162 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS. 



dissect ourselves. We know already that the habitual abuser of 

 stimulants is full to the brim, and will run over with each fresh 

 potation without assimilating it. He has no digestion left for com- 

 mon food, and therefore in point of assimilation his case proves 

 nothing. It is the casual use of wine according to times and sea- 

 sons, as Solomon says, and according to the feelings of the hour, 

 which is life-giving, healthy and enjoyable. But whatever is good 

 becomes, out of its place, an evil. Air which sustains us, native 

 and exhilarating in the chest, is a torment and insurrection in the 

 belly. The spirit and consciousness of the brain, too much poured 

 forth upon a spot of skin, are sensitiveness, or agony, according to 

 the degree. The blood thrown down from its vessels is a foreign 

 body and black death in the system. Continence is the case in 

 which forces are safe. And so with wine, which now and always 

 has unflawed goblets in some men's brains, from which it is safely 

 drank by their powers, and these of the very highest. The ideal 

 then is, to emulate those chaste but intense qualities that enfranchise 

 the favored guests of nature to dip their cups in the rubies. 



And if wine is good to drink, it need not be drank on pretexts. 

 Men have drunk it from the beginning for that which is the best 

 and the worst of reasons — because they like it. " Wine maketh 

 glad the heart of man" — there lies the fortress of its usage. To 

 the wise it is the adjunct of society • the launch of the mind from 

 the care and hiuderance of the day ; the wheel of emotion ; the 

 preparator of inventive idea ; the blanclness of every sense obedient 

 to the best impulses of the hours when labor is done. Its use is to 

 deepen ease and pleasure on high-tides and at harvest-homes, when 

 endurance is not required ; for delight has important functions, and 

 originates life as it were afresh from a childhood of sportive feeling, 

 which must recur at seasons for the most of men, or motive itself 

 would stop. A second use is, to enable us to surmount seasons of 

 physical and moral depression, and to keep up the life-mark to a 

 constant level, influenced as little as possible by the circumstances 

 of the hour. Also to show to age by occasions, that its youth lies 

 still within it, and may be found like a spring in a dry land with 

 the thyrsus for a divining rod. A third use is, to soften us ; to 

 make us kinder than our reason, and more admissive than our can- 



