第56章
Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind which work independently of the will, - poets and artists, for instance, who follow their imagination in their creative moments, instead of keeping it in hand as your logicians and practical men do with their reasoning faculty, - such men are too apt to call in the mechanical appliances to help them govern their intellects.
- He means they get drunk, - said the young fellow already alluded to by name.
Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge in the use of inebriating fluids? said the divinity-student.
If you think you are strong enough to bear what I am going to say, - I replied, - I will talk to you about this.But mind, now, these are the things that some foolish people call DANGEROUS subjects, -as if these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen than out of sight.Now the true way to deal with those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a piece of silk round their HEADS, and pull them out very cautiously.If you only break them off, they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the person who has the misfortune to harbor one of them.Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is to find out where the head lies.
Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice of intemperance.What is the head of it, and where does it lie? For you may depend upon it, there is not one of these vices that has not a head of its own, - an intelligence, - a meaning, - a certain virtue, I was going to say, - but that might, perhaps, sound paradoxical.I have heard an immense number of moral physicians lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them would always insist that the creature had no head at all, but was all body and tail.So I have found a very common result of their method to be that the string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as bad as ever.The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in church by attorney, and make the best statement that the facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be much greater than it is.For the arguments by which the Devil prevails are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most rarely answers.The way to argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it, - to say that it has no attractions, when everybody knows that it has, - but rather to let it make out its case just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons furnished by the Divine armory.Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true shape.If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits would have known how to deal with him.
That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly clear.Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with religious excitement, oftenest with love.Ninon de l'Enclos said she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak.
There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation which, in themselves, and without regard to their consequences, might be considered as positive improvements of the persons affected.When the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the flagging spirit kindled, - before the trains of thought become confused or the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed, - just at the moment when the whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box, -it would be hard to say that a man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his meaner wits about him.The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff.
[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough in those friends who examine these records to commit to their candor.
A PERSON at table asked me whether I "went in for rum as a steady drink?" - His manner made the question highly offensive, but Irestrained myself, and answered thus:-]
Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to the product distilled from molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard.Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum.Champagne, "the foaming wine of Eastern France," in rum.Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as "The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light,"is rum.Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion! Iaddress myself to the company.- I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people.I trust that Ipractice both.But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if Ithought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking.My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards.The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt, - sometimes a misfortune, - as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, - but oftenest of all a PUNISHMENT.