90 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



men who, against their natural inclination, are 

 abstainers, from moral and prudential motives, 

 often have drunken children. The fact that 

 drunkenness tends to run in families, therefore, 

 does not of itself constitute a proof that parental 

 drinking is a cause of filial intemperance. It is 

 merely an instance of the universally admitted 

 truth that children tend to inherit the inborn 

 characters of the parent. A big man tends to 

 have big children ; a fair man, fair children ; a 

 man so constituted as to find delight in alcohol 

 tends to have children similarly constituted. 



Even if it were true that parental drinking in- 

 creased the child's tendency to drink, we could not, 

 by observing the drunken children of a drunken 

 father, find proof For we could not, by observa- 

 tion, separate that portion of the child's tendency 

 which was due to mere inheritance of the parent's 

 inborn capacity for enjoying drink from that 

 increase of tendency which resulted from the 

 parent's drinking. The voluminous statistics which 

 medical men and others have compiled, and which 

 prove that drunken parents tend to have drunken 

 children, have, therefore, no bearing on the point 

 at issue. Post hoc has been confused with propter 

 hoc. It would be as reasonable to suppose, because 

 a man enjoys and eats peaches and mutton, and 

 has a son who also enjoys peaches and mutton, that 



