ALCOHOLIC SELECTION 91 



the child's enjoyment of these edibles is due to 

 the father's indulgence in them. Clearly the 

 proposition is absurd. The child's inborn likes 

 and dislikes depend on something deeper than 

 the mere acquirements of the parent. Savages, 

 whose parents and ancestors had no previous ex- 

 perience of peaches or mutton, enjoy them quite 

 as much as other people. The case of alcohol is 

 precisely similar. It is just as absurd to 

 suppose that, because a drunken father has a 

 drunken child, that therefore the father's drinking 

 is the cause of the child's predisposition to drink. 



Again, some writers, principally medical men, 

 have published statistics, or, more often, mere 

 statements, declaring that they have observed 

 " degeneracy " in the children of drunkards.^ They 

 suppose further that "degeneracy," whatever that 

 may imply — these vague terms are the bane of 

 science — predisposes offspring to intemperance. 

 But no evidence is forthcoming that it does pre- 

 dispose to intemperance, and degeneracy may be 

 observed in the children of non-drunkards. So 

 numerous are the sources of error that it is not 

 possible to obviate the confusion between post and 

 propter hoc except by statistics on an enormous 

 scale, compiled with the exactest care by men 

 of the first class trained to closest habits of 



' Vide Appendix G. 



