The crawling crocodiles, l. 59. As this animal lives chiefly at the bottom of the rivers, which he frequents, he has the power of opening the upper jaw as well as the under one, and thus with greater facility catches the fish or water-fowl which swim over him.[Back to Canto]
One great slaughter-house, l. 66. As vegetables are an inferior order of animals fixed to the soil; and as the locomotive animals prey upon them, or upon each other; the world may indeed be said to be one great slaughter-house. As the digested food of vegetables consists principally of sugar, and from this is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source of life to all organized beings. And that if our improved chemistry should ever discover the art of making sugar from fossile or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful as water, and they might live upon the earth without preying on each other, as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their numbers but the want of local room.
It would seem that roots fixed in the earth and leaves innumerable waving in the air were necessary for the decomposition of water and air, and the conversion of them into saccharine matter, which would have been not only cumberous but totally incompatible with the locomotion of animal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have carried on his head or back a forest of leaves, or have had long branching lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is they take the matter so prepared, and have organs to prepare it further for the purposes of higher animation and greater sensibility.[Back to Canto]
While cold and hunger, l. 71. Those parts of our system, which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus when the hands are for a time immersed in snow, an inaction of the cutaneous capillaries is induced, as is seen from the paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of coldness. So the pain of hunger is probably produced by the inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach from the want of the stimulus of food.
Thus those, who have used much voluntary exertion in their early years, and have continued to do so, till the decline of life commences, if they then lay aside their employment, whether that of a minister of state, a general of an army, or a merchant, or manufacturer; they cease to have their faculties excited into their usual activity, and become unhappy, I suppose from the too great accumulation of the sensorial power of volition; which wants the accustomed stimulus or motive to cause its expenditure.[Back to Canto]
Sævior armis
Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.
Horac.[Back to Canto]
E'en o'er the grave, l. 87. Many theatric preachers among the Methodists successfully inculcate the fear of death and of Hell, and live luxuriously on the folly of their hearers: those who suffer under this insanity, are generally most innocent and harmless people, who are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes; and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe. Where this intellectual cowardice is great, the voice of reason is ineffectual; but that of ridicule may save many from these mad-making doctors, as the farces of Mr. Foot; though it is too weak to cure those who are already hallucinated.[Back to Canto]
And last association, l. 93. The miseries and the felicities of life may be divided into those which arise in consequence of irritation, sensation, volition, and association; and consist in the actions of the extremities of the nerves of sense, which constitute our ideas; if they are much more exerted than usual, or much less exerted than usual, they occasion pain; as when the finger is burnt in a candle; or when we go into a cold bath: while their natural degree of exertion produces the pleasure of life or existence. This pleasure is nevertheless increased, when the system is stimulated into rather stronger action than usual, as after a copious dinner, and at the beginning of intoxication; and diminished, when it is only excited into somewhat less activity than usual, which is termed ennui, or irksomeness of life.[Back to Canto]
Ideal ills, l. 94. The tooth-edge is an instance of bodily pain occasioned by association of ideas. Every one in his childhood has repeatedly bit a part of the glass or earthen vessel, in which his food has been given him, and has thence had a disagreeable sensation in his teeth, attended at the same time with a jarring sound: and ever after, when such a sound is accidentally produced, the disagreeable sensation of the teeth follows by association of ideas; this is further elucidated in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVI. 10.[Back to Canto]