Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/573

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OPIUM AND ITS ANTIDOTE.
555

not unfrequently, in fulfillment of their supposed commands. And the inference is verified on seeing similarly used other kinds of spoils. The Philistines, besides otherwise displaying relics of the dead Saul, put "his armor in the house of Ashtaroth." By the Greeks the trophy, formed of arms, shields, and helmets, taken from the defeated, was consecrated to some divinity; and the Romans deposited the spoils brought back from battle in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Similarly of the Feejeeans, who are solicitous in every way to propitiate their bloodthirsty deities, we read that, "when flags are taken they are always hung up as trophies in the mbure" or temple. That hundreds of gilt spurs of French knights vanquished by the Flemish in the battle of Courtrai were deposited in the church of that place, and that in France flags taken from enemies were suspended from the vaults of churches (a practice not unknown in Protestant England), are facts that might be joined with these, did not so joining them imply the impossible supposition that Christians think to please "the God of love" by acts like those used to please the diabolical gods of cannibals.

Because of inferences to be hereafter drawn, one remaining general truth must be named, though it is so obvious as to seem scarcely worth mention. Trophy-taking is directly related to militancy. It begins during a primitive life that is wholly occupied in hostilities with men and animals; it develops with the growth of conquering societies in which perpetual wars generate the militant type of structure; it diminishes as growing industrialism more and more substitutes productive activities for destructive activities; and it is a truism to say that complete industrialism necessitates entire cessation of it.

The chief significance of trophy-taking, however, has yet to be pointed out. The reason for dealing with it under the general head of Ceremonial Government, though in itself scarcely to be classed as a ceremony, is that it furnishes us with the key to a large class of ceremonies which have prevailed all over the world among the uncivilized and semi-civilized. From the practice of cutting off and taking away portions of the dead body, there grows up the practice of cutting off portions of the living body.

OPIUM AND ITS ANTIDOTE.[1]

By CHARLES RICHET.

OPIUM is the juice of the poppy, and, as there are many varieties of the poppy, so too are there many kinds of opium; the mode of collecting the juice is, however, always the same. In Egypt, Syria, and India, the three countries which produce opium, a number

  1. From the Revue des Deux Mondes; translated and condensed by J. Fitzgerald, A.M.