ALCOHOLIC SELECTION 95 



tend to become less and less prone to exces- 

 sive indulgence. Age after age, generation after 

 generation, it should become more and more 

 temperate.^ 



Here, then, is a method by which we may discover 

 the effect, if any, that parental drinking has on 

 offspring. If we find that races grow increasingly 

 degenerate or prone to intemperance the longer 

 they use alcohol, then we may accept as proved the 

 doctrine that parental drinking is through heredity a 

 cause of filial degeneration or insobriety. But if, 

 on the other hand, we find that races grow in- 

 creasingly sober under the influence of alcohol, we 

 must accept as proved the contrary assumption. 

 In that case the most voluminous of statistics ought 

 not to alter our decision. Such statistics do not at 

 present exist. Only a popular superstition and a 

 few vague and ill-digested guesses by medical men 

 exist. But did they exist, so difficult is their com- 

 pilation, so surrounded by innumerable causes of 



^ The writer has heard it argued that alcoholic selection should 

 render a race more resistant to alcohol, should enable the members of 

 it to imbibe larger and larger quantities without injury. But in the 

 presence of abundant supplies of the poison, alcoholic selection can 

 hardly result, to any great extent, in an increased power of drinking 

 without injury, for under such circumstances the inebriate would 

 simply drink more, and thereby poison himself as effectually as a less- 

 resistant person would with a smaller quantity. There is, besides, no 

 evidence that Italians, for instance, can imbibe larger quantities of 

 alcohol without injury than Australian Blacks, who have never used 

 alcohol till recently. 



