CHAPTER XIII 



THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 



Civilisation inimical to the Temperance Reformer's method — A 

 relic of barbarism — The fundamental errors of Temperance 

 Reformers — Temperance Reform impossible from the 

 biological standpoint — Can only aggravate the evil — A 

 Sisyphean task— The true remedy— The obstacle imposed 

 by man — The alternatives. 



The long record of temperance failures, beginning 

 with the thousand partial and temporary successes 

 of former times, and ending with the total and 

 immediate failures of the present day, demonstrates 

 the increasing futility of all schemes of Temperance 

 Reform that depend for success on the diminution 

 or extinction of the alcohol supply. They are all 

 anachronisms. Legal attempts to enforce modera- 

 tion, such as the Gothenburg System, have proved 

 farcical failures. Local Option has met its very 

 scanty measure of success solely in very sparsely 

 inhabited colonial districts, and then only when 

 public opinion has been especially favourable. 

 Total Prohibition is wholly impracticable in every 

 civilised country under the sun. It may be taken 

 as a broad fact that civilisation is inimical to all 



