the American flag over his pulpit, fastens a large
patch of black color on it, declares that the patch stands for the
liquor evil which smirches the country, denounces wildly the men who
spend for whiskey the money which ought to buy medicine for sick
children, and then madly tears the black cloth from the stars and
stripes and grinds it under his heel--then thousands rush out as
excited as if they had heard a convincing argument. And this
superficiality is the more repellent because every glimpse below the
surface shows an abundance of cant and hypocrisy and search for cheap
fame and sensationalism and still more selfish motives mingled with
the whole movement; even the agitation itself, with its threats of
ruin, borders too often on graft and blackmail and thus helps to
debauch the public life.

_Alcohol and the Brain_

Those who seriously study, not merely the one or the other symptom,
but the whole situation, can hardly doubt that the demand of true
civilization is for temperance and not for abstinence, and that
complete prohibition must in the long run work against real
temperance. But nothing is more characteristic of the hysterical
caprice of the masses than the constant neglect of this distinction.
Even the smallest dose of alcohol is for them nothing but evil, and
triumphantly they seize on isolated statements of physiologists who
acknowledge that every dose of alcohol has a certain influence on the
brain. This is at once given the turn that every glass of beer or wine
"muddles" the brain and is therefore a sin against the freedom of
man.

Certainly every glass of beer has an influence on the cells of the
brain and on the mind; so has every cup of tea or coffee, every bit of
work and every amusement, every printed page and every spoken word. Is
it certain that the influence is harmful because an overdose of the
same stimulants is surely poisonous? Boiling water is most dangerous
for the body on account of its strong heat: is a bath in lukewarm
water therefore also harmful? To climb Mount Blanc would overtax my
heart: is it therefore inadvisable for me to climb the two flights to
my laboratory? Of course, under certain conditions it might be wise to
take account of the slightest influences. Without being harmful, they
might be unsuited to a certain mental purpose. If I were to take a
glass of beer now in the morning, I should certainly be unable to
write the next page of this essay with the same ease; the