"What meaner vice Crawls there than that which no affections urge, And no delights refine; which from the soul Steals mounting impulses which might inspire Its noblest ventures, for the arid quest Of wealth 'mid ruin; changes enterprise To squalid greediness, makes heaven-born hope A shivering fever, and in vile collapse Leaves the exhausted heart, without one fibre Impelled by generous passion?"[178] The "shivering fever" consumes the savage's very life-blood; he gives himself up to it with unrestrained frenzy, and stakes, upon a throw of the dice, his weapons, his possessions, his women, and even his liberty. Scarcely less violent is the passion which plunges him into drunkenness. With the fermented juices of various plants he is skilful in compounding intoxicating liquors, though he greatly prefers to these raw preparations the subtle mixtures introduced by Europeans. There is nothing which you cannot obtain from him for a few bottles of rum, of whisky, or brandy. And it is to the shame of our merchants that they do not scruple to stimulate, for their own sordid benefit, this vile passion to the utmost, against which the efforts of all our missionaries have proved almost powerless; so that, in truth, the commerce of the savage with civilized men, far from contributing to raise the former out of their abject, slothful, and degraded condition, has, on the contrary, proved for the majority of them a new source of embrutization and depravity. Savages have no other literature than the traditions, myths, and marvels to which I have already alluded. They have no written language; and here we are at once provided with a means of distinguishing the wholly savage from the partly civilized races. The reduction of speech to a definite system, the acknowledgment of certain laws and principles as affecting the formation of a language, is the first great step out of barbarism which a barbarous people accomplishes. Their science is limited to some acquaintance with the properties of the plants which they make use of, either as food, medicine, or poison. Medicine, indeed, as practised by "medicine-men," priests, or "sorcerers," consists practically of superstitious formulas, whose object is to expel the "evil spirit" which the savage supposes to be the cause of all his maladies.