THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 34-7 



rational, I hope and expect it will be different ; I hope 

 and expect that individuals, weak against alcohol, 

 suffering from what in the unavoidable presence of 

 alcohol is to all intents and purposes a mental disease, 

 will not be permitted to contaminate the race by bearing 

 offspring, any more than individuals suffering from 

 other grave forms of mental disease are permitted at 

 the present time to do so ; but that they only will be 

 permitted to continue the race who are innately sober, 

 and crave little for excessive indulgence in alcohol. If it 

 is morally right to prevent imbeciles and lunatics repro- 

 ducing themselves, it is surely right, from a moral point 

 of view, to adopt similar measures against inebriates. 

 We have ceased to walk in processions when threatened 

 with pestilence, and resort only to cleanliness and 

 sanitation; presently in our endeavours to procure 

 sobriety we shall cease to resort to enforced or voluntary 

 abstinence — i. e. we shall cease to oppose changing 

 moral influences to an unchanging instinct, and we 

 shall recognize that the will of man, even in the most 

 limited sense, is not entirely free, but, as Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer has truly said, is trammelled by his desires, 

 and that on the average his actions are regulated by 

 the strength of those desires. When we have recog- 

 nized this, we shall recognize also that it is vain, 

 especially in a retrogressing species, to expect that 

 permanent racial sobriety will result notwithstanding 

 the survival of the unfittest — i. e. notwithstanding that 

 the unfittest are permitted to have as much influence 

 on posterity as the fittest. 



It may be argued, Wh}^ if we seek to banish the 

 microbes which cause zymotic disease, should we not 

 seek to banish alcohol, which causes what is practically 

 the death-dealing disease of alcoholism ? If it is right 

 to banish the one, it is surely right to banish the other. 

 On the other hand, if the only way to secure permanent 



