The enduring philosophical conflict: abstinence versus temperance

“ As we have seen, with every natural and healthy exercise of our appetites and faculties moderation is preferable to abstinence. It is better to direct them toward the ends they are intended to accomplish that to stifle and suppress them. But the thirst for intoxicating drink is unnatural. It creates abnormal cravings; it produces diseased conditions which corrupt and destroy the very powers of nerve and brain on which the faculties of reason and control depend. "Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the only rule that can insure one against the fearful ravages of this beastly and inhuman vice. ”

“ Observe, we say temperance. Total abstinence is a different thing altogether—an extreme which may warrant and cover abuses as bad as drunkenness itself. No spectacle is more ludicrous than a procession of Tee-totallers. If total abstinence is a virtue hard to win, and accessible only to an inconsiderable minority, the pharisaical ostentation of its vain-glory is not calculated to attract or conciliate the overwhelming majority who feel unable to soar to its sublimity. ”

“ And it is certainly the inevitable fate of man either to place a morally rational check on the sexual impulse, or to be forcibly held within the limits of the means of subsistence, since they cannot be over-stepped by him—through the agency of vice and misery. ”

“ If not crushed on its first appearance, it gains increasingly upon the soul, and, shaping into innumerable varieties, seizes on all its powers. Vice is naturally despotic; it aspires to universal dominion; and where motives to virtue are never presented, it will most assuredly obtain it. ”

“ If the man who consults his reason has real and powerful motives for doing good to others and abstaining from injuring them, he has present motives equally urgent to restrain him from the commission of vice. Experience may suffice to show him that if he becomes sooner or later the victim of his excesses, he ceases to be the friend of virtue, and exists only to serve vice, which will infallibly punish him. This being allowed, prudence, or the desire of preserving one's self free from the contamination of evil, ought to inculcate to every man his path of duty ”

“ Nothing short of total abstinence can save those who have become the victims of it. In this indulgence, no half way course will ever subdue the disease, or remove the effect of the habit from the system. Total abstinence is the only remedy. If the constitution is not fatally impaired—if organic disease has not taken place, this remedy will prove effectual, and must be adopted, especially in all cases in which the effects are visible, or the consequences cannot fail to be ultimately fatal. ”

“ But it is a very serious error to suppose that the effort to achieve complete and prolonged sexual abstinence is without any bad results at all, physical or psychic, either in men or women who are normal and healthy. ”

“ If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.
Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the verdict should be in favour of temperance. ”

“ To escape the evils arising from the use of alcohol there is only one perfect course, namely, to abstain from alcohol altogether. No fear need be entertained of any physical or mental harm from such abstinence. Every good may be expected from it. True, a certain very qualified temperance, a temperance that keeps the adult to a strict allowance of one ounce and a half of alcohol in each twenty-four hours, may possibly be compatible with a healthy life ”

“ The Sons of Temperance and the Total Abstinent Sons of the Phoenix are similar organizations. The sickness and death-rate among members of these bodies is much below that of the ordinary friendly societies. The beneficial effect of abstinence upon health and longevity is shown by the experience of the United Kingdom Temperance Provident Institution, the example of which has led several large insurance companies to add a special section for teetotallers. ”

“ The recorded experience of men in all situations and climates, under all kinds of labor and exposure, prove that abstinence from alcoholic drinks gives increased ability to go through the labors of the farm and the workshop, to resist heat and cold, to encounter hardships on sea and land, beyond what has ever been done under the unnatural excitement of alcohol, followed, as it is, by depression and debility, if not by fever and disease. ”

“ Second or third attacks very seldom end in recovery unless they arise from alcoholic excess, when entire abstinence for a sufficient length of time affords fair hope of a favorable result, except in cases of long-standing drunkenness. ”

“ The body is chastised by means of abstinence, not only against the allurements of lust, but also against those of gluttony: since by abstaining a man gains strength for overcoming the onslaughts of gluttony, which increase in force the more he yields to them. Yet abstinence is not prevented from being a special virtue through being a help to chastity, since one virtue helps another. ”

“ For, first, abstinence pays in ready money the pain which it has in the beginning; for it tempers the body — it preserves from infirmities — it preserves health — it prolongs the life — it recreates the soul, it renders it fit for prayer and receiving celestial comforts— it takes away the arms of its enemy the flesh, and subjects it to the spirit, to encourage it to undertake glorious enterprises in the service of God. ”

“ A great many are inclined to think of abstinence as representing abstinence from food alone, but it must not be forgotten that as understood in connection with religion it represents abstinence from all the harmful things. For instance, it represents abstinence from sleep when that is being taken to excess, and as a rule any healthy human being above the age of twenty and under sixty who sleeps more than eight hours in the day needs to practice such abstinence. There is literally such a thing as oversleeping and thus accumulating more energy than one has use for. ”

“ The other group – embracing the majority of male ascetics – curses him because he never leaves them in peace."
Approaching the subject in a more modern and scientific attitude of impartial inquiry, the medical man can produce an imposing list of diseases [1] more or less directly caused by abstinence both in men and in women. ”

“ If we thus decide to approach it, and if we have reached the conviction—which, in view of all the evidence we can scarcely escape—that, while sexual abstinence in so far as it may be recognized as possible is not incompatible with health, there are yet many adults for whom it is harmful, and a very much larger number for whom when prolonged it is undesirable, we encounter a serious problem. ”

“ Still the normal woman can stand absolute continued continence without any injury to her body and mind (e. g. nuns) . Hence there is no reason why the human male, if left to himself, and nothing comes to disturb the natural course of his sexual development, should be harmed by abstinence. Until the impulse of permanent mating enters into play, and this comes relatively late in life, abstinence will harm neither men nor women, if they live in an atmosphere free from the influence of artificial stimulation. ”

“ The question whether sexual intercourse is permissible during pregnancy is often put to the physician. Some extremists and theorists demand complete abstinence during the entire duration of pregnancy. Such abstinence is not only not feasible, but is unnecessary and may prove a disrupting factor; it may create not only dissension, it may wreck the love-life of husband and wife. ”

“ The case of widowhood or voluntary abstinence, as well as the case of climacterium adjusts itself in the woman as in the man, but in the case of abstinence there surely is in addition the intentional repression of the sexual ideas, for an abstinent woman struggling with temptation must often decide to suppress it. The abhorrence perceived by an elderly woman during her menopause against the immensely increased libido can have a similar effect. ”

“ Forces are here in play that break through all obstacles." The harmlessness of abstinence was affirmed by Kräpelin, Cramer, Gärtner, Tuczek, Schottelius, Gaffky, Finkler, Selenew, Lassar, Seifert, Gruber; the last, however, added that he knew very few abstinent young men, and himself only considered abstinence good before full development, and intercourse not dangerous in moderation even before then. ”

“ These, and other abstemious people, who, having experienced the greatest extremities of bad health, were driven to temperance as their last resource, may run out in praises of a simple diet; but the probability is, that nothing but the dread of former sufferings could have given them the resolution to persevere in so strict a course of abstinence, which persons who are in health and have no such apprehension could not be induced to undertake, or, if they did, would not long continue. ”

“ Total abstinence and habitual temperance augment considerably the chance of death from old age or natural decay, without special pathological lesion." Subject, however, to a few exceptions, it is not advisable that a man sixty-five or seventy years of age, who has taken alcohol in moderation all his life, should suddenly become an abstainer. Old age can not readily accommodate itself to changes of any kind, and to many old people a little good wine with their meals is a source of great comfort. ”

“ It is a sneaking way of securing a living and those who lend themselves to it ought to be ostracized by citizens who believe in conforming to the ordinary decencies of life.
* * *
Moral reformers are altogether too ambitious. They want to abolish vice but they cannot do it. Vice is not crime, although the two things are often confounded. The word “vice” literally means a fault or error. A crime is a deliberate violation of the law of God or man.
Why should we be so serious and so violent in our attitude toward human vice? The root of the evil is in the weakness or wickedness of human nature. ”

“ Man is a feeble being, whose necessities render him constantly dependent upon the support of others, whether it be for the preservation or the pleasure of his existence; he has no means of interesting others in his welfare except by his manner of conducting himself towards them; that conduct which renders him an object of affection to others is called virtue—whatever is pernicious to society is called crime—and where the consequences are injurious only to the individual himself, it is called vice. ”

“ Society, however, maintains police, sheriffs, and various institutions, the object of which is to protect people against themselves—that is, against their own vices. Almost all legislative [114] effort to prevent vice is really protective of vice, because all such legislation saves the vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. ”

“ But the real dependence of morality must always be upon its penal sanctions—its power to deter from evil. The security of society cannot rest on merely rendering honour to right, a motive so comparatively weak in all but a few, and which on very many does not operate at all. ”

“ In thus judging by results, we agreed in one important respect with the utilitarian school of moralists, among whom Bentham and the two Mills were the most eminent. The traditional view is different; it holds that certain specified classes of actions are vicious, and that abstinence from all these is virtue. It is wicked to murder or steal (except on a large scale) ; it is wicked to speak ill of those in power, from the Deity to the policeman; above all, it is wicked to have sexual intercourse-outside marriage. ”

“ As a rule of conduct, to be enforced by moral sanctions, we think no more should be attempted than to prevent people from doing harm to others, or omitting to do such good as they have undertaken. Demanding no more than this, society, in any tolerable circumstances, obtains much more; for the natural activity of human nature, shut out from all noxious directions, will expand itself in useful ones. ”

“ This attitude is rank superstition, and it is high time that it was got rid of.
Sexual morality, freed from superstition, is a simple matter. Fraud and deceit, assault, seduction of persons under age, are proper matters for the criminal law. Relations between adults who are free agents are a private matter, and should not be interfered with either by the law or by public opinion, because no outsider can know whether they are good or bad. ”

“ At present the sexual morality of the civilised world is the most illogical and incoherent system of wild permissions and insane prohibitions, foolish tolerance and ruthless cruelty that it is possible to imagine. Our current civilisation is a sexual lunatic. And it has lost its reason in this respect under the stresses of the new birth of things, largely through the difficulties that have stood in the way, and do still, in a diminishing degree, stand in the way of any sane discussion of the matter as a whole. To approach it is to approach excitement. ”

“ A state or a society is not bound to procure for the carnal cravings of the sensual any more than to provide for the gambling tendencies or the thieving propensities of the avaricious. On the other hand, nations or communities are no less amenable than individuals to the ethical law that not to rebuke or protest against open vice is to half sanction it. The government that undertakes to protect base gratification from natural sting or merited stigma, incurs the heavy responsibility of furthering vice by making impurity venial. ”

“ What is needed is to invigorate humanity with that moral strength which resists the inroads of vice. There are periods in the history of every nation when certain forms of vice are particularly flagrant. ”

“ Anyhow, though a lad can be trained to strict moderation, abstinence in both alcohol and tobacco must after a time come of the lad's own free will; the last thing that answers is to multiply and enforce restrictions; the rebound is inevitable and often fatal. ”