easure--pleasure
of a higher kind, no doubt, than that which we derive from wine, yet
fairly comparable to it. You went on to say that you could not, from the
moral point of view, discern any appreciable difference between
intoxicating oneself by means of literature or art and getting tipsy on
port wine or brandy; that the reading of poetry, most especially was
clearly self-intoxication--a service of Venus and Bacchus, in which the
suggestions of artfully-ordered words were used as substitutes for the
harem and the wine-flask. Completing the expression of this idea, you
said that the excitement produced by oratory was exactly of the same
nature as the excitement produced by gin, so that Mr. Bright and M.
Gambetta--nay, even a gentleman so respectable as the late Lord
Derby--belonged strictly to the same profession as the publicans, being
dealers in stimulants, and no more. The habitual student was, in your
view, nothing better than the helpless victim of unresisted appetite, to
whom intellectual intoxication, having been at first a pleasure, had
finally become a necessity. You added that any rational person who found
himself sinking into such a deplorable condition as this, would have
recourse to some severe discipline as a preservative--a discipline
requiring close attention to common things, and rigorously excluding
every variety of thought which could possibly be considered
intellectual.

It is strictly true that the three intellectual pursuits--literature,
science, and the fine arts--are all of them strong stimulants, and that
men are attracted to them by the stimulus they give. But these
occupations are morally much nearer to the common level of other
occupations than you suppose. There is no doubt a certain intoxication
in poetry and painting; but I have seen a tradesman find a fully
equivalent intoxication in an addition of figures showing a delightful
balance at his banker's. I have seen a young poet intoxicated with the
love of poetry; but I have also seen a young mechanical genius on whom
the sight of a locomotive acted exactly like a bottle of champagne.
Everything that is capable of exciting or moving man, everything that
fires him with enthusiasm, everything that sustains his energies above
the dead level of merely animal existence, may be compared, and not very
untruly, to the action of generous wine. The two most powerful mental
stimulants--since they overcome even the fear of death--are
unquestionably r