THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 341 



cannot be destroyed by opposing acquired traits, though 

 it may be counteracted by them, especially when it is 

 weak, as among the Italians, or when the counteracting 

 traits are very strong, as among ardent temperance 

 reformers. When it is strong, and the counteracting 

 traits are weak, as among the North American Indians, 

 and when, moreover, an abundant supply of alcohol is 

 accessible, the race is doomed to disaster, perhaps to 

 extinction. Thus, also, the sexual instinct is not 

 destroyed, but is merely counteracted by the mental 

 traits which monks and nuns acquire. The craving for 

 alcohol, age after age, is born anew with each genera- 

 tion, undiminished, except by Alcoholic Selection, and 

 in a race which has undergone Alcoholic Evolution, 

 is increased age after age, and generation after gener- 

 ation, in the absence of such selection. But acquired 

 passions change from generation to generation and from 

 age to age, especially when such passions involve- a 

 limitation, not an extension, of instinct. Who then can 

 doubt that when a changing acquired passion is opposed 

 to an unchanging instinct, in the end the instinct will 

 be triumphant ? Who can doubt that when an inborn 

 craving for alcohol is opposed to an acquired detestation 

 of it, that in the long run the inborn craving will 

 prevail, and therefore that if here in England we 

 succeed at first in an attempt to counteract the inborn 

 craving by moral influences, by acquired mental traits, 

 that in the end the inborn craving will prevail, especi- 

 ally in such a race as ours, which has undergone some 

 alcoholic evolution, and is therefore prone to undergo 

 alcoholic retrogression when the stringency of selection 

 is abated 1 



It will certainly be argued in reply, that since moral 

 influences have caused Mahomedan races to abstain 

 from alcohol for twelve hundred years, and for all we 

 know will continue to do so for an indefinite time 



