[2.] Hist. 7 Sap.
[3.] Chevreana, t. i. p. 217.
[4.] Hist. 7 Sap.
[5.] See his Turkish Hist.
[CHAP. XXVIII.]
RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN GETTING DRUNK. I. NOT TOO OFTEN. II. IN GOOD COMPANY.
To avoid the disorders that drunkenness might cause, here are some rules that ought to be observed in this important affair of getting drunk; for, according to Pliny, the art of getting drunk has its laws.
Hæc ars suis legibus constat.[a]
I. The first, and principal of these, is not to get drunk too often. This is what Seneca[1] recommends very much. “You must not,” says he, “do it often, for fear it grow into a habit; it is but only sometimes you should make your spirits gay in banishing gloomy sobriety.”
And if any person objects, That if one gets drunk sometimes, one shall do it often. I deny the consequence, and say in the words of the philosopher, an axiom held by both universities, that
Ab actu ad habitum non valet consequentia.