Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ADDRESS III. ON HEREDITARY AND ACQUIRED DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF TOTAL ABSTINENCE. In this address I propose to consider some of the personal difficulties which lie in the way of learning to abstain from the use of alcoholic drinks, and the best modes of removing or lessening those difficulties. HEREDITARY DIFFICULTIES. In treating of the difficulties of a personal kind we are, I think, bound to admit the fact that hereditary propensity to the use of strong drink exists. I thought two or three years ago that hereditary tendency exerted a preponderating influence in a large number of cases, and I was for a time content to accept this inference on a general rather than on a particular series of observed facts. A few rather startling assertions, as to their unfortunate inherited propensity, made by persons whowere too fond of the cup that kills, and which assertions were not borne out by a correct narrative of their family history, made me in time more cautious in coming to conclusions, and induced me in all alleged instances of the kind to set down the details I could obtain in due order for systematic investigation. The result of this method of research has been to show me that it is very easy indeed to fall into error on this subject. It happens that many who indulge freely in alcoholic drinks, and that some who indulge moderately, but with a decided relish for the indulgence, excuse themselves on the ground of an inborn or hereditary infirmity, for which they allege they are not accountable, and over which they have no sufficient natural control. ' I have a strong desire,' says one, ' to take to total abstinence, but my father and grandfather had such liking for drink that the actual desire for it is, as it were, engrafted in my nature.' ' Alas! it is a family fa...