Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/172

168 being put forth to suppress by legislative means the traffic in liquor, the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United States increases from year to year. From a per capita consumption of four gallons in 1850, it has steadily risen to nearly 25 gallons in 1913. The increase in the last two or three years has been less marked, owing no doubt to the remarkable extension of "dry" territory, but this is offset by a great increase in the use of narcotic drugs and of tobacco.

Narcotic drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, relieve in an artificial way the tension upon the brain by slightly paralyzing temporarily the higher and more recently developed brain centers. The increase in the use of these drugs is therefore both an index of the tension of modern life and at the same time a means of relieving it to some extent. Were the use of these drugs suddenly checked, no student of psychology or of history could doubt that there would be an immediate increase of social irritability, tending to social instability and social upheavals.

Psychology, therefore, forces upon us this conclusion. Neither war nor alcohol can be banished from the world by summary means nor direct suppressions. The mind of man must be made over. War is not social insanity nor is it even social criminality. It is too normal to be classed as either. But war is fast becoming irrational and a substitute for it must be found. Social reconstruction hereafter will have to be conceived on a different plan. It will have to be based on an intimate knowledge of psychology, anthropology and history, rather than merely upon sociology and economics. As the mind of man is constituted, he will never be content to be a mere laborer, a producer and a consumer. He loves adventure, self sacrifice, heroism, relaxation.

These things must somehow be provided. And then there must be a system of education of our young differing widely from our present system. The new education will not look to efficiency merely and ever more efficiency, but to the production of a harmonized and balanced personality. We must cease our worship of American efficiency and German Streberthum and go back to Aristotle and his teaching of "the mean."