The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions; Or, Joints In Our Social ArmourRunciman, James
Philosophy
The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions; Or, Joints In Our Social Armour
Runciman, James
Alcoholism -- Great Britain; Social problems; Temperance
to a race that was ultimately to develop into Shakespeares and Newtons
and Napoleons. In all the enormous series that had its first term in the
primeval ooze and its last term in man, one supreme motive had actuated
every individual. The desire of life, growing more intense with each new
development, was the main influence that secured continuance of life.
The beings that had the desire of life scantily developed were overcome
in the struggle for existence by those in whom the desire of life was
strong. Thus in man, after countless generations, the wish for life had
become the master-power holding dominion over the body. As the various
branches of the human race moved upward, the passionate love of life
grew so strong that no individual could bear to think of resigning this
pleasing anxious being and proceeding to fall into dumb forgetfulness.
Men saw their comrades stricken by some dark force that they could not
understand. The strong limbs grew lax first, and then hopelessly stiff;
the bright eye was dulled; and it soon became necessary to hide the
inanimate thing under the soil. It was impossible for those who had the
quick blood flowing in their veins to believe that a time would come
when feeling would be known no more. This fierce clinging to life had at
last its natural outcome. Men found that at night, when the quicksilver
current of sleep ran through their veins and their bodies were
quiescent, they had none the less thoughts as of life. The body lay
still; but something in alliance with the body gave them impressions of
vivid waking vigour and action. Men fancied that they fought, hunted,
loved, hated; and yet all the time their limbs were quiet. What could it
be that forced the slumbering man to believe himself to be in full
activity? It must be some invisible essence independent of the bones and
muscles. Therefore when a man died it followed that the body which was
buried must have parted permanently from the mystic "something" that
caused dreams. That mystic "something" therefore lived on after the
death of the body. The bodily organs were mere accidental encumbrances;
the real "man" was the viewless creature that had the visions of the
night. The body might go; but the thing which by and by was named
"soul" was imperishable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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