Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/357

Rh to undergo continued retrogression; and therefore it must 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the race has undergone retrogression to such an extent that the majority becomes the minority, when the law will be repealed or fall into abeyance.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 voluntary 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 counteract it.

Quite apart from the theories of evolution and retrogression, 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 indulgence 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