If we ever get the English back on to the English land they will become
again a religious people, if all goes well, a superstitious people.
The absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith
is largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds.
If we have no more turnip ghosts it is chiefly from the lack of turnips.



VII. Omar and the Sacred Vine


A new morality has burst upon us with some violence in connection
with the problem of strong drink; and enthusiasts in the matter
range from the man who is violently thrown out at 12.30, to the lady
who smashes American bars with an axe. In these discussions it
is almost always felt that one very wise and moderate position is
to say that wine or such stuff should only be drunk as a medicine.
With this I should venture to disagree with a peculiar ferocity.
The one genuinely dangerous and immoral way of drinking wine is to drink
it as a medicine. And for this reason, If a man drinks wine in order
to obtain pleasure, he is trying to obtain something exceptional,
something he does not expect every hour of the day, something which,
unless he is a little insane, he will not try to get every hour
of the day. But if a man drinks wine in order to obtain health,
he is trying to get something natural; something, that is,
that he ought not to be without; something that he may find it
difficult to reconcile himself to being without. The man may not
be seduced who has seen the ecstasy of being ecstatic; it is more
dazzling to catch a glimpse of the ecstasy of being ordinary.
If there were a magic ointment, and we took it to a strong man,