TOBACCO AND THE TOBACCO HABIT. 681 



jects had been exposed to new temptations. Morphinomaniacs 

 are absolutely incurable unless they are interned. Smokers, on 

 the other hand, can correct themselves when they wish to. They 

 only need a firm will. We see persons every day who have done 

 this ; and since the troubles caused by tobacco have been more 

 definitely known we see many men giving it up of their own 

 accord as they advance in age. The habit is so completely lost 

 that after a few years the reformed victim can find himself in a 

 company of smokers without feeling a desire to imitate them ; 

 and if he is moved to light a cigar he will not find the pleasure of 

 the old days in it.* 



I might stop here ; but I will not finish this article without 

 giving my own explanation of the fascination of tobacco. It is 

 probably no better than the others, and I will not try to impose 

 it on any one. 



Men have at all times eagerly sought for substances that would 

 act on their nervous system. The tendency is general, and is ex- 

 clusively human. To escape real life and the drudgery of daily 

 occupations, to live in dream-land, in an ideal world which the 

 imagination can people at its will, and can embellish with its 

 illusions, have irresistible charms to some minds. In obedience 

 to this dangerous seduction they involuntarily seek the dreams of 

 opium and hashish, the intoxication of ether and chloral, or the 

 grosser drunkenness of alcohol. The weak yield unresistingly to 

 their inclination, and pass into the degrading excesses which I 

 have reviewed. Tobacco offers no such seductions and is attended 

 with no such dangers. Its action on the nervous system is weak 

 and wholly special. It does not put to sleep, but it calms and 

 mollifies the sensibility of the organs. It causes an agreeable tor- 

 por, during which thought continues lucid, and the capacity for 

 work is not diminished. Such is the attraction it exercises, and 

 which causes it to be sought for by so many thinkers and stu- 

 dents. Tobacco is to them a help in mental labor. When fatigue 

 begins and the need of a moment's rest is felt ; when the thought 

 fails to present itself with the usual exactness, and the mind hesi- 

 tates over the shape to give it, the student, writer, or investigator 

 stops, lights his pipe, and soon, by favor of this pleasant narcotic, 

 the thought appears clear and limpid through the bluish cloud in 

 which the smoker has enveloped himself. 



I should make a wrong impression if I left it to be believed 

 that I thought tobacco necessary to mental labor. It becomes so 

 only for those who have contracted the habit of using it, and they 



* The translator of this article was an inveterate smoker till the summer of 1868. One 

 evening he said to himself that he would not smoke that evening. That is all the resolution 

 he ever took ; but he has never smoked or desired to smoke since. 



