Note 70 — Chapter III · DISSOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY.

A defender of the use of hasheesh scientifically employed, M. Giraud, who conceives that it is possible to induce ecstasy at will, and to regulate it by medical doses, writes us with enthusiasm: “A bit of hasheesh dispenses with painful mystical expedients to induce ecstasy. There is no further need of asceticism; the result is an intoxication, but a sacred intoxication, which is nothing else than an excess of activity in the higher centres.” We believe that every sort of drunkenness, far from possessing a sacred character, will constitute for ever and always, in the eyes of science, a morbid state, in no sense enviable from any rational point of view, by an individual in normal health; the constant employment of stimulants will exhaust the nervous system and throw it out of order, as the daily employment of nux vomica will, in the long run, destroy the power of a healthy stomach.