The automatic action, by which
genius wrought its wonders, fails. There is only one thing which
can rouse the machine; not will,--that cannot reach it; nothing but
a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out
the heart of the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the
dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be imitated by
artificial excitement; the reasoning ones are safe, because they
imply continued voluntary effort.
I think you will find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on
a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses
and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is
already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that
he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face
which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy
there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the
lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds
untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the
germination of the seeds of intemperance.
Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,--
no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its
course,--he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for
the maelstrom.
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