54 TASTING 



permanently mischievous than those of others, yet 

 every kind of excess is a mischief ; and we cannot 

 gratify any one sense or even insensibility itself, 

 to a state of intoxication, without paying for it in 

 our general happiness. Excess of food leads di- 

 rectly to stupefaction ; excess of stimulating drink 

 ends in stupefaction still more complete, but it 

 arrives at that conclusion through a delirium of 

 very strong, and, up to a certain point, of very 

 delightful excitement -just in the same manner 

 that the excitement of eating wholesome food in 

 moderate quantity when we are hungry is very 

 delightful. The sottishness of the continually in- 

 toxicated, with whom drunkenness has become so 

 much a habit that they absolutely cannot get 

 drunk (for that, and indeed any excess, may 

 be carried so far as to destroy its own effect, by 

 deadening that part of the system on which it 

 acts), is next thing to an absolute extinction of 

 the observation of nature ; and when the powers 

 are absolutely gone in that way, they are in most 

 instances irrecoverably gone. Occasional intox- 

 ication is also an occasional destruction, by means 

 of which time is lost, and from which the powers 

 seldom recover with all their former tone and acti- 

 vity. But still there is a point even in the pro- 

 gress of that, up to which all is wholesome and 

 profitable ; and as every nation under the sun, 

 which has discovered any thing at all, has dis- 

 covered some drink or substance of a stimulating 

 nature, the temperate use of such stimulants must 

 not only be not improper, it must be natural and 

 necessary. Thus in order to enjoy nature fully, 

 and crowd into the years of our time the greatest 

 amount of life, or, in other words, the greatest 



