306 THE EVOLUTION AGAINST NARCOTICS 



Mencius contain so little about alcohol that it is probable that 

 there was little excessive drinking, even in fifth century B.C. 

 " Whilst the princes and people are warned against voluptuousness 

 and extravagance, we seldom find drunkenness referred to as a 

 dangerous and prevalent vice." 1 But in the " Announcement about 

 Drunkenness," an imperial edict believed to have been promulgated 

 about 1116 B.C., it is stated that "our people have been greatly 

 disorganized and lost their virtue, which can be traced to their 

 indulgence in spirits." " Yea, the ruin of states great and small " is 

 invariably traced to the same cause, the use of spirits. 2 Prince 

 Fung, to whom the Announcement is addressed, says, " The people 

 of Yin had followed the example of the sovereign, and the vice of 

 drunkenness with its attendant immoralities extensively character- 

 ized the highest and lowest classes of society. . . . The disastrous 

 consequences of drunkenness are strikingly set forth ; he is called 

 to roll back the flood of its desolation from his officers and people." 3 



511. The furious drinking of those savages, and those only, 

 who have had little or no racial experience of alcohol, Red 

 Indians, Esquimaux, Tierra del Fuegians, Australasians, and 

 others, is too well known to need description. They tend to drink 

 themselves to death at a single bout. 4 Often, as in the case of the 

 ancient Germans, their intoxication is accompanied by homicidal 

 mania, a cerebral effect that tends to procure the speedy elimi- 

 nation of the drinker, and in its extreme forms is rarely found 

 amongst peoples that have long used alcohol. 



512. The facts concerning opium are very similar. It has been 

 used in India for hundreds of years. So rarely do the natives of 

 that country take it in excess that none of the scientific witnesses 

 who appeared before the late Royal Commission on Opium had 

 ever seen an instance. It was introduced into China about two 

 centuries ago with disastrous consequences, but already many 

 Chinese take it in moderation. In Burma, Polynesia, and Australia, 

 where it was introduced within the memory of living man, the 

 aborigines take it in such excess and perish of it in such numbers 

 that their white rulers are obliged to forbid its use to them, while 

 permitting it to natives of India, Chinese, and other aliens just as 

 in Australasia and Canada they are obliged to forbid the use of 

 alcohol to the aborigines, while permitting it to the whites. 



513. Narcotics, like most diseases, have two sets of poisonous 



1 Samuelson, History of Drink, p. 19. 



2 Op. cit,, p. 20. 3 Op. cit., p. 20. 



4 See Alison's History of Europe, vol. i. p. 21, seventh edition. 



