128 THE LAND'S END 



higher things a " quest of God " as he curiously 

 puts it. It is nothing but a prolonged and somewhat 

 shrill echo of a wiser or a saner man's thoughts. 

 " The sway of alcohol over mankind," says Professor 

 William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience^ 

 " is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the 

 mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed 

 to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the 

 sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and 

 says, No ; drunkenness expands, unites and says, 

 Yes. ... It brings its votary from the chill peri- 

 phery of things to the radiant core. It makes him 

 for the moment one with truth ... it is part of the 

 deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and 

 gleams of something that we immediately recognise 

 as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us 

 only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its 

 totality is so degrading a poisoning." 



Mr. Campbell's striver after the higher life who 

 got dead drunk last night is brother to the savage. 

 It is stated by no less an authority on the drink ques- 

 tion than Dr. Archdall Reid that there is in man a 

 passion, an instinct, for alcohol, and that the savage 

 has a craving for drink. There is no such craving. 

 The natural happiness of the savage, as I know him, 

 is in hunting and fighting ; and in the intervals of 

 those stirring pursuits he has a somewhat dull, 

 lethargic existence. Alcohol produces the state of 

 mind he is in when occupied with the chase or in 

 raiding and fighting. It is a joyful excitement, a 

 short cut to happiness and glory which he will take 



