GENIUS AND ALCOHOL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10464, 31 October 1911, Page 7

GENIUS AND ALCOHOL.

(By T. Darley Allen.)

It is not generally known that the vast majority of men of gonitis are strong in their condemnation of-in-toxicating liquors. Thomas A. Edison is a total abstainer. Mistral, ihe poet of Provencal, says that, £■.!- though he is in the habit <-f '•r:nKing a small quantity of wine with his meals, lie is convinced that the use of intoxicating liquors in any form is fatal to intellectual effort. Jules Claretic says he never drinks anything of an alcoholic nature when Le has intellectual work to do. Pierre Loti is a total abstainer, and Paul Bourget declares alcohol in every form and in the smallest quantities to he detrimental to creative labour. Jules Lemaitre gave up wine drinking because he found it interfered with his work.

George Bernard Shaw is a total abstainer, and the late George Mere- j ditto was an abstainer and a strong advocate of total abstinence for other's. Alfred (Russel Wallace, the scientist, William Huggins, the astronomer, and John Gorst, the physician, are eminent,,,, octogenarians who, through their lives, have condemned the use of alcoholic drinks. ■Vincent d'diidy says: "I have never regarded alcohol as of the slightest value in producing musical ideas. JE would :go even further and add that creation, if due to artificial means like alcohol, has every chance of .being vitiated." The testimonies of many other men of genius could be added to the foregoing, to show that the day is rapidly passing when alcohol is considered as of value in helping one to produce (better work than when in his normal condition. Alcohol is not helpful to men of or talent m the production of their .work, but< on the contrary, is a detriment. And this is rapidly being recognised by thinking people everywhere.— Cumberland Presbyterian, Indianapolis, T , Advt. ind.