To be sure, all this is but half true, because, as we said, the individual, and finally the nation, may seek substitutes, may satisfy the craving for emotional excitement, for will elation, for intense experience, by other means than the oldest and most widely scattered. Zealotism in religious belief, tyranny and cruelty, sexual over-indulgence and perversion, gambling and betting, mysticism and superstition, recklessness and adventurousness, and, above all, senseless crimes have always been the psychological means of overcoming the emptiness and monotony of an unstimulated life. They produce, just like alcohol, that partial paralysis and create intense experiences. They thus take hold of the masses, so long as the social mind is not entirely dried up, with the necessity of a psychological law. There is no more dangerous state for a healthy, strong nation than mental monotony in the life of the masses. Catholic countries play to the imagination at least through the religion, monarchic countries have their own picturesqueness and color, America under prohibition pushes the masses into gambling and reckless excitements and sexual disorder and money-crazes and criminal explosions of the mind. _The Temperance Experiment in Mohammedanism_ Has not history experimented sufficiently? Prohibitionist stump speakers may tell us that their cause means the hitherto unheard-of progress of civilization; the United States, after abolishing slavery for mankind, is called on to end also the tyranny of alcohol under which humanity has suffered for ages. But are there not two hundred millions of Moslems who are obedient to Mohammed's law, that wine drinking is sinful? What is the outcome? Of course, it is not inspiring to hear the boast of the Moslems that the Christians bring whiskey to Africa and bestialize the natives, while the Mohammedans fight alcohol. But aside from this, their life goes on in slavery and polygamy and semi-civilization. All the strong nations, all those whose contributions were of lasting value to the progress of mankind, have profited from the help of artificial stimulation and intoxicants.