CHAPTER XV.

FOOD.

As before observed, the study of the stomach is the study of morality. By investigating the influence of food and drink on our minds, we soon discover the strongest motives for self-denial, and learn many a forcible lesson concerning the nature and extent of our responsibility. The results of mismanaging the stomach typify all the effects of our abandonment to any other propensity; for it is most evident that if we do not keep appetite under control, the right use of our reason is abolished, and we become more completely enslaved to our lusts than the most groveling beast. The comfort and efficiency of intellect, nay, the moral perception, manliness, and virtue of the mind depend greatly on our use of aliment; and in the very means by which we sustain the strength of the body, or most directly disorder its functions, we at the same time either fortify or disable the brain, so that we shall be qualified to use our faculties with advantage, or else, amid the confusion of our sensations, be rendered incapable of rational attention. Who has not seen the bright dreams of his morning's philosophy clouded by the fumes of a tempting table, and the best resolves of calm thoughtfulness lost amid the sparklings of wine ? Man has invented most of his dangers; he delights in exposing himself to artificial excitements, and he would rather run the risk of perdition than not try the force of temptation; for alas! since self-confidence first abased him, he has never be

lieved that he could not conquer appetite according to his knowledge whenever he pleased, until he has found his will itself corrupted, and all his humanity helpless and undone. Animal instincts never conduct to such dangers; but the human mind, while it refines the sensations of the body by its own intensity, aggravates the evils amid which it riots, and by its greater capacity for pleasure twines the snare most cunningly around the soul, and by speculating in sensualities, raises a multitude of evil spirits, which at first appear in forms of delicious beauty, but as they weary his brain with their ceaseless presence, they gradually assume disgusting appearances, and as they become more and more hateful, he is more and more in earnest to dismiss them, while they only the more closely haunt and more thoroughly torment him. Reason has been placed by the only wise God in the midst of seductive influences, that by thus perceiving the slender tenure of her power, she may be forced to look above the body for motives to sustain her in dominion over appetite. Those who yield to their lower propensities so far as to regard their indulgence as the end or purpose, instead of the means and appendage of life, to surfeit rather than to suffice nature, are said to make their lusts their gods, because they really serve and obey them. Quorum finis interitus, quorum Deus venter, et gloria in dedecore ipsorum. Reason is strong only in proportion to her motives. She is next to omnipotent in her control over the body when she derives her motives from the Almighty. Hence the reasonableness of the account of man's first disobedience. The test was simple and sufficient. But in order to understand its force, we must remember that the temptation was presented with a false promise of increased knowledge and power. It was made reasonable by at once appealing to appetite and to the pure self-love of our nature for reason's fall is the distrust of her

Maker. Therefore, as Byron says, "if we get rid of the apple, we are no better off." Such, then, is the grand lesson we learn from our necessities being provided for in such a manner that the exercise of judgment is required to avoid the dangers to which our appetites, undirected by exact instinct, would otherwise surely lead us.

The education of our appetites, first under the tuition of parental care and foresight, and then under the vigilance of our own reason in the actual experience of good and evil, constitutes the very marked distinction between a responsible and an instinctive creature. The latter is under a law which governs its propensities with undeviating precision, and which operates as a function of its bodily structure, but the former must be dependent on obedience to laws belonging to the mind. Man discriminates as regards known effects, as well as from choice of sensation, but the lower creatures have no such choice, for instinct is ruled by appetite, but reason by knowledge of consequences. Instinct is informed by acuteness of sense, and has no power of correcting its impressions by reflection; but reason is taught by a sagacity derived from the power we possess of comparing appearances and estimating realities. Reason is analytical as well as logical; but instinct is neither, but it is merely sensuous, and man's mind is little better when he chooses to enjoy the present without regard to the future. Hence the use and abuse of appetite afford criteria of the state and power of our reason. To use the world, without abusing it, is the doctrine of Christianity, because it is a dispensation which sets our reason right with regard to all our appetites, while it introduces our spirits into fellowship with the Creator, who would have us all enter into the fullness of His own satisfaction-that rest in goodness which contemplates a universe reposing in the peace, glory, and blessing of its Maker; for to partake of the bread of heaven is to feast with God.

The word appetite has been restricted by common usage to express the propensity for food; and probably because of its regularity, importance, and power, it furnishes the strongest metaphor of mental desire, as when Lamb speaks of Coleridge looking forward to death as if hungering for eternity. This phrase, however, is but a poor imitation of the beautiful words, Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, for he shall be filled. The wise man, in his proverbs, has taught the necessity of temperance in all things, by language referring only to this desire for food, and his exhortation to us to cease from our own wisdom is well enforced by enjoining abstinence from deceitful food, as if to intimate that truth alone is the proper aliment of the soul. Wisdom and temperance have always been companions, and men most famous for the extent and continued energy of their faculties, have been so convinced that habitual moderation in eating and drinking was essential to the full and healthy employment of their intellect, that those best known for clearness and elevation of mind have also been most remarkable for their control over their appetites. Sir Isaac Newton is a good example. Dr. Cheyne states of him, that when he applied himself to the investigation of light and color, to quicken his faculties and enable him to fix his attention, he confined himself all the time to a small quantity of bread, with a little sack and water, without any regulation, except that he took a little whenever he felt his animal spirits flag. Here we witness true philosophy at work to facilitate its own labors; and we do not wonder to find that the man who, when checked in his researches by the imperfection of his instruments, set about inventing and manufacturing new ones with his own hands, should also resort to the best means for sustaining the functions of his brain when determined to use it to the extent of its power; and although Celsus informs us that imbecilli stomacho

penè omnes cupidi literarum sunt, he knew full well that a bad digestion was by no means a real corroborant of the rational faculties, and however morbidly greedy of books, like the sickly devourers of circulating libraries, dyspeptic individuals might become, their weak stomachs but little aided to strengthen their judgments, or to render them the better qualified to administer to the vigorous growth of other minds. Yet, doubtless, as the same authority observes, obesus venter non parit subtilem, intellectum, an excessive stomach comports with an empty head; not that a man of fair rotundity, like Shakspeare's Justice, can not occasionally think with sufficient clearness for peaceful and epicurean purposes, but simply because the soul of a man fully alive to the great policies of existence must move his affections and his intellect too busily in their working on his nerves, and expend the vitality of his blood too rapidly to allow him to take his ease at long meals, and to accumulate a burden of flesh to impede alike both his body and his mind. The happy medium which Newton endeavored to maintain was just that which would preserve the blood in the fittest state for the purposes of the mind while intently acting on the brain; and probably not a little of the splendid clearness of his demonstrations may be attributed to the success with which he controlled all his bodily propensities, by the moderation which he invariably observed in the management of his stomach.

Many remarkable individuals have been carried by their notions of temperance to most intemperate extremes, and by needlessly abstaining from the use of certain foods, and restricting themselves to very small quantities, have endeavored to secure the favor of God and the admiration of men. If, indeed, by such abstemiousness the soul could attain completer mastery over the body, and be thus enabled to dwell more constantly in the region of pure thought, it would be wise, it