BOOK IV
After we had discussed these clubs a little longer, and I had given them the full speech I would have made in Hootsville, Lysis said: ‘And is it true, Socrates, that the lecture-tour of Alcibiades also was not well received?’
‘It is true,’ I answered.
‘Yet is he not most brilliant and accomplished, and are not his brains, as he says, first-class?’
‘Assuredly,’ I answered. ‘But his manner was high-spirited, and he did not apply himself to win the favour of the Americans as though they had been the populace of Athens. He broke also, and that in a most shameless manner, the law which is the dearest to them of all their laws. He violated the Volstead Act.’
At this Agathon leaned forward and said: ‘You must beware, O Lysis and Phaelon, of the Socratic irony, which has been the subject of a great deal of comment, and of which you are the victims at this moment. For it is well known that the Volstead Act is not dear to the Americans at all and that Alcibiades did nothing uncommon or scandalous in violating it.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Phaelon, ‘we should first understand clearly what this Volstead Act is.’
‘Why,’ I said, ‘it is the law by which the Americans imposed upon themselves a most heavy sacrifice, and denied themselves in a loud voice that great pleasure of human life, wine.’
‘Truly a heavy sacrifice,’ exclaimed both Lysis and Phaelon, and Lysis added the obvious question whether any reason could be found for such amazing conduct, for the folly natural to barbarians seemed wholly inadequate to account for it.
‘It is indeed,’ I answered, ‘a hard knot that we have to untangle, and one that will puzzle future generations. Many and various are the explanations put forward. Thus some philosophers point out that the sacrifice is being made in a time of great prosperity, and believe that it is intended to avert the jealousy of the gods. And there is much truth in that. For the Americans found themselves grown extremely rich, and, believing nothing to be so desirable as material prosperity, they feared lest the whole company of Olympus, both gods and goddesses, should resolve to become American citizens, and should achieve their ends by cunning or magic, despite the immigration Authorities. The Americans did not at all desire their company, partly through fear of the intensified and unscrupulous competition which it is the wont of the gods to indulge in, but chiefly because they consider that the gods, with the uncertain exception of Zeus himself, are not of Anglo-Saxon stock. To abate the edge of envy, they resolved to involve themselves in calamity and, by inserting privation into their Constitution, to create such a drawback to their country that not the divinities only but ordinary mortals also, should have no desire to share their life. You have heard how the maidens of Leucris, to protect their honour, slit off their noses and went undesired of the invading hordes. So also the Americans deemed it prudent to show to the world a mutilated life. They also believed that their own gods would be touched by the sight of such suffering and would augment the number of their other possessions, and they were strengthened in this view when they sent to consult their national oracle at Detroit. For the oracle said:—
which they understood to mean that if they gave up all their potations there would be more cars. And this was decisive, for they think that everything, even life itself, is worthily sacrificed to increase the number of these cars. They believed furthermore that this sacrifice would increase the quantity of other things at their command.’
‘I have heard a different reason,’ here put in Agathon, and seeing us nod to him to go on, he unfolded what follows:
‘The Americans,’ he said ‘are a shrewd people, and know that men easily become lovers of ease unless there is necessity or some great future delight to spur them on to exertion. How, they asked themselves, can the mechanics and other workers be kept from the desire for ease and the abandonment of intense daily toil. For a long time the desire to possess a car could be trusted to spur them on, but cars have grown cheap, and it is found beside that such objects tend by contrast to make men love real ease more than ever before. What was needed was to restore the right conception of wealth as something ardently to be longed for, for invention had too greatly levelled the lives of rich and poor. The poor man had motion and music and print and divorce and patent food and cremation, and everything that was once the privilege of the rich. Nature had made men equal in the chief goods like health and affection, thus seeming herself to render vain the end for which, as they thought, men had been created, the production of wealth. And they discovered that the devout worship of Progress, the very process of creating wealth, made the prize of private gain relatively less valuable, thus threatening the springs of energy itself. As extreme wealth gave men the pleasures of successful propaganda so must ordinary wealth have some special privilege attached. And therefore did their chief men resolve to prohibit by law one of life’s greatest amenities, for if a thing is forbidden by the law, only the rich will enjoy it. For wealth everywhere lifts a man above the laws and nowhere more than in the United States.’
‘Is it perhaps possible,’ asked Phaelon, ‘that it was done from a noble desire to help the Europeans?’
‘How, dear Phaelon?’ I said.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘it is a great advantage to the Spartans to make their Helots drunk that the young Spartans may have before them the spectacle of drunkenness and be warned and seek temperance. It is surely an equal advantage for Europeans to have at hand a nation of teetotallers (I believe that is the word for such people) lest they should be tempted to err in the opposite direction to the Spartans. For I have read many notices about the great charity of America towards Europe and I wondered if it was this self-denial of which you speak.’
‘That is not badly conceived, Phaelon,’ said I, ‘but I am afraid we cannot take it as an explanation. In the first place the nations of Europe do not at all need to be warned, by example or otherwise against teetotalism, and, secondly, the Americans are not at all a nation of teetotallers.’
‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that the rich can drink and do.’
‘Not the rich only, but all who will take a little trouble,’ I answered.
‘Then,’ said he, ‘is it possible that this law has been imposed not to make teetotallers, but for the sake of the bribes of those who wish to break it?’
‘Not so,’ I answered, ‘for it costs the Americans a great deal of money to make this change in the way men drink. They employ many more policemen than before and if there is a bribe it is these men who keep it and not the State, and though the State gains something from the fines it imposes, yet it loses a great deal more by not being able to tax wine and the other drinks.’
Hereupon Lysis exclaimed: ‘Then what is the real reason for such strange goings on. For my part, I believe they prohibit drinks by law in order to give an added flavour or zest to their drinking. For forbidden fruit is sweet to taste.’
‘For the same reason, in fact,’ said Agathon, ‘that they mix different drinks together, to get more stimulus. So that we may say that Prohibition and cocktails spring from the same source.’
‘That explanation and the others, my worthy friends,’ I said, ‘may help us to understand why so many are resigned to the privation. But very different is the true cause why they have poured out so vast a libation to Efficiency.’
‘Explain it, then,’ said they all.
‘Did we not agree earlier,’ I answered, ‘that in America the State does many things that are not for its own good, and that are not done in the interests of the State itself, but that rich and energetic minorities could use the machinery of representative government to make their own will appear as the will of the State?’
‘Indeed, yes,’ they said. ‘And truly,’ said Agathon, ‘and when he said earlier that the combination of the manufacturers and the preachers could never be resisted, I thought at once of this Prohibition.’
‘It seemed to the interests of those two classes and the women,’ I said, ‘and they brought it about. But such men commonly cannot judge what is to their own advantage. For the preachers are men who have chosen for themselves the task of moral leadership, and have commonly great earnestness and little else. You know, Lysis, that the preachers are those who have separated themselves from the priests and the old religious traditions? Indeed it was largely by such preachers and their close followers that the first colonies were founded in America.’
‘The priests themselves,’ said Lysis, ‘are surely not enemies to drink.’
‘By Hercules, no,’ I said.
‘That means much,’ said Agathon.
‘The priests,’ I continued, ‘took to Aristotle generations ago, and have held by his teachings in a most striking manner. For Aristotle’s mind is much like a corkscrew, being tortuous but powerful, and opening up worthy things for our satisfaction. His reputation has surprised me somewhat, seeing how often he is wrong. For he is in general too easily satisfied, and thinks that because a thing exists it is therefore justified. But what he has written about preserving the mean of temperance is excellent, and to that the priests have adhered. The United States, however, is a preachers’ country. Now the preachers are opposed by their natures to the humane and easy enjoyment of life and would sacrifice temperance to avoid excess. For they rightly hold drunkenness to be a degrading thing, but wrongly suppose abstinence to be superior to moderation or temperance. Now while they preached against drunkenness they did no harm, but they made in my opinion a great mistake when they stirred up the women to tamper with the laws.’
‘Is that what they did?’ asked Lysis.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘though the women did not want much persuading, for it seemed obvious to them that money spent by men in obtaining the enjoyment that friends gain by drinking together was wasted money while the same money spent in adorning the women themselves or their offspring was money profitably spent. For they were eager to believe such things.’
A great look of understanding came into the eyes of both Lysis and Phaelon, and Lysis said:—
‘Prohibition then is in large measure a part of that tyranny of the women of which you spoke a little while back?’
‘Why, yes,’ I replied, ‘they were strong enough both by the votes that they enjoyed in many States and by their ascendency over their men to pass this law. For it was a strong alliance. The manufacturers also had great influence with the men, for they kept repeating that all the other trades would share more money if the wine trade was forbidden by the law, and in each man the trading part of the soul fought with the reasonable part, and with many of the Americans it conquered. And each man thought that he could himself evade the law.’
‘Did many say that, Socrates?’ asked Lysis.
‘No,’ I answered; ‘they use other words. They say that such a law is a good thing for the country, by which they mean that it is helping their business without changing their private habits. While others again, both men and women, are of the nobler sort, and will gladly make a personal sacrifice, in the belief that it will help the poor. There are many rich women who regard the poor as their family, and seek their good as a mother seeks that of her children. Such are called Social Reformers.’
‘But are not the poor grown up?’ asked Phaelon.
‘Of course,’ I answered; ‘but the rich have different ideas from theirs, especially if the poor are from south Europe. So the rich busy themselves to change the character of the poor. When they are doing that they call themselves by a high-sounding title, and say they are Practical Idealists.’
‘I understand,’ said Lysis, ‘for the rich are the manufacturers, or share the outlook of manufacturers, and when they are considering the character of the poor, they will identify being a good man with being a good worker, and will give no praise at all to such a one as you yourself, Socrates, forever sitting about in the public places and busying yourself with subjects with which manufacturers have nothing to do.’
‘You have understood perfectly, O excellent Lysis,’ I exclaimed, ‘and you well describe what happens in America to-day, and among other things why the manufacturers have abolished, as far as they could, the drinking of the poor. For it is perhaps better for a workman to be a teetotaller if you consider him merely in his function as a workman, and as a machine to be treated in a certain way, but it is quite a different story if you consider him as a man. For teetotalism makes a worker more a worker but a man less a man. And drunkenness makes him also less a man, but instead of becoming more of a workman he ceases to be a workman at all.’
‘But teetotalism,’ said Agathon, ‘is the more dangerous extreme. For only a very exceptional man can keep really drunk for long periods whereas many teetotallers stay teetotallers for months together.’
‘Many months,’ I agreed.
‘And even years in some cases, Socrates,’ he went on, ‘if what I hear is true.’
‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid we cannot deny it: there are men in Kansas who have repressed their thirst for upwards of forty years.’
‘Surely,’ said Lysis, ‘we would pay more to see them exhibited here than the Americans would pay to see the Parthenon? Let us give the Parthenon to that American who approached you this morning, Agathon, and let us have some Kansans.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘such a group of voluntary Tantaluses would be a spectacle of much interest to the young, who are commonly insensible to the griefs of others, and who would not think it base to let their eyes have their fill of the dreadful sight. But I confess my heart was touched, for the state of these Kansans is like that of the ponies that are kept in coal pits, who by long habituation to the dark become blind. And to their children these people show imaginary pictures of the inside of the human body and the effects of alcohol, for so they love to call all fermented beverages, so that these children shall believe they are being saved from a most terrible dragon. Nor is it till they visit Europe that they learn that the poison of alcohol is not always fatal.’
‘It is a good thing for the Americans that so many of them visit Europe,’ said Lysis gravely.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for I met a man in Kansas who had never been out of Kansas and who refused to believe that I was a human being at all. For he said that Science had shown that alcohol was a poison, and as the Europeans were known from history books to have made a habit of consuming large quantities of this poison, it followed that they were all dead. And he declared that the present peoples in Europe were nothing but a race of apes pretending to be the same creatures that Science showed alcohol to have destroyed. He said the apes were doing it to win the affection that the Americans would show to other human beings, however, degraded, but not to apes.’
‘Truly a striking view,’ exclaimed Lysis.
‘It was one that explained everything to my friend,’ I answered. ‘He declared the pretence could not last, and that the apes had accordingly begun to spread a story round that all men, even the Americans, were kinsfolk to the apes. But with this, he said, he and all good hundred per cent Americans would have nothing whatever to do, and he added they were prepared if necessary to disprove it by an amendment to the Constitution. He claimed, moreover, that this view of his gave by far the best explanation of the chattering and quarrelling that was forever going on over in Europe. And he added that my appearance corroborated his theory.’
‘Well, Socrates,’ said Agathon, ‘you must allow us to excuse him there.’
‘So did I excuse him,’ I answered, ‘for I knew that that man was intoxicated, not indeed by wine, but by statistics, for the Americans find in statistics a drug more powerful than alcohol, the women shamelessly revealing their craving and attending lectures, and crying out for facts, but meaning these numbers. For all large numbers and all numbers arranged in patterns have a magical power over them. And they will eagerly deny their own personal experience if it seems to upset what the statistics say.’
‘Truly a pitiable servitude,’ murmured Lysis.
‘Pitiable indeed,’ I agreed, ‘but they wear these chains of numbers proudly, for in general the numbers are large. And they have no notion that these numbers must be used with care, but will let themselves be led into any error by any cunning piper luring them to destruction, provided only that he can pipe the proper magic ciphers and talk to them of percentages. For these statisticians have more power to make great crowds follow them than ever Orpheus had. But I expect that in the end they will most of them meet with the fate of Orpheus and be torn to pieces by angry women, filled with a different kind of madness.’
‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘there is one thing very hopeful for them and of excellent augury.’
‘Which?’ I asked.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘when they consider the number of their crimes and how much blood is shed and treasure seized each year, do you not think they will be greatly impressed and will realize that their chief trouble is that the laws are not kept and that obedience is not enforced?’
‘I do,’ I agreed.
‘And are they not an active people and one ready to make experiment, even to experiment with European usages?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘will they not be forced to realize that they were the very last people in the world who should have attempted Prohibition, for they cannot even protect human life well. For if they had been a very poor people, fighting for a share in the commerce of nations, and endowed with a tradition of law observance, then they might have attempted this further discipline. But the Americans were not poor, nor were they desperately in need of such efficiency. Indeed no people could better afford to drink.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and their laws were the last laws that could stand the strain. For they have never been well kept, and there has always been corruption. So that they did not do well when they outlawed a permanent human appetite and made another enemy to the law.’
‘Did you keep the law yourself, Socrates?’ said Lysis, ‘for you always say that even a bad law should be obeyed because it is the law.’
‘Why,’ I answered, ‘thinking as I do, and being the guest of the Americans, I would take no step to avoid the abstinence that the law imposed. Yet I must confess that there was no city in which I went unrefreshed.’
‘A great thing is friendship,’ exclaimed Lysis.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘my friends and hosts everywhere insisted, not all of them everywhere, but some in every place, who sought me out, knowing that I was from the Mediterranean.’
‘And when these drinks were offered to you, Socrates,’ demanded Lysis, looking me straight in the face and fixing his eyes on mine, ‘did you still tell them that all laws should be obeyed until they can be altered?’
‘Assuredly.’
‘What did they answer?’
‘That I was to drink my fill, and not be at all uneasy lest I was breaking any law, because it was lawful to drink the wine that you possessed in your cellar before the law was made. It seems it was always such wine that I was drinking. Nor did they seem to fear that they would ever exhaust those cellars of theirs.’
‘Happy Socrates,’ they said.
‘They urged moreover, when they were not too busy to discuss the point, that a law among them is not at all the same as a law among the Athenians. They said that perhaps in Athens, which was small, the people made the law knowing what they did, but that in America thousands and thousands of laws were made every year. America was equally the paradise of her who would make a law and him who would break one, and in proportion as the existing laws were not kept was there a clamour for fresh laws. But there is no sense of responsibility, either in the making or the breaking. And we would do well, my wonderful friends, to give this advice to the Americans that they should treat a law as a great luxury, to be cherished as Helen herself was cherished. Then when they find they are observing all, or some part at least, of the laws they have, they may reward themselves by a new law. Do those who juggle and balance plates seek to add another plate to the row standing edgeways on their noses or foreheads before they can balance those they already have?’
‘Indeed, no, Socrates,’ they replied.
‘And if they did,’ I continued, ‘would they not break all their plates and not receive any plaudits from the spectators?’
‘Such,’ said Lysis, ‘would be their deserved misfortune.’
‘And should we not call such jugglers presumptuous fools and men unskilled in their art?’
‘What else, indeed, O Socrates?’
‘And yet is their case any different from that of these Americans who before they can well keep ten laws will make fifty more? So that the law ceases to hold authority among them and they are careless who makes it and who breaks it. For there can be no more grievous ill done to any state than that its citizens should not think rightly about the laws, and should forget that a good law is the expression of Justice, allotting to each man what is his, and is deserving of all reverence, while a bad law destroys the life of the state and ought by all means to be abolished as soon as possible.’
‘We agree,’ they said.