tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">{24} of their environment, and that the progress of the race or species involves the destruction of the weaker or the inferior who are not in such harmony, the conclusion follows that any aberration toward vice shows such discordance in the individual with the laws of his environment as marks him as inferior, weak, and obstructive of the race's development

Vice is not so much a cause as an effect—precisely as disease is a symptom. Vice does not make a nature weak or defective: a weak and defective nature expresses its weaknesses and defects in vice, and that expression brings about in one way and another {25} the sovereign remedy of extermination.

MUCH is said of the devastation of our fairest and brightest by the Drink Demon. This is mainly nonsense. It was more nearly true in former generations, when intemperance was an almost universal vice. As

Hamlet says:

{26} Morals has made wonderful progress since then, in all directions, and heavy drinking has been more and more restricted to those who are

With few exceptions every one who goes to perdition by the alcohol route would reach that destination by some other highway if the alcohol line were not running.

Every man whose sloth or improvidence has brought himself and his family to beggary, every thieving tramp upon the highways, every rascal in the penitentiary, every murderer upon the gallows, hastens to plead "whisky brought {27} me to this!" because he knows that such a plea will bring him a gush of sloppy sympathy unobtainable by other means.

Whisky makes no man lazy, shiftless, dishonest, false, cowardly or brutal. These must be original qualities with him. If he has them he will probably take to whisky—though not inevitably—which then does the community the splendid service of hurrying him along to destruction, and of abridging his infliction upon the public. {28}

PEOPLE who have done much in the way of reforming drunkards have been astonished to find how little real manhood remained after eliminating whisky from the equation. They had supposed the manhood to be only obscured, and were disheartened to find how frequently it happened to be demonstrated that there never was enough of it to pay for the trouble of "saving the victim of intemperance." Like the cherubim before the throne of God, the Temperance orators "con- tinually do cry," the burden of their song being that hundreds of thousands are annually slain by the monster Intemperance. {29} Quite singularly these figures are probably not exaggerated. Myriads of times kindly-hearted physicians write in the death certificate "pneumonia," "heart-failure," "diabetes," etc., when truth demands "beer" or "whisky."

BUT what of this?

Is it not merely Nature sweeping out her overcrowded workshop? Ridding her laboratory of misfits, defectives, and rejects? Into her junk pile alcohol whisks away daily thousands of thieves, gamblers, prostitutes, loafers, "sports," spongers, swindlers, {30}