46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



made it a grievous addition to the evils it proposed to cure. More 

 than fifteen hundred years ago the Emperor Julian, and even St. Clem- 

 ens Alexandrinus, denounced the absurdities of the Marcionite Gnostics, 

 who " abstained from marriage, the pursuit of worldly advantages, and 

 all temporal pleasures." The original rigor of those dogmas could not 

 maintain itself against the healthier instincts of mankind ; but what 

 they lost in consistency they made up in aggressiveness : an influential 

 sect of the last century attempted to enforce upon others what the 

 Marcionites practiced in private, and, while the Syrian ascetics preferred 

 the desert to the world, the Scotch ascetics tried to turn the world into 

 a desert. 



" According to that code," says the author of the " History of 

 Civilization," " all the natural affections, all social pleasures, all amuse- 

 ments, and all the joyous instincts of the human heart, were sinful. 

 They looked on all comforts as wicked in themselves, merely because 

 they were comforts. The great object in life was to be in a state of 

 constant affliction ; . . . whatever pleased the senses was to be sus- 

 pected. It mattered not what a man liked ; the mere fact of his liking 

 it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was wrong. It was wrong 

 to take pleasure in beautiful scenery, for a pious man had no concern 

 with such matters. On Sunday it was sinful to walk in the fields, or 

 in the meadows, or enjoy fair weather by sitting at the door of your 

 own house." 



" Whatever was natural was wrong " though even the extremists 

 of that school might have shrunk from the consistency of their Syrian 

 exemplar, who forbade his anchorites to sleep twice under the same 

 tree, lest their spiritual interests should be imperiled by an undue 

 affection for any earthly object ! 



If it were possible that such dogmas could ever again overpower 

 the common sense of mankind, we should welcome the poison-mania 

 as the lesser evil, for it is better to seek happiness by a wrong road 

 than to abandon the search altogether. It is better to taste a forbid- 

 den fruit than to destroy all pleasant trees. But it is impossible that 

 such chimeras should have survived their native night. After the ter- 

 rible experience of the middle ages, it is impossible that any sane per- 

 son should fail to recognize the significance of the mistake, and we can 

 not hope to maintain the field against the opponents of temperance till 

 we have deprived them of their most effective weapon : we must fur- 

 nish practical proofs that they, not we, are the enemies of human hap- 

 piness ; that we make war upon vice, and not upon harmless pleasures. 



It is a significant fact that in every civilized country of this earth 

 drunkenness is rarest among the classes who have other and better con- 

 vivial resources. In the United States, where the " almighty dollar " 

 confers unlimited privileges, the well-to-do people are the most temper- 

 ate in the world, the poor the most intemperate. In Turkey, where 

 the lower classes are indulged in many pastimes which are considered 



