THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 345 



to undergo continued retrogression ; and therefore it 

 miist be true that any race which has undergone 

 Alcoholic Evolution will, in the absence of Alcoholic 

 Selection, undergo Alcoholic Retrogression ; whence it 

 follows, since it is impossible to banish alcohol, that any 

 scheme for the furtherance of temperance, which is 

 founded on abstinence from alcohol, whether enforced 

 or voluntary, is doomed to failure and worse than 

 failure. It is doomed to failure if founded on enforced 

 abstinence, because even if a race, which has so far 

 undergone Alcoholic Evolution that the majority of its 

 individuals crave little for indulgence in the poison, 

 consent to the passing of a law forbidding its use, yet, 

 if such a law be passed, a time will surely come, in some 

 future generation, after the race has undergone retro- 

 gression to such an extent that the majority becomes 

 the minority, when the law will be repealed or fall into 

 abeyance. It is doomed to failure if founded on volun- 

 tary abstinence, because in the presence of temptation 

 and the lapse of generations, the opposing acquired 

 traits are prone to undergo change, while the instinctive 

 craving remains unchanged except as regards strength ; 

 and because the craving would eventually grow so 

 ardent as a result of retrogression that, even if the 

 opposing acquired traits underwent no change, no 

 opposing traits would be sufficiently strong to counter- 

 act it. 



Quite apart from the theories of evolution and retro- 

 gression, it is surely evident, since children inherit the 

 traits of their parents, and since alcohol causes a large 

 number of deaths, which occur almost exclusively 

 among those individuals who crave greatly for indulg- 

 ence in it, and among their offspring, that a race in 

 which such deaths occur, must differ from what it 

 would be if such deaths did not occur, and that this 

 difference, since the naturally drunken do not to the 



