"Certainly none could attach," was the general response; "provided, of course, that the end of that pledge was fully attained."
"Of that there can be no doubt," was the assumption of the reformed man. "The end was, to save me from the influence of an appetite for drink, against which, in my own strength, I could not contend. That end is now accomplished. Two years of total abstinence has made me a new man. I now occupy the same ground that I occupied before I lost my self-control."
"Then I can see no reason why you should be denied the social privilege of a glass with your friends," urged one of the company.
"Nor can I see it clearly," Marshall said. "Still I feel that a solemn pledge, made more solemn and binding by the subscription of my name, is not a thing to be lightly broken. The thought of doing so troubles me, when I seriously reflect upon it."
"It seems to me that, were I in your place," gravely remarked one of the company, heretofore silent, "I would not break my pledge without fully settling two points—if it is possible for you, or any other man, under like circumstances, to settle them."
"What are they?" asked Marshall, with interest.
"They are the two most prominent points in your case;—two that have already been introduced here to-night. One involves the question, whether you are really free from the influence of your former habits?"
"I have not a single doubt in regard to that point," was the positive reply.
"I do not see, Mr. Marshall, how it is possible for you to settle it beyond a doubt," urged the friend. "To me, it is not philosophically true that the power of habit is ever entirely destroyed. All subsequent states of body or mind, I fully believe, are affected and modified by what has gone before, and never lose the impression of preceding states,—and more particularly of anything like an overmastering habit—or rather, I should say, in this case, of an overmastering affection. The love, desire, or affection, whichever you may choose to call it, which you once felt for intoxicating drinks, or for the effects produced by them, never could have existed in the degree that they did, without leaving on your mind—which is a something far more real and substantial than this material body, which never loses the marks and scars of former abuse—ineradicable impressions. The forms of old habits, if this be true, and that it so, I fully believe, still remain; and these forms are in the endeavour, if I may so speak, to be filled with the affections that once made them living and active. Rigidly exclude everything that can excite these, and you are safe;—but, to me it seems, that no experiment can be so dangerous, as one which will inevitably produce in these forms a vital activity."
"That, it seems to me," was the reply of one of the company, "is a little too metaphysical—or rather, I should say, transcendental—for, certainly, it transcends my powers of reasoning to be able to see how any permanent forms, as you call them, can be produced in the mind, as in the body—the one being material, and the other immaterial, and, therefore, no more susceptible of lasting impressions, than the air around us."