The hasty survey which has been made in the preceding chapters, of the drinking habits of our race in various lands and ages, will, we trust, have had the effect of modifying some of our theories, based upon preconceived ideas, concerning the causes of intemperance. That climate is not a permanent source of that evil has, we think, been clearly proved. Nor is the popular theory tenable that barbarism and an aboriginal condition of mankind mean purity and sobriety, but that drunkenness is the invariable concomitant of a high state of civilisation. For, at the time when man is supposed to have been in a state of paradisiacal innocence, the standard of his morality was very low indeed, both as it concerned his indulgence in drink, as well as in other respects; and although purity and simplicity of faith appear at all times to have been accompanied by similar moral qualities, yet religion alone, excepting in one or two cases, has not exercised an important controlling influence upon the passion for drink in the human race. On the other hand, however, the superstitious rites and ceremonies with which religion has been more or less encumbered in all ages have countenanced if not patronised the use of intoxicating beverages. It is quite true that every phase and form of civilisation has at one time or other been debased by its association with intemperance, and has frequently ministered to man’s self-indulgence. Music and the arts have not disdained to become the handmaids of debauchery; poetry has been degraded by its influence; the artifice of politics and the designs of priestcraft have found it a convenient tool. And as to science, she has consented in a hundred different ways to multiply man’s opportunities for self-debasement or to furnish him with palliatives for mitigating the evil effects of his dissoluteness. But, on the other hand, if we can trust our imperfect knowledge, we see already that the wave of intemperance has invariably reached its highest point, not when nations have been the most highly civilised (if any nation can be said to have attained that condition), but either before it was fairly educated, or during the national decadence. Nor is the expression “waves of intemperance” purely imaginative, for they have had a real existence in the history of the past. One or more such waves rose high in ancient China, and probably overwhelmed dynasties, and yet modern China is not reckoned amongst inebriate states.