The manliest races of the present world are probably the Lesghian[15] and Daghistan[16] mountaineers, who inhabit the southern highlands of the Caucasus,[17] and who defied the power of the Russian empire for sixty-five years. From 1792 to 1858, army after army of schnapps drinking[18] Muscovites[19] attacked them from the north, east and west, and were hurled back like dogs from the lair of a lion, and fifteen hundred thousand Russian soldiers perished in the Caucasian defiles before the Russian eagles supplanted the crescent of Daghistan. For the heroic highlanders are Mohammedans, and total abstainers from intoxicating drinks. The Ossetes,[20] who inhabit the foothills of the northern range, are addicted to the use of slibovits[21] (peach brandy) and other stimulants, and their bloated faces present a striking contrast to the clean-cut features of the tribes who have been chosen as the representatives of the white race. They are as stubborn as their southern neighbors, but not as enterprising; as self-sacrificing in the defense of their country, but not as self-reliant. In spite of their healthy climate they are cachectic[22] and rather dull witted; alcohol has stunted their stamina as well as their stature.
But there are other forms of physical degeneration which can with certainty be ascribed to the influence of the secondary stimulants, tobacco, tea, coffee, and pungent spices. Tobacco makes the Turks indolent, tea and coffee make us nervous and dyspeptic; and the worst is that those minor vices pave the way to ruin; a constitution enfeebled by theïne poison[23] is less able to resist the influence of fusel poison. It is a great mistake to suppose that abstinence from concentrated alcoholic liquors could atone for the habitual use of other stimulants. The vices of our ancestors were gross, but one-sided; ours are more manifold, and in their effects more comprehensive. In France many so-called temperate drinkers indulge in light wine, absinthe, tea, coffee and chloral, and are weaklier and sicklier than the Hungarian dram drinkers who confine themselves to plum brandy, for the system of the miscellaneous poison-monger has to defend itself against five enemies, and, as it were, sustain the wounds of five different weapons. The mediæval knights and many Grecian and Roman epicureans could drink a quantity of wine that would kill a modern toper; but they confined themselves to that one stimulant, and showed sense enough to keep it from their boys, who had a chance to fortify their constitutions with gymnastics before they endangered them with alcohol, and not rarely thus fortified their mental constitutions to a degree that made them temptation proof. Pythagoras and Mohammed interdicted wine, and that statute did not interfere with the propagation of their doctrines, for voluntary abstainers were by no means rare—before the introduction of secondary stimulants. We fuddle our schoolboys with coffee and cider, and it is a curious and very frequent consequence of that early development of the stimulant habit that its victim forgets the happiness of his childhood and accepts daily headaches and chronic nightmares as some of the “ills that flesh is heir to.” Rousseau believed that a man would be safe against the poison vice if he could reach his twentieth year without contracting the habit, because in the meantime observation would have taught him the effects of intemperance. But his safety would be guaranteed by another circumstance. He would know what health means, and no deference to established customs would tempt him to exchange freedom for chains.
But a still greater mistake is the idea that drunkenness could be abated by the introduction of milder alcoholic drinks. We can not fight rum with lager beer. All poison habits are progressive, and we have seen that the beer vice is always apt to eventuate in a brandy vice, or else to equalize the difference by a progressive enlargement of the dose. Common brandy contains fifty per cent. of alcohol, lager beer about ten; so, if A. drinks one glass of brandy and B. five glasses of beer they have outraged their systems by the same amount of poison and will incur the same penalty. Total abstinence is the safe plan, nay, the only safe plan, for poisons can not be reduced to a harmless dose. By diminishing the quantities of the stimulant we certainly diminish its power for mischief, but as long as the dose is large enough to produce any appreciable effect that effect is a deleterious one.
Various diseases and that artificial disorder called intoxication react on certain faculties of the mind (by affecting their corresponding cerebral organ) as regularly as on the liver or any other part of the human organism. Consumption stimulates the love of life: a self-deluding hope of recovery characterizes the advanced stage of the disease as invariably as the hectic flush that simulates the color of health. Hasheesh excites combativeness. Alcohol first excites and gradually impairs self-reliance, and thus undermines the basis of truthfulness, of private and social enterprise, of manly courage and generosity. Moral cowardice, the chief reproach of our generation, has more to do with the tyranny of the poison vice than with the despotism of social prejudices. The brain stimulating effect of alcohol decreases with every repetition of the dose, and Dr. Theodore Chambers warns us that “however long the evil results of such habitual overtasking may be postponed, they are sure to manifest themselves at last in that general breakdown which is the necessary sequence of a long continued excess of expenditure over income.”
Besides, even the temporary results would not justify that expenditure. “Brain workers should confine themselves to metaphysical tonics,” says Dr. Bouchardat[24]; “alcoholic drinks, at any rate, are unavailable for that purpose. Even after a single glass of champagne I have found that the slight mental exaltation is accompanied by a slight obfuscation.[25] The mind soars, but it soars into the clouds.” “Wine stirs the brain,” says the poet Chamisso, “but not its higher faculties as much as the sediments that muddle it.”
The Arabs have a tradition that soon after the flood, when Nunus (the Arabian Noah) had resumed his agricultural pursuits, a Ghin, or spirit, appeared to him and taught him the art of manufacturing wine from grape-juice. “This beverage, O son of an earthly father,” said the Ghin, “is a liquid of peculiar properties. The first bumperful will make you as tame as a sheep. If you repeat the experiment you will become as fierce as a rampant lion. After the third dose you will roll in the mud like a hog.” If the Ghin had been a spirit of epigrammatic abilities he might have summarized his remarks: “The effects of this liquid, O Nunus, vary, of course, with the amount of the dose. But if you drink it you will infallibly make a beast of yourself.”
In the long list of artificial stimulants, with all their modifications and compounds, there is no such thing as a harmless tonic. Alcohol, especially, is in all its disguises, the most implacable enemy of the human organism. In large quantities it is a lethal[26] poison; in smaller doses its effects are less deadly but not less certainly injurious, and the advocates of moderate drinking might as well recommend moderate perjury. Our lager beer enthusiasts might just as well advise us to introduce a milder brand of rattlesnakes. The alcohol habit in all its forms and in every stage of its development, is a degrading vice.
[D] Since the end of the seventeenth century—i. e., since a time when medical delusions made every hospital a death trap—longevity has slightly increased, but, as compared with the first century of our chronological era, it has enormously decreased. Peasants outlive men of letters, and yet the records of the ancients show that nearly half their poets, statesmen and philosophers were centenarians. If the years of the patriarchs were solar years their average longevity was 280 years; if they were seasons (of six months), at least 120 years. The Bible years were certainly not months, for men who “saw their children and children’s children,” can not have died before their thirtieth year.