supposed to govern humanity and induce men
to live temperately. The cultivated gourmand
cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors;
but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the
fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications.
Like the boor he is deluded by a
mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies,
having once obtained a sensuous joy that
pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction
by endless repetition, till at last he
reaches madness. The bouquet of the wine he
loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving
him with no thoughts but those of sensuous
desire; and he is in the same hopeless state
as the man who dies mad with drink. What
good has the drunkard obtained by his
madness? None; pain has at last swallowed
up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to
terminate the agony. The man suffers the final
penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law
of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation,--a
law which forbids a man to stand still.
Not twice can the same cup of pleasure be
tasted; the second time it must contain either
a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life.

The same argument holds good with regard
to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates.
We see men who are the flower of their
age in intellect, who pass beyond their fellows