TEE FRIT1T GIFT. 159 



with the other names defined in this chapter, will not only be 

 found practically more convenient than the phrases in com- 

 mon use, but will more securely fix in the student's mind a 

 true conception of the essential differences in substance, which, 

 ultimately, depend wholly on their pleasantness to human per- 

 ception, 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 cinnamon is made of 

 cells with so many walls, or grnpe-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 exhilarating, 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 sub- 

 stances by a name rightly belonging to it through all the past 

 variations of the language of educated man, will probably en- 

 able us often to discern powers in the thing itself, of affecting 

 the human body and mind, which are indeed qualities infi- 

 nitely 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 powderiness of oat-cake, or a well- 

 boiled potato (in the days when oat-cake and potatoes were !) 

 from the glossily-softened crispiiess of a well-made salad, 

 and from the cool and fragrant amber of an apricot, are in- 

 deed distinctions between the essential virtues of things 

 which were made to be tasted, much more than to be eaten ; 

 and in their various methods of ministry to, and temptation 

 of, human appetites, have their part in the history, not of ele- 

 ments merely, but of souls ; and of the soul-virtues, which t 

 from the beginning of the world have bade the barrel of meal 

 not waste, nor the cruse of oil fail ; and have planted, by 

 waters of comfort, the fruits which are for the healing of 

 nations. 



8. And, again, therefore, I must repeat, with insistance. 



