to the commonly gross sense of taste, that
I have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had
eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The soul not being mistress
of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one
listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the
savor of food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can
never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan
may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an
alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth
defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither
the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when
that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our
spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter
has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits,
the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for
sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond,
she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live
this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce
between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never
fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the
insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer
for the Universe's Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our
little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at
last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent,
but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every
zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate
who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the
charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off,
is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our
higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be
wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy
our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its
nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we
may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up