158 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS. 



or kindly speaking, faith in abstinence, he may be a strong man 

 through life on cold water. His strength will be in proportion to 

 his dose of faith. A batch of abstinence soldiers working in emu- 

 lation against a batch accustomed to stimulants, will generally be 

 the conquerors. New systems, and especially self-denials, have the 

 advantage of enlisting faith, the wonder-worker. The victories of 

 Mohammedanism were due in part to the combination of a religious 

 faith with a faith in abstinence; a union of two powerful springs 

 affecting the soul and the body. Torrents of passion which had 

 been wont to vent themselves in pleasures, were suddenly stopped 

 off, and they burst through another channel, in faith and energetic 

 fighting. Faiths, however, wear out in many cases, and the truth 

 of things is the ultimate level, unaffected by mortal enthusiasm. 



Successful abstinence shows that stimulation is a law of existence, 

 for an abstinence neither hereditary nor stimulating is not kept up. 

 The most sober people have their " pocket pistols," and take their 

 own stimulants as neat as they can get them. For there are two 

 sides of the cellar, two decanters of spirit, the body and the soul. 

 Take away the bodily decanter, and life itself must furnish an ex- 

 citement that will be equivalent. There are other stimulants be- 

 sides drink that cheat us of our senses, other drunkenness than that 

 of the public house. Teetotalism might be drunk with its own 

 cause, with the additional indecorum of exhibiting its disgrace in 

 Exeter Hall. 



Abstinence excludes temperance or the faculty of balance, which 

 communicates with reason, the temperance of the upper degree. 

 For the sake of the evil it bans both the good and the evil. It is 

 the suicide of choice. Similarly, vowed celibacy excludes chastity, 

 and is a knot tied in the will against both cleanness and uncleanness. 

 This is not healing, but castration. But there are those who require 

 these extirpations, at least with our present means of cure. " If 

 thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; if thy 

 right hand offend thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter into 

 life," &c. &c. Thence we note that total abstinence is a thing com- 

 manded, and a means entering into an ultimate plan of fulness of 

 life. But there is an if in the case — " If thine eye offend thee !" 



Teetotalism reasons without this if and brandishes its surgical 



