are not life; they are prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness.1

Is it wrong to smoke?

Statistics taken with care at many American colleges show with apparent conclusiveness that the use of tobacco is physically and mentally deleterious to young men.2 It seems that smokers lose in lung capacity, are stunted slightly in their growth, are lessened in their endurance, develop far more than their proportion of eye and nerve troubles, furnish far less than their proportion of the athletes who win positions on college teams, furnish far less than their proportion of scholarship men, and far more than their proportion of conditions and failures. It is perhaps too early to be quite sure of these results; but in all probability further experiment will confirm them, and make it certain that tobacco is physically harmful — as has long been recognized by trainers for athletic contests. The harm to adults seems to be less marked; perhaps to some it is inappreciable. And if there is appreciable harm, whether it is great enough to counterbalance the satisfaction which a confirmed smoker takes in his cigar or pipe, or any worse than the restlessness which the sacrifice of it might engender, is one of those delicate personal problems that one can hardly solve for another. But certainly where the habit is not formed, the loss of tobacco involves no important deprivation; its use is chiefly a social custom which can be discontinued without ill effects. Effort should be made to keep the young from forming the habit; college "smokers," where free cigarettes and

1 Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.

2 See, e.g., in the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1912, a summary by Dr. F. J. Pack of an investigation covering fourteen colleges. Similar investigations have been made by several others, with generally similar results.

cigars are furnished, should be superseded by "rallies," where the same amount of money could provide some light and harmless refreshment.

This is not one of the important problems. But, after all, everything is important; and men must, and ultimately will, learn to find their happiness in things that forward, instead of thwarting, their great interests; what makes at all against health and efficiency — when it is so needless and artificial a habit as smoking, so mildly pleasant and so purely selfish - must be rooted out of desire. The great amount of money wasted on tobacco could be far more wisely and fruitfully expended. We shall not brand smoking as a sin, hardly as a vice; but the man who wishes to make the most of his life will avoid it himself, and the man who wishes to work for the general welfare will put his influence and example against it.

H. S. King, Rational Living, chap. VI, secs. I, II. J. Payot, The Education of the Will, bk. III, sec. IV. J. MacCunn, The Making of Character, pt. II, chap. II. W. Hutchinson, Handbook of Health. L. H. Gulick, The Efficient Life. F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. III, chap. III. T. Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life. P. G. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, pt. 1.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM

Or all the problems relating to health and efficiency there is none graver than that of the narcotic-stimulants. With the exception of tobacco, which is probably, for adults, but mildly deleterious, their use is fraught with danger, both physical and moral; beyond the narrowest limits it is certainly baneful, while it is as yet an open question whether even a very slight use is not distinctly harmful. The exact physiological effects of the several narcotic-stimulants are different, but they are alike in stimulating certain activities and depressing others; and their attraction for men is similar. Opium, morphine, and cocaine are more powerful drugs, and more inherently dangerous; but alcohol is much the most widely used and so most productive of evil. The hypodermically used narcotics need not be here discussed; for although they can give a far keener pleasure than alcohol, the penalty they inflict is more evident. Moreover, since their sale is not pushed by such powerful interests as continually stimulate the use of alcohol, they can, by the vigilant enforcement of existing laws, be readily removed from any general use. We turn, then, to the consideration of the one which has got a universal hold on the imagination and social habits of men, the only one that constitutes at present a serious and complicated problem.

What are the causes of the use of alcoholic drinks?

(1) We may dismiss at once the suggestion that alcoholic liquors are drunk for the pleasantness of their taste or for their food value. To some slight extent these factors enter

in; but neither is important. The taste for them is for most men an acquired taste; and with so many other delicious drinks to be had, especially in recent years, drinks that are far less expensive and without their poisonous effects, it is safe to say that the mere taste of them would not go far toward explaining the lure they have for men. As to their food value, there are those who justify themselves on the score of the nutrition they are getting from their wine or beer. But careful experiments have shown that the food value of alcohol is slight; and certainly, for nutrition received, these are among the most expensive foods, to be ranked with caviare and pâté de foie gras. Beer is the most nutritious of the alcoholic drinks; but the same amount of money spent on bread would give about thirty times the nutrition, and a more all-round nutrition at that. Alcoholic liquors as food are, as has been said, like gunpowder as fuel - very costly and very dangerous.1

(2) A much commoner plea for drinking rests upon its sociability. But this is a matter of convention which can readily enough be altered. There is nothing inherently more sociable in the drinking of wine than in the drinking of grape-juice, or coffee, or chocolate, or tea. Indeed, one may well ask why the chief social bond between men should consist in drinking liquids side by side! Games and sports, in which wit is pitted against wit, or which bring men together in happy coöperation, together with the great resource of conversation, are more socially binding than any drinks. There will, indeed, be a temporary social hardship for many abstainers until the custom is generally broken up; one runs the risk of being thought by the heedless a prig and a Puritan. But that is a small price to pay for one's health and one's influence on others.

1 See H. S. Williams, Alcohol, p. 133 ff.; H. S. Warner, Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, p. 80 ff., and bibliography, p. 95.

(3) More important than any of these causes is the craving for a stimulant. The monotony of work, the fatigue toward the end of the day, the severity of our Northern climate, the longing for intenser living, lead men to seek to apply the whip to their flagging energies. This stimulus to the body is, however, largely if not wholly, illusory. The mental-emotional effects, noted in the following paragraph, give the drinker the impression that he is physically fortified; but objective tests show that, after a very brief period, the dominant effect upon the organism is depressant. The apparent increase in bodily warmth, so often experienced, is a subjective illusion; in reality alcohol lowers the temperature and diminishes resistance to cold. Arctic explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure snake-bite, hydrophobia, etc., by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the quickly passing stimulating power of alcohol useful; and even for such purposes other stimulants are more valuable. Reputable physicians have almost wholly ceased to use it.1

(4) The one real value of alcohol to man has been the boon of stimulating his emotional and impulsive life, bringing him an elevation of spirits, drowning his sorrows, helping him to forget, helping to free his mind from the burden of care, anxiety, and regret. As William James, with his unerring discernment, wrote twenty-five years ago: "The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an anesthetic, even in moderate quantities. It obliterates a part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of thought." 2 This use, in relieving brain-tension, in bringing a transient 1 See H. S. Williams, op. cit., p. 4 ff., 124-27; H. S. Warner, op. cit., pp. 84 ff.

2 Tolstoy also hit the nail on the head in his little essay, Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?