Effects
Abstem. How ended the banquet—the story of which sounds like a fable?
Asot. The floors swam with wine. We were all drunk, especially the host, a strong man. Two or three were lying down under the table, overcome by a great victory.
Abstem. O glorious victory, and in a very beautiful and glorious conflict! But did wine overcome every one?
Asot. Even so.
Abstem. Wretched man, what do you think drunkenness is?
Asot. A fine thing! It is to give oneself up to one’s genius.
Abstem. Yes, but which genius, your good one or your bad one?
Glauc. If you will rightly look into all these matters, you will never find which genius they give themselves up to. For it is neither to the heart, nor to pleasure, nor any other cause for which others indulge, who follow vices and the depraved desires of the mind. To be drunk is different. It is to lose the power of the senses, to go away from the power of reasoning, of judgment; clearly, from being a man to become either cattle or, indeed, a stone. What follows afterwards I can easily imagine, had I never seen a drunkard; to speak, and not to know what you are saying; if any secret, of especial importance not to be divulged, is committed to you, to blab it out, and to say things which may lead into grave danger yourself, your people, and often your whole province and fatherland, to have no discrimination of friend and foe, of wife and mother—and it leads to quarrels, contentions, enmities, snares, wounds, maiming, killing!
Tric. Even without sword and blood, for not a few pass on from drunkenness to death.
Glauc. Who would not prefer to be shut up at home with a dog or a cat than with a drunkard? For those animals have more intellect in them than the drunkard.
Abstem. After the drunkenness follows indigestion, weakening of the nerves, paralysis, the tortures of gout, heaviness in the head and the whole body, dulness of all the senses; memory is extinguished; the sharpness of the intellect is stunned; thence there is a stupor in the whole mind which precludes intelligence, wisdom, and eloquence.
Asot. Now I begin to understand what a serious evil drunkenness is; henceforward, I will take the keenest pains to drink up to the point of cheerfulness, not to that of drunkenness.
Glauc. Joviality is the gate of drunkenness. No one comes to be drunk with the idea in his mind that he will get drunk; but he is exhilarated by drinking; then going on and on, drunkenness follows afterwards, for it is difficult to place the bounds of joviality and to remain in it. Slippery is the step from joviality to drunkenness!
Abstem. So long as thou hast the wine in the beaker, it is in thy power; when thou hast it in thy body, thou art in the power of the wine. Then you are held and do not hold. When you drink, you treat wine as you like. When you have drunk, it will treat you as it likes.
Asot. What then? Are we never to drink?
Abstem. When fools avoid their vices, they run into the opposite extremes. We must, indeed, quench thirst, but not be “drinkers.” Nature on this point teaches beasts alone. The same nature will not teach man, because he possesses reason. You eat when you are hungry; you drink when you are thirsty. Hunger and thirst will warn you how much, when, to what extent, we must eat and drink.
Asot. What if I am always thirsty, and if I cannot assuage my thirst except by getting drunk?
Abstem. Then drink what cannot possibly make you drunk.
Asot. The constitution of my body won’t permit that.
Abstem. If then you had such hunger that by no amount of food you could satisfy it unless you were to burst yourself, what then?
Asot. That indeed would not be hunger, but disease.
Abstem. There would surely be need of medicine, not meals, to take away that hunger, wouldn’t there?
Asot. Certainly.
Abstem. So needest thou for such a thirst a physician, not an inn-keeper, and a drug from the chemist, not one fetched from the providers of banquets. What you describe is not thirst but disease, and a perilous one, too!