606 The Philosophy of Drunkenness. [JUNE, 



whatever that may be. The combative man will quarrel, the sensualist will love, 

 the detractor will abuse his neighbour. I have known exceptions, but they are 

 few in number. At one time they seemed more numerous, but closer observation 

 convinced me that most of those whom I thought drunkenness had libelled, in- 

 herited, at bottom, the genuine dispositions which it brought forth." 



We do not entirely agree with Mr. Macnish upon this point. His principle 

 that " in wine there is truth," has age to entitle it to respect ; but we can- 

 not admit that a man's *' natural disposition" discovers itself in drunken- 

 ness ; because, modified as our habits are in civilized society, by restraint 

 and education, it becomes difficult to say often what is a man's natural, or 

 what is his acquired, disposition ; and, perhaps, the distinction is unim- 

 portant. As far as we can judge, we should say, that naturally there 

 will not be a great deal of variety in the characters of men : they are 

 savages, and have all, pretty nearly in the same degree, the passions and 

 the vices of savages. " Naturally," we take it. man seldom sees more than, 

 one object of good the immediate gratification of his desire; and this 

 object circumstances may lead two different men to pursue in different 

 ways ; but, still, they do pursue it. 



The first great lesson which education teaches a man and the fact of 

 which he has little idea in his natural state is, that his present desire may 

 be foregone for his future advantage. This is perhaps the grand lesson to 

 which all civilization tends, and the inculcation of which it is sufficiently 

 difficult to accomplish. Naturally, we apprehend there can be little doubt 

 that every man has an inclination to possess himself of the house, the wife, 

 the pocket-handkerchief of his neighbour. Small children, left in groupes 

 together, instinctively take the sugar-plums, toys, &c., which are the pro- 

 perty of each other. Man naturally is, under all circumstances (those 

 occasional exceptions from which no principle is free, of course, admitted) 

 tyrannous and cruel. The individual who finds his bodily strength supe- 

 rior to that of those about him will indulge his bad passions openly, and 

 by quarrel and combat. He who feels that, in this sort of contest, he 

 shall be worsted, changes his mode of warfare, and will have recourse to 

 fraud. But each still pursues the same object, and by means equally in 

 the view of civilized society objectionable or unworthy. 



In fact, we may go farther than this. Man's wants apart, it cannot be 

 doubted that there is about him, naturally, an appetite for cruelty and 

 insult. An infant strikes as instinctively as it swallows. Observe a flock 

 of sheep, driven through the streets of town : not a boy approaches but 

 will go out of his way to hunt and maltreat them. A horse fallen and 

 dying ; an Italian child selling images, or shewing a marmot ; any object 

 which may be attacked, and put to pain with impunity, is sure to be seen 

 surrounded with tormentors. This is not at all confined to the merely 

 vulgar and uneducated : all lads are disposed to ferocity ; and the urchins 

 of Westminster or Eton require as severe a control or perhaps more severe 

 than the boys of a lower degree, to restrain their temper; because they 

 have a touch of the pride and insolence which arises out of the observance 

 paid to their superior rank, without as yet any sense of that deference 

 to public opinion, which forms some restraint upon their uncles or 

 fathers. 



Therefore, although, in society, "life," as Mr. Macnish says, may be "all 

 a disguise/' yet, the disguise, being universal and worn from first to last 

 seems, in fact, to us to become (as far as we have practically any thing to 

 do with the matter) the reality. We doubt very much whether it be a fair 



