multiply beneficial relations
alike with nature and with society.

*Temperance*, rather than abstinence, *is needed on grounds connected with
social economy*. Labor for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a
tithe of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a nation of idlers.
It is the demand for objects of enjoyment, taste, luxury, that floats
ships, dams rivers, stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates
the wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance that sustain and
aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, wants, and burdens; while moderate,
yet generous use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of universal
industry, progress, comfort, and happiness.

But there are *cases in which abstinence*, rather than temperance, *is a
duty*.

*Past excess* may render temperance hardly possible. From the derangement
consequent upon excess, an appetite may lose the capacity of healthy
exercise. In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and useless
limb, we should suppress the appetite which we can no longer control.
Physiological researches have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating
drinks, when long continued, produces an organic condition, in which the
slightest indulgence is liable to excite a craving so intense as to
transcend the control of the will.

*Inherited proclivities* may, in like manner, render temperance so
difficult as to make abstinence a duty. It is conceivable that a nation or
a community may, by the prevalence of excess in past generations, be
characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance as to render general
abstinence a prerequisite to general temperance.

Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many around us our *example* in
what we may enjoy innocently would be ensnaring and perilous. The
recreation, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has become a source of
corruption, it may be our duty to forego. The indulgence, safe for us,
which would be unsafe for our associates, it may be incumbent on us to
resign. The food, the drink which would make our table a snare to our
guests, we may be bound to refrain from, though for ourselves there be in
it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which
each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one
is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man
a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an
amusement or