114 THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



partaking of alcohol is just as little a character trait or a 

 disease as the custom of taking coffee or tobacco. What 

 leads to drink may be a disposition, either normal or 

 pathological, in a given individual. In one man it may be 

 a weak will, giving way under temptation ; in another, a 

 strong passion coupled with an abnormal craving for 

 stimulants. This has carefully to be distinguished from 

 the result of that disposition, which is the alcoholic state 

 and its consequences. The causes of alcoholism — i.e., those 

 motives and influences which lead men to drink — are 

 outside the scope of our discussion. We deal only with 

 the results of alcoholism, its effects on body and germ cells. 

 Seeing that inebriety is not a character trait nor a disease, 

 it can naturally not be inherited as such. What may be 

 and is inherited is a lesser or greater predisposition leading, 

 under certain conditions, to the taking of strong liquor. 



That alcohol, when taken in excess, exerts a most dele- 

 terious influence upon the individual is an admitted 

 commonplace ; but whether the effects of such abuse are 

 inherited by the progeny is open to great doubts. Not 

 that evil results of chronic drunkenness on the children of 

 drunken parents can be denied. Degeneration in the 

 families of drunkards is only too patent a fact. But the 

 question is : What is the real interpretation of the observed 

 facts ? 



We must, in the first instance, as we have already 

 pointed out, not confuse the issue by regarding alcoholism 

 as inheritable, because the propensity to drink, which leads 

 to alcoholism, may be inherited. If, notwithstanding, there 

 is the general impression that alcoholism of the parents is 

 transmitted to the children, this is due to the fact that 

 inheritance is simulated through the operation of the same 

 causes as we have already discussed in the section dealing 

 with the inheritance of acquired characters and the 

 inheritance of disease. 



We have, first of all, the effect of the alcohol, if the 

 mother is a drunkard, on the foetus. As the alcoholic 



