rinkers, but classified the parents as those who
drank, and those who were sober; the latter were not, for the most part,
teetotalers, but merely persons whose use of alcohol was so moderate
that it exercised no visible bad influence on the health of the
individual or the welfare of the home. Something can be said on both
sides of all these objections; but giving them as much weight as one
thinks necessary, the fact remains that the Elderton-Pearson
investigation failed to demonstrate any racial poisoning due to alcohol,
in the kind of cases where one would certainly have expected it to be
demonstrated, if it existed.

Much more observation and measurement must be made before a
generalization can be safely drawn, as to whether alcohol is or is not a
racial poison, in the sense in which that expression is used by
eugenists. It has been shown that the evidence which is commonly
believed to prove beyond doubt that alcohol does injure the germ-plasm,
is mostly worthless. But it must not be thought that the authors intend
to deny that alcohol is a racial poison, where the dosage is very heavy
and continuous. If we have no good evidence that it is, we equally lack
evidence on the other side. We wish only to suggest caution against
making rash generalizations on the subject which lack supporting
evidence and therefore are a weak basis for propaganda.

So far as immediate action is concerned, eugenics must proceed on the
basis that there is no proof that alcohol as ordinarily consumed will
injure the human germ-plasm. 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