76 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



Parents who drink from Habit may have Debilitated 

 Offspring. 



In a former chapter we have suggested that the 

 alcohol circulating in the parental veins may affect the 

 germinal cells, not in such a manner as to make those 

 cells develop into individuals with a tendency to drink, 

 but rather with the result that debilitated offspring are 

 often thereby produced. It is quite conceivable that 

 this latter effect may be brought about, although our 

 study of the infective diseases has indicated to what 

 lengths the whole system may be affected without 

 the production of any permanent change in the germ 

 cells ; but it is, I think, greatly over-stating the case to 

 adduce examples such as one brought forward by Gal- 

 ton, in which we are told of a man who had begotten 

 children of the ordinary type becoming a drunkard, 

 and afterwards having imbecile children. This seems 

 to me to be very questionable evidence indeed. We 

 can seldom ground any general rule on the basis 

 of a few isolated cases, and just as one may support 

 almost any argument by means of a text of Scripture, 

 so one might bring forward isolated cases to support 

 almost any view of heredity. Amongst the some 

 forty million instances of transmission to be seen at 

 the present day in the British Islands and the many 

 thousands of imbeciles and drunken parents, one 

 hardly wonders at what may after all be only a 



