294 ALCOHOL 



who is the reverse. The child has two parents, and may inherit 

 mainly or exclusively from the one or the other. Or the conditions 

 of life under which parent and child develop may be different. 

 Thus a man, impressed by the u awful example " of his father, may 

 become an abstainer. But his son, falling amongst evil companions, 

 and seeing at first more of the delights than the woes of drinking, 

 may exhibit the character of the grandparent. The facts remain, 

 however, that, though many people who are very susceptible to the 

 charm of alcohol do not fall victims to it, yet, whether it be in- 

 dulged or not, the susceptibility exists, is greater in some people 

 than in others, tends to be inherited in its various degrees, and 

 people on the average tend to fall victims to it in proportion 

 to its strength in them. The clearest proof that degrees ot 

 susceptibility to the charm of alcohol tend to be reproduced by 

 offspring is found when we examine races. In the midst of 

 abundance of alcohol, generations of Spaniards or Italians lead 

 temperate lives. Under similar conditions Englishmen are more 

 drunken, Russians yet more drunken, while Red Indians furiously 

 drink themselves to death. Races are merely aggregates of more 

 or less nearly related individuals. Therefore, as in the case of 

 disease, the individuals of each race must tend to transmit their 

 degrees of susceptibility to offspring and descendants. 



490. There can be no doubt, then, that some people are so 

 constituted as to be more tempted by drink than others, that they 

 tend to transmit this characteristic to offspring, and that, though a 

 proportion of those who have it are, in England at least, abstainers, or 

 in far rarer cases moderate drinkers, yet all really excessive drinkers 

 are drawn from their ranks. Again, there can be no doubt that 

 excessive drinking is injurious, and that a great number of people, 

 all of a particular type, indulge in it. The question arises, then, 

 whether it is so injurious and to so large a number of people, as 

 to act, like a microbic disease, as a stringent agent of selection. 

 In that case it must so shorten or in other ways so influence the 

 lives of a certain type of people, that the total number of offspring 

 and descendants they contribute to the race is much less than 

 would have otherwise been reared. According to the Registrar- 

 General, 221 1 people died of alcoholism in 1905, the rate per 

 million of the population being only 65. In the same year the 

 deaths from tuberculosis were 55,759, the rate per million being 

 1632. Judged, then, by the returns, excessive drinking is by no 

 means a stringent agent of elimination. The number of deaths 

 recorded must bear a very small proportion to the total number of 



