• KNOWLEDGE 



201 



male, 2, fell from chair ; male, 41, by fall in passage ; male, 10, fell 

 from scaffold ; males, 2 and 4, by fall ; male, 14, injured by 

 machinery ; and male, 4, by blow. An inquest was held in each of 

 these seventeen cases. Seren cases of soicide were registered. In 

 Greater London 3,288 births and 1,671 deaths were registered, 

 equal to annual rates of 35-1 and 178 per 1,000 of the population. 

 In the Outer Eing twenty-one deaths were referred to diarrhoea, 

 including ten in the district of West Ham. Four fatal cases of 

 diphtheria occurred in Harrow sub-district. — Times. 



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 done nothing." — Liebig. 



STIMULANTS AND WORK. 



[514] — I have just read your quotation from the Abbe Moigno 

 (page 142) and yonr own comments thereon. 1 have tried experi- 

 ments very similar to those you describe, with exactly the same 

 results; in fact, so far as intellectual work is concerned, I might 

 describe my own experience by direct plagiarism of your words. 



Besides these, I have tried other experiments which may be 

 interesting to those who, mthout any partizan fanaticism, are 

 seeking for practical guidance on this subject. 



As many of yonr readers may know, I have been (when of 

 smaller girth) an energetic pedestrian, have walked over a large 

 part of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, crossed France 

 twice on foot, done Switzerland and the Tyrol pretty exhaustively ; 

 in one walk from Paris taking in on the way the popular lions of 

 the Alps, and then proceeding, vin, Milan and Genoa, to Florence, 

 Rome, Naples, and Calabria, then from Messina to Syracuse, and 

 on to the East. All this, excepting the East, on foot. At another 

 time from Venice to Milan, besides a multitude of minor tours, and 

 my well-known walk through Norway. 



In the course of these, my usual average rate, when in fair 

 training, was 200 miles per week. The alcohol experiments con- 

 sisted in doing a fortnight at this rate on water, scnipulously 

 abstaining from any alcoholic drink whatever, and then a fortnight 

 using the beverages of the country in ordinary moderate quantity. I 

 have thus used British ales and porter. Bavarian beer, French wines, 

 Italian wines, Hungarian wine in the Tyrol, Christiania iJl, Ac, 

 according to circumstances, and the result has been the same, or 

 with very little variation. With the stimulant I have, of course, 

 obtained a temporarj' exhiliration that was pleasant enough while 

 it lasted, but after the first week 1 found myself dragging through 

 the last few miles, and quite able to appreciate the comnton habit 

 of halting at Broadside "pub" or wine-shop, for a drink on the 

 way. No such inclination came u|)on me when my only beverage 

 was water, or water plus a cup of coffee for breakfast only (no 

 afternoon tea). Then I came in fresh, usually finishing at the best 

 pace of the day, enjoying the brisk exercise in coo! evening air. 

 Physical work of this kind admits of accurate measurement, and 

 I was careful to equalise the average of these experimental com- 

 parative fortnights. 



The result is a firm conviction that the only beverage for obtain- 

 ing the maximum work out of any piece of human machinery is 

 water, as pure as possible j that all other beverages (including even 

 tea ami coffee) ginger- beer, and all such concoctions as the so-called 

 " temperance drinks," are prejudicial to anybody not under medical 

 treatment. To a sound-bodied man there is no danger in drinking 

 any quantity of cold water in the hottest weather, provided t( is 

 s%BaUov:ed tlovoly. I hare drunk as much as a dozen quarts in the 



course of a stiff mountain climb when perspiring profusely, and 

 never suffered the slightest inconvenience, but, on the contrary, 

 have found that the perspiration promoted by frequent and copioaa 

 libations at the mountain streams enabled me to vigorously enjoy 

 the roasting heat of sun-rays striking so freely and fiercely as they 

 do through the thin air on the southward slopes of a high 

 mountain. 



I am not a teetotaler, and enjoy a glass of light wine, bnt always 

 take it as I sucked lollypops when a child, not because " it is good 

 for my complaint," or any such humbug, bnt simply because 1 am 

 so low in the scale of creation, as imperfect, as far from angelic, as 

 to be capable of occasionally enjoying a certain amount of purely 

 sensual indulgence, and of doing so from nothing higher than purely 

 sensual motives. 



If all would admit this, and freely confess that their drinking or 

 smoking, however moderate, is simply a folly or a ^-ice,* they would 

 be far less liable to go to excess than when they befool themselves 

 by inventing excuses that cover their weaknesses with a flimsy 

 disguise of medicinal necessity, or other pretended advantage. In 

 all such cases the physical mischief of the alcohol is supplemented 

 by the moral corruption of habitual hypocrisy. 



w! Mattieu Williams. 



* [All the rest of Mr. Williams's letter is so very sensible and so 

 very much to the point, that I must confess I read with extreme 

 surprise a sentence which implies what I cannot but regard a3 

 utterly wrong, and worse than wrong. My esteemed friend in his 

 extreme love of honesty and plain speaking, wants those who do as 

 he does, to push honesty to a point which is, I take it, uncommonly 

 near humbug and hypocrisy. In the first place all need not admit 

 even that their taking daily a little wine or spirit, or ale, or cyder, 

 is a mere indulgence, for it is certain there are tens of thousands 

 who honestly believe the moderate use of alcoholic stimulants to be 

 essential to their health, and there are thousands who have proved 

 this by carefully watched experiment. But if we set these 

 on one side and consider only those who take an occasional 

 glass or smoke an occasional cigar, because they like it, be- 

 cause it gives them a certain amount of pleasure, doing them 

 so far as they can judge no harm whatever, why should 

 these, of whom I confess I am one, admit and freely confess 

 that their drinking, however moderate, is simply a folly or a rice ? 

 Where does the folly or the vice come in ? It seems to me uncom- 

 monly sensible to take any ])leasure which hurts no one, including 

 one's self. I am in the habit of regarding a man who denounces 

 his fellows for taking innocent pleasures, and calls those pleasures 

 follies or rices, as a mischievous hypocrite, — generally as a man 

 who strives to hide real wickedness, by which I mean wrong-doing 

 to others, or selfish disregard for their interests, by protended zeal 

 about trifles, which are not even triflingly wrong, but perfectly 

 innocent. The man who warns one whom ho knows to be weak 

 from the social glass I respect ; the man who tells another whom 

 he knows to have a good average amount of common sense and 

 strength that he is a fool or vicious if he takes a social glass, I 

 assume at once to be a humbug and a hypocrite, for in no other 

 way can his action be explained : and experience shows the interpre- 

 tation to be systematically correct. What, then, should wo think 

 of a man who says as much of himself ? But, apart from this, the 

 general principle that pleasures are follies or rices merely because 

 they are pleasures of the senses only, is an outrage on common 

 sense. Life is full of pains and sorrows, cares, anxieties, and occa- 

 sions for self-sacrifice ; it also affords opportunities for many 

 pleasures of all classes— emotional, sensorial, intellectual ; not to 

 take these when one may without injury or loss to others or one's 

 self, is the only folly I see in connection with them, to whatever 

 class they may belong. To imagine there is wisdom in rejecting 

 them — unless it be for the sake of others — is utter folly; to imagine 

 that a Being of infinite wisdom, who so made us that we cannot live 

 our lives without sorrow and suffering, tnkcs pleasure in seeing His 

 creatures reject such innocent picasnres as lie in their way, seems 

 to me much nearer blasphemy than much that goes by that name. 

 —En.] 



THE LIBRATION OF SENSATION. 

 [515]— In my little book, "The Revised Theory of Light," I 

 showed that tho received explanation of the phenomena of the 

 octilar spectra is full of discrepancies, and inadequate. And in that 

 work and previous lectures I ventured to substitute my hypothesis 

 of tho Libration of Sensation, by which title I seek to express that 

 tendency of the nervous system to oscillate from one extreme to an 

 opposite condition, in the ratio in which the initial sensation was a 

 departure from the nervous system's normal state. This law of 

 libration or reaction might bo shown to hold thn.nghont the whole 

 human constitution. A point of contact is thus established between 

 the organisations of the macrocosm and microcosm. They are 



