82 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



In this town we are also told that opium dens are 

 formed as the alleged result of prohibition, and my 

 informant, whose testimony was unimpeachable, was 

 told by a physician practising there that the use of 

 opium in the place was a positive curse ; he had 

 twenty or thirty cases on his hands of persons suffer- 

 ing from the habit, both men and women." 



Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive. 



One may often draw false deductions from statisti- 

 cal evidence through ignorance of facts, which qualify 

 and give quite another colour to the figures quoted, 

 but the above data suggest that any lasting prohi- 

 bition, other than the dictates of a man's own con- 

 science and sense of self-respect, may do more harm 

 than good ; for when not upheld as a fashion, exces- 

 sive drinking can only be looked upon as a symptom 

 of a debilitated or depraved nature, which, without 

 access to drink, would show itself depraved in other 

 ways, and which, if artificially kept sober and assisted 

 thereby to live, will tend to perpetuate itself and 

 widen the circle of its depravity. 



May it not be said that a clear case is to be made 

 out for the introduction of preventive measures in 

 districts where drunkenness has become a matter of 

 universal habit or fashion, where, therefore, the 

 selective action of alcohol from the fact that al- 



