232 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



existence, that we may explain thus the comparative rarity 

 of these varieties in savage communities ? It certainly does 

 not seem to have been proved as yet that civilisation per se 

 is favourable to the development of insanity. 



The liking for strong drink, as is too well known, is often 

 transmitted. It is remarked by Dr. Howe that ' the children 

 of drunkards are deficient in bodily and vital energy, and are 

 predisposed by their very organisation to have cravings for 

 alcoholic stimulants. If they pursue the course of their 

 fathers, which they have more temptation to follow and less 

 power to avoid than the children of the temperate, they add 

 to their hereditary weakness, and increase the tendency to 

 idiotcy or insanity in their constitution ; and this they leave 

 to their children after them.' Whatever opinion we may 

 form on the general question of responsibility for offences of 

 commission or of omission, on this special point all who are 

 acquainted with the facts must agree, admitting that in some 

 cases of inherited craving for alcoholic stimulants the respon- 

 sibility of those who have failed and fallen in the struggle 

 has been but small. ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 

 and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Robert Collyer of 

 Chicago, in his noble sermon ' The Thorn in the Flesh/ has 

 well said, ' In the far-reaching influences that go to every 

 life, and away backward as certainly as forward, children are 

 sometimes born with appetites fatally strong in their nature. 

 As they grow up the appetite grows with them, and speedily 

 becomes a master, the master a tyrant ; and by the time he 

 arrives at manhood, the man is a slave. I heard a man say 

 that for eight-and-twenty years the soul within him had had 

 to stand like an unsleeping sentinel, guarding his appetite 

 for strong drink. To be a man at last under such a disad- 

 vantage, not to mention a saint, is as fine a piece of grace as 

 can well be seen. There is no doctrine that demands a 

 larger vision than this of the depravity of human nature. 

 Old Dr. Mason used to say that " as much grace as would 

 make John a saint, would hardly keep Peter from knocking 

 a man down." ' 



