To say this is not in any way to minify
the evil results which alcohol often has on the individual, or the
disastrous consequences to his offspring, euthenically. But nothing is
to be gained by making an assumption of "racial poisoning," and acting
on that assumption, without evidence that it is true; and the temperance
movement would command more respect from genetics if it ceased to allege
proof that alcohol has a directly injurious effect on the race, by
poisoning the human germ-plasm, when no adequate proof exists.
How, then, can one account for the immense bulk of cases, some of which
come within everyone's range of vision, where alcoholism in the parent
is associated with defect in the offspring? By a process of exclusion,
we are driven to the explanation already indicated: that alcoholism may
be a symptom, rather than a cause, of degeneracy. Some drunkards are
drunkards, because they come of a stock that is, in a way, mentally
defective; physical defects are frequently correlated in such stocks;
naturally the children inherit part or all of the parental defects
including, very likely, alcoholism; but the parent's alcoholism, we
repeat, must not be considered the _cause_ of the child's defect.
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