Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/354

longer, there is no reason why moral influences should not cause Anglo-Saxons and other races equally to abstain. But the particular moral influence which has caused total abstinence among Mahomedans, religious enthusiasm, the strongest of all such influences, since it appeals to self-interest by promising rewards and punishments of enormous magnitude, cannot bring about the same result among us, for the simple reason that the Christian religion does not enjoin abstinence from alcohol, and there is no prospect of our substituting for it another religion which does. Again, Mahomedans are total abstainers only at the cost of being barbarians also; the same influence which has banished alcohol from among them has banished much else besides, and has in great measure cut them off from intercourse with other peoples. But Christians use alcohol in many other ways besides drinking it; without serious injury to their arts and manufactures they could not banish it from their midst; and their increasing civilization causes intercourse among themselves, and with other peoples, to become more free and extensive every year—that is, brings into more intimate relations peoples such as the Italians, whom the drug now injures very little, and who therefore have little reason to adopt a policy of total abstinence, and peoples such as the English, whom the drug injures very much, and who therefore might on the score of self-interest be persuaded to adopt such a policy. With our higher civilization it is then impossible to banish alcohol from our midst as it has been banished from among the Mahomedans, and without such banishment it is tolerably certain that abstinence from the poison could not be secured; for it must be clearly understood that Mahomedans abstain from alcohol, not solely because religious enthusiasm forbids, but mainly because among them opportunity for indulgence is not afforded to