Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/673

 helpless paralysis. The wonder suggested, by such analysis of natural phenomena, is not that forty per cent, of the insanity of the country should be directly or indirectly produced by one lethal agent alone, but that so low a figure should indicate all the truth.

When, then, we fairly consider the two questions now before us—whether the lethal agents are called for because they are demanded by a law of natural necessity, a law which stands above man, and is dominant over his nature because independent of him; or whether there is no such law whatever, but an error of man himself, by which he institutes for himself a taste for lethal derangement, and, making for himself and his heirs a new constitution, begins thereupon to justify what he has done on the basis of the constitution he has established—when, I repeat, we consider these two questions, we can, I think, come but to one conclusion. We must, if prejudice be not too strong, lean to the view that man makes the constitution he defends, and that it is the lethal agent, speaking as it were through him, on which a defense of all these agents, common or uncommon, rests for its support.

There is one final argument which many set lip who are not content with either of the two views above described. This argument is that, in the natural state of man and beast, the things which "wreathe themselves with ease in Lethe's walk" are not in any sense necessary things. On the contrary, the things are decidedly injurious, and should not be used. At the same time, it is also admitted that the indulgence in lethal agents is, in truth, a mania which begets a mania, and which inflicts all kinds of follies, crimes, and miseries on the race. But, continues the argument, the mania being admitted as such, is rendered justifiable by the circumstance that they who make it and propagate it do not start from the natural condition. They find in the world so much care, so much sorrow, so much misery, and their own path is bestrewed with so many anxieties and difficulties, that they are, in fact, diseased. All society is diseased. Therefore, to meet this vast amount and volume of disease, remedies of a palliative kind are required. Exceptional conditions call for exceptional measures. A man who can not sleep, owing to the cares and anxieties of his life, must take chloral hydrate or opium to obtain sleep. A man who can not finish a certain amount of work against time, by his own natural powers, must whip himself up to the work by means of wine; must force his heart and brain on against time at all risks and sacrifices. A man who has forced himself on against time, and has thereby obtained a momentum which he can not arrest by ordinary means, must calm himself down by tobacco, must literally put the reins on his heart, and pull the heart up sharply and decisively. These remedies, at all risks of learning to crave for them, at all risk of falling the victim to toxico-mania, must be accepted, that the work of the world may go on at full pace.

The argument is specious. If it be a sound argument, it must be