While there has so far been no organised effort to bring about this selection, for we have not yet turned our attention with sufficient interest to the race as a whole, yet there is a popular and widespread feeling against the marriage of those with a distinct family history of insanity. This feeling has had in the past an undoubtedly selective influence, and has in some measure diminished the number of marriages with neurotic families; and the strengthening of this feeling in the future is the only thing we have to look to, as matters stand, as a means whereby the race may free itself from an inherent weakness of a most distressing kind. _Alcoholism a Habit, and Alcoholism a Sign of Mental Instability._ Not unfrequently we hear of the hereditary tendency to alcoholism, and it is generally understood that a specific tendency to drink alcohol is transmitted. To me it appears that the facts at our disposal seem rather to warrant the conclusion that most of those cases which are supposed to be examples of transmission, are really due to the permanence of intemperate habits in the same family or district perhaps for generations, and that in these cases the children drink from the force of imitation. In other cases I would rather infer that unbalanced vicious temperaments are transmitted, but that as to the way in which these will manifest themselves it depends much upon the circumstances and surroundings of the individual, who may become a drinker, an opium eater, or a profligate, or perhaps a combination of all three. _Drink is a Selective Agency._