94 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



be untrue, if parental drinking does not increase the 

 child's proneness to drunkenness, the result must be 

 quite different. Alcoholic selection is very stringent. 

 The children of drunkards, who, if they survive, 

 inherit, as a rule, the parental character, and tend 

 in turn to be eliminated by drink, are generally 

 placed under conditions much less favourable than 

 those which surround the offspring of more tem- 

 perate individuals. They are neglected and ill- 

 nourished ; they live in poorer and less sanitary 

 homes. As a consequence they perish in greater 

 numbers. Very frequently the worst alcoholics — 

 those who have quickly and violently developed 

 the craving for intoxication — do not marry. In- 

 dulgence ruins their appearance, and renders them 

 mentally and physically unattractive to the opposite 

 sex. Men and women, from prudential motives, 

 object to ally themselves to known inebriates. 

 Male drunkards are very apt to satisfy their 

 sexual cravings by intercourse with an unfortunate 

 and very sterile class of women, who are often 

 unfortunate because drunken. Deaths indirectly 

 attributable to alcohol, therefore, swell the total of 

 those directly attributable to it, and to their sum 

 must be added all those offspring which drunkards 

 might have, but do not have. If, then, the Neo- 

 Darwinian doctrine be true, a race afflicted by 

 alcohol should, by the weeding out of the unfit. 



