THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 19 
immediately visible. Every one knows that great smokers are 
sleepy, dreamy, contemplative. Their conduct through life is 
wanting in tenacity and perseverance; they pass from a short- 
lived activity toa state of inefficiency and somnolence. Aslongas 
smokers restrict themselves to the domain of ideas, of projects, 
and dissertations, they are admirable for reason and judgment ; 
but when the inexorable necessities of life bring them back to 
the world of realities, they show themselves discontented, irri- 
table; they accuse fortune of being unjust to them. The nar- 
cotism into which they have plunged themselves so deliciously 
enervates the will, and renders them incapable of following a 
project with vigour and perseverance. It is the only cause for 
that want of foresight in their character, and of which they are 
sooner or later the victims. A narcotized man, in a more or 
less degree, is a man of dwarfed faculties. Narcotics weaken 
the forces of the body and of the mind; they induce repose 
and effeminacy—to want of foresight; wine moderately used. 
on the contrary, keeps up a foreseeing and searching activity, 
‘¢ Deprive a man of this acquired activity by means of which 
he penetrates into the luminous sphere of the moral world, 
drags from nature her most hidden secrets, suddenly his mind 
relapses, the springs of his genius are weakened ; he feels like 
a rebel angel, thunderstruck by the immortal splendours of 
science and philosophy into the lowest and most abject regions 
of animality. 
‘* Listen to Zimmermann: ‘ What is really the besetting sin 
of the human race? — pride, ambition, egoism? No; it is 
indolence. He that can triumph over his natural indolence 
can conquer everything. All the good principles become 
deteriorated and corrupted if not put in movement by moral 
activity.’ 
‘* In Asia, in Africa and in Europe the vine has rarely been 
