that all the living creation craves for stimulants, and that stimulants therefore, are a part of the necessities of life. The argument in its application to men is often used because it is rather a convenient argument than a logical. If the craving were really a natural act, ‘the interpretation of an instinct,' as one wise man has defined it, then it seems to me that natural law in this matter is an exceptionally confused and contradictory law, something nearer human than anything else that can be found in other parts of the domain of nature. If it be natural to crave for these things, why does not the craving begin before the things are known, and why should the craving be extended towards substances which none but persons advanced in knowledge could ever possess? The craving after ether, for example, when it has once been excited, may be as urgent in an unlettered peasant who does not even know that there is such a science as chemistry, as it would be in a learned chemist who knows that in order to produce an ether he must first produce an alcohol, a strong acid, and an elaborate apparatus, for the discovery of which some centuries of research must needs have intervened between the craving for it and its gratification. Nay, the craving when it has been excited may be as urgent in a lower animal as in the unenlightened peasant or the wise philosopher. All things that are truly natural are naturally provided, and there is not a single natural necessity that is not naturally and bountifully supplied. We can modify all these and create a craving for the modification. We can modify the air so that what we breathe produces a different mode of existence; and for that very modification we can create such a craving, that the greatest of philosophers and the poorest of lower animals may long for the new life, and feel such an irresistible desire to breathe the new life, that whenever the mere means for accomplishing that desire are suggested, even by the sight of the means, the desire is all aglow. To my mind the evidence is conclusive that this craving, whenever it is indicated, is the crucial sign of aberration from nature; that it has no connection with the truly natural life, but is the interpretation of a morbid habit, acquired by man out of his own inventions, and communicable by man to other men and other animals lower than himself; that comparable in no sense with the divine schemes which he did not invent, it is as far apart from them and out of harmony with them, as it is far apart from his good and out of harmony with it. In a word, that whoever craves beyond his wants, whoever makes craving the object of his life, is aberrant is no longer in the ranks of the survivals of the fittest; and in craving at all is craving for death. A A It is The history of ether-drinking which I have narrated is a singular phase of social life in this century, and as such alone is worthy of record. still more worthy of record as a study of life under aberration; of the extent to which man can indulge in the freedom of his own inventions; of the desires he can gratify by his own inventions; and, of the end and result of the gratification. It, with much more that is akin to it, tells us that, free as we are when we are running in concert with Nature, we are stopped whenever we try to go our own way; that so soon as we strive to make a nature of our own, or to alter the bases of Nature, so soon are we landed on the impossible; that if we try to invent no more than a change of dreams, fascinating as may be the attempt, we must, in the process, either become unintelligible one to the other or sink into the universal silence. |