Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/697

Rh The customs and tastes of populations and the fashions change and give place to others that disappear in their turn, after having inspired the same infatuation in us; but the habit of smoking goes on increasing, over all obstacles. The earliest adepts of the practice braved anathemas and persecutions, and some of them punishments. The smokers of to-day do not have to make the same struggles, but many of them endure troubles that compromise their health rather than abandon the practice, and among these are men of energy and intelligence, whatever else may be said of them.

There must, therefore, be in this passion something besides the satisfaction of a mechanical habit. "The particular intoxication caused by tobacco," says M. Dumas, "must have irresistible attractions for an intoxicant of so recent discovery, the initiation into which is so painful, to have overtaken wine, old as the world." The charm of tobacco-intoxication is not easy to explain. It is in the soothing, says M. Fay; it is an anaesthesia that has become necessary, says M. Richet; it is a state of torpor which conduces to revelry, say others. Tolstoi maintains that it is nothing of this kind, but the desire to stifle the voice of conscience; and, confounding tobacco with alcohol and opium, the Russian romancist envelops them both in the same anathema. In explanation of his view he has recourse to a theory known in physiology as that of duality, or human dynamism. During his conscious life, Tolstoi says, man has frequent occasion to recognize in himself two distinct beings: one blind and sensitive, the other enlightened and thinking. The former eats, drinks, rests, sleeps, reproduces, and moves, like a machine wound up for a certain time. The other, the thinking and enlightened, united with the sensitive one, does not act by itself, but only controls and appraises the conduct of the former one, helping it effectively if it approves, and remaining neutral in the contrary case. This spiritual but powerless being plays in human psychology the part of the compass of the ship, of which the other being is the helmsman. The last can follow the directions of the magnetic needle, or he can pay no attention to them; he is even able, when its warnings annoy him, to disarrange his compass. Weak and timorous persons have recourse to the last expedient. They stifle their conscience, and, in order to do so, use alcohol or tobacco.

Count Tolstoi's theory can not be sustained. It has one particularly weak point in the similarity which the author assumes between the effects of tobacco and of alcohol. Not one of the personages whom the translator of his work consulted protested against this confusion, and still it is false and deceitful. The Russian's paradox may be applied, to a certain extent, to drunkenness. We do sometimes get drunk to forget, to stupefy ourselves, and it is a detestable means. Rogues and criminals all do it; they