n of these principles in the evidence of
life insurance companies in reference to spirit drinking and
abstinence. The oldest two life insurance companies of England, the
General Provident and the United Kingdom, have made records for
forty-five years which distinguish the total abstainers and the
moderate drinkers. Drunkards they do not insure at all. The care with
which lives are selected for insurance results in a smaller rate of
mortality among the insured than in the entire population. This gain
was but slight among those classed as moderate drinkers, for their
mortality was only three per cent less than the average mortality; but
among the total abstainers it was thirty-one per cent less. Thus the
proportion of deaths among moderate drinkers compared to that of total
abstainers is as 97 to 69.

The temperance advocate would assume that this was owing entirely to
the deleterious effects of alcohol, and that is partially true; but
there is a deeper reason in the difference of the two classes of men.
The man in whom the appetites are well controlled by the higher
energies of his nature, and who has therefore no inclination to
gluttony or drunkenness, has a better organization for health and
longevity than he in whom the appetites have greater relative power,
and who seeks the stimulus of alcohol to relieve his nervous
depression. The inability or unwillingness to live without stimulation
is a mark of weakness, which is an impairment of health; and this
weakness predisposes to excessive and irregular indulgence, though it
may not go so far as intoxication.

The effects of marriage furnish a parallel illustration. It is
well-known that bachelors are more short lived than married men, but
this is not owing _entirely_ to the hygienic influence of marriage. It
is partly owing to the inferiority of bachelors as a class. The men
who remain celibate are either too inferior personally to win the
regard of women, or are generally deficient in the strong affections
which seek a conjugal life, and the energies which make them fearless
of its responsibilities and burdens. Evidently they have not as a
class the robust energies of the marrying men, and the urgent motives
to compel them to regular industry and prudence. Everything which
stimulates men to exercise the nobler qualities of their nature is
promotive of health and longevity; and the _true_ religion which
anthropology commends will increase human longevity in proportion