WINE WHEN IT IS RED

I suppose that there will be some wigs on the green in connection with the recent manifesto signed by a string of very eminent doctors on the subject of what is called “alcohol.”  “Alcohol” is, to judge by the sound of it, an Arabic word, like “algebra” and “Alhambra,” those two other unpleasant things.  The Alhambra in Spain I have never seen; I am told that it is a low and rambling building; I allude to the far more dignified erection in Leicester Square.  If it is true, as I surmise, that “alcohol” is a word of the Arabs, it is interesting to realise that our general word for the essence of wine and beer and such things comes from a people which has made particular war upon them.  I suppose that some aged Moslem chieftain sat one day at the opening of his tent and, brooding with black brows and cursing in his black beard over wine as the symbol of Christianity, racked his brains for some word ugly enough to express his racial and religious antipathy, and suddenly spat out the horrible word “alcohol.”  The fact that the doctors had to use 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.