The science temperance text-book : in relation to morals, chemistry, physiology, criticism, and history / [Frederic Richard Lees].

  • Frederic Richard Lees
Date:
1884-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science temperance text-book : in relation to morals, chemistry, physiology, criticism, and history / [Frederic Richard Lees]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/264 page 3
    The Bugbear 1 Fallacy of Extremes.’ everything is relative, and the other that everything right is absolutely right, how can the dispute be settled? So it is between the fanatics of abstinence (who declare that death is in the very smallest pot), and the moderate drinkers who only drink when they are thirsty, or tired. All drinkers are not vicious drinkers, and to those who do not confound use with abuse, and moderation with excess, abstinence seems to bear the same relation to sobriety as fanaticism to religion.” * The Temperance-argument is the very contrary to any ‘ fallacy of extremes.’ It ridicules and rejects the shallow conceptions expressed by this end of a stick, and the other end of a stick. It is founded upon the actual relations of things, and these, primarily, are never settled by such phrases as pole and anti-pole, big or little, much or minim, nor even by equators, middles, or mediums ! Men who talk and write after that fashion may be set down as mere parrots, who have no ideas behind their sounds and signs. They are literary patchers, not true tailors even, as absurd in their way as the Herr Schneider who should persist in refusing to cut and shape his cloth to the form of the body he had to fit, and make a 1 middle-sized’ coat, vest, and pantaloons, as the right thing alike for a big, a small, and a * A mingled yarn of false statement and fallacious reasoning, of which a decent paper ought to be ashamed. The ATews, with all its cant of liberality, refused insertion to our polite correction of its mis-statements, and so we must now expose its sophisms to lasting contempt. Temperance men no more affirm that ‘ death is in the smallestthan the Daily News asserts that ‘ death ’ is in the smallest potion. They say just the same of alcohol as others say of opium, or strychnine, or arsenic—that such substances are in 7iature poisonous— harmful,—no more, no less. And they never assert that any of them, or anything else, is good or bad ‘ absolutely ’—but always in relation to that for which it is bad or good. The phrase, evil per se, is as foolish as would be the phrase, a son per se without a father, an effect per se without a correlative cause, or a pronoun per se without a related noun ! The News invents the premisses it tries to refute—and fails even then to prove anything. It says of sports—“ Nothing can be better for boys and young men.” Prove this of alcohol; and we surrender the ground. Prove that alcohol does ‘fortify’ (i.e. strengthen) the body, like exercise, and we yield the field to the drinker of drams, whether distilled or diluted. Experience and experiment have demonstrated that alcohol always increases the internal-work of heart-pumping, without ever providing a particle of the energy so expended.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3