THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 257 



carefully considered, encounters serious difficulties and only adds to the 

 obscurity of the subject. Are we to understand that the desire for 

 alcohol is due to the " demand for joy " ? There never was a time in 

 the history of the world when, quite apart from alcohol, joys were so 

 abundant as they are in America at the present day. The rich have 

 every comfort and luxury and the poor have every humane considera- 

 tion, while laborers have shorter hours, better pay, better food and 

 better clothes and more books, papers and other forms of entertainment 

 than ever before in the world's history. "We are comparatively pros- 

 perous, happy and well fed, have abundant leisure and countless com- 

 forts, yet it appears that we need 2,000 million gallons of alcoholic 

 liquors yearly to complete our " joy." Furthermore, if this were the 

 correct theory, it would be impossible to explain the lesser desire for 

 alcohol among women, for although at present in America the lot of 

 woman is a relatively happy one, this has not been the case among 

 primitive people, nor in historic times, nor even in other countries at 

 the present time. Her life has been relatively monotonous and labori- 

 ous and her joys and amusements have been fewer. 



But serious psychological objections to this theory appear also. 

 Joy and pleasure are the mental accompaniments of physical well- 

 being, of mental and physical health, while alcohol acts as a poison in 

 the presence of all forms of life. Against this apparent contradiction 

 little is gained by saying that the joy of alcohol is an abnormal joy 

 answering to an abnormal or diseased condition. The desire is too 

 universal, too fundamental, so to speak, for that. Or if we say that 

 alcohol brings an immediate and temporary joy, while its poisonous 

 effects are delayed, we encounter two difficulties, first the difficulty of 

 showing what particular kind of benefit corresponds to the immediate 

 and temporary joy, and second the difficulty of explaining on any 

 principles of evolution the desire for a drug whose effects are on the 

 whole injurious — a desire which is so strong and so universal as almost 

 to merit the name of an instinct. This seems to be a kind of dead- 

 lock to any further progress in arriving at a theory of alcohol. But the 

 joys of alcohol are evident and its injurious effects are equally evi- 

 dent. It is clear, therefore, that the " demand for joy" theory is only 

 a superficial statement of a certain truth whose explanation lies deeper. 



But leaving for the moment the " demand for joy " theory, let us 

 consider the view that alcohol banishes care and drives away sorrow 

 and pain, in other words, that it is narcotic in its action, a kind of 

 sedative or anesthetic. This theory seems at first sight to account for 

 some of the facts. It is now generally, though not quite universally, 

 admitted by physiologists that alcohol is not a stimulant but a narcotic. 

 It apparently paralyzes the higher brain centers and in thus inhibiting 

 the inhibitory centers produces effects resembling stimulation. Fur- 



vol. lxxxiit.— 18. 



