The issue then balances somewhat delicately on the point of “authority,” which is really at bottom a matter of comparative ethnography. If, as we believe, the scientific is truly the most mature knowledge-technique man has yet perfected, then facile and off-hand condemnation of peyotism on its basis is even less possible. Aside from the probable ultimate disappearance of the Native American Church, a generous and libertarian philosophy would condemn present attacks on it as often misguided and even oftener uninformed. The chief human difficulty in the world today is the adjustment of one culture to another, of one absolutistic ideology and Weltanschauung to another. But the scientific spirit itself would protest against the dictatorship of any one ideology, of whatever sort; there is too much chance that any self-contained scheme be dangerously wrong, when unchecked by modifying differing beliefs. Science, indeed, has been lifted above the level of folklore precisely because the spectacle of variously conditioned culture-historical outlooks has necessitated self-criticism and an objective comparative survey of beliefs. A fetishistic attitude toward science and its tentative pronouncements, therefore, is itself folkloristic in tone. This however, is not to suggest any distrust in the ability of the scientific method to obtain such sound results as have been so far achieved; but it is intended to point out the real limitations in our information. Although the best modern scientific knowledge would indicate that the alkaloids in peyote do not perform the manifold therapeutic miracles which natives ascribe to it, one might still well wonder whether harsh sumptuary laws would not work more positive hardship and harm than the drug itself. If not the injustice then certainly the inexpedience of such exercise of civil authority has been amply demonstrated in the Eighteenth Amendment and its sorry consequences. We may not presume therefore to judge what should be the administrative fate of the peyote cult. The emotional and ideological side of the religion is not open to judgement; and on the properly scientific and physiological side of the question the simple fact is that we actually don’t know enough about it. APPENDIX 7: JOHN WILSON, THE REVEALER OF PEYOTE The life and career of a remarkable individual were successively involved in the several traditions of the Ghost Dance, mescalism, old Algonquian shamanistic “shooting” ceremonies and finally peyotism. Both for its intrinsic interest and its historical significance we give here in some detail the life of this man. Wilson appears first as a leader in the Ghost Dance movement of the 1890’s. Mooney[1] writes: