All Things Considered
this word for the sake of scientific clearness was really a great
disadvantage to them in fairly discussing the matter. For the word
really involves one of those beggings of the question which make these
moral matters so difficult. It is quite a mistake to suppose that, when
a man desires an alcoholic drink, he necessarily desires alcohol.
Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer’s day along a dusty
English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. The fact
that beer has a very slight stimulating quality will be quite among the
smallest reasons that induce him to ask for it. In short, he will not
be in the least desiring alcohol; he will be desiring beer. But, of
course, the question cannot be settled in such a simple way. The real
difficulty which confronts everybody, and which especially confronts
doctors, is that the extraordinary position of man in the physical
universe makes it practically impossible to treat him in either one
direction or the other in a purely physical way. Man is an exception,
whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a
disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then
we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. In
neither case can we really argue very much from the body of man simply
considered as the body of an innocent and healthy animal. His body has
got too much mixed up with his soul, as we see in the supreme instance
of sex. It may be worth while uttering the warning to wealthy
philanthropists and idealists that this argument from the animal should
not be thoughtlessly used, even against the atrocious evils of excess;
it is an argument that proves too little or too much.
Doubtless, it is unnatural to be drunk. But then in a real sense it is
unnatural to be human. Doubtless, the intemperate workman wastes his
tissues in drinking; but no one knows how much the sober workman wastes
his tissues by working. No one knows how much the wealthy
philanthropist wastes his tissues by talking; or, in much rarer
conditions, by thinking. All the human things are more dangerous than
anything that affects the beasts—sex, poetry, property, religion. The
real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but
that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it
did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and
rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There
is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing
intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always
something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument
from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal
is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented
anything so bad as drunkenness—or so good as drink.
The pronouncement of these particular doctors is very clear and
uncompromising; in the modern atmosphere, indeed, it even deserves some
credit for moral courage. The majority of modern people, of course,
will probably agree with it in so far as it declares that alcoholic
drinks are often of supreme value in emergencies of illness; but many
people, I fear, will open their eyes at the emphatic terms in which
they describe such drink as considered as a beverage; but they are not
content with declaring that the drink is in moderation harmless: they
distinctly declare that it is in moderation beneficial. But I fancy
that, in saying this, the doctors had in mind a truth that runs
somewhat counter to the common opinion. I fancy that it is the
experience of most doctors that giving any alcohol for illness (though
often necessary) is about the most morally dangerous way of giving it.
Instead of giving it to a healthy person who has many other forms of
life, you are giving it to a desperate person, to whom it is the only
form of life. The invalid can hardly be blamed if by some accident of
his erratic and overwrought condition he comes to remember the thing as
the very water of vitality and to use it as such. For in so far as
drinking is really a sin it is not because drinking is wild, but
because drinking is tame; not in so far as it is anarchy, but in so far
as it is slavery. Probably the worst way to drink is to drink
medicinally. Certainly the safest way to drink is to drink carelessly;
that is, without caring much for anything, and especially not caring
for the drink.
The doctor, of course, ought to be able to do a great deal in the way
of restraining those individual cases where there is plainly an evil
thirst; and beyond that the only hope would seem to be in some
increase, or, rather, some concentration of ordinary public opinion on
the subject. I have always held consistently my own modest theory on
the subject. I believe that if by some method the local public-house
could be as definite and isolated a place as the local post-office or
the local railway station, if all types of people passed through it for
all types of refreshment, you would have the same safeguard against a
man behaving in a disgusting way in a tavern that you have at present
against his behaving in a disgusting way in a post-office: simply the
presence of his ordinary sensible neighbours. In such a place the kind
of lunatic who wants to drink an unlimited number of whiskies would be
treated with the same severity with which the post office authorities
would treat an amiable lunatic who had an appetite for licking an
unlimited number of stamps. It is a small matter whether in either case
a technical refusal would be officially employed. It is an essential
matter that in both cases the authorities could rapidly communicate
with the friends and family of the mentally afflicted person. At least,
the postmistress would not dangle a strip of tempting sixpenny stamps
before the enthusiast’s eyes as he was being dragged away with his
tongue out. If we made drinking open and official we might be taking
one step towards making it careless. In such things to be careless is
to be sane: for neither drunkards nor Moslems can be careless about
drink.
DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES
I once heard a man call this age the age of demagogues. Of this I can
only say, in the admirably sensible words of the angry coachman in
“Pickwick,” that “that remark’s political, or what is much the same, it
ain’t true.” So far from being the age of demagogues, this is really
and specially the age of mystagogues. So far from this being a time in
which things are praised because they are popular, the truth is that
this is the first time, perhaps, in the whole history of the world in
which things can be praised because they are unpopular. The demagogue
succeeds because he makes himself understood, even if he is not worth
understanding. But the mystagogue succeeds because he gets himself
misunderstood; although, as a rule, he is not even worth
misunderstanding. Gladstone was a demagogue: Disraeli a mystagogue. But
ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a
universality, but as what the tradesmen call “a speciality.” We all
know this, for instance, about modern art. Michelangelo and Whistler
were both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other
obviously private, or, rather, not obvious at all. Michelangelo’s
frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but they are
plainly meant to strike the popular judgment. Whistler’s pictures seem
often meant to escape the popular judgment; they even seem meant to
escape the popular admiration. They are elusive, fugitive; they fly
even from praise. Doubtless many artists in Michelangelo’s day declared
themselves to be great artists, although they were unsuccessful. But
they did not declare themselves great artists because they were
unsuccessful: that is the peculiarity of our own time, which has a
positive bias against the populace.
Another case of the same kind of thing can be found in the latest
conceptions of humour. By the wholesome tradition of mankind, a joke
was a thing meant to amuse men; a joke which did not amuse them was a
failure, just as a fire which did not warm them was a failure. But we
have seen the process of secrecy and aristocracy introduced even into
jokes. If a joke falls flat, a small school of æsthetes only ask us to
notice the wild grace of its falling and its perfect flatness after its
fall. The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company
has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was
not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane
individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and
uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They
have made laughter lonelier than tears.
There is a third thing to which the mystagogues have recently been
applying the methods of a secret society: I mean manners. Men who
sought to rebuke rudeness used to represent manners as reasonable and
ordinary; now they seek to represent them as private and peculiar.
Instead of saying to a man who blocks up a street or the fireplace,
“You ought to know better than that,” the moderns say, “You, of course,
don’t know better than that.”
I have just been reading an amusing book by Lady Grove called “The
Social Fetich,” which is a positive riot of this new specialism and
mystification. It is due to Lady Grove to say that she has some of the
freer and more honourable qualities of the old Whig aristocracy, as
well as their wonderful worldliness and their strange faith in the
passing fashion of our politics. For instance, she speaks of Jingo
Imperialism with a healthy English contempt; and she perceives stray
and striking truths, and records them justly—as, for instance, the
greater democracy of the Southern and Catholic countries of Europe. But
in her dealings with social formulæ here in England she is, it must
frankly be said, a common mystagogue. She does not, like a decent
demagogue, wish to make people understand; she wishes to make them
painfully conscious of not understanding. Her favourite method is to
terrify people from doing things that are quite harmless by telling
them that if they do they are the kind of people who would do other
things, equally harmless. If you ask after somebody’s mother (or
whatever it is), you are the kind of person who would have a
pillow-case, or would not have a pillow-case. I forget which it is; and
so, I dare say, does she. If you assume the ordinary dignity of a
decent citizen and say that you don’t see the harm of having a mother
or a pillow-case, she would say that of course _you_ wouldn’t. This is
what I call being a mystagogue. It is more vulgar than being a
demagogue; because it is much easier.
The primary point I meant to emphasise is that this sort of aristocracy
is essentially a new sort. All the old despots were demagogues; at
least, they were demagogues whenever they were really trying to please
or impress the demos. If they poured out beer for their vassals it was
because both they and their vassals had a taste for beer. If (in some
slightly different mood) they poured melted lead on their vassals, it
was because both they and their vassals had a strong distaste for
melted lead. But they did not make any mystery about either of the two
substances. They did not say, “You don’t like melted lead?.... Ah! no,
of course, _you_ wouldn’t; you are probably the kind of person who
would prefer beer.... It is no good asking you even to imagine the
curious undercurrent of psychological pleasure felt by a refined person
under the seeming shock of melted lead.” Even tyrants when they tried
to be popular, tried to give the people pleasure; they did not try to
overawe the people by giving them something which they ought to regard