What are we to conclude from all this? Are we to knock the heads out of
all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men
who do not follow our example? Taking together all that science and
observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: That, to a
person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not
necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful. This truth becomes so
clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who
means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts; for
if he does, he will never again be able to lift a glass of wine to his
lips, nor contemplate a foaming tankard, nor mix his evening toddy, nor
hear the pop and melodious gurgle of champagne, with that fine
complacency which irradiates his countenance now, and renders it so
pleasing a study to those who sit on the other side of the table. No;
never again! Even the flavor of those fluids will lose something of
their charm. The conviction will obtrude itself upon his mind at most
inopportune moments, that this drinking of wine, beer, and whiskey, to
which we are so much addicted, is an enormous delusion. If the
teetotalers would induce some rational being--say that public
benefactor, Dr. Willard Parker of New York--to collect into one small
volume the substance of all the investigations alluded to in this
article,--the substance of Dr. Beaumont's precious little book, the
substance of the French professors' work, and the others,--adding no
comment except such as might be necessary to elucidate the
investigators' meaning, it could not but carry conviction to every
candid and intelligent reader that spirituous drinks are to the healthy
system an injury necessarily, and in all cases.
The Coming Man, then, so long as he enjoys good health,--which he
usually will from infancy to hoary age,--will _not_ drink wine, nor, of
course, any of the coarser alcoholic dilutions. To that unclouded and
fearless intelligence, science will be the supreme law; it will be to
him more than the Koran is to a Mohammedan, and more than the
Infallible Church is to a Roman Catholic. Science, or, in other words,
the law of God as revealed in nature, life, and history, and as
ascertained by experiment, observation, and thought,--this will be the
teacher and guide of the Coming Man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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