346 THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 



same extent influence posterity, must be in the direction 

 of a lesser cravinij. 



If, then, racial abstinence from alcohol must have for 

 ultimate result only excessive racial indulgence in the 

 poison, how may we save posterity from the curse of 

 intemperance ? How cause our race ultimately to crave 

 as little for it as the South Europeans ? Most assuredly 

 only by imitating the process of Alcoholic Selection, by 

 eliminating those individuals amoni^ us who crave for 

 alcohol to an excessive degree, at least in so far as to 

 prevent them influencing posterity by leaving offspring, 

 who, by marrying the children of the naturally sober, 

 would contaminate the whole race. In other words, we 

 must either permit Alcoholic Selection to run its cruel 

 course, or we must assist it by Artificial Selection, and so 

 prevent much of the misery, by weeding out the ob- 

 viously unfit, either by forbidding marriage to drunken 

 individuals, or in the married by preventing the pro- 

 creation of children by separating the parents, or such 

 other means as science may devise. 



The above proposals, as well as the conclusions on 

 which they are founded, will certainly be received on 

 " moral grounds " with horror by a certain section of 

 tlie community, and in a country, in some respects tho 

 foremost as regards sanitation in the world, where that 

 monstrous crime, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases 

 Act, was possible, whereby, notwithstanding our en- 

 deavours to banish all other zymotic diseases, notwith- 

 standinjT the crreat care with which we isolate individuals 

 suffering from small-pox, diphtheria, scarlatina, &c., the 

 venereal zymotic diseases were let loose on the com- 

 mimity, and England made the plague-spot of Europe 

 — of the world, as many unhappy and vanishing abori- 

 ginal races attest — it is certain that they will not at 

 present be accepted. In the future, when the reign of 

 prejudice has grown w^eaker, and our legislation more 



