lished the
liquid has become completely altered, it has acquired a peculiar smell,
and, what is still more remarkable, it has gained the property of
intoxicating the person who drinks it. Nothing can be more innocent than
a solution of sugar; nothing can be less innocent, if taken in excess,
as you all know, than those fermented matters which are produced
from sugar. Well, again, if you notice that bubbling, or, as it were,
seething of the liquid, which has accompanied the whole of this process,
you will find that it is produced by the evolution of little bubbles of
air-like substance out of the liquid; and I dare say you all know this
air-like substance is not like common air; it is not a substance which
a man can breathe with impunity. You often hear of accidents which take
place in brewers' vats when men go in carelessly, and get suffocated
there without knowing that there was anything evil awaiting them. And if
you tried the experiment with this liquid I am telling of while it
was fermenting, you would find that any small animal let down into the
vessel would be similarly stifled; and you would discover that a light
lowered down into it would go out. Well, 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 pro