Then come the moralists truly and say, "You should not purposely throw yourselves into an artificial gladness; the true gladness comes from within." Very true; and the genuine healing of sickness comes from within, and you shall and cannot subdue it by art? It is therefore that the Turks believe that you ought not to assist nature in her marvellous operations by a healing means. If that be your faith, do as the Turks do, and drink no wine. But have we not thus a thousand things which are to a certain degree necessary to our well-being, necessary to preserve the proper tone of mind and body? And would you blindly condemn all these? Wherefore then do you imagine that wine was made? Would you banish all poetry out of life, and say
Who then would cheat himself with phantom shapes,
That with a borrowed charm do clothe existence,
And with a false possession follow Hope?
Schiller.
Will you do that? Then, indeed, must you banish wine; for it is, so to say, an incarnate poetry. For if it were not that, it were nothing to us; and to whomsoever it is not that, him counsel we to refrain, and to hand it over to other and happier mortals. But think well on it ere you banish all poetry out of the world.
The roseate-tinted veil of dreams
Falls from Life's countenance of pallid gloom,
And the world showeth as it is--a tomb.
Schiller.
Who, then, would wish to live in such a world? No; we value the wine which calls forth the poetry of the inner man of him who is not totally abandoned of the Muses. But you, perhaps, reprobate the enjoyment of wine as too ignoble and material. But is it then the material portion of the wine which confers on us its witchcraft? No; it is the fine spirit, and that ethereal life which the German calls the flower of the wine. They ascend to the exhausted brain, and brace the relaxed chords. Know you then whether the strength which gives to life poetry and fresh grace, may not be one and the same? Whether the strength which is here bound to the material substratum, be not the same which there seizes thee mightily in the creations of Shakspeare? whether it be not the same which lives in the accord of the violoncello; whether it be not the same which dwells so entrancingly in the voice of the beloved? Yes, the spirits of the wine are related to others; and when they discover their brothers in the breasts of men, so combine they vigorously, and bursting their bonds, rush forth into active operation. All those noble feelings which had long, perhaps, by their possessor, who had experienced the bitter deceits of life, been beaten down and slept in obscurity--now, touched by the magic wand of wine, start again from their tomb. But when the spirits of the wine find there only strange and ignoble associates, then raise they with them a fierce conflict, in order from such guests of hell to free man; whose difference from all other beings, says Goethe, consists in this--that he be noble, helpful, and good! Therefore despise not wine, which is capable of accomplishing such rare ends, which can raise phantasies such as were dreamed in the Rathskeller at Bremen.[[36]] No; we acknowledge the wisdom of him who gave the wine to mankind, and of the good old patriarch who so thankfully received it.
[OLD NOAH.]
Noah from the ark had got,
The Lord came to him on the spot;