Hunger and thirst are my natural appetites, which would rest satisfied with the most simple food, were it not for the elaborate flavours, the sauces, and other sophistries, with which you mislead me. My uneducated hunger would never have attempted a discovery beyond plain meats, so that, without your fertility of invention, and your research into flavours, the gout would never have been found. Pray answer me, was it the body that invented wine? To which of my limbs did it first occur that the grape might become a delicious liquor? Was it the foot, the hand, or the shoulder, that conceived the happy thought? Look at the drunkard in his disgrace, and remember that it was the reason, the immortal mind, which devised a liquor to debase him. Such is your justice to me: you invent a pernicious liquor, pour it down my throat, till I can no longer walk or stand, and then accuse me of debauchery. My natural moderation is proved by those animals which have no mind, or at least one of so little sagacity, that it can make no discoveries in vice. The horse has the same sensations as man: like you, it has to contend with a conspiracy of the five senses, but not having an immortal reason to invent new tastes, it remains satisfied with its original enjoyments. You say it is unjust that you should feel the pains from my festivities, by which you would make it appear that I associate you with me only in gout and head-ache, and refuse to admit you as an accomplice in the delight of eating and drinking, while the truth is, that you share with me all the pleasures of a banquet, and cannot deny that I impart to you the flavour of wine as frankly as I communicate a pang of gout. You are never excluded from my palate, nor is there a taste or sensation in it which is kept a secret from you. I am not therefore to be persuaded that you have less pleasure from our enjoyments than I have; but so unreasonable are you, that while you never fail to demand from me your full share of enjoyment, you wish me to keep all the pain for myself. If you had not your part of the delight, I think you would not so easily acquiesce in our pleasures; for when any pernicious food is to be devoured, or a few supernumerary goblets are to be drained, I always find you a willing associate.
MIND.
That I deny; I never fail to remonstrate against your vices.
BODY.
Yes; when there is no banquet ready, you pass the time in admiring temperance, and sometimes you tell me that we will certainly begin to practise it; but when the opportunity arrives,—when the table is before us, and we sit down to be temperate,—you forget all our plans, and suffer us to be undone without the least expostulation.
That you may not seem to authorise our irregularities, you pretend to be careless and forgetful, while in truth you heartily enjoy what we are doing. When I stretch out my hand to the goblet, you seem to be thinking of something else; when I help myself to a luxurious dish, though you know how perniciously it is composed, you wink at the ingredients, and give me no warning against it. Nor is this all, but you frequently labour even to corroborate my imprudence; and when, from a regard to health, we hesitate to partake of something that we both love, you can instantly find some casuistry to justify the dish, affirming that it has not all the malice imputed to it, or we have tried it before, and survived, or perhaps, this once it may do no harm, with many such evasions, which I never should have had genius to invent. But if you really disapprove of intemperance, why do not you positively forbid it?
MIND.
If I sometimes want the firmness to control you, I ought not to be reproached with it by you, who betray me into every frailty. All my base appetites I receive from you; the immortal soul has no love of wine or rich viands. It is by your means only that plausible dishes ever prevail against me. Without your persuasion, the most urgent meats would fail to move me; but you give them a specious flavour, and misrepresent them to me in such a variety of tastes that I am deceived.