One of the strongest desires of human nature is the passion for some kind or another of alcoholic stimulants. Intoxicating liquors are made by savages in primeval forests, and travellers in all parts of the world have found the natives conversant with the art of preparing some sort of stimulating liquor in the shape of beer, wine, or spirit. The ancient Egyptians had their beer and brandy, the Mexicans their aloe beer or pulque. Probably the art of preparing fermented drinks was in each nation discovered by accident. Berries soaked in water, set aside and forgotten, saccharine roots steeped in water and juices preserved for future use, have probably taught primitive man everywhere to manufacture stimulating beverages. The influence of alcoholic drinks on the development of the human mind must have been very great. If primitive man has learned so much from his dreams, what has he not learned from the exaltation produced by medicinal plants and alcoholic infusions? If the savage conceives the leaves of a tree waving in the breeze to be influenced by a spirit, it is certain that a medicinal plant or a fermented liquor would be believed to be possessed by a beneficent or evil principle or being. A poison would be possessed by a demon, a healing plant by a good spirit, a stimulating liquor by a god. Plant-worship would on these principles be found amongst the earliest religious practices of mankind, and so we find it, although not to the extent we might have expected. Some savage peoples worship plants and make offerings to the spirits which dwell in certain trees. It would seem that it is not the plant or tree itself which is thus venerated, but the ghost which makes it its dwelling. In classic times “the ivy was sacred to Osiris and Bacchus, the pine to Neptune, herb mercury to Hermes, black hellebore to Melampus, centaury to Chiron, the laurel to Aloeus, the hyacinth to Ajax, the squill to Epimenes,” etc.[100] Herbert Spencer thinks that plant-worship arose from the connection between plants and the intoxication which they produce. It is very remarkable that almost all peoples of whom we have any knowledge produce from the maceration of various vegetable substances some kind of intoxicating liquor, beer, wine, or spirit. As the excitement produced by fainting, fever, hysteria, or insanity is ascribed amongst savages and half-civilized peoples to a possessing spirit, so also is any exaltation of the mind, by whatever means produced, attributed to a similar cause. Supernatural beings they consider may be swallowed in food or drink, especially the latter.[101] Vambery speaks of opium-eaters who intoxicated themselves with the drug; that they might be nearer the beings they loved so well. The Mandingoes think that intoxication brings them into relation with the godhead. A Papuan Islander hearing about the Christian God said, “Then this God is certainly in your arrack, for I never feel happier than when I have drunk plenty of it.”[102]