Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge in the use of
inebriating fluids? said the divinity-student.
If you think you are strong enough to bear what I am going to say,-
-I replied,--I will talk to you about this. But mind, now, these
are the things that some foolish people call DANGEROUS subjects,--
as if these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the Guinea-
worm burrows into the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would be
more mischievous when seen than out of sight. Now the true way to
deal with those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long,
some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a piece of
silk round their HEADS, and pull them out very cautiously. If you
only break them off, they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill
the person who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. Whence it
is plain that the first thing to do is to find out where the head
lies.
Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice of
intemperance. What is the head of it, and where does it lie? For
you may depend upon it, there is not one of these vices that has
not a head of its own,--an intelligence,--a meaning,--a certain
virtue, I was going to say,--but that might, perhaps, sound
paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of moral physicians
lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority
of them would always insist that the creature had no head at all,
but was all body and tail.
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