第129章

The different effects arising from the action of the inventive faculty, as it operates on utilities or luxuries, afford a means of distinguishing the one from the other.The progress of invention extends the consumption of utilities; it diminishes the consumption of pure luxuries.Were steel, platina, or plate glass, produced by one tenth of the labor they presently cost, their consumption would be very much increased.Were pearls, or lace, to be got for one tenth of the labor that must now be given for them, they would go completely out of fashion.The additional amount of utilities produced, occupying the place of instruments that cost more labor, and did not return more abundantly, their consumption implies a diminution in the cost of the whole stock of the society as compared with the returns made by it, and consequently the progress of that stock to an order of quicker return.The facility given to the production of luxuries has rather a contrary effect, exciting to the greatest outlay of labor of which the accumulative principle is capable, previous to the abandoning of the manufacture.

PART II.

In the preceding part of this chapter we have considered the loss occasioned to the stock of societies, from part of the products that would otherwise be yielded by the industry of their members, applied to the formation of instruments, being dissipated through the operation of an affection of the mind.We are now to consider a similar loss, occasioned by a peculiarity in the combined corporeal and mental constitution of man.

There are various matters that physiologists have attempted to comprehend under the general term of narcotics, of which the primary operation is directed to the nervous system.What their ultimate effects may be on man, considered not in the individual, but in the species, this is not the fit place to discuss.There are, however, some general laws that belong to them, which it concerns the present inquiry to notice.

1.A gradual increase in the quantity consumed does not produce a correspondent increase in the effects first experienced.One commencing with twenty drops of laudanum, if he make a habit of consuming that drug, and attempt to continue the effects first experienced, must double, quadruple, or farther increase the quantity.A few glasses of wine will at first cause a degree of exhilaration equal to what it will take a bottle or two finally to produce.

Unlike things consumed to satisfy hunger, thirst, or warmth, their effects are by no means determined by the quantity consumed.We may reckon that a slice of bread, or a glass of water, will one year hence supply the wants for which any individual consumes them, as well as now, however great his consumption of these articles may be in the interim.But if a person now daily drinks a glass of brandy, there is no saying how many glasses, ten years hence, be may find himself obliged to take to produce the same effects.

This is a property common to all narcotics, though not in an equal degree.

The effects of tea and coffee on the nervous system diminish through use, as well as those of brandy and tobacco, though not in an equal degree, and the quantity taken may be gradually very greatly augmented.

2.The temporary exhilaration produced by the consumption of these substances is followed by a temporary depression.They produce evil as well as good.

Whether, when taken in small quantities, the former overbalance the latter, or the latter the former, is a point undetermined; but it is well known that as the quantity is increased, the evil effects predominate, until at last both the bodily and mental energies sink under their operation.

Hence what is called the abuse, to which the consumption of all this class of commodities is apt to lead.The labor bestowed on them is very often not only useless, but absolutely prejudicial to the society.

3.Their consumption is regulated, ill a great degree, by the influence of the imitative propensity.We may form a near guess whether a person is in the custom of drinking wine, or tea, or coffee, or smoking tobacco, from knowing the habits of his associates.

4.Their consumption is also greatly regulated by the passion of vanity.

This is especially the case, as I have already remarked, in vinous liquors.

These liquors derive their narcotic properties from containing a portion of the fluid termed alcohol.In addition to its power over the nervous system, this substance has that of preventing, or retarding, the changes that naturally go on in vegetable juices.Liquors, therefore, impregnated with it, long retain their peculiar flavor and other properties, and may thus be consumed in times and at places remote from those in which they were produced.This serves to render them matters on which vanity can easily lay hold and convert into luxuries.Besides serving as marks to this passion, the vegetable juices and salts contained in these liquors have probably other effects.They afford a certain degree of nourishment, and present the spirit in a diluted form.Hence a part of their medicinal effects, and hence, also, their greater safety as narcotics.The stomach gets loaded with them sooner than with diluted alcohol, which might be absorbed with less immediate inconvenience to the digestive powers, though its permanent effects may be more pernicious.In this respect there is a real cause for the preference given them, although, in this view also, beer is the best, because the safest of all liquors.