to lay waste man's mental and moral
nature. Just as the inebriate's senses, sight, hearing, and touch, fail to
report correctly of the outer world, so the mind fails to preside properly
over the inner realm. Mental perceptions are dulled. The stupefied
faculties can hardly be aroused by any appeal. Memory fails. Thus the man
is disqualified for any responsible labor. No railroad company, no
mercantile house, will employ any one addicted to drinking. The mind of
the drunkard is unable to retain a single chain of thought, but gropes
about with idle questionings. The intellect is debased. Judgment is
impossible, for the unstable mind cannot think, compare, or decide.

The once active power of the will is prostrate, and the victim can no
longer resist the feeblest impulse of temptation. The grand faculty of
self-control is lost; and as a result, the baser instincts of our lower
nature are now uppermost; greed and appetite rule unrestrained.

But the moral power is also dragged down to the lowest depths. All the
finer sensibilities of character are deadened; all pride of personal
appearance, all nice self-respect and proper regard for the good opinion
of others, every sense of decorum, and at last every pretence of decency.
Dignity of behavior yields to clownish silliness, and the person lately
respected is now an object of pity and loathing. The great central
convictions of right and wrong now find no place in his nature; conscience
is quenched, dishonesty prevails. This is true both as to the solemn
promises, which prove mere idle tales, and also as to property, for he
resorts to any form of fraud or theft to feed the consuming craving for
more drink.

298. Evil Results of Alcoholism Inherited. But the calamity does not
end with the offender. It may follow down the family line, and fasten
itself upon the unoffending children. These often inherit the craving for
drink, with the enfeebled nature that cannot resist the craving, and so
are almost inevitably doomed to follow the appalling career of their
parents before them.

Nor does this cruel taint stop with the children. Even their descendants
are often prone to become perverse. As one example, careful statistics of
a large number of families, more than two hundred descended from
drunkards, show that a very large portion of them gave undoubted proof of
well-marked degeneration. This was plain in the unusual prevalence of
infant mortality, convulsions, epilepsy, hysteria