Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/352

340 the stringency of Alcoholic Selection, e.g. by diminishing or abolishing the supply of alcohol, whereby the innately drunken are permitted to surviye and have offspring equally with the innately sober, that the craving for alcohol will grow in generation after generation, till the race reverts to that ancestral condition in which the craving was as strong as it is at the present day among the North American Indians or the native Australians, who have undergone no evolution in relation to alcohol; in other words, the success of every scheme for the promotion of temperance, which depends on the diminution or extinction of the alcoholic supply, or on voluntary or involuntary abstinence from alcohol, Total Abstinence, Local Veto, the Gothenburg System, &c., will—must—result in an aggravation of the craving for that state of mind which indulgence in alcohol induces; a craving which, in each stage, will be proportionate to the degree of retrogression undergone by the race, both in respect to the strength of the craving, and in respect to the depth of the intoxication desired; and therefore it follows, that all such schemes for the promotion of temperance are in effect nothing other than schemes for the promotion of drunkenness, or at any rate for the promotion of the craving for it.

It cannot be too strongly insisted on, or too often reiterated, that the craving for alcohol, like sexual love, is an instinct, not an acquired trait. It is called into activity, but is not created by appropriate stimulation, by experience of that state of mind which indulgence in alcohol induces. In this it differs radically from such an acquired passion as that, for instance, for a particular religious system, which is entirely created, not merely called into activity by stimulation, and for which may be substituted aversion or a passion for some other religious system; that is, which may be destroyed by opposing acquired traits. The passion for alcohol