e
it clear that alcohol is acting as an instrument of racial purification
through the elimination of weak stocks. It is a drastic sort of
purification, which one can hardly view with complacency; but the
effect, nevertheless, seems clear cut.

To demonstrate the action of natural selection, we must first
demonstrate the existence of variations on which it can act. This is
not difficult in the character under consideration--namely, the greater
or less capacity of individuals to be attracted by alcohol, to an
injurious degree.

As G. Archdall Reid has pointed out,[18] men drink for at least three
different reasons: (1) to satisfy thirst. This leads to the use of a
light wine or a malt liquor. (2) To gratify the palate. This again
usually results in the use of drinks of low alcohol content, in which
the flavor is the main consideration. (3) Finally, men drink "to induce
those peculiar feelings, those peculiar frames of mind" caused by
alcohol.

Although the three motives may and often do coexist in the same
individual, or may animate him at different periods of life, the fact
remains that they are quite distinct. Thirst and taste do not lead to
excessive drinking; and there is good evidence that the degree of
concentration and the dosage are important factors in the amount of harm
alcohol may do to the individual. The concern of evolutionists,
therefore, is with the man who is so constituted that the mental effects
of alcohol acting directly on the brain are pleasing, and we must show
that there is a congenital variability in this mental quality, among
individuals.

Surely an appeal to personal experience will leave little room for doubt
on that point. The alcohol question is so hedged about with moral and
ethical issues that those who never get drunk, or who perhaps never even
"take a drink," are likely to ascribe that line of conduct to superior
intelligence and great self-control. As a fact, a dispassionate analysis
of the case will show that why many such do not use alcoholic beverages
to excess is because intoxication has no charm for them. He is so
constituted that the action of alcohol on the brain is distasteful
rather than pleasing to him. In other cases it is variation in
controlling satisfaction of immediate pleasures for later greater good.

Some of the real inebriates have a strong will and a real desire to be
sober, but have a different mental make-up, vividly described by William
James:[19] "The cravi