But man has not satisfied himself with admitting intellectual beings to a share of his repast, and in some measure with inviting them to his table; he has found the means of elevating himself to their rank, by the physical effects of those very aliments. It is singularly remarkable, that several savage Nations have been discovered, who scarcely possessed industry sufficient to procure food for themselves; but not one who had not invented the means of getting drunk. Man is the only animal who is sensible of that pleasure. Other animals are content to remain in their sphere. Man is making perpetual efforts to get out of his. Intoxication elevates the mind. All religious festivals among savages, and even among polished nations, end in feasting, in which men drink till reason is gone they begin it is true with fasting, but intoxication closes the scene. Man renounces human reason that he may excite in himself emotions that are divine. The effect of intoxication is to convey the soul into the bosom of some deity. You always hear topers celebrating in their songs, Bacchus, Mars, Venus, or the God of Love. It is farther very remarkable, that men do not abandon themselves to blasphemy till they arrive at a state of intoxication; for it is an instinct as common to the soul, to cleave to the DEITY when in it's natural state, as to abjure Him when it is corrupted by vice,

Of the Sense of Smelling.

The pleasures of smell are peculiar to Man; for I do not comprehend under it the olfactory emana, tions by which he forms a judgment of his aliments, and which are common to him with most animals. Man alone is sensible to perfumes, and employs them to give more energy to his passions. Mahomet said that they elevated his soul to Heaven. Whatever may be in this, the use of them has been introduced into all the religious ceremonies, and into the political assemblies, of many Nations. The Brasili ans, as well as all the Savages of North-America, never deliberate on any object of importance without smoking tobacco in a calumet. It is from this. prac. tice that the calumet is become among all those Nations, the symbol of peace, of war, of alliance, according to the accessories with which it is accom❤ panied.

It is undoubtedly from the same custom of smoking, which was common to the Scythians, as Herodotus relates, that the caduceus of Mercury, which has a striking resemblance to the calumet of the Americans, and which appears like it to have been nothing but a pipe, became the symbol of com merce, Tobacco increases in some measure the powers of the understanding, by producing a species of intoxication in the nerves of the brain. Lery tells us that the Brasilians smoke tobacco till it makes them drunk. It is to be observed, that those nations have found out the most cephalic plant of the whole vegetable kingdom, and that the use of it is the most universally diffused of all those which exist on the Globe,

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the vine and the corn-plants not excepted. I have seen it cultivated in Finland, beyond Viburg, in about the sixty-first degree of North Latitude. The habit of using it becomes so powerful, that a person who has acquired it, will rather forego bread for a day than his tobacco. This plant is nevertheless a real poison; it affects at length the olfactory nerves, and sometimes the sight. But man is ever disposed to impair his physical constitution, provided he can strengthen in himself the intellectual sentiment.

Of the Sense of Seeing..

Every thing that has been said, in detailing cer tain general Laws of Nature, harmonies, conformi ties, contrasts, and oppositions, refers principally to the sense of seeing. I do not speak of adapta tion or correspondence; for this belongs to the sentiment of reason, and is entirely distinct from matter. The other relations are in truth founded on the reason itself of Nature, which communicates delight to us by means of colours and forms generative and generated, and inspires melancholy by those which announce decomposition and destruction. But without entering upon that vast and inexhaustible subject, I shall at present confine myself to certain optical effects, which involunta rily excite in us the sentiment of some of the attributes of Deity.

One of the most obvious causes of the pleasure which we derive from the sight of a great tree, arises from the sentiment of infinity kindled in us, by it's pyramidical form. The decrease of it's dif

ferent tiers of branches and tints of verdure, which are always lighter at the extremities of the tree than in the rest of it's foliage, give it an apparent elevation which never terminates. We experience the same sensations in the horizontal plan of landscapes, in which we frequently perceive several successive hilly elevations flying away one behind the other, till the last melt away into the Heavens. Nature produces the same effect in vast plains, by means of the vapours which rise from the banks of the lakes, or from the channels of the brooks and rivers that wander through them; their contours are multiplied in proportion to the extent of the plain, as I have many a time remarked. Those vapours present themselves on different plans; sometimes they stand still, like curtains drawn along the skirts of the forests; sometimes they mount into columns over the brooks which meander through the meadows: sometimes they are quite grey; at other times they are illumined and penetrated by the rays of the Sun. Under all these aspects they display to us, if I may venture to use the expression, several perspectives of infinity in infinity itself.

I say nothing of the delightful spectacle which the Heavens sometimes present to us in the disposition of the clouds. I do not know of any Philosopher who has so much as suspected that their beauties were subjected to Law. One thing is certain, namely, that no one animal which lives in the light is insensible to their effects. I have spoken in another place somewhat of their characters of amability or terror, which are the same with those of amiable or dangerous animals and vegetables, conformable

conformable to those of the days and of the seasons which they announce. The Laws of them which I have sketched, will suggest delicious subjects of meditation to any person disposed to study them, excepting those who are determined to apply the mechanical medium of barometers and thermometers. These instruments are good for nothing but the regulation of the atmosphere of our chambers. They too frequently conceal from us the action of Nature; they announce, in most instances, the same temperatures in the days which set the birds a-singing, and in those which reduce them to silence. The harmonies of Heaven are to be felt only by the heart of Man. All Nations, struck by their ineffable language, raise their hands and their eyes to Heaven in the involuntary emotions of joy or of grief.

Reason however tells them that God is every. where. How comes it that no one stretches out his arms toward the Earth, or to the Horizon, in the attitude of invocation? Whence comes the sentiment which whispers to them, God is in Heaven? Is it because Heaven is the place where light dwells? Is it because the light itself which discloses all objects to us, not being like our terrestrial substances liable to be divided, corrupted, destroyed, and confined, seems to present something celestial in it's substance?

It is to the sentiment of infinity which the sight: of the Heavens inspires, that we must ascribe the taste of all nations for building temples on the summit of a mountain, and the invincible propensity which the Jews felt, like other Nations, to worship

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