Humanity is disposed to sit weakly down before anything that has been with us for a long time, and say it is impossible to do away with it. "We have always had liquor drinking," say some, "and we always will. It is deeply rooted in our civilization and in our social customs, and can never be outlawed entirely." Social customs may change. They have changed. They will change when enough people want them to change. There is nothing sacred about a social custom, anyway, that it should be preserved when we have decided it is of no use to us. Social customs make an interesting psychological study, even among the lower animals, who show an almost human respect for the customs of their kind. Have you ever seen lizards walk into a campfire? Up from the lake they will come, attracted by the gleam of the fire. It looks so warm and inviting, and, of course, there is a social custom among lizards to walk right in, and so they do. The first one goes boldly in, gives a start of surprise, and then shrivels, but the next one is a real good sport, and won't desert a friend, so he walks in and shrivels, and the next one is no piker, so walks in, too. Who would be a stiff? They stop coming when there are no more lizards in the lake or the fire is full. There does not seem to be much reason for their action, but, of course, it is a social custom. You may have been disposed to despise the humble lizard with his open countenance and foolish smile, but you see there is something quite human and heroic about him, too, in his respect for a social custom. Moths have a social custom, too, which impels them to fly into the flame of the candle, and bees will drown themselves in boiling syrup. No matter how many of their friends and cousins they see lying dead in the syrup, they will march boldly in, for they each feel that they are strong enough to get out when they want to. Bees all believe that they "can drink or leave it alone." But moralists tell us that prohibition of any evil is not the right method to pursue; far better to leave the evil and train mankind to shun it. If the evil be removed entirely mankind will be forced to abstain and therefore will not grow in strength. In other words, the life of virtue will be made too easy. We would gently remind the moralists who reason in this way that there will still be a few hundred ways left, whereby a man may make shipwreck of his life. They must not worry about that--there will still be plenty of opportunities to go wrong! The object of all laws should be to make the path of virtue as easy as possible, to build fences in front of all precipices, to cover the wells and put the poison out of reach. The theory of teaching children to leave the poison alone sounds well, but most of us feel we haven't any children to experiment on, and so we will lock the medicine-chest and carry the key.