XIV. THE FRUIT GIFT. 231 



the essential differences in substance, which, ultimately, 

 depend wholly on their pleasantness to human percep. 

 tion, and offices for human good ; and not at all on .any 

 otherwise explicable structure or faculty. It is of no 

 use to determine, by microscope or retort, that cinna- 

 mon is made of cells with so many walls, or grape- juice 

 of molecules with so many sides ; we are just as far as 

 ever from understanding why these particular interstices 

 should be aromatic, and these special parallelopipeds ex- 

 hilarating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days 

 when we could only see with our eyes, and smell with 

 our noses. But to call each of these separate substances 

 by a name rightly belonging to it through all the past 

 variations of the language of educated man, will prob- 

 ably enable us often to discern powers in the thing it- 

 self, of affecting the human body and mind, which are 

 indeed qualities infinitely more its own, than any which 

 can possibly be extracted by the point of a knife, or 

 brayed out with a mortar and pestle. 



7. Thus, to take merely instance in the three main 

 elements of which we have just determined the names, 

 flour, oil, and ambrosia ; the differences in the kinds 

 of pleasure which the tongue received from the powderi- 

 ness of oat-cake, or a well-boiled potato (in the days 

 when oat-cake and potatoes were !) from the glossily- 

 softened crispness of a well-made salad, and from the 

 cool and fragrant amber of an apricot, are indeed dis- 

 tinctions between the essential virtues of things which 



