The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-29
STRONG DRINK AND MODERN cIVILIZA-
TON,


Washington dispatches speak OF proposed
coalition of unlicensed liquor retailers with
the Sons Of Temperance to promote the pas
sage of prohibitory liquor law by Congress.
law. or a limited association, has, per Sc,
about as much power to conquer the general
desire for alcoholic stimulants, by operating
against the various methods of INDUCING the
appetite, as it would have to put an end to
tsrnadoes and earthquakes, by forbidding
ships and houses to be exposed to the dam
GERS of either. For it is not the manufacture,
the retail or the wholesale of alcoholic liquids,
that is the real matter for reformatory enter
prise to take hold of but it is the alcoholic
appetite, or, TO speak more strictly, those con-
ditions of the life of man, physical and men
tai, by which the alcoholic appetite is gener-
ated. The temperance reformers fell, from
the first, into a fundamental mistake, mis-
take which has constituted the fatal vice of
nearly all the plans adopted in this age for
suppressing an ever increasing multiplicity of
evils. Like the penal law, like the uriwrit-
ten code of social communication and excom-
munication, like the shallow practitioner of
medicine who treats symptoms without refer
ence to the nature, the seat, and the origin
of the disease, they have let causes
alone and devoted their whole attention to
consequences they have attacked, with zeal
as furious as misdirected. this. that, and the
other manifestation of an evil, as if the sign
were the parent of the thing signifed. Their
war upon liquor houses, while in no instance
greatly reducing the amount of drunkenness,
has done no more to dry up the source of the
alcoholic appetite, than some crack-brained
engineer might accomplish in an attempt to
stop the cataract of Niagara by draining off
the water at some point below it. II strong
drink is unnatural and unwholesome, even
when moderately used, it is not more SO than
the high-pressure scale, and the extremely
complicated modes, of living, working, think
ing, universally prevailing in the most civiliz-
ed countries. Can the teetotaler, who insists
on correcting abuse of stimulating beverage
by absolute prohibition of the use, point to
a single one of the characteristic activities of
our modern civilization in which excess is
the exception, and moderation the rule? We
doubt it. Strong drink, generally INDUCED in,
is simply an expression of general excess.
Individual cases of its abuse in the shape of
maudlin or frantic drunkenness are certainly
revolving enough; but it is seen in its worst
aspect when philosophically regarded as
symptomatic of prevalent conditions of
modern society, and of peryading vitiation
of the physical and mental energies of men.
| While the typical man of the age shall con-
tinue to live, with respect to business, pleas
ure, and even duty, like steam engine,
driven by maniacal engineer, the task of
weaving him from alcoholic liquors, or from
stimulants of some kind, will be hopeless; for
they will continue to be necessary as fuel to
keep up the steam, or as grease to prevent
the machine from coming to dead stop by
| its own friction. Parton, though advocating
total abstinence, is still considerate enough to
| say: "Perhaps, if we were all to stop our
| guzzling suddenly, aoihtoad disseminating our
| other bad habits, we should rather lose by it
than gain. Alcohol supports us in doing
wrongl 1t prevents our immediate destruc-
ton" Exactly. There is precisely where the
great trouble lies. 1t is not simply reform
with reference to strong drink that is
needed to overcome the particular evil in this
regard, but it is universal reform-a reform
SO wide and fundamental that scarcely less
than the unanimous consent and cooperation
of civilized society would be able to effect it.
Parton predicts that "the coming man will
not drink when he is WELL" This leaves the
door wide open for the present man to drink
whenever he is unwell and when is he not
unwell? Say, if you will, that the chronic
sickness of mind and body, of brain and mus
Gle, is not necessary, but is the product of un-
natural conditions of life. Very well. But
| you must admit, Mr.. Parton, that as long as
| these conditions are maintained the use
of strong drink will be, SO to speak, natural
attendant of an unnatural system, and its alb
solute disuse, poison though it be, altogether
out of the question.
1.-THE coming man will not drink wine. "
| Perhaps. But, if SO, he will be the man of
the coming, not of the present civilization.
The question now demanding consideration
| is how to hasten the advent of that potential
type of humanity by extricating the man of
| our time from conditions which bind him to
general system of morbid excess, and send
him in dizzy career to an unknown destina-
ton, like Mazeppa strapped to the wild horse
of the Ukraine. The man of our era must
have time for ripe thought, before he can rise
| to the hight of the great argument on whose
pinnacle he may see his own image trans
| figured into the regenerated humanity of the
| future. There is terribly little rest, these
days, in the sense of regeneration, and still
less of that silence which has been well de-
scribed as "the fermentation of thought. "
People, for the most part, only dream that
they rest, while excitement still preys upon
their blood and marrow. They imagine that
they think something, when they only men,
tally humble over phantoms of words that
are not even the shadows Of anything that
has either the soul or the symmetry of truth,
/ that CON osearf n riohtfrl axistance on earth