192 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



Through tears and suffering ; through disease 

 and untimely death ; through all the miseries 

 caused by intemperance, our race has won its way. 

 At length, by virtue of a grief-laden past, it has 

 become capable of enduring the hard conditions 

 imposed by modern civilisation. It has spread over 

 the fairest portion of the globe. The future calls it 

 to a destiny of unexampled splendour. Safe as a 

 race from war and famine, and even from disease 

 and alcohol, it has builded its empire on the solid 

 rock. We know of no combination of forces 

 which is likely to prevail against it. But must the 

 tears and suffering be perpetuated for ever in equal 

 measure 1 Must the future of the race be as grief- 

 laden as the dreadful past ? Something we can do 

 if we set our shoulders to the wheel. Death we 

 may delay, but we cannot in the end prevent. 

 Disease will be with us always, but over certain 

 forms of it our power is growing very great. Over 

 intemperance, perhaps the chiefest source of human 

 misery, science gives us a power almost absolute — 

 if only we have the courage and the self-sacrifice to 

 use it. Our fathers wrought in the cause of 

 sobriety, but wrought in vain. They knew not the 

 secret of Nature and fought against her. Unmind- 

 ful of the race, thinking only of the individual, 

 forgetful of the future, labouring only for the 

 present, they sought not only to save the drunkard, 



