Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1891-10-22
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
MORALITY AND ALCOHOLISM.
A Potential Quality ofthe state of Drunk
enness.

A Potential Quality ofthe State of Drunk
enness.
DIR. T. Wright, in considering the in
fluence of alcohol on the moral consti-
tuition of man, remarks:
1.-The manners of men as they relate
to questions of duty, obligation, SYM
patty. and the movements of PERSONAL
ity, either for good or evil, are usually
known as morals. Manners are much
involved with considerations of in
centive, motive, design, intent and pur-
pose, and they are thereby materially
colored and modified. The influence
of alcohol on morals is immediate. 1t
is perceptible to observation quickly
after alcohol is taken into the system;
but it varies greatly, both in kind and
intensity, with the stage of drinking.
''In general terms, it may be said
that no instance has been recorded
where the influence of alcohol upon
good man, when carried to its full ex-
tent has failed to faint his moral
nature. Nor has an instance ever been
known of character so base, so bestial
and inhuman that alcohol could not
sink it still lower. 1t seems, in fact,
true, as far as the worlds experience
extends, that the depths of depravity
into which alcohol may plunge the
human soul have never yet been
sounded. In its position as wrecker
of good morals, alcohol stands proud
ly eminent Few things are SO bad as
to have no good in them; but, aside
from certain properties available in
therapeutics, alcohol seems, in its i'm
pressions on the human organism, to
be singularly bad. In all its long and
dreary history, it has never been known
to add anything whatever to mans
real character for piety, or sympathy,
or love to his family, or kindness 10
his fellow-man.
"Alcohol deadens the conscience of
anyone who partakes of it, let his mo-
tives in drinking be what they may. The
casual drinlxer often partakes of alcohol
without any clearly-defined purpose,
certainly without the slightest intent OF
committing an unlawful act. Yet the
poison affects him as it does others; it
paralyzes his conscience, the acut eness
of his sensibilities is blunted and he is
peculiarly liable to be led into improper
and unlawful conduct. The drinxer is
deprived of intellectual soundness, as
well as moral capacity; and yet the
law says drunkenness is no excuse for
crime.
Shakespeare knew the deadly spell
that alcohol casts on morality:
II can fasten but one cup upon him
With that which be hath drunk tonight al.
ready,
He'll be as fun Of quarrel and ofense
| AS my young mistress dog
saith honest lago
ut appears to be a potential quality
of drunkenness to depress the moral ca
pacities and thus foster the assaults of
temptation, whether it comes in the
guise of folly or of criminality. The
corruption of the moral system may be
observed in the small vices of drunken
ness as well as in the surprising turpi-
tude of its conspicuous outrages. The
crimes of drunkenness are not com
monty the outcome of generalization
and brooding malevolence. The natural
offense against their exhibition and
activity, the nervous basis of the moral
constitution, is disabled While this
nerve defect in drunkenness may, to
sorne extent, be consistent with pre-
meditation and malice in the commits
sion of crime, yet the very defect is the
more dangerous to society from the
fact that it is withdrawn from the
supervision of the rational mind.
"a person intoxicated will commit
offenses in thought, in speech and in
conduct which in his sober moods he
would view with adherence. The ten
dency of drunkenness is inevitably to-
ward crime"
Such are the effects resulting from
the use of alcohol. And the man who
INDUCES in it or hampers with it ex-
poses himself to these dangers He is
liable to become raving maniac or a
ferocious brute, making his home
hell and his existence a curse to all
around him.
As John Bright justly says:
'sTo drink deeply-to be drunk-is
sin; this is not denied At what point
does the taking of strong drink become
a sin? We suppose man perfectly
sober; one glass excites him, and to
some extent disturbs the state of So
briefly, aud SO far destroys it: another
glass excites him still more; a third
fires his eye, loosens his tongue, in
flames his passions; fourth increases
all this; fifth makes him foolish and
partially insane; sixth makes him
savage; a seventh or eighth makes him
stupid-a senseless. degraded man. But
when does the sin begin? At the first
step toward complete intoxication or
a. the sixth, seventh or eighth? Is not
every step from the natural state OF
the system toward the state of stupid
intoxication an advance in sin and
yielding to the unwearied tempter of
the soul?~-Alienist and Necrologist-