The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1881-04-14
PUBLIC CHALLENGE.

A PUBLIC CHALLENGE.
70 the Editors of the N. P. Farmer.
The Scientific american says:
.'There are men upon whom wine
has not the ordinary exhilerating in
4luence, and opinion acts only as ca
thartic; and others who are born
cunuchs. All these should bear their
idiosyncrasies modestly, and not pre-
sumo to make laws for others who
have all the common attributes Of
humanity.'' This trite paragraph
condences within the compass of a
nut shell, the whole experience OF
mankind. regarding the totallst ta'
naticism of abstinence, and the Pa
pist fanaticism of Celibacy. The
verdict of this experience is. that the
affinity between the human spirit and
the spirit of wine, is intended to in
crease our knowledge of good and evil;
and the affinity between the sexes
is intended to perpetuate our race.
When these instincts are gratitied rs
our maker directs, they lead to the
highest conditions of human enjoy
ment and perfection. When these
instincts are abstructed and perverted
10y the idiosyncracies of fanatics, the
consequences are seen in the degener-
ating deciples Of Neal Dow, and in
the hidden cloisters of Papal Rome.
It is half 4 centuary since I first
heard 4 totalist lecturer. He declared
war against the invisible spirit of
wine,' as he termed it, and prophe-
sled that all mankind would soon re-
fuse to use it, and it would cease to
be sold or made. That war still con-
tinues, and similar prophesies are
still made with as much enthusiasm
as when these fanatics first proclaimed
these to our fathers. While fighting
this invisible spirit, the figurative
army has changed it's tactics, and
multiplied it's men and means many
times, but the quantity of spirit used,
has multiplied many more times. 1t
costs fifty times more. money, con-
tains fifty times more poison. and
contains fifty times more. crime and
diseases, delirium-tremens and
deaths. Why should we permit the
tides Of temperance, health and NOR
ais to be thus driven backward, while
the tides of science and civilization
have made such rapid progress dur
ing the same period, wherever true
temperance has been cultivated?
The rapid increase Of intemperance
and vice, which prompted me to
search for it's cause, has obscured the
intellect of these totalists, instead of
opening their eyes. They assumed
that no special knowledge was re-
quired to change the whole method
of mans alimentation, and they de-
spised the teachings of nature and
experience. They tried to prevent
the use of outside spirit, without i'm.
proving the inside supply to fill the
void. They insisted that wine in
jured healthy system, although it
was both food and medicine, when
the same system was diseased. OBJ
servation would have taught them,
that when spirit is supplied by the
natural process, equal to its consump-
tion by the mental organs, the whole
economy is harmonious. But if the
food be defective, or lack cerialine;
or the stomach be dispeptic, or desti-
tute of pepsi,,, the food will pass off
undigested, and the brain will crave
spirit from any source, even it the
stomach be filled with crude food.
These defects may be supplied by
graham -four, oat meal, or other food
containing cerialine; or by ripe grapes
or other fruit, instead of spirit, to
satisfy the mental appetite. These
xinous food3 viii be digested in the