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    THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

    _A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE.
    ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE._

                 VOL. V.       MARCH, 1885.       NO. 6.

Officers of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

_President_, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. _Chancellor_, J. H. Vincent,
D.D., New Haven, Conn. _Counselors_, The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.,
the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C.
Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. _Office Secretary_, Miss Kate
F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. _General Secretary_, Albert M. Martin,
Pittsburgh, Pa.



Contents

Transcriber’s Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created
for the HTML version to aid the reader.


    REQUIRED READING FOR MARCH.
    Temperance Teachings of Science; or, The Poison Problem
        Chapter VI.—Subjective Remedies                       311
    Sunday Readings
        [_March 1_]                                           314
        [_March 8_]                                           315
        [_March 15_]                                          315
        [_March 22_]                                          315
        [_March 29_]                                          316
    Studies in Kitchen Science and Art
        VI. Cabbages, Turnips, Carrots, Beets and Onions      316
    The Circle of the Sciences                                320
    Home Studies in Chemistry and Physics
        Fire—Physical Properties                              323
    The Mohammedan University of Cairo                        327
    As Seeing the Invisible                                   329
    National Aid to Education                                 329
    A Trip to the Land of Dreams                              333
    The Homelike House
        Chapter III.—The Dining Room                          335
    Mexico                                                    338
    Two Seas                                                  339
    New Orleans World’s Exposition                            340
    Geography of the Heavens for March                        342
    How to Win                                                343
    Notes on Popular English                                  345
    The Chautauqua School of Liberal Arts                     348
    Outline of Required Readings, March, 1885                 350
    Programs for Local Circle Work                            350
    Local Circles                                             351
    The C. L. S. C. Classes                                   356
    Questions and Answers                                     357
    The Trustees Reorganize Chautauqua                        358
    Editor’s Outlook                                          360
    Editor’s Note-Book                                        362
    C. L. S. C. Notes on Required Readings for March          365
    Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan”           367
    Talk About Books                                          369
    Paragraphs from New Books                                 370
    Special Notes                                             372




REQUIRED READING FOR MARCH.




TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE;

OR, THE POISON PROBLEM.

PART VI.

BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.


CHAPTER VI.—SUBJECTIVE REMEDIES.

“Deeprooted evils can not be abolished by striking at the
branches.”—_Boerhave._[1]

The history of the temperance movement has demonstrated the sad futility
of palliative remedies. We have seen that the malady of the poison vice
is not a self-limited, but a necessarily progressive evil. The half-way
measures of “restrictive” legislation have resulted only in furnishing
additional proof that prevention is better, because less impossible, than
control.[A] The regulation of the poison traffic, the redress of the
unavoidably resulting mischief, the cure and conversion of drunkards, in
order to be effectual, would impose intolerable and never ending burdens
on the resources even of the wealthiest communities, while the advocates
of prohibition would forestall the evils both of the remedy and the
disease.

But we should not overlook the truth that, in our own country at least,
the poison plant of intemperance springs from a composite root. In
southern Spain, under the dominion of the Saracens,[2] the poison vice
was almost unknown during a series of centuries.[B] The moral code and
the religion of the inhabitants discountenanced intemperance. The virtue
of dietetic purity ranked with chastity and cleanliness. An abundance
of harmless amusements diverted from vicious pastimes. Under such
circumstances the absence of direct temptations constituted a sufficient
safeguard against the vice of the poison habit; but in a country like
ours the efficacy of prohibition depends on the following supplementary
remedies:

1. INSTRUCTION.—In the struggle against the powers of darkness light
often proves a more effective weapon than might or right. Even the
limited light of human reason might help us to avoid mistakes that have
undoubtedly retarded the triumph of our cause. We must enlighten, as
well as admonish our children, if we would save them from the snares of
the tempter; among the victims of intemperance, even among those who can
speak from experience and can not deny that their poison has proved the
curse of their lives, only a small portion is at all able to comprehend
the necessary connection of cause and result. They ascribe their ruin to
the spite of fortune, to the machinations of an uncharitable world, to
abnormally untoward circumstances, rather than to the normal effects of
the insidious poison. Intoxication they admit to be an evil, but defend
the moderate use of a liquor as infallibly injurious in the smallest
as in the largest dose; they underrate the progressive tendency of
their vice and overrate their power of resistance; they cling to the
tradition that alcohol, discreetly enjoyed, may prove a blessing instead
of a curse. We must banish that fatal delusion. We must reveal the true
significance of the poison habit before we can hope to suppress it as
a life blighting vice. Our text-books should be found in every college
and every village school from Florida to Oregon. Every normal school
should graduate teachers of temperance. The law of the State of New York
providing for the introduction of primers on the effects of alcoholic
beverages was attacked by one of our leading scientific periodicals,
with more learning than insight, on the ground that the physiological
action of alcohol is as yet obscure even to our ablest pathologists,
and therefore not a fit subject for a common school text-book. The same
objection might be urged against every other branch of physiology and
the natural history of the organic creation. “Every vital process is a
miracle,” says Lorenz Oken,[3] “that is, in all essential respects an
unexplained phenomenon.” A last question will always remain unanswered
wherever the marvelous process of life is concerned, but our ignorance,
as well as our knowledge, of that phenomenon has its limits, and in
regard to the effects of alcoholic beverages it is precisely the most
knowable and most fully demonstrated part of the truth which it behooves
every child to know, but of which at present nine tenths of the adults,
even in the most civilized countries, remain as ignorant as the natives
of Kamtschatka who worship a divinity in the form of a poisonous
toadstool. A boy may be brought to comprehend the folly of gambling
even before he has mastered the abstruse methods of combination and
permutation employed in the calculus of probable loss and gain. We need
not study Bentham[4] to demonstrate that honesty is an essential basis
of commerce and social intercourse. By the standard of usefulness, too,
temperance primers might well take precedence of many other text-books.
Our school boys hear all sorts of things about the perils encountered by
the explorers of African deserts and Arctic seas, but next to nothing
about the pitfalls in their own path—no room for the discussion of
such subjects in a curriculum that devotes years to the study of dead
languages. Is the difference between the archaic and pliocene form of a
Greek verb so much more important than the difference between food and
poison?

With such a text as the monster curse of intemperance and its impressive
practical lessons, a slight commentary would suffice to turn thousands of
young observers into zealous champions of our cause, just as in Germany a
few years of gymnastic training have turned nearly every young man into
an advocate of physical education. The work begun in the school room
should be continued on the lecture platform, but we should not dissemble
the truth that in a crowded hall ninety per cent. of the visitors have
generally come to hear an _orator_ rather than a teacher, and enjoy
an eloquence that stirs up their barrenest emotions as much as if it
had fertilized the soil of their intelligence, just as the unrepentant
gamesters of a Swiss watering place used to applaud the sensational
passages of a drama written expressly to set forth the evils of the
gambling hell. Enthusiasm and impressiveness are valuable qualifications
of a public speaker, but he should possess the talent of making those
agencies the vehicles of instruction. The great mediæval reformers, as
well as certain political agitators of a later age, owe their success to
their natural or acquired skill in the act of stirring their hearers into
an intellectual ferment that proved the leaven of a whole community—for
that skill is a talent that can be developed on a basis of pure common
sense and should be more assiduously cultivated for the purposes of our
reform. A modern philanthropist could hardly confer a greater benefit on
his fellow-citizens than by founding a professorship of temperance, or
endowing a college with the special condition of a proviso for a weekly
lecture on such topics as “The Stimulant Delusion,” “Alcoholism,” “The
History of the Temperance Movement.”

Pamphlets, too, may subserve an important didactic purpose, and in the
methods of their distribution we might learn a useful lesson from our
adversaries, the manufacturers of alcoholic nostrums, who introduce
their advertisements into every household, by publishing them combined
with almanacs, comic illustrations, note-books, etc., _i. e._, not only
free, but winged with extra inducements to the recipient, and often by
the special subvention of druggists and village postmasters—till quack
annuals have almost superseded the old family calendars with their
miscellanies of pious adages and useful recipes. Could we not retrieve
the lost vantage ground by the publication of temperance year-books,
compiled by a committee of our best tract societies and distributed by
agents of the W. C. T. U.—with inspiring conviction to emulate the zeal
stimulated by a bribe of gratuitous brandy bottles?

Popular books must above all be _interesting_, and with a large plurality
of readers that word is still a synonym of entertaining. A German
bookseller estimates that the romances of Louisa Mühlbach have done more
to familiarize her countrymen with the history of their fatherland than
all historical text books, annals and chronicles taken together, and we
should not despise the aid of the novelist, if he should possess the
gift of making fiction the hand-maid of truth, and the rarer talent of
awakening the reflections as well as the emotions of his readers, for all
such appeals should prepare the way for the products of the temperance
press proper, by which we should never cease to invoke the conscience and
the reason of our fellowmen.

2. PROSCRIPTION.—That union is strength is a truth which asserts itself
even at the expense of public welfare, and in favor of those who combine
to thwart the purposes of the law or prevent the progress of needed
reforms. To the cabals of such adversaries, against whom the influence
of moral suasion would be powerless, we should oppose weapons that would
strike at the foundation of their strength, namely, the most effectual
means to diminish the number of their allies. Many of those who are
callous to the stings of conscience would hesitate to defy the stigma of
public opinion; others who are proof against all other arguments would
yield if we could make it their commercial interest to withdraw their aid
from the enemies of mankind.

That the prescription of alcohol for remedial purposes will ultimately
be abandoned, like bleeding, blue-pill dosing and other medical
anachronisms, is as certain as that the Carpathian peasants will cease
to exorcise devils by burning cow dung, and we can somewhat promote the
advent of that time by patronizing reform physicians in preference to
“brandy-doctors,” as Benjamin Rush[5] used to call them, and by classing
alcoholic “bitters” with the prohibited beverages. It is mere mockery to
prohibit the sale of small beer and permit quacks to sell their brandy
as a “digestive tonic,” and obviate the inconveniences of the Sunday
law by consigning their liquor to a drug-store. Does the new name or
the admixture of a handful of herbs change the effects of the poison?
We might as well prohibit gambling and permit musical lottery drawings
under the name of sacred concerts. Till we can do better we should permit
druggists to sell alcoholic bitters only on the certified prescription
of a responsible physician, all such prescriptions to be duly registered
and periodically reported to the Temperance Commissioner of a Board of
Health. Nostrum-mongers[6] will probably continue to fleece the ignorant
to the end of time, but they must cease to decoy their victims by
pandering to the alcohol vice.

3. HEALTHIER PASTIMES.—There is no doubt that a lack of better pastimes
often tends to promote intemperance. In thousands of our country towns,
equidistant from rural sports and the amusements of the metropolis
_ennui_ rather than ignorance[C] or natural depravity leads our young
men to the dram shop, and in recognizing that fact we should not delude
ourselves with the hope that reading-rooms alone could remedy the
evil.[D] The _craving after excitement_, in some form or other, is an
instinct of human nature which may be perverted, but can never be wholly
suppressed, and in view of the alternative we would find it cheaper—both
morally and materially—to gratify that craving in the comparatively
harmless way of the Languedoc[9] peasants (who devote the evening hours
to singing contests, trials of skill, round dances, etc.), or after
the still better plan of the ancient Greeks. Antiquity had its Olympic
Games, Nemean and Capitoline arenas, _circenses_, and local festivals.
The Middle Ages had their tournaments, May days, archery contests, church
festivals and guild feasts. The Latin nations still find leisure for
pastimes of that sort—though in modified, and not always improved, forms;
but in Great Britain, Canada and the United States, with their six times
twelve hours of monotonous factory work, and Sunday laws against all
kinds of recreations, the dreariness of existence has reached a degree
which for millions of workingmen has made oblivion a blest refuge, and
there is no doubt that many dram-drinkers use alcohol as an anodyne—the
most available palliative against the misery of life-weariness. We would
try in vain to convert such men by reproofs or ostracism. Before we can
persuade them to renounce their excursions to the land of delirium the
realities of life must be made less unendurable. They know the dangers
of intemperance, but consider it a lesser evil.[E] They know no other
remedy. Hence their bitter hatred of those who would deprive them of that
only solace. Shall we resign such madmen to their fate? I am afraid that
their type is represented by a larger class than current conceptions
might incline us to admit. Let those who would verify those conceptions
visit a popular beer garden—not as emissaries of our propaganda, but
as neutral observers. Let them use a suitable opportunity to turn the
current of conversation upon a test topic: “Personal Liberty,” “The
Sunday Question,” “Progress of the Prohibition Party.” Let the observer
retain his mask of neutrality, and ascertain the views—the private
views—of a few specimen topers. Do they deny the physiological tendencies
of their practice? The correlation of alcohol and crime? They avoid such
topics. No, nine out of ten will prefer an unanswerable or unanswered
argument; the iniquity of interfering with the amusements of the poor,
with the only available recreations of the less privileged classes. Take
that away and what can a man do who has no better pastimes, and can not
always stay at home? What shall he do with sixteen hours of leisure?

The question then recurs: How shall we deal with such men? How reclaim
them sufficiently even for the nobler purposes of the present life, not
to speak of higher aims? How save them from the road that leads down to
death? A change of heart may now and then work wonders, even the wonder
of a permanent reform; but we have no right to rely on constant miracles,
and for thousands in sorest need of help there is only one practical
solution of the problem: Let us provide an opportunity of better
pastimes—_not as a concession to our enemies, but as the most effectual
method to counteract the attraction of their snares and deprive them of
the only plausible argument against the tendencies of our reform_. We
need not profane the Sabbath by bull-fights. We need not tempt the poor
to spend their wages on railway excursions or the gambling tables of a
popular summer resort. But we should recognize the necessity of giving
them once a week a chance for outdoor amusements, and unless we should
prefer the Swedish compromise plan of devoting the evening of the Sabbath
to earthly purposes, we should adopt the suggestion of the Chevalier
Bunsen,[10] and amend the eight hour law by a provision for a _free
Saturday afternoon_. Half a day a week, together with the evenings of the
long summer days, would suffice where the means of recreation are near at
hand. Even the smallest factory villages could afford a little pleasure
ground of their own, a public garden with a free gymnasium, a footrace
track, ball ground, a tennis-hall or nine-pin-alley, for the winter
season, a free bath, and a few zoölogical attractions. In larger towns
we might add free music, a restaurant managed on the plan of Susanna
Dodds, M.D.,[F] and perhaps a museum of miscellaneous curiosities. Such
pleasure resorts should be known as _Temperance Gardens_. They would
redeem as many drunkards as all our prisons and inebriate asylums taken
together; they would do more: they would _prevent_ drunkenness. And above
all, they would accustom the working classes to associate the name of
Temperance with the conceptions of liberality, manliness, cheerfulness,
and recreation, instead of—well, their present misconceptions. We might
arrange monthly excursions, and the happiest yearly festival would be a
Deliverance Feast; an anniversary of the day when the city or village
decided to free itself from the curse of the poison traffic. Like some
of the Turner halls[11] of the German gymnasts, temperance gardens could
be made more than self-supporting by charging a small admission fee to
the spectator-seats of the gymnasium, and selling special refreshments at
a moderate advance on the cost price. The surplus might be invested in
prizes to stimulate competition in such gymnastics as wrestling, running,
and hammer throwing (“putting the club,” as the Scotch highlanders call
it), with reserved days, or arenas, for juvenile competitors. In winter
we might vary the program by archery, singing contests, and trials of
skill in various domestic fashions, with an occasional “spelling bee”—at
least for those who could be trusted to consider it a pastime, rather
than a task, for the purpose of recreation should not be sacrificed even
to considerations of utility. In regard to athletics, that apprehension
would be superfluous; the enthusiasm of gymnastic emulation has exerted
its power at all times and among all nations, and needs but little
encouragement to revive in its old might. It would make the Temperance
Garden what the Village Green was to the archers of Old England, what
the palæstra was to the youth of ancient Greece. It would supersede
vicious pastimes; it would regenerate the manhood of the tempted classes,
and thus react on their personal and social habits; they would satisfy
their craving for excitement in the arena, they would learn to _prefer
mechanical to chemical stimulants_.[G] Physical and moral vigor would go
hand in hand.

The union of temperance and athletic education has, indeed, been
the ideal of many social reformers, from Pythagoras to Jean Jacques
Rousseau,[12] and the secret of their failure was a mistake that has
defeated more than one philanthropic project. They failed to begin their
reform at the basis of the social structure. He who fears the hardships
of such a beginning lacks, after all, true faith in the destiny of his
mission. Perseverance and uncompromising loyalty to the tenets of our
covenant is to us a duty, as well as the best policy, for as a moral
offense treason itself would not be more unpardonable than doubt in the
ultimate triumph of a cause like ours. There is a secret which almost
seems to have been better known to the philosophers and patriots of
antiquity than to this unheroic age of our own, namely, that in the arena
of moral contests a clearly undeserved defeat is a step toward victory.
In that warfare the scales of fate are not biased by a preponderance of
gold or iron. Tyrants have reached the term of their power if they have
made deliverance more desirable than life; the persuasive power of Truth
is increased by oppression; and if the interests of a cause have become
an obvious obstacle in the road of progress and happiness the promoters
of that cause have to contend with a law that governs the tendencies of
the moral as well as the physical universe, and inexorably dooms the
unfit to perish.[H] The unmasked enemies of mankind have no chance to
prosper.

And even where their disguises still avail them amidst the ignorance of
their victims we should remember the consolation of Jean Jacques Rousseau
in his address to the Polish patriots: “They have swallowed you, but you
can prevent them from assimilating you.” Our enemies may prevent the
recovery of their spoil; they may continue to devour the produce of our
fields and of our labor, but we do not propose to let them enjoy their
feast in peace; whatever their gastric capacity, it will be our own fault
if we do not cause them an indigestion that will diminish their appetite.
“All the vile elements of society are against us,” writes one of our
lecturers, “but I have no fear of the event if we do not cease to agitate
the subject,” and we would, indeed, not deserve success if we should
relax our efforts before we have secured the coöperation of every friend
of justice and true freedom.

It is true, we invite our friends to a battle-field, but there are times
when war is safer than peace, and leads to the truer peace of conscience.
The highest development of _altruism_ inspires a devotion to the welfare
of mankind that rewards itself by a deliverance from the petty troubles
and vexations of daily life; nay, all personal sorrows may thus be sunk
out of sight, and those who seek release from grief for the inconstancy
of fate, for the frustration of a cherished project, for the loss of a
dear friend, may find a peace which fortune can neither give nor take
away by devoting themselves to a cause of enduring promise, to the
highest abiding interest of their fellowmen. At the dawn of history
that highest aim would have been: security against the inroads of
barbarism. In the night of the Middle Ages: salvation from the phantoms
of superstition. To-day it should be: deliverance from the curse of the
poison vice.

That deliverance will more than compensate all sacrifices. Parties, like
individuals, are sometimes destined to conquer without a struggle; but
the day of triumph is brighter if the powers of darkness have been forced
to yield step for step, and we need not regret our labors, our troubles,
nor even the disappointment of some minor hopes, for in spite of the long
night we have not lost our way, and the waning of the stars often heralds
the morning.


FOOTNOTES

[A] “All past legislation has proved ineffectual to restrain the habit
of excess. Acts of Parliament intended to lessen, have notoriously
augmented the evil, and we must seek a remedy in some new direction, if
we are not prepared to abandon the contest or contentedly to watch with
folded arms the gradual deterioration of the people. Restriction in the
forms which it has hitherto assumed, of shorter hours, more stringent
regulation of licensed houses and magisterial control of licenses,
has been a conspicuous failure. For a short time after the passing of
Lord Aberdare’s act, hopes were entertained of great results from the
provisions for early closing, and many chief constables testified to the
improved order of the streets under their charge; but it soon appeared
that the limitation, while it lessened the labor of the police and
advanced their duties an hour or so in the night, was not sufficient to
reduce materially the quantity of liquor consumed, or the consequent
amount of drunkenness.”—_Fortnightly Review._

[B] “The western Saracens abstained not only from wine, but from all
fermented and distilled drinks whatsoever, were as innocent of coffee as
of tea and tobacco, knew opium only as a soporific medicine, and were
inclined to abstemiousness in the use of animal food. Yet six millions
of these truest sons of temperance held their own for seven centuries
against great odds of heavy-armed Giaours, excelled all christendom
in astronomy, medicine, agriculture, chemistry and linguistics, as
well as in the abstract sciences, and could boast of a whole galaxy of
philosophers and inspired poets.”—_International Review_, December, 1880.

[C] “Education is the cure of ignorance,” says Judge Pitman, “but
ignorance is not the cause of intemperance. Men who drink generally
know better than others that the practice is foolish and hurtful.”
“It is not the most earnest and intelligent workers in the sphere of
public education that make their overestimate of it as a specific for
intemperance. While they are fully sensible of that measure of indirect
aid which intellectual culture brings to all moral reforms, they feel how
weak is this agency alone to measure its strength against the powerful
appetite for drink.”

[D] “In a primitive state of society field sports afford abundant
pastimes, our wealthy burghers find indoor amusements, and scholars
have ideal hunting grounds of their own; but the large class of our
fellow-citizens, to whom reading is a task rather than a pleasure,
are reduced to the hard choice between their _circenses_[7] and their
_panes_[8]. Even the slaves of ancient Rome had their saturnalia, when
their masters indulged them in the enjoyment of their accumulated
arrears of happiness; but our laborers toil like machines, whose best
recreation is a temporary respite from work. Human hearts, however, will
not renounce their birthright to happiness; and if joy has departed this
