342 THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN— MENTAL 



longer, there is no reason why moral influences should 

 not cause Anglo-Saxons and other races equally to 

 abstain. But the particular moral influence which has 

 caused total abstinence among Mahomedans, religious 

 enthusiasm, the strongest of all such influences, since 

 it appeals to self-interest by promising rewards and 

 punishments of enormous magnitude, cannot bring 

 about the same result among us, for the simple reason 

 that the Christian religion does not enjoin abstinence 

 from alcohol, and there is no prospect of our substituting 

 for it another religion which does. Again, Mahomedans 

 are total abstainers only at the cost of being barbarians 

 also ; the same influence which has banished alcohol 

 from among them has banished much else besides, and 

 has in great measure cut them off from intercourse with 

 other peoples. But Christians use alcohol in many 

 other ways besides drinking it; without serious injury 

 to their arts and manufactures they could not banish 

 it from their midst; and their increasing civilization 

 causes intercourse among themselves, and with other 

 peoples, to become more free and extensive every year 

 — that is, brings into more, intimate relations peoples 

 such as the Italians, whom the drug now injures very 

 little, and who therefore have little reason to adopt a 

 policy of total abstinence, and peoples such as the 

 English, whom the drug injures very much, and who 

 therefore might on the score of self-interest be per- 

 suaded to adopt such a policy. With our higher civiliz- 

 ation it is then impossible to banish alcohol from our 

 midst as it has been banished from among the Mahome- 

 dans, and without such banishment it is tolerably 

 certain that abstinence from the poison could not 

 be secured ; for it must be clearly understood that 

 Mahomedans abstain from alcohol, not solely because 

 religious enthusiasm forbids, but mainly because among 

 them opportunity for indulgence is not afforded to 



