Tobacco and the Individual1

Development in the human being manifests itself in a progressive growth and exercise of all senses. As the individual grows older the senses must correspondingly become more acute. In observing any child, one can clearly see how it constantly exercises all its senses. It is fascinated by light and color; it loves sounds of all kinds; it exercises its sense of smell and there is nothing within its reach that it does not wish to touch and taste.

All animals at first evince a very simple and crude mechanism for the taking of nourishment. Young mammals at first subsist on the simplest diet of milk furnished by the mother, but as they grow and develop they make themselves more and more independent of this form of food, and the nourishment then becomes of a more general kind. We usually classify animals as carnivorous, herbivorous or omnivorous. The last is probably a product of necessity as well as civilization. It may also be assumed that, like in the individual, everything was very simple to start with in the race, and became more and more complex as time went on. Be that as it may, in a state of nature, every animal finally settles down to one definite form of nourishment. Every species subsists on some special type of food. That this type of food can be varied is well known. We know, for instance, that the anthropoid monkeys although primarily frugivorous, devouring very little organic matter, soon learn to enjoy any form of food, they can even be taught to drink and eat food that is at first very obnoxious to them. The highest form of animal organization, modern man, shows the greatest complexity and generality in this regard. No one is considered civilized unless he is very versatile in his tastes for all sorts of foods and dishes, regardless of their nutritional value. This, like all other habits,