CHAPTER III 



Very important considerations now demand our 



attention. The whole organic world has arisen through 



the action of Natural Selection, under which general 



heading should properly be included the various special 



forms of selection — sexual, artificial, disease, alcoholic, 



&c. But whenever the stringency of selection is abated, 



every type, whether plant or animal, throughout the 



whole organic world, constantly displays a tendency 



towards retrogression, the strength of which is strictly 



proportionate to the rapidity of the previous evolution. 



Now we have no reason to suppose that races that have 



undergone evolution through the operation of Alcoholic 



Selection are less hable to undergo retrogression when 



the stringency of that selection is abated, than are races 



or types which have undergone evolution under any other 



form of Natural Selection. On the contrary, we have 



every reason to suppose, since inborn traits alone are 



transmissible, that when the stringency of Alcoholic 



Selection is abated, when the unfittest survive and 



have offspring as well as the fittest, when the innately 



intemperate have as much influence on posterity as 



the innately temperate, alcoholic retrogression will 



ensue, and therefore that a race that has undergone 



Alcoholic Evolution will, under such circumstances, 



undergo Alcoholic Retrogression, and revert to the 



ancestral type in which the craving was greater. It 



follows, then, if by any means we cause relaxation of 



339 



