008 V 'he Philosophy of Drunken ness. [J iw E . 



are rarely united together. In such people, the animal propensities prevail over 

 the moral and intellectual ones. They are prone to comhativeness and sensuality ; 

 are either very good-natured or extremely quarrelsome. All their passions are 

 keen: they will fight for their friends, or with them, as occasion requires. They 

 are talkative from the beginning, and, during confirmed intoxication, perfectly 

 obstreperous. It is men of this class who are the heroes of all drunken companies, 

 the patrons of masonic lodges, the presidents and getters-up of jovial meetings. 

 With them, eating and d/ inking are the grand ends o( human life. Look at their 

 eye?, how they sparkle at the sight of wine, and how their lips smack and their teeth 

 water in the neighbourhood of a good dinner : they would scent out a banquet in 

 Siberia. When intoxicated, their passions are highly excited: the energies of a 

 hundred minds then seem concentrated into one focus. Their mirth, their anger, 

 their love, their folly, are all equally intense and unquenchable. Such men cannot 

 conceal their feelings. In drunkenness, the veil is removed from them, and their 

 characters stand revealed, as in a glass, to the eye of the beholder. The Roderic 

 Random of Smollett had much of this temperament, blended, however, with more 

 intellect than usually belongs to it.'' 



We doubt here again the <* natural" disposition to drink which, we 

 should say as far as nature went men in the same societies, and in the 

 same climates, would have, pretty nearly all in the same degree excepting 

 those few who, from constitution, had their stomachs constantly affected 

 by the liquor. Almost all savages are great drunkards, where they have 

 the means; and the Turks, who arc forbidden to use wine, have found out 

 an indemnity in tobacco and opium. The difference between those per- 

 sons who drink habitually, and those who do not drink, in a civilized com- 

 munity, seems to us to depend not much upon any constitutional disposi- 

 tion or indisposition for liquor but rather in the inducements which the 

 party in question may have to indulge, or forbear the practice. Thus, 

 among the drunkards of habit, great numbers of persons drink inveterately ; 

 because a habit which, originally, did not prejudice them -take the case of 

 soldiers has grown into a habit too strong to be resisted. But. still, drink- 

 ing as they do, to their own ruin, such persons will be found, in general, 

 as it seems to us, to labour rather under a general inability to govern their 

 natural passions, collectively, than under any peculiar constitutional love 

 of liquor. Thus, in the case of women who drink to which the author 

 afterwards alludes the women who here abandon themselves to a cus- 

 tom which society detests,' will, in general, be found to be those who have 

 held the sirict rules of etiquette and decorum something at nought. A 

 woman whose general habits have been those of reserve and guardedness, 

 of industry and cleanliness and such generally as are dictated by a desire 

 to acquire or maintain high reputation in society will seldom be found 

 lapsing into the habit of drinking. This fault is seldom the first, and still 

 less frequently comes alone. 



The sketches of the melancholy, phlegmatic, and nervous drunkard are 

 all good ; but we have only room for one picture : it shall be that of the 



" Surly Drunkard. Some men are not excited to mirth by intoxication. On 

 the contrary, it renders them gloomy and discontented. Even those who in the 

 sober state are sufficiently gay, become occasionally thus altered. A great pro- 

 pensity to take offence is a characteristic among persons of this temperament. They 

 are suspicious, and very often mischievous. If at some former period they have 

 had a difference with any of the company, they are sure to revive it, although, pro- 

 bably, it has been long ago cemented on both sides, and even forgotten by the 

 other party. People of this "description are very unpleasant companions. They 

 are in general so foul-tongued, quarrelsome, and indecent in conversation, that 

 established clubs of drinkers have made it a practice to exclude them from their 

 society." 



