CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 655 



helpless paralysis. The wonder suggested, by such analysis of natural 

 phenomena, is not that forty per cent, of the insanity of the country 

 should be directly or indirectly produced by one lethal agent alone, 

 but that so low a figure should indicate all the truth. 



When, then, we fairly consider the two questions now before us 

 whether the lethal agents are called for because they are demanded 

 by a law of natural necessity, a law which stands above man, and is 

 dominant over his nature because independent of him ; or whether 

 there is no such law whatever, but an error of man himself, by which 

 he institutes for himself a taste for lethal derangement, and, making 

 for himself and his heirs a new constitution, begins thereupon to jus- 

 tify what he has done on the basis of the constitution he has estab- 

 lished when, I repeat, we consider these two questions, we can, I 

 think, come but to one conclusion. We must, if prejudice be not too 

 strong, lean to the view that man makes the constitution he defends, 

 and that it is the lethal agent, speaking as it were through him, on 

 which a defense of all these agents, common or uncommon, rests for 

 its support. 



There is one final argument which many set lip who are not con- 

 tent with either of the two views above described. This argument is 

 that, in the natural state of man and beast, the things which " wreathe 

 themselves with ease in Lethe's walk " are not in any sense necessary 

 things. On the contrary, the things are decidedly injurious, and should 

 not be used. At the same time, it is also admitted that the indulgence 

 in lethal agents is, in truth, a mania which begets a mania, and which 

 inflicts all kinds of follies, crimes, and miseries on the race. But, con- 

 tinues the argument, the mania being admitted as such, is rendered 

 justifiable by the circumstance that they who make it and propagate it 

 do not start from the natural condition. They find in the world so 

 much care, so much sorrow, so much misery, and their own path is 

 bestrewed with so many anxieties and difficulties, that they are, in 

 fact, diseased. All society is diseased. Therefore, to meet this vast 

 amount and volume of disease, remedies of a palliative kind are re- 

 quired. Exceptional conditions call for exceptional measures. A man 

 who can not sleep, owing to the cares and anxieties of his life, must take 

 chloral hydrate or opium to obtain sleep. A man who can not finish a 

 certain amount of work against time, by his own natural powers, must 

 whip himself up to the work by means of wine ; must force his heart 

 and brain on against time at all risks and sacrifices. A man who has 

 forced himself on against time, and has thereby obtained a momentum 

 which he can not arrest by ordinary means, must calm himself down 

 by tobacco, must literally put the reins on his heart, and pull the heart 

 up sharply and decisively. These remedies, at all risks of learning to 

 crave for them, at all risk of falling the victim to toxico-mania, must 

 be accepted, that the work of the world may go on at full pace. 



The argument is specious. If it be a sound argument, it must be 



