Further, the relation between cigars and spiritedness may explain why cigars are now for the first time gaining a significant number of female disciples. For as women continue to enter the traditionally male world of competition, many are beating men at their own game by using the same tactics of gaining power. And with the tactics have come the symbols. Most significantly, however, the relative rarity of pipe-smoking in America is a telling sign of its current intellectual crisis. It should also be no surprise in this pipeless age that the ferocious battle over tobacco has missed the real point about its addictive power.
Tobacco holds sway over the soul as much as it does the body.
The qualities it takes in its various forms make it a near irresistible complement to the particular desire dominant in an individual's soul. How we react to these forms says as much about our attitude toward those desires as it does toward the weed itself. Michael P. Foley is a Ph.D. candidate in theology at Boston College. He is currently completing his dissertation on St. Augustine.