Measure.
There are many objects, as to which *the question of duty is a question of
more or less*. To this class belong not only food and drink, but all forms
of luxury, indulgence, recreation, and amusement. In all these the choice
lies between excess, abstinence, and temperance. The tendency to excess is
intensely strong, when not restrained by prudence or principle. This
tendency is by no means confined to the appetite for intoxicating liquors,
though modern usage has restricted to excess in this particular the term
_intemperance_, which properly bears a much more extended signification.
There is reason to believe that there is fully as much intemperance in
food as in drink, and with at least equally ruinous consequences as to
capacity, character, health, and life,—with this difference only, that
gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while drunkenness maddens; and that the
glutton is merely a dead weight on the community, while the drunkard is an
active instrument of annoyance and peril. There are probably fewer who
sink into an absolutely beastly condition by intemperance in food than by
intemperance in drink; but of persons who do not expose themselves to open
scandal, those whose brains are muddled, whose sensibilities are
coarsened, and whose working power is impaired by over-eating, are more
numerous than those in whom similar effects are produced by over-free
indulgence in intoxicating drinks. Intemperance in amusements, also, is
not uncommon, and would undoubtedly be more prevalent than it is, were not
the inevitable necessity of labor imposed on most persons from a very
early period. In this matter the limit between temperance and excess is
aptly fixed by the term _recreation_, as applied to all the gay and
festive portions of life. _Re-creation_ is making over, that is, replacing
the waste of tissue, brain-power, and physical and mental energy
occasioned by hard work. Temperance permits the most generous indulgence
of sport, mirth, and gayety that can be claimed as needful or conducive to
this essential use, but excludes all beyond this measure.
*Abstinence* from all forms of luxury and recreation, and from food and
drink beyond the lowest demands of subsistence, has, under various
cultures, been regarded as a duty, as an appropriate penance for sin, as a
means of spiritual growth, as a token of advanced excellence. This notion
had its origin in the dualistic philosophy or theology of the East. It was
believed that the sovereignty of the universe was divided between the
semi-omnipotent principles of good and evil, and that the earth and the
human body were created by the evil principle,—by Satan or his analogue.
Hence it was inferred that the evil principle could be abjured and defied,
and the good principle propitiated in no way so effectually as by
renouncing the world and mortifying the body. Fasting, as a religious
observance, originated in this belief. It was imported from the East. The
Hebrew fasts were not established by Moses; they were evidently borrowed
from Babylon, and seem to have been regarded with no favor by the
prophets. The Founder of Christianity prescribed no fast, nor have we any
reason to believe that his immediate disciples regarded abstinence as a
duty. Christian asceticism in all its forms is, like the Jewish fasts, of
Oriental origin, and had its first developments in close connection with
those hybrids of Christianity and Oriental philosophy of which the dualism
already mentioned forms a prominent feature.
With regard to all objects of appetite, desire, and enjoyment,
*temperance* is evidently fitting, and therefore a duty, unless there be
specific reasons for abstinence. Temperance demands and implies moral
activity. In the temperate man the appetites, desires, and tastes have
their continued existence, and need vigilant and wise control, so that he
has always work to do, a warfare to wage; and as conflict with the
elements gives vigor to the body, so does conflict with the body add
strength continually to the moral nature. The ascetic may have a hard
struggle at the outset; but his aim is to extirpate his imagined enemies
in the bodily affections, and when these are completely mortified, or put
to death, there remains no more for him to do, and moral idleness and
lethargy ensue. Simon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years on pillars of
different heights, had probably stupefied his moral faculties and
sensibilities as effectually as he had crushed to death the appetites and
cravings of the body. It must not be forgotten that the body no less than
the soul is of God’s building, and that in his purpose all the powers and
capacities of the body are good in their place and uses, and therefore to
be controlled and governed, not destroyed or suppressed. The mediæval
saint, feeding on the offal of the streets, was unwittingly committing
sacrilege, by degrading and imbruting an appetite for which God had
provided decent and wholesome nutriment.
Temperance is better than abstinence, also, because *the moderate use of
the objects of desire is a source of refining and elevating influences*.
It is not without meaning that, in common speech, the possession or loss
of the senses is made synonymous with mental sanity or derangement. By the
temperate gratification of the senses the mind is sustained in its
freshness, vigor, and serenity; while when they are perverted by excess,
impaired by age, or deadened by disease, in that same proportion the
mental powers are distracted, enfeebled, or benumbed. Taste, the faculty
through which we become conversant with the whole realm of beauty, and
than which devotion has no more efficient auxiliary, derives its name from
what the ascetic deems the lowest animal enjoyment, which, however, has
its range of the very highest ministries. The table is the altar of
home-love and of hospitality, and there are clustered around it unnumbered
courtesies, kindnesses, and charities that make a large part of the charm
and joy of life. So far is thoughtfulness for its graceful and generous
service from indicating a low type of character, that there is hardly any
surer index of refinement and elegant culture than is furnished by the
family meal. Similar remarks apply to the entire range of pleasurable
objects and experiences. While there are none of them in which excess is
safe, they all, when enjoyed in moderation, stimulate the mental powers,
develop and train the æsthetic faculty, and multiply beneficial relations
alike with nature and with society.
*Temperance*, rather than abstinence, *is needed on grounds connected with
social economy*. Labor for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a
tithe of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a nation of idlers.
It is the demand for objects of enjoyment, taste, luxury, that floats
ships, dams rivers, stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates
the wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance that sustain and
aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, wants, and burdens; while moderate,
yet generous use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of universal
industry, progress, comfort, and happiness.
But there are *cases in which abstinence*, rather than temperance, *is a
duty*.
*Past excess* may render temperance hardly possible. From the derangement
consequent upon excess, an appetite may lose the capacity of healthy
exercise. In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and useless
limb, we should suppress the appetite which we can no longer control.
Physiological researches have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating
drinks, when long continued, produces an organic condition, in which the
slightest indulgence is liable to excite a craving so intense as to
transcend the control of the will.
*Inherited proclivities* may, in like manner, render temperance so
difficult as to make abstinence a duty. It is conceivable that a nation or
a community may, by the prevalence of excess in past generations, be
characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance as to render general
abstinence a prerequisite to general temperance.
Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many around us our *example* in
what we may enjoy innocently would be ensnaring and perilous. The
recreation, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has become a source of
corruption, it may be our duty to forego. The indulgence, safe for us,
which would be unsafe for our associates, it may be incumbent on us to
resign. The food, the drink which would make our table a snare to our
guests, we may be bound to refrain from, though for ourselves there be in
it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which
each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one
is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man
a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an
amusement or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and
there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a question
of social morality falling under this head. The joyous side of life must
be maintained. The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events have
recreations, games, festivities, and of these there is not a single
element, material, or feature that has not been abused, perverted, or
invested with associations offensive to a pure moral taste. To disown and
oppose them all in the name of virtue, is to prescribe a degree of
abstinence which can have the assent of those only who have outlived the
capacity of enjoyment. The more judicious course is to favor, or at least
to tolerate such modes of indulgence as may for the present be the least
liable to abuse, or such as may in prospect be the safest in their moral
influence, and by sanctioning these to render more emphatic and efficient
the disapproval and rejection of such as are intrinsically wrong and evil.