good and evil, and the fungus from which the Samoiede extracts in autumn
a few days of brutal happiness, before the setting in of the long six
months' night? God grant that modern science may not bring to light
fresh substitutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest; and give the white
races, in that state of effeminate and godless quasi-civilisation which I
sometimes fear is creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying
themselves delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth.

It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this island. I
have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it possible; for every
cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. Overwork of body and mind;
circumstances which depress health; temptation to drink, and drink again,
at every corner of the streets; and finally, money, and ever more money,
in the hands of uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often
not the means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These,
it seems to me, are the true causes of drunkenness, increasing or not.
And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must lessen them, if
we cannot eradicate them.

First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All things
are full of labour, man cannot utter it." In the heavy struggle for
existence which goes on all around us, each man is tasked more and
more--if he be really worth buying and using--to the utmost of his powers
all day long. The weak have to compete on equal terms with the strong;
and crave, in consequence, for artificial strength. How we shall stop
that I know not, while every man is "making haste to be rich, and
piercing himself through with many sorrows, and falling into foolish and
hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How we
shall stop that, I say, I know not. The old prophet may have been right
when he said, "Surely it is not of the Lord that the people shall labour