Heart and Soul by Maveric Post

by Victor Mapes

So that the remote and indirect consequences of this kind of conduct may be more harmful to a young man than his lack of experience and understanding makes him aware of, at the time being.

How about the young woman of superior intellect and breeding, who had an inclination to smoke opium, on one occasion, and to sniff cocaine, on another?

Suppose she had been better informed on the subject than she apparently was. Suppose she happened to have a friend, who had been connected with one of the state institutions for drug addicts, and this friend had told her about the inmates—how hopeless and pitiful their degradation was—how abject their slavery to the drug sensation for which they continually yearned. No way has been found to cure them, because they have no will to be cured. And the beginnings of the habit are so often accidental and trivial—curiosity, or bravado, or carelessness on the part of a practitioner. A Harvard college student, of good family, for instance, was on a spree in Boston, with some friends—they went to an opium joint and thought it would be fun to try the sensation. This particular boy remained in the den twenty-four hours, under the influence. That was the beginning—and the end. He went there again—he got himself a lay-out—and is now a hopeless wreck in the state institution, twenty-one years old. Another is a society woman who was given a dose of heroin and that one dose proved sufficient for her undoing. The craving for it came and she wanted more and more.

Or suppose some one had told her about a very remarkable case which came to my attention, a number of years ago. Four young physicians were associates on the staff of one of our leading medical institutions. A considerable part of their time was devoted to research work and among other things they started experimenting with the effects of cocaine, which was a comparatively recent discovery. They were brilliant young men of unusual character and promise, but all four succumbed to the cocaine habit. The last of them died in pitiful degradation, within five years of their first experiment.

Experience has shown that just as there are certain poisons which the bodily functions are unable to resist, so there are certain drugs which have the effect of sapping the will and distorting the judgment. The craving which they leave in their wake may very easily become so compelling that human nature cannot resist it.

So that if any society woman has sufficient understanding of the subject, there is plenty of reason why she should dismiss an inclination to try opium-smoking, or cocaine sniffing. The impulse is mere whim, silly curiosity—the consequences may be degrading, terrible.

But if she believes in paying no heed to the conventional ideas of other people, and is lacking in experience and knowledge of her own, she may be very well pleased with herself for her daring. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"—that is an old saying which suggests that ignorant people, defying the counsels of experience, were known to exist before now—only in the past they were called "fools," whereas to-day they prefer to be considered "exponents of advanced thought," with a superior point-of-view, inaugurating a new era of "emancipation."

It is not my purpose here to go on multiplying examples. I merely wished to indicate as simply and clearly as possible an underlying, fundamental principle. It is at work in countless ways, in everybody's life, nearly all the time. Personal impulses and inclinations may be very short-sighted, very unlovely, very unworthy. Greed, murder, arson, lust, theft, lying, betrayal—are only a few samples of the variety of impulses which may come and do come frequently to various individuals upon occasion.

Our own limited experience and a little reason may be a sufficient guide in many cases. They teach us to overrule certain inclinations, whose consequences we understand and which we deem contrary to our interests.

In many other cases, the consequences may be just as contrary to our interests, though they lie beyond our own experience and present understanding. For that reason people have been taught throughout the centuries to accept and be guided by the accumulated experience and wisdom of those who have gone before. This accumulated experience has been preserved and made available to each new generation, in many ways—traditions, conventions, customs, familiar quotations, standard books, the schools and the Bible. Most of all, it has been the special care and function of parents to instill it into their children. For the first ten or fifteen years of life, children are constantly being told what to do and what not to do, in all sorts of contingencies. And what they are told is the result of accumulated experience in crystallized practical form.