ALCOHOLIC SELECTION 89 



of drink appears to awaken in them a furious 

 desire for deep indulgence ; but it is probable 

 that, even in them, the appetite grows with feed- 

 ing. At any rate, it is certainly true that it grows 

 thus in all European drunkards. It is this 

 growth of craving that writers generally allude 

 to when they say the craving for drink is trans- 

 mitted. They suppose that the father's drinking 

 increases his capacity for enjoying alcohol and 

 therefore his craving for it ; and they think that 

 this increase of appetite is transmitted to off- 

 spring. 



They found their belief on the indisputable 

 fact that drunkenness tends to run in families ; in 

 other words, on the fact that drunken parents tend 

 to have children who in turn are drunken.^ But 

 here we happen on a very fine, but vastly im- 

 portant point. A drunkard drinks because he is 

 so constituted that experience of alcohol awakens 

 in him a craving for alcohol. Whether he drinks 

 or not, he tends to transmit this inborn constitu- 

 tion of mind to his child. Thus many savages 

 whose parents and ancestors never tasted alcohol 

 {e.g. Esquimaux and Tierra del Fuegians) become 

 exceedingly drunken when given the opportunity. 

 Their parents had the capacity for enjoying drink, 

 but had not opportunity of indulging it. Again, 



' Vide Appendix F, 



