454 . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



waning life, waning at last to a state of callous vegetation, Nature is 

 reduced to the alternative of ending an evil for wbicli she has no 

 remedy. 



But while the ebb of life alternates with a tide, the struggle against 

 a natural instinct is the struggle of Prometheus against the vulture of 

 Jove ; in the intervals of torment the martyr may forget his misery, 

 but the torturer returns, and the poisoned arrows of the interventor 

 can bring only a temporary relief. . Man can not conquer a God-sent 

 instinct, though he may for a time defy it with poison ; the most 

 incurable victims of intemperance are those who resort to stimulants 

 less for the sake of intoxication than for the benumbing after-effect 

 which helps them to stifle the voice of outraged Nature. It is a sig- 

 nificant circumstance that the consumption of intoxicating poisons 

 increases in times of famine and general distress ; the Christian dogma 

 of the reformatory value of misery has, indeed, been refuted by the 

 most dreadful arguments of the world's history ; the unhappiest na- 

 tions are not only the most immoral, but the most selfish and the 

 meanest in every ugly sense of the word : virtues do not flourish on a 

 trampled soil. The same with individuals ; injustice, disappointment, 

 and bodily pain, can turn the noblest man into a querulous tyrant, a 

 harmless kitten into a spiteful cat. Happiness, on the other hand, is 

 the sunshine that decks the moral world with flowers ; making earth 

 a heaven would be the surest way of turning men into angels ; the 

 hardest heart will melt under the persistent rays of kindness and hap- 

 piness. Happy children have no time to be wicked ; it is not worth 

 their while to waste the merry hours on vices. Genius, too, is a child 

 of light ; the Grecian worship of joy favored the development of every 

 human science, while the monastic worship of sorrow produced nothing 

 but monsters and chimeras ; for to modern science Christianity bears 

 about the same relation as the plague to the quarantine. 



But, aside from all this, mirth has an hygienic value that can hardly 

 be overrated while our social life remains what the slavery of vices and 

 dogmas has made it. Joy has been called the sunshine of the heart, 

 yet the same sun that calls forth the flowers of a plant is also needed 

 to expand its leaves and ripen its fruits ; and without the stimulus of 

 exhilarating pastimes perfect bodily health is as impossible as moral 

 and mental vigor. And, as sure as a succession of uniform crops will 

 exhaust the best soil, the daily repetition of a monotonous occupation 

 will wear out the best man. Body and mind require an occasional 

 change of employment, or else a liberal supply of fertilizing recrea- 

 tions, and this requirement is a factor whose omission often foils the 

 arithmetic of our political economists. 



To the creatures of the wilderness affliction comes generally in the 

 form of impending danger famine or persistent persecution ; and 

 under such circumstances the modifications of the vital process seem 

 to operate against its long continuance ; well-wishing Nature sees her 



