n
that to the obvious and visible miseries of the children arising from
drink, lowered intelligence and physique are not added."

The difficulties surrounding investigation and the interpretation of
the results of investigation in this particular field are evidenced by
the fact that these results have been adversely criticised, on the one
hand, because "alcoholism" was taken to mean the continued moderate
use of alcohol, and on the other because "alcoholism" was taken to
mean only the occasional excessive abuse of alcohol. Much of the
confusion surrounding the discussion of the racial effects of alcohol
grows out of the underlying confusion of statistical and individual
statements. It may be left open, then, whether this result from the
Galton Laboratory is clearly demonstrated and whether the basis of
investigation was sufficiently broad to make the facts of general
applicability.

The frequent association between alcoholism and certain forms of
insanity is sometimes taken as evidence of a racial effect. Here again
we find the question really left open when we appeal to facts taken in
large numbers. In a few cases it seems to have been demonstrated that
saturation of the bodily tissues with alcohol affects directly the
structure of the germ cells formed at that time, and that this effect
is seen in physical and mental disturbances of the offspring derived
from such germ cells, and thus becomes hereditary or racial. But these
results, like those mentioned above, need confirmation. The impairment
of the child _in utero_ through maternal overindulgence in alcohol
would not necessarily denote any corresponding germinal (i. e.,
racial) effect.

It is often the case that alcoholic excess, like other forms of
excess, may be an indication of a lack of complete mental balance or
sanity, sure to have become expressed in some form. The lack of
balance in the offspring of such persons is a simple case of heredity
and not the result of the parental use of alcohol. The alcoholism of
the parent was a result, an indication, and not a cause. There may be
instances of the direct action of external conditions upon the germ,
and in a very true sense the body is a part of the external
environment of the germ, but to say that such an action has been
demonstrated for alcohol is premature. It should be easily possible to
get real evidence upon this and similar questions. But at present it
is safest to leave the whole question of the racia