INSANITY AND ALCOHOLISM. 83 



most all take it is reduced to a minimum, and 

 where, from its general consumption in injurious 

 quantity, the debility possibly transmitted may be 

 considered as reaching towards a maximum ? In 

 this case preventive measures, introduced perhaps for 

 a few years only, would be instrumental in getting 

 the people into more reasonable habits of living, and 

 might enable those who possessed the necessary 

 tastes to cultivate such pastimes and recreations as 

 would keep them free from falling victims to a vice, 

 to which they had previously given way rather from 

 force of imitation than from any strong personal 

 predilection. On the other hand, from our point of 

 view, that of racial progress, the case for preventive 

 interference is not so clear when introduced into 

 a district where the population have in the mass 

 learnt to lead sober lives, where drunkenness is 

 looked upon as a vice, and where only those natur- 

 ally without self-respect and proper self-control fall 

 victims to drink; the artificial interference prevents 

 the operation of a selective influence which eliminates 

 from society many of its most undesirable elements. 

 Under these conditions excessive drinking is but the 

 symptom of something which lies deeper, namely, an 

 organic defect, a poor and vicious type, and its pre- 

 vention cures the symptom, while the disease remains 

 and perpetuates itself to the hapless children of the 

 future, 



