NARCOTICS 193 



devote their lives to self-indulgence ; but this form of self- 

 indulgence does not appeal to them. It is unbelievable that 

 such people spend their lives valiantly resisting exceedingly 

 urgent temptation. No doubt many moderate men exercise 

 a certain amount of self-control. Warned by unpleasant 

 experience they drink less than they would otherwise do. 

 They are easily able to exercise the necessary restraint 

 because they are not driven by their desires as by a tempest. 

 It is this comparatively small amount of self-control exercised 

 by people of this class that has given rise to the fiction that 

 a man is sober or drunken mainly because he does, or does 

 not, exercise self-control. 



322. The truth is that most men and women who drink at 

 all and can afford it take alcohol more in proportion to their 

 desires than in proportion to their lack of self-control. One 

 may observe this every day at dinner. As a rule the people 

 one meets there are manifestly not under the influence of 

 strong temptation. They take as much alcohol as they are 

 inclined for. More would be unpleasant, or at least not very 

 pleasant, to them. Indeed it is hardly possible for a man 

 who is strongly tempted by alcohol to be a moderate drinker. 

 The human will is not strong enough to resist a passion so 

 overmastering when it is continually fed by small indulg- 

 ences. Such men must, as a rule, be drunkards or total 

 abstainers. 



323. It is not intended to deny the merits of self-control. 

 Beyond doubt many a man is now an abstainer because he 

 had the resolution and courage to exercise self-control. 

 Indeed it is probable that most men, even habitual drunkards, 

 exercise some restraint and drink less than they otherwise 

 would. The essential thing is, not that men do not exercise 

 restraint, but that different men are so constituted mentally 

 that they differ vastly in the strength of their desires, in the 

 strength of their cravings for intoxication, and that, as a 

 rule, drinkers are drunken or temperate, not mainly because 

 they exercise less or more self-control, but mainly because 

 they are more or less tempted. Abstainers form a class by 

 themselves; they are not exposed to the same extent to 

 what may become very urgent temptation. Of drinkers it is 

 certain that most if not all moderate men are so constituted 

 that their desires are comparatively weak. It is equally 

 certain that all drunkards are so constituted that their 

 desires are very strong. No man unless he were strongly 

 tempted would systematically and regularly take doses of 

 poison which, besides entailing on him a multitude of other 







