Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/197

 "You'd better be," chuckled Oliver. "Cæsar's wives, I suspect, had better be necessitarians."

"But I am as religious as Willys," I added.

"That's very right," said Willys.

"And so," I continued, "I shall take a middle ground."

"I see," said Oliver, "the golden mean, or temperance. Too little temperance is chronic inebriety. Too much temperance is teetotalism. Prohibition may and must be defended as the only known means to insure moderate drinking among the better sort of people. Exactly my position!"

"No, Excellency," I said, "you don't see. Mine is not exactly your position. I take the middle position according to a precept of Pascal: I seize upon both extremes and occupy all the ground between. But my extremes are not yours. The extremes which I have in mind are your economic necessitarianism and Willys's religion—his theory of the necessity of religious excitement. I lay hold of both those positions as firmly as you and Willys; but I reconcile them, instead of making them mutually destructive. Starting from the same premises, I reach a different conclusion."