There is a pride which belongs to every rightly-constituted mind, though it is scarcely to be called pride, but rather a proper estimate of self. It is, properly speaking, the elevation of mind which arises when we feel that we have mastered some noble idea and made it our own. Man is proud of the idea only so far as he feels that it has become part of himself.—Von Humboldt.
ARDENT SPIRITS.
By B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D.
It is the business of science to take up the pint and a half of ardent spirit which, split up through fifteen pints, gives all the zest and consequence to the thirteen and a half pints of colored water.
Taking this ardent spirit into one of her crucibles or laboratories, Science compares it with other products on the shelves there, and soon she finds its niche in which it fits truly. On the shelf where it fits she has ranged a number of other spirits. There is chloroform, ether, sweet spirit of nitre, and some other fluids, very useful remedies in the hands of the physician. These, she sees, are the children of the spirit, are made, in fact, from it. On the same shelf she has another set of spirits; there is wood spirit, there is potato spirit, there is a substance which looks like spermaceti; and these she sees are all members of the same family, not children, this time, of the ardent spirit, but brothers or sisters, each one constructed from the same elements, in the same relative proportions and on the same type. Passionless, having no predilection for any one object in the universe except the truth, she writes down the ardent spirit as having its proper place in a group of chemical substances which are distinctly apart from other substances she knows of, on which men and animals live, and which are called by the name of foods or sustainers of life. She says all the members of the spirit family are, unless judiciously and even skilfully used, inimical to life. They produce drowsiness, sleep, death. In the hands of the skilful they may be safe as medicines; in the hands of the unskilful they are unsafe, they are poisons. To this rule there is not one exception amongst them. There can be no demur, no doubt now on this particular point; it may be a blow to poetry of passion; it may make the ancient and modern bacchanalian look foolish to tell him that wine is a chemical substance mixed and diluted with water, and that beer and spirits are all in the same category; but such is the fact. In computing the influence of wine, men have no longer to discuss anything more than the influence of a definite chemical compound, one of a family of chemical compounds called the alcohols—the second of a family group, differing in origin from the first of the series, which is got from wood, in that it is got from grain, and is called ethylic, or common alcohol, pure spirit of wine. But now the world turns properly to ask another question. Admitted all that is said, why, after all, should the practice of mankind in the use of this spirit be bad? Man is not guided solely by reason; passion may lead him sometimes, perchance, in the true path. Tell us then, O Science! why this ardent spirit may not still be drunken; why may it not be a part of the life of man?
To this question the answer of Science is straight and to the point. In the universe of life, she says, man forms but a fractional part. All the sea is full of life; all the woods are full of life; all the air is full of life; on the surface of the earth man possesses, as companions or as enemies, herds and herds of living forms. Of that visible life he forms but a minute speck, and beyond that visible life there is the world invisible to common view, with its myriads of forms unseen, which the most penetrating microscope has not reached. Again, there are other forms of life; plants innumerable, from gigantic Wellingtonias to lichens and mosses, and beneath these myriads more so infinitely minute that the microscope fails to reach them. This is all life, life which goes through its set phases in due form; grows in health and strength and beauty, every part of it, from highest to lowest living grade, without a shade of the use of this strong spirit. What evidence can be more conclusive that alcohol is not included in the scheme of life?