TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 9

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The matter under thia headig is pub--lished at the request of, and is supplied by, the United Temperance Beform Council in pursuance of the desire to inculcate the principles of temperance-] EDUCATIONAL. Vigorous health and its accompanying high spirits are larger elements of happiness than any other thing whatever, and the teaching how to maintain them is a teaching that yields in moment to no other whatever. . . . For complete living it is necessary that there be escaped the incapacities and slow annihilations which unwise habits entail. When Herbert Spencer wrote these words he was seized of the great need of his day, the inculcation of the principles of temperance. The mind of the philosopher was not concentrated on only one form of intemperance, but upon intemperance of thought and habit generally.’ He recognised clearly that full development and enjoyment of our mental faculties depends in very large measure upon our bodily health. Intemperance in at least one respect was probably much more widespread in Spencer’s day than is the case to-day. Why the difference? Surely we cannot assume that in such a short period men have become inherently better? Yet something has cause ! a world of difference in our outlook. The mind at once leaps to the real cause—education. Education has enabled us to .draw the sharp line of distinction between those intemperate through ignorance and those intemperate from choice—between the well-meaning and the vicious. This distinction helps in part to account for a difference in definitions of temperance. Confusion of thought still accounts for a good deal; there is still room for steady 'educational work to make clear the need for temperate living. This confusion may be noted by any inquirer. Ask half a dozen of your fi’iends the meaning of me word “Temperance,” and you will get a variety of answers; but a certain broad distinction will manifest itself. One group, composed of those whose ideas upon the subject are fairly clear, will interpret it to mean “. . . . cleave to that which is ood, abhor that which is evil.” In other words, make reasonable use of those things which are desirable, and. leave alone those things which are undesirable. The other group is composed of those whoso •deas are not clear, together with those whose ideas are mastered by a riotous instinct for sensation or physical pleasure. This second group, by no means a small one, interprets temperance to mean something less than full enjoyment, of any desire. That proportion, adopting this attitude from ignorance, offers scope for conversion only by steady educational work; the others can only be opposed until nature has removed them, while every possible effort is being made to ensure that the young are being grounded in those, guiding principles which will make certain that there will be few recruits to the vicious class—that in this class the death-rate will exceed the Temperance emphatically is not moderation in all things. It is wrong to take the lives of many men; it is not temperance to moderate your actions and take the -life of cnly one man. When a blaspheming individual is exhorted to moderate his language it is not meant thereby that he should blaspheme only a little. What is meant is that he should change his lan. guage and not at all blaspheme. It is clear that if a thing or custom is specifically harmful or evil that the thing to do is to eschew it. The word “moderation” finds a legitimate place in respect to those things which may be done or taken. Food is necessary, but there is such a thing as over-indulgence in food. 111-results will follow unless moderation be practised in regard to suitable foods, and unless there be abstinence from unsuitable foods. Exercise is necessary but over-exercise or strain is harmful; therefore, wo must be moderate in our exercise. Reading is a necessity to full enjoyment of life and of education, but continuous reading with reflection is destructive reasoning power and produces the * dictionary mind. In short, a thousand instances may be cited to sustain the definition of temperance as “the moderate use" of those things good and total abstinence, from those things evil.” Is is the teaching of temperance to be limited to any one thing? Emphatically no. The principle of temperance has a broad application to life. Steady spadework on educational lines is necessary; but if intemperance in any one direction can be seen to have a greater bearing on all tendencies to intemperance, then organisation —which is nothin n- more or less than the securing of the greatest effect from a given amount of effort —demands that first attention be given to that particular form of intemperance which has the most nearly general bearing. In the matter of intelligence anyone can see the effect of intemperance. You can’t make a sober man intelligent bv giving him alcohol. You can’t make a fool a wise man by taking alcohol away from him. You can make a wise man a fool by giving hinf alcohol and sending him down the ladder by the steps of foolishness, irascibility, cantankerousness, helplessness. Ho might, as often happens, pass en route through a period of violence and passion, and it is here that he is strangely diverted to other forms of intemperance which leave on-his body and character indelible marks which are deeper than those made by alcohol itselC Alcohol ic a. concomitant, or prelude to nearly every excess committted by the ordinarily decent citizen. The whole world of specialists is making an outcry against this form of intemperance. Not a great deal can be done to change the mature mind from confirmed habits of thought, or to change the demands of the body for its usual supply of material. Something, of. course, can be done for the adult, but it is incomparable to what can be done for the young. A high authority in New Zealand’s educational system has stated that in one generation the Department of Education can change the whole outlook of the nation. This is so largely true that it invests our teaching staff with the gravest responsibility,' of which they are aware, and one with which they are steadily becoming still more fitted to cope.