RACIAL DIFFERENCES 123 



former class are recruited the drunkards of the 

 better classes ; from the latter the sober majority, 

 who under the ordinary conditions of their lives 

 are temperate without effort.^ 



It must be noted that we have under discussion, 

 not abstainers, but drinkers. Undoubtedly many 

 men are abstainers through will-power called into 

 operation by teaching, or by personal experience, a 

 form of teaching. They remove themselves from 

 temptation, and, comparatively speaking, have a 

 very easy task. But the moderate drinker who is 

 temperate by force of will in the face of a great 

 craving, has an infinitely harder part to play. He 

 is rarely met with. It is true that many men who 

 have been somewhat — or to speak more precisely, 

 occasionally — drunken in their youth, in later life 

 are perfectly temperate. But they do not belong 

 to that type which under the ordinary conditions 

 of society finds delight in mere intoxication. They 

 drank for convivial purposes, and when alone or 



1 Occasionally a drunkard appears in a family that has long been 

 temperate, a fact that has puzzled many writers. Usually he is 

 supposed to have exercised less self-restraint than his fellows. As a 

 fact, his predisposition to intemperance has been greater. He has 

 reverted to the ancestral type {vide chap. v. and Appendix E.). 

 Under all forms of evolution reversion is common, especially when 

 the antecedent evolution has been recent and rapid. The evolution 

 of the better classes is an affair of yesterday. Moreover, they con- 

 stantly intermarry with the lower classes, whose evolution is still more 

 imperfect. Hence the frequency of reversion. 



