who from time immemorial have commanded large supplies of alcohol.

FROM HARRY CAMPBELL, M.D., F.R.C.P.

Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, Author of "The Causation of Disease," etc., Physician, West End Hospital for

Nervous Diseases.

My own belief is that, far from injuring the race (as distinguished from the individual), wholesale drunkenness has a beneficial rather than a harmful racial effect, by causing a wholesale elimination of degenerates and those lacking moral grit. In this opinion, if I mistake not, I am following Dr. Archdall Reid. It must never be forgotten that adverse and difficult conditions make for evolution, while easy conditions favor devolution. This is a biological axiom. If a nocuous factor is introduced into the environment of a species, one of two things happens-either a process of adaptation is set on foot or the species dies out. And so it is with alcohol. Millions of British have died from the effects of alcohol during the past centuries, and yet I see no evidence of racial degeneration among the British. A certain percentage of congenital degenerates exists in all species, but most of the degenerates observed among us are instances of defective development, the result of artificial conditions of existence.

FROM JAMES A. LINDSAY, M.D., F.R.C.P.

Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Queen's
University of Ireland.

There is acute divergence of view, even amongst thoroughly well-informed persons, regarding the effects of alcohol upon the

A MOONSHINE STILL AS THE REVENUE OFFICERS FOUND IT.