Before Garrison Keillor, H. L. Mencken

Published on by D. G. Hart

In honor of Keillor’s line about non-smokers living longer and dumber, here’s an early review by Mencken on the benefits of alcohol (the inflamed may want to avert their eyes):

Dr. Williams’s proofs that total abstinence is necessary to extreme longevity are convincing without being impressive. Before the human race will accept the conclusions he draws from them, it must first accept the theory that the usefulness and agreeableness of life are to be measured by its duration, and by its duration only. No such theory is held today by sane men. We estimate an individual life, not by length, but by its breadth. Fifty years of Shakespeare were worth more to the world than the innumerable hundreds of all the centenarians that ever lived. . . .

[The anti-rum crusaders] forget that there is such a thing as an art of life — that civilization, at bottom, is really a successful conspiracy to defy and nullify the simple laws which secure the perpetuation of the protozoa. The physical act of reading a book obviously shortens life, for it not only strains the eyes but also tends to compress the lungs and other viscera and to atrophy the disused muscles of leg and arm; but the man of thirty who has read many books is more creditable to the race, all other things being equal, than the man of ninety who has merely lived ninety years. (“To Drink or Not to Drink,” H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set Criticism, 159-160)

19 thoughts on “Before Garrison Keillor, H. L. Mencken”

  14. Mark Twain (I think) remarked that his doctor said he could live ten years longer if he quit smoking.
    Twain’s reply was “but that’s ten years without a cigarette.”

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  15. Is some liberty “bondage to our emancipation”?

    http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2013/11/drinking-christians.html

    Romans 14: 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, in order to be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

    14:21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

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  16. Pingback: Before Garrison Keillor, H. L. Mencken. By Dr. Darryl Hart | Moderate. Thinking.

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