within the bounds of sane reason and does not give rise to evil
consequences in self or others. Apart, therefore, from the danger of
abuse--a real and fatal danger for many, especially for the young--and
from the evil effects that may follow even a moderate use, the habit is
like another; a temperate man is not, to any appreciable degree, less
righteous than a moderate smoker. The man who can use and not abuse is
just as moral as his brother who does not use lest he abuse. He must,
however, be said to be less virtuous than another who abstains rather
than run the risk of being even a remote occasion of sin unto the weak.

The intrinsic malice therefore of this habit consists in the disorder
of excess, which is called intoxication. Intoxication may exist in
different degrees and stages; it is the state of a man who loses, to
any extent, control over his reasoning faculties through the effects of
alcohol. There is evil and sin the moment the brain is affected; when
reason totters and falls from its throne in the soul, then the crime is
consummated. When a man says and does and thinks what in his sober
senses he would not say, do, or think, that man is drunk, and there is
mortal sin on his soul. It is not an easy matter to define just when
intoxication properly begins and sobriety ends; every man must do that
for himself. But he should consider himself well on the road to guilt
when, being aware that the fumes of liquor were fast beclouding his
mind, he took another glass that was certain to still further obscure
his reason and paralyze his will.

Much has been said and written about the grossness of this vice, its
baneful effects and consequences, to which it were useless here to
refer. Suffice it to say there is nothing that besots a man more
completely and lowers him more ignobly to the level of the brute. He
falls below, for the most stupid of brutes, the ass, knows when it has