TEETOTALISM. 161 



upon the cup, and clip their spirity roots into the beakers. The 

 imaginative skies are vinous then ; Valhalla has its mead, and great 

 Odin never eats, but all sustenance is liquor to Allfather, who 

 drinks only wine. Elysium too would be a poor Elysium without 

 nectar and ambrosia. The case is purely one of assimilation. If 

 the life can drink the wine, and make life of it, then the wine is 

 food j if the life is overtopped by the wine, which lies in pools in the 

 reeking stomach and above the swampy brains, then there is excess, 

 sensuality, or spiritual drowning. It is like the case of the horse 

 and his rider. Many are thrown, and break their bodies ; many 

 should never get on horseback ; some can ride where their animal 

 is not too spirited j and some can back any charger even were it 

 Bucephalus. But it is to be noted that allowance is only to persons 

 in health, and not to those who have bodily ailments, diseased 

 imaginations, or predominant lusts, or other maladies which want a 

 physician. 



It is now therefore obvious that we cannot take the personal 

 experience of any man as to abstinence, beyond the limits of his 

 own temperament, business and pleasures. The different functions 

 to which our employments convert our organs, require for the or- 

 gans different stimulation to put them " into condition" for their 

 work. A Newton may require to fast and agonize before he can 

 end his fearful mathematics, but that is no reason why our grooms 

 and gardeners, with no end of the kind, should go through the like 

 discipline. The adjustment must be left to experience, but it can- 

 not come from an author's study. 



Thus the power of assimilating wine is various in different per- 

 sons, and in the same person at different times, and a flexible sense 

 is necessary, to adjust the indulgence to the occasion. Observation 

 proves this, for we can drink more at some times than at others, 

 and sometimes with impunity and great restoration ; at other times 

 we feel ill consequences which show that we have not judged wisely 

 at the boar J. 



Above all things it is plain that cutting up dead sots will not settle 

 the question. On the contrary, we must dissect all the drinkers, 

 temperate and intemperate, and the same man at many different 

 times, to elicit the living law of temperance. And first we must 



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