122 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



fact and act accordingly. These creatures are as 

 helpless to fight against the desire for drink as is 

 the hereditary suicide to fight against the fate which 

 impels him to destruction, and their punishment is 

 neither more just nor more beneficial than would be 

 that of the epileptic for creating an obstruction by 

 falling down upon the pavement. Justice will not 

 be done until these " weak ones," instead of being 

 packed off again and again to prison, and being per- 

 mitted to propagate their kind in the intervals, are 

 sent to some kind of industrial home or penitentiary 

 where they will be guarded against temptation, where 

 they may spend the full value of their labours in 

 any comforts they please, except only intoxicants, and 

 where the sexes shall be kept apart. 



The fact that this drink crave is handed down 

 through generations in most instances, can in no 

 way justify any man or woman, however clean their 

 family bill of health may be, in thinking that their 

 indulgence in this vice will be harmless to their off- 

 spring. It must be remembered that acquired char- 

 acters tend to be transmitted, and that the most 

 vicious hereditary predisposition existent had a be- 

 ginning in the healthy individual. Therefore, those 

 who wish to live in posterity and see their children 

 free from the mark of the beast endowed with all 

 the heaven-born attributes which raise man to his 

 high position above all other creatures must never, 

 even temporarily, degrade their nature. True, one 

 indulgence may not leave an impress sufficient to 



