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2. That the craving for alcohol is innate in the human race, and is 
not an acquired character. 
3. That human beings differ in the degree in which they possess 
this craving—that there are the more alcoholically inclined and the 
less so. But if a man with a great alcoholic craving is able to satisfy 
this craving with drink, even to his own injury, or is prevented by 
prohibition measures from satisfying it, his offspring will not in the 
one case be the more drunken, or in the other case the more sober: 
they will only inherit the innate craving which he possessed. 
4. That the-peoples who have had the most experience of alcohol are 
the least inclined to excessive indulgence therein. 
5. That this result has been brought about because alcohol is such 
a rank poison that it has effectually and constantly killed off the 
individuals of the nations who were most prone to excessive indulgence, 
and so left the field free for the breeding of those who were less 
aleoholically inclined. 
It is hoped that this statement does full justice to the position 
which Mr Reid takes up. It is a very extraordinary position, with a 
maximum of surmise and a minimum of proof. It suggests a case of 
a man seeing a flash of lightning and subsequently a house in ruins 
jumping to the conclusion that the former was the cause of the latter, 
because such events have been known to occur, without being able to 
show (1) that the lightning did strike the house ; (2) that the house 
was not in ruins before. 
Because the main argument of Mr Reid is that savages have drunk 
themselves to death. And considering the raw, much adulterated 
liquid fire with which Christian traders have taken so much pains to 
supply them, there is not much wonder thereat. But to conclude 
therefore that the nations of Southern Europe have become temperate 
because all the alcoholically inclined individuals have been killed off by 
drink is most rash. What warrant is there for such an assumption in 
our own case? for, according to Mr Reid, we are.in the stage of 
alcoholism that the southern peoples were in long years ago. But 
what do we see ?—that the most alcoholically inclined, the labourers 
and artizans, breed in about the proportion of 3 to 1 in regard to the 
less alcoholically inclined remainder of the population. Wherefore, 
according to Mr. Reid, we should be getting a more drunken nation 
with every generation. 
This is one of the missing links in Mr Reid’s chain of evidence. 
For in order to prove that alcoholic over-indulgence is an eliminator 
of the unfit, he must shew that it is so deadly a habit as to kill off its 
votaries before they have been able to produce as many offspring as the 
rest of the population. This he does not do. He actually admits 
that among women alcoholism is not manifest till late in life. But 
for the purposes of elimination it does not matter in the least if a 
woman who has passed the procreative period kill herself off in five 
years with drink, or live to be ninety in soberness. And so with the 
agricultural labourer,—he may kill himself with drink at forty-five; but 
if he has at that age, as is not infrequent, added some twelve or fifteen 
children to the next generation, he has done more to propagate his 
kind than has the sober professional man who lives to be seventy and 
has five children. 
