THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 21 



" THE EXISTENCE OF ANY ORGANISM DEPENDS 

 UPON ITS BEING ABLE TO MAINTAIN A PROCESS 

 OF CHANGE, IN CONTINUOUS ADJUSTMENT WITH 



ITS SURROUNDINGS." (See Herbert Spencer and 

 other writers on Biology, passim.) 



Drugs are essentially intractable, and do not lend 

 themselves to a process of change. In their mildest 

 and least harmful forms, they obstruct and dam the 

 river of the water of physical life. But this is at the 

 best. No language can convey an adequate notion of 

 the miseries which drugs (whether introduced under 

 the guise of food, drink, or medicine) have brought 

 upon mankind. 



When they lie dormant in our system they " perplex 

 and retard"* all its operations, and always tend to 

 sink us Lethewards, towards the ever-open gates of 

 death ; but when in her effort to restore the body to 

 health, Nature is struggling to expel these foes, then 

 begins the weary labour and painful work. 



It needs the imagination and the pen of a Milton 

 adequately to state and depict the scenes which accom- 

 pany the expulsion of these foes. 



Indeed, in the strange correspondence between the 

 spiritual and material worlds, the mighty poet has 

 already in some sense described them. 



Every part of the following description of the 

 behaviour and employments of man's spiritual foes 

 (in the second book of " Paradise Lost") corresponds 

 with the effect of some one or other of the drugs in the 

 process of their expulsion. 



Prophetic of the practice of medicine and the delu- 

 sive gains of the drug-taker, it is : 



* Keats' Ode to a nightingale. 



