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The most common expedient is one which will drug the sensitive nerves and produce an easy relief from strain and worry. There is a magic in alcohol and kindred distillations, which, like Aladdin’s genie, builds a palace of joy and, for the moment, banishes the enemy of all peace. The refuge seems complete. All fear is gone, worry is a thing of the past. The jargon of life is over, the pitiless problem of good and evil drops out of consciousness. The shelterless soul seems covered and housed. Intoxication is only one of the many quick expedients. It is always possible to retreat from the edge of strenuous battle into some one of the many natural instincts as a way of refuge. The great instinctive emotions are absorbing, and tend to obliterate everything else. They occupy the entire stage of the inner drama, and push all other actors away from the footlights of consciousness, so that here, too, the enemies of peace and joy seem vanquished, and the refuge appears to be found.

That multitudes accept these easy ways of defense against the ills of life is only too obvious. The medieval barons who could build themselves castles of safety were few in number. Visible refuges in any case are rare and scarce, but the escape from the burdens and defeats of the world in drink and drug and thrilling instinctive emotion is, without much difficulty, open to every man and within easy reach for rich and poor alike, and many there be that seize upon this method. The trouble with it is that it is a very temporary refuge. It works, if at all, only for a brief span. It plays havoc in the future with those who resort to it. It rolls up new liabilities to the ills one would escape. It involves far too great a price for the tiny respite gained. And, most of all, it discounts or fails to reckon with the inherent greatness of the human soul. We are fashioned for stupendous issues. Our very sense of failure and defeat comes from a touch of the infinite in our being. We look before and after, and sigh for that which is not, just because we can not be contented with finite fragments of time and space. We are meant for greater things than these trivial ones which so often get our attention and absorb us; but the moment the soul comes to itself, its reach goes beyond the grasp, and it feels an indescribable discontent and longing for that for which it was made. To seek refuge, therefore, in some narcotic joy, to still the onward yearning of the soul by drowning consciousness, to banish the pain of pursuit by a barbaric surge of emotions, is to strike against the noblest trait of our spiritual structure; it means committing suicide of the soul. It cannot be a real man’s way of relief.