THE COSMIC LAW 
OF 
INTEMPERANCE. 
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE .SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF THE TEMPERANCE 
QUESTION. 
By George M. Beard, A. M. M. D., and Fellow of the New York Acad- 
emy of Medicine 
The subject of the climatology of intemperance is a department 
of science that has been pretty generally ignored. Amid all the dis- 
cussions to which the temperance agitation has given rise very few have 
thought it necessary to study in elaborate fullness the effects of race 
and climate on the intemperate habit. Nearly all that has been spok- 
en or written on this subject has been fragmentary, and incidental, 
founded on a narrow range of facts. Quite recently Dr. Bowditch of 
Boston has drawn certain conclusions concerning the relation of cli- 
mate and race to intemperance and the relation of intemperance to 
the different kinds of alcoholic liquors employed, derived from a cor- 
respondence on the subject with the representatives of the United States 
government in different parts of the globe. 
This report of Dr. Bowditch is one of very few attempts that have 
been made to solve the complex problem of intemperance by scientific 
methods; amid a dreary waste of thought and word and deed that the 
past half century has given to the theme it is one of perhaps but three 
or four oases. 
It is because of the great value of this report and the vast import- 
ance of the subject, that I desire to point out what seems to be erro- 
•Second and third annual reports of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1871 
and 1572. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
neons in the cosmic law as stated by Dr. Bowditch and in some other 
inferences contained in the report of which I have spoken. 
i. The data from which Dr. Bowditch derives his cosmic law, 
-though original and very valuable as adjuncts to facts obtained from 
other sources, are of themselves incomplete and unsatisfactory, and are 
insufficient to establish a cosmic law. 
The letters of enquiry on the subject of alcoholic liquors were di- 
rected mostly to those stations where our government is represented, 
and to individuals many of whom had neither the opportunity nor the 
capacity to give any just and reliable information on the subject. Even 
if every representative of our government and the non-officials to 
whom the circulars were sent had given a full and satisfactory reply, 
the information thus obtained would have been by no means sufficient 
to establish a general law, but as a matter of fact replies came only 
from forty-nine different places, i. e., from a little more than one-fourth 
of those to whom the circular was sent, which, with three from this 
country made fifty-two different “ observation stations ” so to speak. 
This number Dr. Bowditch concedes “is too small to lay down per- 
fectly positive laws in regard to the topics suggested.”* Concerning 
the quality of these replies it may be remarked that while some of them 
are surprisingly full, and others are exceedingly suggestive, others still 
are almost if not absolutely valueless. To obtain accurate information 
concerning the drinking customs of all ranks of society, even in a 
country where we reside, is a matter of great difficulty, and not one 
man in ten thousand is qualified to conduct such an investigation. Con- 
sider for a moment the diametrically opposite opinions that are daily 
expressed concerning intemperance in our own land. I hold that the 
man who declares that intemperance is at all frequent among the ladies 
of America is a slanderer of his nation; in what we call good society 
female sots are exceedingly rare ; and yet pulpits and papers continu- 
ally proclaim the opposite opinion. At the present time very few of 
our college graduates fall into permanent habits of gross drinking, but 
colleges are persistently stigmatized as nurseries of intemperance, and 
every year young men of talent are sent into commerce and trade be- 
cause their parents dare not allow them to go to a university. Several 
times a day I go through portions of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, but 
rarely do I see there an intoxicated person of either sex, and yet there 
is no question that New York is one of the most intemperate cities in 
the world, and every year witnesses the arrest of thirty odd thousand 
for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In any attempt to trace the 
•Third Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1872, p. 73. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
3 
relation between intemperance and disease and crime, we encounter 
difficulties that baffle the largest wisdom and the most practised skill. 
If, in our native land, amid life-long associations, we find express- 
ed opinions concerning the abuse of alcoholic liquors and the effects of 
such abuse so widely divergent, what reliance shall we place on the 
opinions of a single individual who has resided at most but a few years 
among the people, concerning whose customs he is expected to be in- 
formed ; whose social and official position precludes him from the op- 
portunity of learning the habits of the great masses, and who, very 
likely in all his life, has never studied any subject by scientific meth- 
ods, and who, perchance, is organically incapable of scientific think- 
ing. Professed politicians are of all classes the most unscientific, and 
very few of our literati have received sufficient scientific training to 
enable them to pursue with calmness add precision any vast and com- 
plex social problem. Very few have the candor of Mr. Bancroft, who 
writes to Dr. Bowditch that he has (“ no opportunity of observing the 
people in their places of indulgence and cannot offer an opinion of my 
own on the relative amount of intoxication in this country.” But 
some, who probably know as little as he, are ready with absolute and 
final statements on the subject. I speak from laborious personal ex- 
perience when I say that to obtain truthful answers to the questions 
contained in the circular of the State Board of Health, even when one 
is on the ground, and aided by all necessary official influence, is a mat- 
ter of excessive difficulty, and is in some cases utterly impossible. The 
moral of these remarks is that we must not depend on the statements 
of any one or two individuals in regard to the subject under discussion, 
but should seek out every possible source of information and dilligent- 
ly compare them before we form our conclusions. 
Information of great value on this subject is found in works of 
travel. They are not complete : they are not all trustworthy; travel- 
ers are men of like passions with ourselves, and are, therefore, liable 
to all the errors that arise from ignorance, and prejudice and supersti- 
tion. Many travelers, however, have been endowed with scientific 
minds, scientifically trained, and practised by long years of residence 
among strange people, living under strange climates and speaking 
strange languages. The art of observation, like every other art, is only 
perfected by practice : to see and to know what we see, to hear and to 
know what we hear, to feel and to know what we feel, and to accu- 
rately record the sights and sounds and sensations we experience is 
an art that can no more be extemporized or stumbled upon than can 
the art of executing an elegant painting, or composing in a strong 
and eloquent style. 4 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
Travelers have the advantage that they live and move among the 
masses, and hence have an opportunity to observe the actual customs 
of the people whom they visit. They have the advantage, also, that 
observation is with them a business, a speciality; with government of- 
ficials it is an incidental matter, and in so far as they fail in that, in 
so far do they fail in the object of their travel. In the study of the 
subject of intemperance, works of travel have the further advantage 
that many of them were written before the era of the temperance agi- 
tation, before prohibition or tetotalism were thought of, while yet all 
people in all parts of the globe were using stimulants and narcotics 
just as they used ordinary food, without fear or moral questioning; 
consequently they have on this theme no prejudices to gratify and no 
theories to establish; they testify simply of things as they are seen and 
allow the reader to make the inferences. 
In my own researches on this subject, I have studied pretty ex- 
haustively the works of the best known travelers, in Africa, Asia, 
South America, the Pacific Islands, and all lands that are far removed 
from civilization, and have compared the various and conflicting ac- 
counts which they give of the eating and drinking cnstoms of the 
world, with what is known on the subject through observation and 
general literature. In these researches the letters received in reply to 
the circular of the State Board of Health have been very carefully con- 
sidered ; and not a little assistance has been derived from conversation 
and correspondence with those who have visited and resided in distant 
lands. 
The conclusions to which I have arrived may not be wholly true, 
but they are based on a very broad range of facts, and are, perhaps, 
the nearest aproximation to the truth on this subject that is possible in 
the present state of hygienic science. 
2. The Cosmic Law of Intemperance as stated by Dr. Bowditch, is 
but partially true. In the Annual Report for 1872, the law is thus giv- 
en : “ Intemperance prevails the world over, but it is very rare at the 
equator. The tendency increases according to latitude, becoming more 
frequent and more brutal and disastrous in its effects on man and soci- 
ety as we approach the northern regions.” 
There is in fact not a little intemperance in the tropics. The is- 
othermal lines of 770 F. mean annual temperature, north and south of 
the equator, between which, according to Dr. Bowditch, intemperance 
is rare, enclose vast armies of drunkards. Between these lines, under 
the burning heat of the tropics, may be found exhibitions of drunk- 
enness that in beastliness and brutality rival the ugliest streets of Liv- 
erpool or Dublin of New York or San Francisco. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
5 
The East African, according to Burton, “drinks till he can no 
longer stand, lies down to sleep, and awakens to drink again. * * 
The highest orders rejoice in drink and pride themselves upon powers 
of imbibing. If a Muyamwezi be asked after eating, whether he is 
hungry, he will reply “yes,” meaning that he is not drunk." 
At Angola funerals are attended with intemperance of the gross- 
est form, just as was formerly the custom in Scotland. Reprove an 
African for being drunk on such an occasion, and he will promptly re- 
ply “Why, my mother is dead;” no other excuse being needed. 
There are tribes in Africa who spend nearly their whole lives in a state 
of intoxication, and very many of whose members are disfigured by 
wounds received in drunken brawls. It would seem that in compari- 
son with some of these Central Africans the Northerner has yet to learn 
the alphabet of drinking. 
In India —one of the hottest of countries—intemperance of a 
gross form has existed for ages, and especially in Bengal, its effects on 
the native population have been so disastrous as to arouse the earnest 
attention of philanthropists ; and all the power of the religions of that 
land does not avail to cure the evil. 
The natives of the West Indies and of Central South America are 
sometimes as beastial in their habits of drinking as the natives of Af- 
rica. By the Brazilians nine different liquors are made, “ each posses- 
sing peculiar qualities.” The natives of the hot regions of South 
America drink in crowds for days and weeks at a time, rolling on the 
ground in intoxication, or flagellating themselves with thongs. 
The tropical islands of the Pacific are inhabited by savages who 
in frequency and brutality of drunkenness are, to say the least, the 
peers of the negroes of Africa and Brazil, or even the peasantry of 
Scotland and Ireland, of Sweden and Norway. 
Ellis in his Researches in Polynesia, where he was several years a 
missionary, gives us pictures of the drinking customs of those islands 
that make Liverpool or New York white in comparison. The Sand- 
wich Islands, before the arrival of the missionaries, were as conspicu- 
ous for their excess in drinking their native liquors as for their degra- 
dation in all other respects. In short, the hot places of the earth ev- 
erywhere are filled with the habitations of drunkenness. 
The apparent exceptions are those localities, where, as in portions 
of South America and West Indies, liquor is so scarce and dear that 
the classes most disposed to drink cannot obtain it, or where the popu- 
lation is largely composed of colonists who belong to temperate races. 
It may, indeed, be questioned whether among the natives of trop- 
ical climes there is not more of continuous revolting excess in drink- 6 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
ing in proportion to the population than in the cold regions of the 
North. The Spaniards, Portuguese and French, are everywhere tem- 
perate, and in South America and the West Indies they carry with 
them and bequeath to their descendants—even to those of mixed blood 
—the temperate habits of Spain, Portugal and France—but to judge 
the aborigines of those countries by the descendants of European col- 
onists is obviously unfair. 
One fact that my researches seem to establish is this, that in warm 
or hot climates very much more liquor is needed to produce intoxica- 
tion than in cold climates. The difference is seen in our own country, 
for in the Southern cities there appears to be a much larger relative 
consumption of strong and weak alcoholic drinks than in the Northern 
cities, and with a relatively less amount of intoxication therefrom, as I 
judge from personal observation, and from the experience of a large 
number of travelers. The natives of Africa, of South America, and 
of the Pacific Islands all agree in making every distinctive event—• 
death or birth, arrival and departure, a secular or religious festival—• 
an excuse for drinking, and the amount consumed is stupendous. 
Another fact of importance, is that the excess in the use of alco- 
hol in warm or hot climates docs not cause nervous diseases to the same 
extent as in the cold climates of civilization. Delirium tremens and in- 
sanity and chronic alcoholism are comparatively rare among the na- 
tives of hot climates, even when alcoholic drinking is carried to 
enormous excess; under and near the equator the punishment of long 
continued drunkenness is disease of the liver, which does not mani- 
fest itself as readily to the superficial observer as delirium tremens and 
some other diseases of the nervous system. These facts taken together 
may partly explain the great errors contained in the replies of the cor- 
respondents of the State Board of Health.* 
The Cosmic Law of Intemperance to which my researches seem 
to point may be thus stated : Intemperance has existed in all recorded 
ages, and in all parts of the globe where alcoholic liquors of any kind 
are attainable. It is most common and most disastrous in its effects in 
the colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and especially in those 
climates that are made disagreeable and trying by extremes of heat and 
cold. It is, on the whole, for various reasons, less common in the Trop- 
* For sources of information on the subject above discussed, X may refer to my works on 
“ Eating and Drinkingand “ Stimulants and Narcoticsin both of which the titles and 
authors of about one hundred books of reference may be found. I may here specify as worthy 
of special study the writings of Burton, Speke, Ellis, Baker, Livingstone and Reed, Hum- 
boldt, Astley’s Collection of Truths, Morezuood's History of Inebriating Liquors, and a very 
excellent essay on Comparative Morality in Essays of a Birmingham Manufacturer, by 
Sargant, vol. iii., pp. 195-296, London, IS7I. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
7 
ics, and is most rare and least disastrous in its effects in the southern 
portions of the North Temperate Zone, where the climate is uniformly 
mild and agreeable. 
The prevalence and the injuriousness of the vice of intemperance 
depend not only on climate, but on race, on the population, and on 
the quality and cheapness of the alcoholic liquors. It would be a very 
great error to infer that the distribution of intemperance as expressed 
by the above law was the result of climate alone. The South Tem- 
perate Zone I exclude from consideration, for the reason that it is so 
limited in extent and population. South America is probably the 
most temperate of all the continents, while the palm of intemperance 
is borne by Europe. The most temperate region of the globe—the 
temperate belt, as I term it—includes Spain, Italy, Southern France, 
Turkey, Syria, Persia, North Africa, and Southern China. In these 
regions there is crime enough of every kind—murder, brigandage, 
licentiousness of the greatest extreme, and any amount of ignorance 
and degradation—but there is comparatively very little of intemper- 
ance. 
It is probable that if the present inhabitants of the tropical re- 
gions of Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific Islands were 
turned loose among the same variety of alcoholic liquors that on every 
hand tempt the inhabitants of Northern Europe and America, this 
cosmic law, as I have stated it, would not be correct, for the tropics 
would certainly take the lead in intemperance, at least in proportion 
to the population; for there can be no question that an extremely 
high temperature invites and favors excessive consumption of alcohol. 
It does this in several ways. First, it increases thirst, and alcoholic 
liquors are most agreeable temporary assuagers of thirst. Secondly, it 
induces a condition of languor and debility, which for the time, at 
least, is very successfully controlled by stimulants. Thirdly, by the 
profuse perspiration that it causes, and possibly for other reasons less 
understood, it makes it possible to consume large quantities of alco- 
holic liquors without experiencing any immediate ill effects therefrom. 
In extremely cold climates, alcoholic liquors are not well borne, 
as all travelers will agree. When the climate is rendered trying by 
extreme heat, as in the tropics, or by extremes of heat and cold, as 
in Northern Europe and America, there is the strongest temptation to 
excess in the use of alcohol; when the climate is really temperate, 
uniformly agreeable, without intense extremes of heat or cold, there 
is the least temptation to excess in alcohol, and this fact, taken in 
connection with considerations of race—which is itself partly a result 
of climate—will explain in a measure the existence of the temperate 
belt of which I have spoken. 8 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
The notion that civilization favors intemperance by making se- 
vere drafts on the brain, which alcoholic stimulation counteracts, is 
not sustained by the researches I have made in this department. On 
the contrary, a number of considerations seem to show that, when cli- 
mate and accessibility to alcoholic stimulants are the same, civilized 
man is far less intemperate than the uncivilized, and that the opposite 
idea has arisen from the fact that the majority of savages are less 
abundantly supplied with alcoholic liquors than the residents of civil- 
ized lands. 
Savages, under whatever climate they are found, almost invari- 
ably plunge into excesses of intoxication whenever the materials are 
obtainable. Amid the icebergs of Siberia and Kamtschatka, as well 
as in the jungles of India, or on the deserts of Africa, travelers find 
it necessary to look out sharply lest the natives get access to their 
stores of alcoholic liquors. 
Another fact, pointing the same way, and one to which I have 
already referred, and the significance of which cannot well be over- 
estimated, is that the leading and truly cultured classes of all civilized 
lands, everywhere, are on the average te7nperate. The habitual intem- 
perance of Europe and America is mainly confined to the ignorant 
and degraded classes—those who have made the least advance beyond 
the savagery of our ancestors. 
3. Dr. Bowditch gives a greater relative prominence to climate 
as a cause of intemperance than a wide survey of the facts that bear 
on the subject will justify. 
Granting, that in the long lapse of ages climate is the leading fac- 
tor that determines the differences of race* yet in appreciable, historic 
time—certainly for a number of generations—race everywhere is more 
potent than climate. The Anglo-Saxons are a race of drunkards— 
made so partly by the stock from which they sprung, and partly by 
long residence in climates that excite intemperance; and wherever 
they go, from the equator to the poles, equally in the South Temper- 
ate and the North Temperate Zones, at sea and on shore, in lands 
where the vine grows, and in lands where nothing will grow, they 
carry with them habits of beastly intoxication; and generations of 
residence in Australia, or South America, or in any of the countries 
lying within the belt of the globe where intemperance is most rare, 
have not availed to cure these habits. On the other hand, the tem- 
perate peoples of the earth—the Spaniards, the Italians, the Turks, 
the Syrians, and the Germans—do not acquire, even after a long resi- 
dence, the grossly intemperate customs of the English, Scotch, Irish, 
and Americans. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
9 
We have seen that the comparative temperance of the leading 
classes of North America and the West Indies is due to the fact that 
they were settled by French and Spaniards. The Hebrews, starting 
from a land where intemperance has never been a dominant vice, have 
gone all over the globe, have mingled with the most besotted nations, 
and under the most unfavorable climates, and everywhere they have 
carried with them and kept with them their habits of sobriety. Rarely 
do we see a case of delirium tremens, or of chronic alcoholism, among 
the Jews, in any climate. Just how much the climate of Italy has 
changed during the past 2500 years, no one can fully learn, but it is 
certain that the ancient Romans were far more intempeaate than the 
modern Italians. If the United States had been settled by the French, 
Spaniards and Italians, instead of the English, it is probable that in- 
toxication would be a rare evil here, and the temperance reform might 
never have been heard of. 
4. Dr. Bowditch places greater reliance on the cultivation of the 
vine and the cheapening of pure wines and mild .beers, as an aid to 
the temperance cause, than he would have done if he had based his 
generalizations on a broader range of facts. 
Even the facts contained in his own reports will not allow us to 
hope for any very radical improvement in the drinking customs of our 
country, by the popularization of vine growing, or the multiplication 
of beer gardens. 
It so happens, by the law of correlation, that the vine grows abun- 
dantly ill those climates that are peopled by temperate races, but it no 
more follows that the generous diffusion of the wines of Spain and 
Italy will cure our drunkards than that an abundance of maccaroni 
will cure our gluttons. 
The bold, adventure-loving, energetic and laborious Anglo-Saxon 
will not be content with mild liquors, even though they are as abun- 
dant and as cheap as the rain of heaven. To this must be added the 
consideration that in our climate wine is, in individual cases, the silken 
cord that conducts to the stronger liquors, in which we are bound fast 
and strong. Preeminently, France is the land of the vine, and it is 
fast becoming a drunken nation, though peopled by a comparatively 
temperate race. The comparative cheapness of wine has not saved 
Switzerland, nor did it save Ancient Rome, from the horrors of drunk- 
enness. Similarly, also, an abundance of mild fermented liquors will 
not save a people whom race and climate invite to intoxication. The 
pombe or plantain wine of Africa, the various drinks of South Amer- 
ica and the Pacific Islands, minister to a type of intemperance that is 
as common as it is revolting. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
Ancient history throughout refutes the popular notion that wines 
are to solve the temperance problem for the moderns. The art of dis- 
tillation is of recent discovery, but intemperance is coeval with his- 
toric man. The climates of Persia and Babylonia, and ancient Italy, 
were not such as foster intemperance, but in all these lands there was 
intoxication, and abundance of it, and it was fed by pure and simple 
wines.* 
The Italians, the Spaniards, may colonize lands where wine is 
scarce and dear, but they are temperate still; the Saxon may take up 
his residence by the dome of a vineyard, and he can no more leave 
behind him his habits of excessive drinking than he can leave his blue 
eyes or his love of adventure. 
The illustration sometimes brought from California is utterly 
valueless. California was settled by very much the same class as 
flocked to King David in the case of Adullam, or rallied to the con- 
spiracy of Cataline—the class who in every land furnish the recruit* 
for the armies of the intemperate; with the advance of culture in 
California, with the introduction of woman and education, and a 
better quality of emigrants, there has been an inevitable increase of 
sobriety. As a matter of fact, however, the native wines are not 
remarkably popular in California, and certainly do not exclude, if in- 
deed they at all restrict, the use of stronger liquors. 
Whether a nation is to be temperate or intemperate depends on 
the following conditions, which I name in the order of their relative 
importance ; 
x. Race. 
2. Climate. 
3. Social position, (including religion, education and govern 
ment, and financial status). 
4. Kind of liquor employed. 
Given these factors—bold, energetic races, trying and disagreeable 
climate, gross ignoratice and poverty, and adulterated distilled liquors— 
and we have intemperance. Given, timid and indolent races, mild and 
equable climates, high intelligence and education, and wealth, and pure 
native wines, or mild fermented liquors, and we have tempei'ance. 
With all the exceptions that may be brought, these laws hold true 
as generally and as logically as any laws of cause and effect that are 
known to science. 
Of these factors, only the 3d and 4th are at all under human con- 
trol. The diffusion of knowledge, and of physical comforts, wise 
* On this subject see Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies. THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
11 
legislation and the encouragement of the use of wine and beer in 
preference to stronger liquors, are all, to a limited degree, within the 
range of the human will, and all are of value; but the latter is, I be- 
lieve, the least important. 
The means for diminishing intemperance which are at all under 
human control, are the following, which I present in the order of their 
relative importance: 
i. Educatio7i, literary, technical, scientific, moral and religious. 
2. Diffusion of material comforts. 
3. Popularization of pure wines and mild beers. 
4. Restriction of the sale of strong and adulterated liquors. 
Of these four methods of attacking the evil of intemperance—• 
through universal education, through diffusion of material comforts, 
through popularization of pure wines and mild beers, and through re- 
striction of the sale of strong and adulterated liquors—the first men- 
tioned is not only more important than all the others, but is really 
worth more than all the others combined ; it is the method that de- 
mands first and chief consideration, even to the neglect of all the 
rest. The second method—through the diffusion of material comforts 
—is closely related to the first, and indeed becomes a part of it; while 
the third and fourth methods are of but little avail unless preceded and 
reinforced by the first and second. The shortsightedness of politicians, 
statesmen and philanthropists, is shown by the fact that during most 
of the agitation on this subject attention has been mainly directed to 
the last and least important of these four methods. Completely foiled 
in all their experiments in this direction, temperance men split into 
two hostile factions—one putting their faith in absolute prohibitory 
legislation; the other in the popularization of pure native wines and 
mild beers, and both agreeing on one point only : that is, to ignore 
entirely the one method which is worth infinitely more than both of 
them combined. 
The second method—universal diffusion of material comforts— 
involves the whole complex subject of labor reform, which I have here 
no time to discuss. It is sufficient to state that, the other conditions 
being the same, those classes are most intemperate who are deprived of 
the most comforts. 
The one great practical lesson to be learned from the scientific 
study of intemperance, is that the future of the temperance reform 
must rest mainly on education, in the broad sense of the term, and in 
the self control that is generated by intellectual training, and in the 
incitement to virtue and dissuasion from coarse vices that come from a 
moderate supply of physical needs and from agreeable social surround- 12 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
ings. As long as we have among us, in this climate, and of these 
drunken races, a large and increasing class of wretchedly poor, wretch- 
edly ignorant, and universally despised and oppressed citizens, without 
good food, or comfortable clothing, or decent homes, and without any 
social position or aspiration—a class separated by a gulf as wide as all 
the oceans from those who have either money or culture—so long shall 
we have intemperance. Legislation may do something, and perhaps 
has done something already, but the temperance question is a part of 
the great social problem—is interwoven with it, and must be solved in 
connection with it. 
At the present time, although the habit of drinking is almost uni- 
versal, yet intemperance among the liberally educated classes is com- 
paratively infrequent, and among the ladies of the higher orders, 
liberally educated or half educated, it is, as I have stated, excessively 
rare. Every year thousands of receptions are held in New York, 
where liquors of all kinds, from champagne to claret, are as abundant 
as water, and where all or nearly all the guests partake without show- 
ing any evidence of intoxication. If a crowd of savage Africans or 
Hindoos, or South American Indians, were thus set free among wine 
bottles, nearly all would be either jolly or dead drunk before they left, 
and very likely the reception would end with a free fight all around. 
Our ancestors in Great Britain and in this country, only fifty years ago 
found it impossible to celebrate a wedding, or a funeral, or a church 
raising, without becoming the worse for drink, and yet it took much 
more alcohol to produce intoxication in them than in their descend- 
ants. Why all this difference ? Can we account for it in any other 
way than by the fact of the higher culture and wider diffusion of lib- 
eral education, and general increase of refinement in the present gen- 
eration ? If the temperance agitation alone explained this progress 
why is it not found among the poor and ignorant, who at the present 
day sign more pledges than the wealthy and cultivated ? It is social 
rather than moral principle, fashion more than conscience, the in- 
stincts of culture and good breeding, that explain the usual moderation 
of the leading orders of American society. In France, during the last 
quarter of a century, ignorance has increased, and intemperance has 
increased also, and pretty nearly in the same ratio. 
I am inclined to believe that the temperance of Germany is more 
the result of a system of compulsory education that makes gross ignor- 
ance impossible, than of the lager beer and Rhine wine, for the an- 
cient Germans were gluttons and drunkards. 
The one great error of temperance reformers has been to suppose 
that any single virtue could be artificially cultivated and developed far THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
13 
. 
in advance of all other allied and correlated virtues. It is a funda- 
mental law of sociology, that virtues must be evolved together, in har- 
mony with each other, so that each may receive the support of all the 
rest. All the special virtues must spring from some common, funda- 
mental virtue which has itself been developed from a virtuous princi- 
ple still more fundamental, just as many twigs may spring from a single 
shoot that is one of many divisions of the main branch of a tree. It is 
no more possible for a nation that race and climate predisposes to in- 
temperance to become suddenly temperate, than it is for a tree to bear 
fruit without trunk or branches, or for a flower to bloom before the 
seed has sprouted. 
In the coming golden age, when passion everywhere shall be sub- 
jected to reason, and selfishness shall be transformed into benevolence, 
and the vast irregularities of life shall be brought to a dead level; 
when there shall be no hewers of wood and drawers of water, but when 
high education and material comforts shall be universal, and all the 
joys and burdens of humanity shall be impartially distributed—in such 
a perfect social state there will be perfect sobriety; and in proportion 
as we approach that state, in proportion to our success in diminishing 
the general ignorance and wretchedness, and increasing the general 
knowledge and comfort among the intemperate races, in that propor- 
tion shall we approach a state where intemperance shall be unknown. 
Conversely, it is established by recent experience that no amount of 
special temperance agitation, or of special temperance legislation, will 
long or permanently avail to diminish intemperance among the lower 
orders. 
There has never been a period in the history of civilization when 
intemperance among the depressed and dangerous classes of Europe 
and America was more prevalent or disastrous in its effects than it is 
to-day, although among the liberally educated classes of the same 
countries the evil has now been reduced to a minimum. In connection 
with this fact, and as serving to explain it, it has been shown by statis- 
tics, and by general observation, that the condition of the working and 
dangerous classes of Great Britain has [not improved during the past 
one hundred years; that it has, on the whole, retrograded; that while 
the privileged orders have steadily advanced in wealth, in culture and 
refinement, the poorer classes have either remained stationary in their 
poverty, or have been gradually sinking into deeper depths of wretch- 
edness and degradation ; the mist which once enveloped all ranks of 
society has rolled off from the favored upon the unfavored classes, so 
that the latter are in deeper darkness than before. Not only are the 
rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer, but the wise are be- 14 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
coming wiser and the ignorant more ignorant still, as our complex 
civilization goes on. As in the first clearing away of a storm the clouds 
collect on the borders of the distant horizon thicker and darker than 
when the storm was at its height, so in certain stages of human progress, 
ignorance and despair seem to be lifted from one portion of society 
only to settle and concentrate on the other. Thus it happens that 
while Europe and America have been presumably advancing in wisdom 
and culture, while the temperance reform, under the guidance of men, 
\xho, though usually narrow and ignorant, and oftimes unscrupulous, 
have been terribly in earnest, has, in connection with this general ad- 
vance in refinement, by the aid of the increasing nervous susceptibility 
of modern brain-workers, that renders it impossible for them to use 
alcohol in the manner of our ancestors, thoroughly leavened the higher 
classes, it has but little affected the working man, the pauper, the 
criminal, or the slave. 
Another error of temperance agitators has been to suppose that to 
abolish alcohol would be to abolish intemperance. Alcohol is only 
one of the very many varieties of stimulants and narcotics, and excess 
in the use of it is by no means so disastrous as excess in the use of 
some of the others. Now, the habit of using stimulants and narcotics 
of some kind or other began with human history; it antedates by 
thousands of years the discovery of distillation, or even of wine itself. 
Nations that by climate or soil are deprived of one form, resort to some 
other, and by simple or complex manufacture, or by importations, they 
will obtain it. If by virtue of legislation they are debarred from any 
one variety, they atone for the deprivation by greater excess in the use 
of the others. Long ago I observed that total abstinence advocates 
were very free users of tobacco, especially in the form of chewing, and 
the enormous and alarming increase in the habit of opium-eating in 
this country during the last thirty years, is largely the result of moral 
and legislative agitation on the subject of temperance ; and yet this 
moral agitation has only affected a certain portion of society, and pro- 
hibitory legislation is almost a failure. If, now, we could conceive of 
a state of society in which, in our climate and with our present or- 
ganization and appetites, the habit of total abstinence from alcoholic 
liquors should be universal, or if a prohibitory law should be really 
enforced, we should expect to find a great increase in the amount of 
opium imported. A greater evil than the general extention of the 
opium-eating habits of the Eastern nations to this country could not 
be imagined, a more destructive calamity could not be prayed for by 
the bitterest enemy of republican institutions. With our race and 
climate, with our inherited and acquired nervousness, it would destroy THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
the national life, physical, intellectual and moral, and might alone re- 
duce us to a lower grade than the people of Asia. 
If some despot, armed with absolute power, could carry out the 
wishes of certain of the temperance reformers, and entirely prohibit 
the manufacture, the importation and the sale of any form of alcoholic 
liquors in Europe and America, then opium would take the place of 
alcohol, and men would pray for the repeal of the arbitrary law as the 
only hope of civilization. For mighty as are the evils of intemper- 
ance in the use of alcoholic liquors, vast as is the destruction that it 
causes in the increase of pauperism and crime* and disease, the evils 
of excess in the use of opium, though less noisy and conspicuous, are 
yet very far greater. 
If the power of this despot could be further extended, so that 
he might prohibit opium as well as alcohol, and if tea, and coffee, and 
tobacco were also included under the anathema, men would be driven 
to ether and chloroform, to Indian hemp and chloral, to satisfy the 
universal, imperious and God-implanted desire for stimulants. 
The general use of ether, or chloroform, or Indian hemp would 
be worse for society than the use of alcoholic liquors. Of all the 
stronger stimulants and narcotics, wines and fermented liquors are the 
least injurious, and any legislation that tends to discourage their man- 
ufacture and importation is so far pernicious to society. 
If not content with previous failures, this despot should prohibit 
all substances that are now known to possess narcotizing or stimulating 
properties, then the scientific genius and resources of the nineteenth 
century would immediately supply the deficiency, and out of the chem- 
ical laboratories new combinations would flyf like the young birds in 
the early summer, and from the depths of the forest, and from the most 
distant lands, men would bring to light stimulants and narcotics of in- 
finite and unknown variety, to terrify and destroy the race. Some of 
* I miy remark here, that most of the widely-quoted circulated statistics, showing' the 
relation of pauperism and crime to intemperance, are utterly unworthy of credence; they are 
obtained usually from untrustworthy sources, and are gathered and commented on by reckless 
and ignorant declaimers who are absolutely incapable of scientifically investigating any subject 
whatever. While it is undeniable that pauperism, disease and crime are originated and aggra- 
ted by intemperance, it is also true that a large proportion of drunkards and criminals are 
criminally disposed, whether drunk or sober. If we could annihilate alcohol, crime, and pau- 
perism, and ignorance, the mother of lust, would, notwithstanding be sufficiently prevalent 
among us. Intemperance is the concomitant even more than the exciting cause of poverty and 
crime. Criminals in penitentiaries are very fond of telling visitors that rum brought them 
there, and statistics thus obtained from ignorant, low-lived, oftentimes half-idiotic men, who 
could not, if they would, ascertain the real truth on so complex a subject as the philosophy of 
their own guilt, and who would not tell the trnth if they knew it, are repeatedly quoted as au- 
thority on this great question. 
tEven during the past five years a number of new and important stimulants and narcotics 
have been brought to the attention of the public. 16 
THE COSMIC LAW OF INTEMPERANCE. 
the substances thus discovered would probably be more injurious than 
those now in use, and the universal prohibition would not only fail of 
its purpose, but would leave the world worse than it found it. It has 
been said that absolute prohibition would be a good thing if it could 
be enforced. I have shown that in proportion as prohibitory laws are 
enforced, in that proportion do they fail of their purpose. It is for- 
tunate for the human race that they cannot be enforced, excepting in 
restrictive localities or among those people who have no desire to 
drink. 
The most powerful ally of the temperance cause in recent times, in 
this country, has been the increasing nervous susceptibility of our brain- 
working classes, that compels them to abstain not only frotn ardent spirits, 
but also from tobacco, from tea, and, i7i our Northern States, from cojfee. 
In my own practice and observation among the intellectual classes, I 
find very many more who are injured by coffee and tobacco than by 
alcoholic liqnors ; in the lower ranks of society this rule does not hold 
good. This extreme nervousness of the intellectual Americans of both 
sexes, is the result partly of the dryness of our climate, and partly of 
our institutions. 
In conclusion, I may say that those who love the Cause of Temp- 
erance, whatever differences of opinion there may be in regard to total 
abstinence, should concentrate their energies in the attempt to bring 
about a state of society in which it will be impossible for any child to 
grow up without a good education.