286 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



VII. This lesion of tlie vitality of the germinal tissue shows 

 itself in the offspring developing therefrom, by affecting those 

 nervous elements which are the latest products of evolution, and, 

 therefore, the least stable, which also constitute the physical basis 

 of the higher mental operations. 



VIII. This affection of the nervous elements consists of an 

 impaired vitality, and, therefore, retarded development, with 

 enfeebled performance of the functions of these tissues. 



IX. This condition may manifest itself, first, in arrested 

 development (idiocy) ; second, in greater irritability or proneness 

 to discharge (epilepsy) ; or, thirdly, in a diminution from the 

 average mental power of self-control. 



X. It is under this latter manifestation that the tendency to 

 inebriety is met with. 



XI. If in addition to the racial inborn tendency to indulge 

 the animal cravings (JV.B. — Not a tendency to inebriety but to 

 the general condition) there be, in the parent, an inborn morbid 

 deficiency of the power of self-control, and if this is manifested by 

 inebriety, the offspring of such parent will be more prone to 



vital processes, e.g. the liver, the kidneys, the heart, and the nervous 

 system. In the tissues not so actively concerned in metabolic changes, 

 as, for example, the germinal cells of the testes and ovaries, the effect 

 of such intoxication takes place in structural changes, from the nature 

 of the case utterly impossible to demonstrate, or in impairment of 

 vitality, or that form of motion which is the property of protoplasm, 

 which can only be seen in the effects produced in future development, 

 evidence of which is to be met with in the prisons, in the asylums, and 

 in the hospitals. 



Scientific evidence which will positively connect alcoholic poisoning 

 and the effect here asserted to 'make its appearance in the offspring, 

 cannot be produced, from the impossibility of distinguishing between 

 the effect of alcoholic impairment and that produced by other causes ; 

 but from the analogy of its action on other organs and tissues, it seems 

 unwise to conclude that it has no such action on the germinal tissues, 

 especially in the face of the almost universally held opinion which has 

 grown up from individual experience. 



