then, lastly, if after this liquid has been thus altered you expose it
to that process which is called distillation; that is to say, if you
put it into a still, and collect the matters which are sent over, you
obtain, when you first heat it, a clear transparent liquid, which,
however, is something totally different from water; it is much lighter;
it has a strong smell, and it has an acrid taste; and it possesses the
same intoxicating power as the original liquid, but in a much more
intense degree. If you put a light to it, it burns with a bright
flame, and it is that substance which we know as spirits of wine.

Now these facts which I have just put before you--all but the last--have
been known from extremely remote antiquity. It is, I hope one of the
best evidences of the antiquity of the human race, that among the
earliest records of all kinds of men, you find a time recorded when
they got drunk. We may hope that that must have been a very late period
in their history. Not only have we the record of what happened to
Noah, but if we turn to the traditions of a different people, those
forefathers of ours who lived in the high lands of Northern India, we
find that they were not less addicted to intoxicating liquids; and I
have no doubt that the knowledge of this process extends far beyond the
limits of historically recorded time. And it is a very curious thing
to observe that all the names we have of this process, and all that
belongs to it, are names that have their roots not in our present
language, but in those older languages which go back to the times at
which this country was peopled. That word "fermentation" for example,
which is the title we apply to the whole process, is a Latin term; and a
term which is evidently based upon the fact of the effervescence of the
liquid. Then the French, who are very fond of calling themselves a
Latin race, have a particular word for ferment, which is 'levure'. And,
in the same way, we have the word "leaven," those two words having