MARRIAGE AND DRUNKENNESS. 117 



of which habitual drunkenness is the outward sign, 

 although firmly established and universally admitted, 

 is not understood as it should be. It is too often looked 

 upon as a vice acquired by the individual, the outcome 

 of voluntary wickedness. In some cases this is doubtless 

 true, but in the vast majority of cases inquiry into the 

 family history will reveal the presence of an inherited 

 taint, such families generally showing the neurotic or 

 insane diathesis more or less distinctly marked. No 

 grade in the social or intellectual world is, or ever has 

 been, free from this disease, and if we study the family 

 histories of the great ones of the earth who have fallen 

 victims to it, we shall find that there the cause is the 

 same as amongst the obscure, viz., that they have 

 inherited a degenerate nerve-condition which renders 

 them above others susceptible to this and allied 

 neuroses, such as epilepsy, idiocy, madness, suicide, 

 and the like. In fact, the dipsomaniac and habitual 

 drunkard are very often as much sinned against as 

 sinning, inasmuch as they have inherited an unstable 

 nervous system which renders them liable at any time 

 to fall victims to this vice under provocation which, 

 upon a stable nervous organisation, would be powerless 

 for evil. 



Evidence of the hereditary character of this and other 

 transmitted pathological conditions is seen in the 

 tenacity with which they stick to their victims despite 

 all treatment. An acquired vice or disease often gives 

 way before persistent judicious treatment, but the 

 innate evil is only" to be eradicated by treatment carried 



