The ancients have variously endeavoured to determine the seat of this faculty. Aristotle placed it in the heart, which, from the sense of its oppression observed in acute moral sufferings he considered the origin of our nerves, or sensorium. Avicenus and other philosophers located imagination in the anterior portion of the brain, which he called the prow; memory in the posterior part, which he denominated the poop, and judgment in the centre of the organ, or what mariners would term mid-ship. The notions of Gall and Spurzheim had long since been anticipated by philosophers and physicians, both in regard to the division of the cerebral organ, and the external appearance of the cranium, which denoted their preponderancy. That temperature exercises a powerful influence over our mental faculties is evident. In warm climates we find a greater exaltation of the mind, more enthusiasm and vivid emotion, than in northern latitudes. The East is the land of fancy, illustrated by their wondrous tales of fiction, and their vivid and fantastic imagery, displayed in the chimeras and the arabesques of their palaces and temples. In these regions all the passions are uncontrollable and wild. Love is characterized by furious or dark jealousy, according to the rank and power of the lover; and ambition is signalized by bloodthirsty and promiscuous barbarity. No opposition can be brooked: man is either a ferocious tyrant, or an abject slave; subjection alone preventing the oppressed from being as sanguinary as the oppressor. Government is despotism, and religion fatality and fanaticism. In northern climes, on the contrary, every thing is cold and calculating. The almighty passion of love may prevail; but its demonstrations are morose, concentrated, although not less ferocious than under a southern sky. In the one country, man seeks the dark shelter of the forest, and the solitude of the mountain, to ponder over his grievances, or soliloquise on his sufferings; in the other he courts the roseate bower and the orange grove, to lull him into a soft repose which may calm his feelings by temporary oblivion, to be roused again to action by the stimulus of opium, tobacco, and a burning sun. The ancients were so fully convinced of this influence of the amorphous constitution, that Lucianus tells us that the Abderites (a people so remarkable for their stupidity and sluggishness that Abderitica mens was proverbial), having witnessed the performance of one of Euripides’s plays under the fierce solar rays, became fired with such enthusiasm, that they ran about the streets in a wild phrensy, repeating aloud his sublime verses, until the coolness of the evening restored them to reason and to their native torpor. So predominant are these feelings, which owe their character to climate, that they regulate our ideas of a future state, as well as our conduct on earth. The paradise of the Mohammedan is a blessed region of everlasting pleasure and sensual enjoyments; beauteous houris await the soul, which is to luxuriate in corporeal voluptuousness; and the purple wine, forbidden to the living, is to flow in delectable streams, to delight the dead, who may, in the seventh paradise inhabit a land where rivers of wine, and milk, and honey, are ever flowing; where evergreen trees bend under luxurious fruits, whose very pips are transformed into lovely maidens, so sweet—to use their own metaphorical language—that the ocean would lose its bitterness if they did but condescend to spit in its briny waters; and all these enjoyments are secured to the true believer by hosts of guardian angels, who have seventy thousand mouths, and seventy thousand tongues, to praise God seventy thousand times each day in seventy thousand languages: and such is their horror of earthly heat, that in the other world one of the greatest rewards is the delight of being able to sleep under the cool shade of a tree each leaf of which is of such an expanse that a man might travel fifty thousand years under its benign protection. How different is the paradise of Odin! There, it is true, the soul of the departed dwells in magnificent palaces; but what are his enjoyments compared to those of the sensual Asiatic! Instead of soft music, the din of war is constantly to resound in his ear, while he luxuriates in drinking strong beer and hydromel, poured by the fair Valknas, the houris of the Vahalla paradise, into the skulls of his enemies. Their God is called the god of crows; and two of these sable familiars, Hugin, who represents the mind, and Nunnin, or memory, are constantly perched upon his shoulders, until they take flight to seek information for their master.
To this day it is said that the Tartars fancy, that, in their future abode of bliss, their reward will be a sort of Platonic affection, and a perpetual and undisturbed state of meditation; in short, a celestial far niente. So convinced were the ancients of this effect of peculiar temperature, that the morose Heraclitus maintained that the power of the mind arose from a dry splendour; that all things were created by solar heat; and when ill himself, he sought health by endeavouring to dispel watery accumulations by the heat of a dunghill. Ptolemy and Posidonius assert, that southern climes engender genius and wit, and are better calculated for the study of things divine; and Plato, Hippocrates, and Galen, on the same principle, affirm that stupidity and forgetfulness are produced by cold and humidity. The celebrated Descartes, in his younger days, states that he felt his enthusiasm moderated by the damps and cold of Holland; and that he ever experienced more facility in pursuing his philosophic studies in winter than in summer. Poets, on the contrary, court the glowing rays of an inspiring sun, and their Phœbus and their Apollo is the conductor and the inspirer of the Muses:
Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit.
That the energies of our intellectual faculties are under the influence of our food, is a fact long since observed. The stupidity of the athletæ, who lived upon coarse bread (coliphium) and underdone meat, was proverbial; even Hercules laboured under the imputation of a mind somewhat obtuse. Our genius, our energies are all affected by our mode of living. The rule of Sanis omnia sana, of Celsus, is applicable to very few individuals; and all our faculties may be rendered more keen or less vivid by temperance or excesses. As the nature of our ingesta influences the functions of our digestive organs, so do these organs in their turn influence our moral powers when our physical energies are elevated or depressed. Our courage, our strength of mind, our religious and our moral train of thinking, are under the control of diet. Fasting has ever been considered as predisposing to meditation and ascetic contemplation. Tertullian tells us, that we should approach the altars fasting, or having eaten nothing but dry substances. All the religious ceremonies of the Egyptians were preceded by abstinence, and their sacrificators were allowed neither animal food nor wine. Indeed, the Egyptian priesthood were remarkable for their abstinence and self-denial, fearful, according to Plutarch, that “the body should not sit light upon the soul.” Similar precautions were observed with animals, and the ox apis was not allowed to drink the waters of the Nile, as they were considered of a gross and fattening nature; even upon festive days they observed a similar moderation. It was customary, on the 9th day of the month Thoth, for every one to eat fried fish at their doors—the priests only conformed to the custom by burning theirs at the appointed time. In general they abstained from most sorts of pulse, especially beans and lentils, onions, garlic, leeks, mutton, pork; and on certain days of purification, even salt was forbidden. Many of their fasts lasted from seven to forty-two days, during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and the indulgence of any passion. Similar privations were observed by all those who attended the mysteries of Juno and Ceres. In Holy Writ we find that it was after abstinence that Divine inspiration illumined the elect. The angel appeared unto Daniel after he had been three weeks without tasting flesh, or wine, or “pleasant bread.” In the Acts, x., we find that the vision appeared to Peter, “when he had become hungry and would have eaten.” Moses fasted forty days on Mount Sinai. We find in Jonah, that even cattle were frequently subject to this mortification, when he proclaimed in Nineveh that neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, should taste any thing; “let them not feed nor drink water.” Congius Ripensis tells us, that the same restriction was imposed by the Lacedæmonians on their Helots and all domestic animals. Fasting was considered by the early Christians as an essential rite. St. Anthony prescribed to his disciples one meal of dry bread, salt and water, in the day without any food on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the monastery of Mocham, in Egypt, a monk of the name of Jonas was beatified for having lived until the age of eighty-five, working hard in the garden, and without any other food than raw herbs and grass steeped in vinegar; this abstemious cenobite added to his claims to canonization by always sleeping in his chair. St. Hilarius only ate fifteen figs and six ounces of barley bread per diem. St. Julian Sabus retired to a cavern, where he only luxuriated once in the week on millet-bread, with salt and water; and St. Macarius resolved to outdo him by restraining his sustenance to a few cabbage-leaves every Sunday. Not only did these gastric martyrs attribute their holy visions to abstinence, but they considered it as the source of their longevity. Thus, St. Anthony lived to the age of one hundred and five; St. Paphinus to ninety on dry bread; and St. Paul the Hermit thrived for one hundred and fifty-nine years upon dates. It is not derogatory to their supposed divine mission to say that all these men were as enthusiastic as the fakirs of the east.
So acceptable to the Deity was starvation considered, that at various periods it was enforced by penal laws. Charlemagne denounces the punishment of death on all those who transgressed in this respect; and, by an old Polish edict, any sinner who ate on a fast-day was sentenced to have all his teeth drawn. However, monkish ingenuity endeavoured to elude these severe enactments, by interpreting the letter instead of the spirit; and we find, in the regulations of a German monastery, the following accommodation, “Liquidum non frangit jejunium,” by which, on days of penance, the monks only took rich soups and succulent broth. In latter days, being permitted to eat fish in Lent, they saw no reason why fowl should not be included, on the authority of Genesis, that the waters brought forth every winged fowl after his kind. This relaxation in culinary discipline called forth loud indignation from many prelates. St. Ambrosius attributes the profligacy of the monks to these excesses; and Tertullian considers the fall of the Israelites as the punishment of their neglect in this respect. Our Shakspeare illustrates this belief in the influence of fasting as preparatory to inspiration.
Last night the very gods shew’d me a vision—
I fast and pray’d for their intelligence.
Not satisfied with this mystification in food, we find some austere monks endeavouring to reduce carnal appetites by other means, such as by blood-letting, monialem minuere; and claustral flesh was brought down by phlebotomy and purging at regular periods. To this day we find that well-behaved Turks, during the Ramasan, make it a godly point never to swallow their saliva.
This digression on fasting was somewhat necessary, to show how much our diet tends to modify our being. It is well known that troops will display more activity and courage when fasting than after a meal; and an ingenious physician of our day is perfectly correct when he attributes a daring spirit or a pusillanimous feeling to the influence of our stomach.
Intellectual weakness, frequently brought on by excesses, has proved a rich source to empiricism; hence the belief in mystic and supernatural agencies, and the power of certain nostrums. Coloured fountain water and bread pills have made the fortune of various quacks, when imaginary cures have relieved imaginary diseases. In our days, numerous have been the recoveries attributed to Hohenloe’s prayers. Trusting to mystic numbers, three, five, seven, or nine pills have produced effects, when other numbers less fortunate would have failed. To this hour mankind, even in enlightened nations, are fettered by these absurd trammels. Credulity, and superstition her twin sister, have in all ages been the source whence priestcraft, and quackery have derived their wealth. Next to these rich mines we may rank fashion. The adoption of any particular medicine by princes and nobles will endow it with as great a power as that which was supposed to be vested in regal hands in the cure of scrofula, hence called king’s evil; and we have too many instances of such cures having been effected by a monarch’s touch to doubt the fact. The history of the potato is a strong illustration of the influence of authority: for more than two centuries the use of this invaluable plant was vehemently opposed; at last, Louis XV. wore a bunch of its flowers in the midst of his courtiers, and the consumption of the root became universal in France. The warm bath, so highly valued by the Romans, once fell into disrepute, because the Emperor Augustus had been cured by a cold one, which for a time was invariably resorted to. Thus Horace exclaims,
——Caput ac stomachum supponere fontibus audent
Clusinis, Gabiosque petunt et frigida rura.