This circumstance was particularly evident among the poor sailors
who were in the boat with Captain Bligh after the mutiny. The
captain was sent by government to convey some plants of the
bread-fruit tree from Otaheite, to the West-Indies; soon after he
left Otaheite, the crew mutinied, and put the captain and most of
the officers, with some of the men, on board the ship's boat, with a
very short allowance of provisions, and particularly of liquors, for
they had only six quarts of rum, and six bottles of wine, for
nineteen people, who were driven by storms about the south-sea,
exposed to wet and cold all the time, for nearly a month; each man
was allowed only a tea-spoon full of rum a-day, but this tea-spoon
full refreshed the poor men, benumbed as they were with cold, and
faint with hunger, more than twenty times the quantity would have
done those who were warm, and well fed; and had it not been for the
spirit having such power to act upon men, in their condition, they
never could have outlived the hardships they experienced. All these
facts, and many others which might be brought, establish beyond a
doubt the truth of the law I have mentioned, namely, that when the
powerful action of the exciting powers ceases for some time, the
excitability accumulates, or becomes more capable of receiving their
actions.

The second law is, that when the exciting powers have acted with
violence, or for a considerable time, the excitability becomes
exhausted, or less fit to be acted on, and this we shall be able to
prove by a similar induction. Let us take the effects of light upon
the eye; when it has acted violently for some time upon the optic
nerve, it diminishes the excitability of that nerve, and renders it
incapable of being affected by a quantity of light that would at