274 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



IV. The inborn capacity for enjoying alcohol, like other 

 inborn traits, is certainly heritable, and for this reason, among 

 others, it is that one drunken generation succeeds another. 



V. On the other hand, there is no evidence that acquired 

 characters are heritable. 



VI. In particular, there is no evidence that characters 

 acquired by the parent through indulgence in drink are inherited 

 by the children subsequently born. The Committee are aware 

 that it is possible that the mental and physical states produced in 

 the parent by indulgence in alcohol do affect the child in some 

 way through inheritance; again they admit as possible, though 

 strictly speaking this is no question of the inheritance of an 

 acquirement, that indulgence may so damage the parental tissues 

 that the germ is ill-nourished, and the child is thus affected ; yet 

 again, they admit as possible that the alcohol circulating in the 

 parent's blood may directly affect the germ, and in this manner 

 affect the offspring, as by producing degeneracy. But these 

 speculations have not been strongly supported by any evidence 

 tendered to the Committee. 



VII. Just as men differ in size, in strength, in colour, and 

 in every other peculiarity, so they differ in their capacity for enjoy- 

 ing alcohol, some men delighting greatly in it and some men little. 



VIII. Men differ also in their capacity for resisting the 

 temptation to drink to excess, some men giving way more, and 

 some less, to the temptation to indulge. — See comments of 

 Dr Archdall Reid and Dr Laing Gordon. 



IX. As a rule men drink in proportion to their desires, 

 balanced, however, by each man's degree of self-control, and by 

 the environment in which he is placed; in other words, men 

 who greatly enjoy alcohol drink, as a rule, deeper than men who 

 enjoy it less. As a consequence, deep and habitual drinkers are 

 almost invariably those to whom alcohol brings much enjoyment 

 (either as positive pleasure or as cessation of pain) ; whereas the 

 great bulk of temperate persons are those to whom it brings 

 comparatively little or even no enjoyment. The Committee 

 recognise that there are numerous exceptions, for men are 



