Spice is seldom taken in such quantity as to do any material injury to the system, flesh-meats as well as vegetables are the natural diet of mankind; with these a glutton may be crammed up to the throat, and fed fat like a stalled ox; but he will not be diseased, unless he adds spirituous or fermented liquor to his food.  This is well known in the distilleries, where the swine, which are fattened by the spirituous sediments of barrels, acquire diseased livers.  But mark what happens to a man, who drinks a quart of wine or of ale, if he has not been habituated to it.  He loses the use both of his limbs and of his understanding!  He becomes a temporary idiot, and has a temporary stroke of the palsy!  And though he slowly recovers after some hours, is it not reasonable to conclude, that a perpetual repetition of so powerful a poison must at length permanently affect him?—­If a person accidentally becomes intoxicated by eating a few mushrooms of a peculiar kind, a general alarm is excited, and he is said to be poisoned, and emetics are exhibited; but so familiarised are we to the intoxication from vinous spirit, that it occasions laughter rather than alarm.

There is however considerable danger in too hastily discontinuing the use of so strong a stimulus, lest the torpor of the system, or paralysis, should sooner be induced by the omission than by the continuance of this habit, when unfortunately acquired.  A golden rule for determining the quantity, which may with safety be discontinued, is delivered in Sect.  XII. 7. 8.

11.  Definition of drunkenness.  Many of the irritative motions are much increased in energy by internal stimulation.

2.  A great additional quantity of pleasurable sensation is occasioned by this increased exertion of the irritative motions.  And many sensitive motions are produced in consequence of this increased sensation.

3.  The associated trains and tribes of motions, catenated with the increased irritative and sensitive motions, are disturbed, and proceed in confusion.

4.  The faculty of volition is gradually impaired, whence proceeds the instability of locomotion, inaccuracy of perception, and inconsistency of ideas; and is at length totally suspended, and a temporary apoplexy succeeds.

* * * * *

SECT.  XXII.

OF PROPENSITY TO MOTION, REPETITION AND IMITATION.

I. Accumulation of sensorial power in hemiplagia, in sleep, in cold fit of fever, in the locomotive muscles, in the organs of sense.  Produces propensity to action. II. Repetition by three sensorial powers.  In rhimes and alliterations, in music, dancing, architecture, landscape-painting, beauty. III. 1. Perception consists in imitation.  Four kinds of imitation. 2. Voluntary.  Dogs taught to dance. 3. Sensitive.  Hence sympathy, and all our virtues.  Contagious matter of venereal ulcers, of hydrophobia, of