LX BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNoLOliY 



If we contemplate the use of intoxicant beverages, like facts 

 apjiear, for it is found that pleasures of the inebriating bever- 

 age must be developed by experience, and again it is found 

 that the love of these bacchanalian pleasures has a tendency 

 to become hereditary and to engender an appetite that pro- 

 duces })ain. In the case of alcoholic beverages the tendency 

 to inherit the taste is more fully developed than in the case of 

 tobacco, and the taste has thus certainl}^ become intuitive. 



The love of the taste of some kinds of food of which man 

 partakes, and with which he has had experience for untold 

 generations, seems to be hereditary and hence intuitive. The 

 pleasure derived from the sipidity of honey, sugar, and juices 

 of fruits is innate from experience dating back to jjrimordial 

 life, for the evidence is at hand that all of these ambrosial 

 pleasures are derived and can easily be lost. 



Pleasure may easily be transformed into pain. The attar of 

 rose is a pleasant odor intuitive from hereditary experience, 

 3'et it is within the experience of the writer that it may become 

 loathsome. Once on a time an epidemic of cholera was carry- 

 ing off its victims, and he attended many men, women, and 

 children in the last sad office of life. It was midsummer, and 

 raging heat prevailed, so rosewater was freely used until at 

 last it became disgusting to him and has remained so, although 

 the distaste is gradually wearing away in later years. 



Thus, when we consider that hereditary and innate pleasures 

 may be transmitted into pains, and that new pleasures maj^ be 

 derived from old pains, the argument for the derivation of pain 

 is in such cases made plain. Ambrosial pleasures and pains 

 are artiticial, and no insigiiihcaiit portion of human activit-s' is 

 occupied in catering thereto. 



The nature of ambrosial pleasures and pains and the activi- 

 ties which arise therefrom have been sufficiently set forth for 

 the purpose of recognizing the group. 



Decorativp: Pleasures 



In science antithetic meanings are sometimes embraced in 

 one term; thus degrees of plus or minus from a particular 

 datum point are combined and their sum is expressed in one 



